The Tissue Veil by Brenda Bannister - Book Tour
The
Tissue Veil
What if
you discovered a hundred-year-old diary under your floorboards - and then found
references in it to yourself? Or if you lived in 1901, yet kept seeing glimpses
of a girl from modern times? And what if both of you had problems that only the
other could really understand? Emily and Aysha live in the same Stepney house
and an inexplicable link develops between them, fuelled by Aysha's discovery of
a journal and Emily's sightings of a 'future ghost'. Each takes courage from
the other's predicament - after all, what's a hundred years between friends?
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Guest Post
Dear Jasmine,
thank you for inviting me onto your
blog. There's a conundrum at the heart of my novel The Tissue Veil and I thought I'd try to explain it.
If we grow up
with stories, we instinctively learn the art of willingly suspending our
disbelief. Talking animals? No problem. Flying humans? Whether it's Peter Pan
or Superman, we'll go with the flow.
My novel has two time frames, in the
early 20th and 21st centuries, and the stories are united by both theme and place.
The young female protagonists both face problems which the other would
recognise -- family and social pressures which push them towards unwanted
marriage, frustrate their ambitions and threaten their independence.
Thematically, I hoped to show that life has changed -- but not that much and
not for all; story-wise, I didn't just want parallel narratives; I needed the
girls to interact and influence each other at some level. Emily and
Aysha live in the same Stepney house and 'share' the same bedroom: the link
between them is fuelled by Aysha's discovery of a journal and Emily's sightings
of a 'future ghost'.
Future ghost? Surely no problem for
readers familiar with 'Back to the Future' or 'Doctor Who', but the journal
stretches their credibility a little further. It was important that Aysha
didn't have access to all of Emily's history at once and that the stories
developed in step with each other. Aysha
reads the journal then replaces it where she found it, under the floorboard;
when she retrieves it some weeks later, she finds new entries and this
continues to happen. The book has become 'a live channel to the past' and the
veil which separates the Edwardian age from present seems tissue thin. Emily's
sightings of Aysha at first puzzle, then comfort her; not surprisingly, she
keeps her 'visions' to herself. Experiencing Emily's story as it's happening
has a powerful effect on Aysha and she's desperate to know what happened to the
other girl. She's also very reluctant to share the journal with friends -- if
she can't explain it to herself, how can she expect someone else to understand?
-- but eventually she does.
I suppose I was influenced by the
time-slip classics of children's literature -- such as Alison Uttley's A
Traveller in Time or Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden -- and
modern adult fiction, like Kate Mosse's Carcassonne novels, but The Tissue
Veil is not traditional time-slip. Journal and sightings aside, the two
stories are, I hope, realistic narratives set firmly at their own point in time
and the girls work out their problems and face their own challenges
independently of each other. The alternating story-lines have equal weight and
I'd like to think that readers will root for both girls and be continually
enticed to read one more chapter to find out what happens to each of them in
turn.
Although it
doesn't have any supernatural elements, the story I'm now writing does cover
several decades and I soon found a linear approach wouldn't do. I am now
jumping about in time, from one point in the central character's life to
another, child to adult, and feeling much happier. I missed the alternating
times and voices of The Tissue Veil!
Author
Bio –
Brenda studied English at university and
later qualified as a librarian, working in various educational settings from schools
to higher education. Moving from London to Frome in Somerset in 2010 proved a
catalyst for her own writing as she joined local fiction and script writing
groups. She has had a number of short stories published, plus short plays
produced in local pub theatre, but all the while was incubating a story based
in the area of Tower Hamlets where she had worked for eighteen years. This germ of a story became 'The Tissue
Veil'.
Brenda is a founder member of Frome
Writers' Collective, an organisation which has grown from a handful of members
to over a hundred in the past four years, and helped set up its innovative
Silver Crow Book Brand. She is also the current organiser of the annual Frome
Festival Short Story Competition. A lifelong reader, Brenda rarely follows
genres, but enjoys modern literary fiction, historical fiction, classics and
the occasional detective novel. The latest Bernard Cornwell might be a guilty
pleasure, but she'll be even more eager to get her hands on Hilary Mantel's
final instalment of Thomas Cromwell's story.
Social
Media Links –
2 Comments
Thank you for hosting my guest post, Jasmine. x
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome! :) Happy to help out!
DeletePlease try not to spam posts with the same comments over and over again. Authors like seeing thoughtful comments about their books, not the same old, "I like the cover" or "sounds good" comments. While that is nice, putting some real thought and effort in is appreciated. Thank you.