The Rescued Heart, by Madeleine McDonald, Reviewed

Madeleine McDonald’s The Rescued Heart is a good old-fashioned romance, set in modern times in

Switzerland and Edinburg. The story deals with the burgeoning romance between Ellen, a Scottish widow and Christian, a Swiss artist, with the banker, Philip, as the villain. It’s a romance and therefore written with a female readership in mind, since that’s what the publishers of romantic novels expect of their authors.

So, what’s an ancient male doing reading such a book? Well, for a start, I’m just an old romantic. And, secondly, as a writer who enjoys incorporating romance into his own books, it’s helpful to know what readers expect.

Those familiar with my reviews will know that the most important element for me is character. Here we have two main protagonists and one antagonist. All three are skilfully drawn and I easily formed empathy with both Ellen and Christian, whilst quickly disliking Philip. So, it became a book I wanted to read on from the earliest pages. The ancillary characters, principally Ellen’s teenage daughter and son, are drawn with as much care and skilful observation as the main three.

The story takes a number of unexpected twists as it travels through the contemporary landscape of the Swiss art festival and the more familiar countryside of the Scottish family. There are lovely contrasts between the staid and the spontaneous. And there is building tension in the relationship between Ellen and her erstwhile friend, Philip, as his real personality and motives are revealed. Christian is a true artist, with all the freedom of spirit that entails. Further complications are introduced through the appearance and attitudes of the children.

In romantic fiction, true love never runs smooth and this tale has its fair share of ups, downs, twists and turns. There are threads of tension that build toward the very satisfactory denouement, encouraging the reader to read on. This is a book that makes you want to read to the end. Modern romance often seems to be a euphemism for erotica. Not so in this case. Whilst there are sensuous elements, all that happens in the bedroom remains hinted at rather than explicitly displayed.

So, this is a love story, involving mature lovers who find themselves brought together in unexpected circumstances and who fall in love in the most natural way. I found myself rooting for Ellen, whilst feeling frustration at her doubts and insecurities. I wanted Christian to win the day with her and I wished Philip out of Ellen’s life. Were my wishes fulfilled? You’ll have to read the book to find that out.

I enjoyed the read and loved the descriptions of the locations; places I’ve never visited in fact but that I could see as I travelled with the lovers. Madeleine is a gifted writer and she tells a great story. If you like your romance to deal with love and the trials that lead that love across the barriers of real life, you’ll enjoy this book. I thoroughly recommend it.

The Pitfalls of Stereotyping.

A multinational crowd in Paris, taken from the Eifel Tower.

You do it; you know you do. We all do, usually without realising it. We have a tendency to put all people from a nation, class, occupation or whatever into the same pot and accuse them all of the same faults. It’s a form of laziness, sometimes a simple resort to shorthand because we find it too onerous to look beneath the surface, sometimes because we lack experience, sometimes because our circle of friends and acquaintances simply isn’t wide enough.

Here, today, I want to look at the way we, as writers, can easily be persuaded into making our characters into stereotypes; specifically, national stereotypes. Of course, what we should strive for is the archetype instead, if we are attempting to portray a ‘type’ at all.

So, let’s start by understanding what a stereotype actually is. My SOED (Shorted Oxford English Dictionary - 2 large authoritative volumes for those who don’t know), my personal bible for definitions, defines the noun, for the purposes of this piece, as follows: A preconceived , standardised, and oversimplified impression of the characteristics which typify a person…often shared by all members of a society or certain social groups; an attitude based on such a preconception. Also a person…appearing to conform closely to such a standardised impression.

And, because it’s germane, let’s also look at what inspired me to post this today. My wife and I have just (Tuesday 2nd October) returned from a 10 day holiday in France. It’s a country I’ve not visited before, so my expectations of the people were formed by impressions from friends and colleagues. Now, it’s well known that the Brits and the French aren’t natural buddies. They’re said to consider us conservative, dull and uncultured. We, especially the English, apparently consider them arrogant, dirty, sexually predatory and unwelcoming to strangers.

 

But, Paris is as cosmopolitan as any major city so I also expected to meet people of many other nations. I wasn’t disappointed. We were greeted at Charles De Gaul Airport by a charming Frenchman, who drove us to our hotel in the city, speaking excellent English and quietly informative. The receptionist, Karolina, was a pretty, efficient, charming and multilingual Polish girl who greeted us warmly and answered all our questions with knowledge and confidence. The lady who prepared breakfasts and cleaned the rooms was a black Frenchwoman, with no English, who smiled and greeted us with warmth.

We’d booked an all day walking tour of the city and found the French staff at Cityrama helpful and competent with no trace of the arrogance they should have displayed with their superior knowledge. Our guide for the day was Chantal, a charming mature French lady who conducted the tour with skill, humour and encyclopaedic knowledge, shepherding our small group of five around the crowded Louvre, Eifel Tower and Notre Dam with casual expertise and patient attention to our varied needs. The group consisted of my wife and I, both from the north of England, an English woman from London and an American couple from a small town near Cincinnati, Ohio. The latter pair, who made no effort to speak even a greeting in French, could have impressed me with an idea of Americans as being selfish, self-important, inconsiderate, grouchy, complaining, demanding and generally rude. However, not only was this initial impression softened slightly during the day by the addition of a glimpse of inappropriate humour from the man, who seemed to think it okay to mock the armed guards patrolling the Eifel Tower, much to the distress of his wife, but also by his willingness to engage our lone black English lady in conversation.

It helped modify my first impressions of Americans that we sat next to another couple, from Texas, in the first floor restaurant at the Tower (lunch there was part of the package), and they proved charming and interesting neighbours with no trace of the gung-ho attitude displayed by our tour companions. When they left and were replaced by a couple from Washington State, my impressions were further improved due to their quiet and almost shy responses to our conversation.

I could go on to describe the French staff at the Tower restaurant (all charming), the Italian staff at the restaurant where we ate one evening (also charming), the Japanese group who shared our carriage on the train from Paris to St Raphael (amusing, multilingual and helpful), the French taxi driver who waited exactly as arranged via my pigeon-French emails to collect us for our ride to St Maxime and proved to be friendly and welcoming, and the various groups and couples we met on walks, boat trips and in restaurants - Swiss, German, Australian, English and French. But I think you get the picture.

Perhaps the one fly in the ointment, for the French, was the utter lack of customer care shown by the owners of the holiday resort where we spent our week in St Maxime. We were greeted there by an envelope stuck on the outside of the door of the reception point. An inadequate map directed us to our accommodation, where we were expected to make our own beds, and where there was nothing in the way of a welcome pack - no food or drink to refresh the weary travellers, not even any paper in the toilet, and no information about where we might buy such items. This theme extended throughout the week, with an early morning meeting demanded for the following morning, which we attended but for which they failed to show up. This was followed by a departure, where we were expected to allow an inspection prior to leaving, for which they also failed to arrive as arranged, leaving us concerned in case we couldn’t finalise things before the taxi arrived to take us to Nice Airport. As it happened, both these failures were dealt with efficiently and in a friendly manner by two English maintenance men who happened to be on duty, cleaning the swimming pool, at the times.

If I’d based my impressions of the French on the behaviour of the owners of that complex I would have left the place with a very different impression from the one I gleaned by contact with many other people. And that’s my point: apologies for the convoluted trip to arrive here.

If we, as writers, have no contact with the people about whom we write, it’s clear that we can’t rely on the impression provided by minimal contact with a few representatives of a nation or on information given by friends and acquaintances, no matter how well-meaning. The popular habit of labelling people from other countries as if they were all the same is patently absurd. The world, as a whole, seems to regard the French as arrogant, Germans as aggressive, Americans as obsessively self-important, Italians as incurable Lotharios, the Swiss as boring and the English as dull and repressed. If, as writers, we employ such lazy categorisation to describe fictional characters, we do the citizens of the whole world a serious disservice.  

People are different or the same according to our own perceptions, ideas, philosophies and personalities. Whilst the placing of a descriptive label on a whole nation may be considered acceptable for everyday reference (and I don’t think it is), it’s certainly not a satisfactory way for an author to represent a character. If I’ve learned anything about the peoples of various nations it’s that they’re all as complex and individual as we are ourselves. It’s an insult to make a box, label it ‘French’ and stick inside it every person from that nation, unless, of course, it’s a shorthand joke intended to create humour rather than offence.

We’re more than the seed of the country of our birth, however proud, or otherwise, we may be of that origin. Americans are more than America with its brash, overconfident, hypocritical, Bible-bashing, superior and dominating world image. Germans are more than Germany and its efficient, calculating, aggressive, bullying and precise global persona. And the English are more than England with its quaint, bumbling, reserved, atheistic and self-effacing world picture. Each nation is seen as a specific type by every other nation and these types differ according to which nation is describing which: a proof, if ever one were needed, of the inaccuracy of such stereotyping.

So, when you decide to make your villain an Englishman, your business tycoon an American, your lusty lover an Italian, your artist a Frenchman or your engineer a German, please call to mind the simple fact that people are individuals first and national types, if at all, a long way down the line. You’ll make your writing so much more real and accessible and, perhaps more importantly for a writer, you might even collect some foreign friends and readers along the way. 

Related articles

• Some Inaccurate Negative Stereotypes About Stereotypes
• French Stereotypes / Stéréotypes français
• New research reveals what the French really think about London
• Stereotypically racist lib site criticizes conservatives for being stereotypically racist

Stuart's Daily Word Spot (Antonyms): Pacific/Belligerent

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Pacific/Belligerent

Pacific: adjective - making, or tending to make peace, resulting in reconciliation; appeasing, conciliatory, calming; of a peaceful character, peaceable; characterized by calm or peace, tranquil.

Belligerent: adjective - waging war regularly, as recognized by law; aggressively hostile, pugnacious; pertaining to a belligerent.

'In the world, whilst the general perception of Switzerland and Norway tends to the pacific, many nations view the USA as belligerent, due to its chosen stance as policeman of the globe.'

'Jenny stepped lightly between the boys, her gentle touch on each of their arms, a pacific influence on what had promised to be an ugly conflict over her charms.'

'Always ready for a fight, Tony was known as a bully in the streets and feared because of his belligerent nature and readiness to use his fists or any available weapon to get his own way.'

1669 - The first jury trial was held in Delaware, resulting in Marcus Jacobson being condemned for insurrection and suffering a sentence of flogging, branding & slavery.

1920 - Bob Hope became an American citizen, creating the 'loss' of a great comedian to the British but extending his talents to the wider world in the process.

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Habitat

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Habitat: noun - natural environment occupied by a particular organism; area distinguished by the organisms occupying it; such areas collectively; dwelling place, usual surroundings, habitation.

‘Many of the world’s rarest creatures are facing extinction due to the disappearance of their habitat, often due to the encroachment of man and his activity.’

6 June 1961 – Carl Jung died

Carl Gustav Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961), Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology, is thought by some to be the first modern psychologist to state that the human psyche is, by nature, religious. He’s also one of the best known pioneers of dream analysis. He considered himself a natural scientist, not a theoretical psychologist, like Freud. Jung used deep observation followed by categorization instead of the opposite process of imagining what categories might exist and then looking for proof of these and deciding which was always correct. He was a practicing clinician, but involved himself in philosophy, sociology, astrology, literature, the arts and even alchemy.   

Writing: 3000 Words in Two Sessions

The first session, before breakfast in bed with Valerie, took me to a little over 1800 words and again moved the story on apace. After the usual morning jobs, we saw the weather forecast for tomorrow and decided our walk would be more pleasant today. And, pleasant it was, though we trod the ground we have covered on many previous weekends.
After lunch, inside, as it was too windy to sit in the garden today, I set to on a second writing session and turned out another 1200 plus words. So, today, the epic fantasy has taken me through a desert, along a track in a rain forest, and into the streets of a city lying on the shores of a lake beneath a smoking volcano. I've been in the company of slave traders, questionable high priests and heroic warriors. Such is the daily life of the writer of fantasy; and it's great fun.
Of course, England (the football team, that is) were playing Switzerland in a qualifying match. The draw was a better result than they deserved, to be honest and I'm pleased I sat through only the second half.
Dr Who entertained us with further adventures and left us cliff hanging until the series resumes in Autumn. Neat trick from the producers, that.
Now, since I've uploaded, edited and 'fixed' the photographs I took in the garden and on our walk, dealt with a multitude of emails and spent enough hours pounding keys and staring at a screen, I think it's time for the rest of that bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon I opened last night, don't you?

AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTA POLKINHORN

Christa Polkinhorn, originally from Switzerland, lives and works as writer and translator in Santa Monica, California. She divides her time between the United States and Switzerland and has strong ties to both countries. The tension and excitement this "double life" creates informs her work. Among her many interests, aside from writing, are traveling, studying foreign languages and cultures, drawing and painting, meeting people and forming friendships. Christa has published poems in various literary magazines, a collection of poems, Path of Fire, 2002, published by Finishing Line Press, and her debut novel, Love of a Stonemason.

Tell us about Love of a Stonemason in a few sentences.

 Love of a Stonemason is a story about the struggle of two artists with their past, their family, their creativity, and their love for each other. Told from the point of view of Karla, a young painter, it depicts the world through her artistic sensibility. It takes the reader on a journey full of sights, smells, tastes, and sounds from the south of Switzerland to Italy and the Peruvian Andes. 

Here is a short blurb: Karla Bocelli is no stranger to loss. When she was five years old, her mother died in a car crash in the south of Switzerland. Her Peruvian father lives at the other end of the world, and a year ago, her aunt and guardian passed away. Now, at age twenty-four, Karla almost gets hit by a speeding car. As if this wasn’t fateful enough, Andreas, the driver, turns out to be a sculptor and carver of tombstones. In spite of his profession, Andreas is anything but morbid. Quick-tempered and intense, he exudes a rough-and-tumble energy. After a tumultuous start of their relationship, Karla comes to see in Andreas the "rock in her life," the perfect antidote to her fears of abandonment and bouts of depression. Andreas, however, wrestles with his own ghosts: an alcoholic father who abused him as a child and his own fits of anger. Together, the two artists must confront the demons that haunt them.

  

How did you come to write this particular book?

The initial trigger was an intense personal experience. At the end of 2005, I lost my mother and found myself to be the sole survivor of our immediate family in Switzerland, my only sister and my father having died earlier. Death and its impact—the pain of loss and loneliness—plays an important in the life of the main character in the novel. My father was an artist in his younger years. I talked to a stonemason about the tombstone on my parents’ grave. Some of my relatives live in the south of Switzerland and my visits in Italy and Peru also found their way into the novel. The final product was a completely fictional story. While writing Love of a Stonemason, I was rarely conscious of any one particular person, incidence, or experience, which influenced me. Some of it came to me much later. I had many “aha”-moments half-way into the novel or even after it was finished. One of the most fascinating aspects of the creative process is the way consciousness and the unconscious work together to produce something unique and new.

If you have a favorite character in your novel, why that particular one?

Both main characters, Karla and Andreas, are flawed but I fell in love with them as I created them. When I was writing the book, they became more real to me than some of the “real” persons in my life. It was a little unsettling, to say the least.

How can people buy your book?

Love of a Stonemason is available as ebook for the Kindle reader at Amazon, both in the USA and in the UK, and in various other ebook formats at Smashwords. It is also available as paperback at Amazon.

Here are the links: My Author’s Page at Amazon.com, USA

Love of a Stonemason at Amazon, UK

Love of a Stonemason in various ebook formats at Smashwords

What qualities make a successful writer?

Passion, willingness to practice one’s craft, to revise, and to learn from one’s mistakes, patience, insistence, and, yes, some talent.

How do you set about writing a piece?

I don’t have a set approach. I have an idea and start writing. After a while, somewhat of a rough outline begins to develop, which I change as I go along. When the piece feels like it’s coming together, I sometimes write a blurb or a short synopsis. Once in a while, I write the last chapter early on but I often change it because the work leads me in a different direction.

Beginning writers make many mistakes; what do you think is the most harmful?

Talking about wanting to be a writer and not doing it. I have several friends who told me after I published my novel that they were thinking about writing, but then gave me a ton of excuses why they didn’t have enough time and so on. My answer: If you want to write, you have to do it. Stop making excuses. If you only write one page a day, double-spaced, then after a year, you have a 365 page manuscript!

To what extent are grammar and spelling important to a writer?

That’s a non-brainer, isn’t it? Of course, they are important. You can have the most interesting plot in the world but if your work is full of spelling mistakes, if the style doesn’t fit the content, you lose most sophisticated readers.

How much revision of your MS do you do before you send it off?

I revise it myself many times and then I hand it over to a professional editor. First of all, I do my creative writing in English, which is not my native language. My native language is German (Swiss German actually). Although, I have lived more than half of my life in the United States and am fluent in English, I still feel I need a native speaker to point out awkward expressions or flawed syntax. So, yes, I wouldn’t think of publishing anything without having it proofread and edited. And even with all the proofreading by a professional editor, some minor mistakes still remain. A work is really never done. I am in the process of translating my novel into German and as a translator, you are really close to the text and you find all those little blunders you didn’t notice before. It’s aggravating and I have uploaded new versions of my novel several times. That’s the one big advantage of ebooks; they are fairly easy to update. With paperbacks, it’s a little more cumbersome.

To what extent do you think genre is useful in the publishing world?

I dislike genre labels because they are limiting and often misleading. Is a novel about love and relationships a “romance?” Perhaps, but not necessarily. What do you call a book which deals with love between a man and a woman and at the same time with relationships between parents and children and the creative process of artists? An art romance? An art-family-saga? I think most great works of literature cross genres. The only genres that make any sense to me are “Fiction” and “Non Fiction.”

Do you have support, either from family and friends or a writing group?

My friends and family are very supportive. I have joined writing groups in the past and may do so again in the future. Ultimately though, writing is a solitary process. You have to be willing to spend quite a bit of time by yourself. I have known people who join workshops for years and never produce a finished piece of work. There is a great article by Michael Ventura, an American author, about writing: The Talent of the Room. I have it pinned to the wall in my writing corner at home.

If there’s a single aspect to writing that really frustrates you, what is it?

That’s probably the same for many authors: sitting in front of a piece of paper or a computer screen, chewing your fingers, and not knowing what to write. Writer’s block. It happens sometimes.

Is there any aspect of writing that you really enjoy?

There are moments of elation when something inside me clicks and a paragraph or chapter feels just right, when the characters on the page become alive. Those moments make up for all the drudgery of sitting at my desk or on my sofa, struggling with words and ideas. Writing for me is a process of discovery, of exploring things in the world around me and in myself. There is a quotation I recently read by May Sarton, the author of Mrs. Stevens hears the Mermaids Singing: “Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.” You can replace “love” by “writing” and it would fit.

What are you writing now?

I just finished the rough draft of a second novel with the working title “An Uncommon Family.” You can read the first three preliminary chapters on my blog: http://christa-polkinhorn.blogspot.com/

Do you have a website or a blog that readers can visit?

Yes, my website, which also leads to my blog, is www.christa-polkinhorn.com

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to be interviewed. I enjoy your blog and the interesting topics!

Christa

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Christa Polkinhorn
Bookworm Press
Tel/Fax: 310-393-7199
E-Mail:  (primary), (secondary)