I'm Writing About Bones Again

In November of 2020, in Yorkshire, three shifts of gravediggers worked from six o’clock in the morning until ten o’clock at night over a period of at least ten days to prepare the cemetery for the burials of people who have died in the second wave of coronavirus.

 Undertakers in the UK came out of retirement to help attend to the dead and their families – before the second wave hit. One of them is a friend who told me that funeral workers are the unnoticed exhausted. In May of 2020, at least one funeral home chain doubled the number of funeral services in one week. Most of the deceased are being cremated, yet there are long waits for burials.

The media ridicule and criticize Funeral Directors in normal times, and there is a whispered surprise among the industry that they’ve not yet been accused of enjoying a financial field day. It is quite the opposite. I’m told most families have the simplest service possible; there is no embalming, there are no flowers, no order of service, no limousines, etc. Due to limited finances of the bereaved, and in adherence to strict Covid guidelines, a grim ritual is made grimmer.

 While this untold misery of death blankets the globe, there is a sprawling necropolis 20 miles south of Cairo, Egypt where the ancient dead are being dug up by the hundreds. The vast underground burial site of Saqqara has been trampled upon by teams of archaeologists and researchers, and those who do their bidding. There have been looters in this spot for centuries digging for treasures, but the big news is that they didn’t dig deep enough. Since September of 2020, a treasure trove has been unearthed. In a string of finds, sealed, 2,500-year-old coffins and their mummies have been hoisted up 12-meter shafts to the light of the arid day. In a matter of a few months, it was the biggest cache of ancient coffins discovered in over 100 years. The digging continues.

 I first visited Saqqara over thirty years ago. It was not the bustling, busy archaeological site that now exists. There was, literally, no one there. I was traveling with a small group of adult students of Egyptology and their university professor on my first ever trip abroad. Exotic, intoxicating, it was a time before cheap and easy travel. The professor and his wife were friends of my fiancé. It should have been an exciting adventure, yet it was tainted by my ever-growing suspicion that the professor’s wife and my fiancé were slowly but surely falling in love. I tried to settle this nagging, gut wrenching feeling in Old Cairo, in Luxor, in Aswan, on the Nile, at dinner, on the bus, on a camel, on a horse, in the souks, bazaars, and museums. But that feeling didn’t settle until I sought comfort in the atmosphere that pervades all of Egypt and its assiduousness with death and the afterlife – the atmosphere in which my childhood was seeped – cemeteries, tombs, and everything funereal.

 I was the youngest, less worldly, less educated of the group of New Yorkers. And though I had lived in New York for six years by then, the fact that I grew up in a funeral home in the South presented my travel companions with unlimited fodder. I was a sitting duck in the sand that surrounded the Sphinx. A steady stream of jokes flew at me like the Egyptian spears painted on tomb walls, delivered with an underlying, thinly veiled snobbism. I would never forget the faux pas of saying hieroglyphics instead of hieroglyphs, which was the acceptable noun amongst these scholars; nor would I make peace with their attempts to grossly exaggerate a Southern accent, which seemed to both fascinate and repel them.

I was trying to give up smoking, but I sought the little kiosks that sold a five pack of Marlboros, (not my regular brand) and traipsed up and down Egypt where it seemed the same man at the same kiosk waited my arrival in each town, each village. Never were cigarettes smoked so passionately.

 The Giza complex and the Great Pyramid are, of course, impressive. The Great Pyramid is well lit inside, the stairs are modern and have banisters, there’s even a kind of tourist smell that overwhelms the odour of old. But the 4,700-year-old Step Pyramid of King Djoser at Saqqara is older than the Great Pyramid by two hundred years. Not as refined, nor as elegant, but a humongous crumbling structure that was closed to the public when I was there, and is almost always closed due to its dangerously unstable condition. However, the professor, who had cultivated connections with local authorities over many years, made it possible for us to gain entrance inside the ancient tomb.

The approach to the Step Pyramid was breathtaking. It sat desolate; a bleak structure of mastaba squares, stacked progressively in smaller squares one on top of the other, 62 meters high. Compared to Giza and its busy paths and roads near the Great Pyramid, Saqqara and the Step Pyramid held a grand, old, lonesome aura. We walked on sand that hid a necropolis like no other, so revered that it was said to have a divine energy that would aid one into the afterlife. It was more than a buried cemetery, it had been a pilgrimage site for not only the whole of Egypt, but all over the eastern Mediterranean.

 The day began badly. The fiancé and the professor’s wife announced that they were considering a side trip the next day to Saint Catherine’s Monastery, a six to seven hour journey each way from Cairo. It is one of the oldest Christian working monasteries in the world and contains the oldest continuously operating library in the world. I wanted to go too. But the fiancé made nonsensical excuses about how I wouldn’t enjoy it, that it was a long journey, that it probably held no interest for me. (Library at the foot of Mount Sinai? Oldest working library in the WORLD?) They were so intent on going alone, that they scrapped the idea when I insisted that I join them. They were in utter denial of their feelings and the inappropriateness of their wish to run off to a monastery, and it took a few years and two divorces, theirs and ours, before they finally attempted a relationship. For years they insisted they were just friends, as did our friends and even his family. But I knew that day.

 So I had a chest full of anger and confusion when our group entered the Step Pyramid. It was everything the Great Pyramid wasn’t. Utter darkness enveloped us, it was cold, and I had a palpable sense of walking a tomb path that was thousands of years old. This, I thought, is the smell and air of an ancient thing. Quite suddenly, all my despair and angst fell off me. The knots in my stomach eased, my senses sharpened. I remember the light of my small torch falling on pieces of blue faience scattered sparingly on the dusty floor. I pocketed one, unaware I was breaking the law. Years later, the ‘blue faience rooms’ would be restored, and the shafts and burial chambers brought back to life.

 When I read a few weeks ago of the archaeological discovery of evidence of a vast mummy workshop underneath the Saqqara necropolis, I must admit a little tingle went up my spine. I had unknowingly come full circle those years ago, and had stood atop ancient Egypt’s first known funeral home and Mortuary Temple buried deep below my feet.

 But as the global death rate from Covid-19 climbs, and climbs, and climbs, I think how, simultaneously, hundreds of bodies, the mummies, that had been put to rest using many highly sacred rituals, are being disturbed.

 I understand all the educational and cultural benefits of such painstaking and arduous series of digs– the fiancé studied archaeology at university. I understand that Egypt’s tourist trade has been devastated and these digs provide desperately needed jobs. But I’m finding it hard to reconcile that this, of all years, is the best time to unearth the dead.

2021 will bring ‘never-before-seen-footage’, dramatic unwrappings, the big reveals of not only opening the coffins, but live enactments of x-raying the mummies. At press conferences this year they have already begun doing just that. It has been insinuated that many, many more bodies will be exhumed.

For social history purposes, how valuable is it to continue to unearth hordes of mummies, considering the bodies of ancient Egyptians have been studied for years.

When is enough, enough?

Almost 6,000 miles away from Saqqara in Lake George, New York, the full skeletons and fragments of bones of British soldiers and colonial militia who died during the French and Indian War were unearthed over 70 years ago on the shores of the lake during the reconstruction of Fort William Henry. More than 260 years after the soldiers’ deaths, many of their remains have still not been repatriated, nor buried. A portion sit in a box in a storage area, and others are still being studied at a university in Arizona. Even if the handling of the dead has been respectful, should there be a limit to how long human remains can be studied?

I think so.

My empathy muscle has been overworked this year. Yet, as it continues to power tirelessly on in this cruel climate, I cannot stop thinking about the thousand-year-old painted coffins being opened, the mummies’ linens studded with amulets, their written spells unwound, intricate work unravelled, dropping off. A box of British skeletons weighs on my mind. And while it may be ignoble of me to worry about the disturbance of the long dead while numbers of the recent dead rise, I beg the excuse of my late father’s profession that has left its indelible mark in my life. I think of all those women and men who are working so hard to care for the dead, shoveling earth not to raise the dead, but to prepare the dead for cremation and burial, day after day, doing so quietly, respectfully, without recognition, out of our own thoughts unless it is tragically forced upon us. The death worker’s light is always on. I think about the relentless toll on our women and men, our unnoticed exhausted, and I want to scream.

I want to scream, ‘Stop digging up the bodies. Allow the dead, all of them, ancient and new, to rest in peace.’

The Blue Faience Chambers of King Djoser

Interview with Author Sophia Tobin

I am delighted to introduce and interview best-selling author Sophia Tobin about her smashing fourth novel A Map of the Damage.
Sophia’s first novel, The Silversmith’s Wife, was a Sunday Times bestseller, and shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish College Fiction Prize.
Her second novel, The Widow’s Confession, was published in 2015, and her third, The Vanishing, in 2017, both of which have won accolades from a host of media outlets, including the Sunday Times, the Daily Mail, Country Life, and the BBC History Magazine.
Thanks very much to Sophia for her time and insights into the writing of the fascinating and highly enjoyable A Map of the Damage.

For a real treat, you can read a synopsis and first chapter of A Map of the Damage on Sophia’s website here

Sophia Tobin

INTERVIEW

Kate: A Map of the Damage has a dual time line, a departure from your other books. Why did you take this new approach?

 Sophia: When I originally thought about writing the book, it only had the 1940s strand. That’s where everything began: with Livy, walking away from a bombed-out house. But at the time, my first book (The Silversmith’s Wife) had just come out, and I was seen as a writer who concentrated on the 18th and 19th centuries, so I just put the idea away and wrote a novel based at the Victorian seaside (The Widow’s Confession). But the hook stayed with me, and simmered away in the back of my mind. And the idea of having this central place, the Mirrormakers’ Club, with its central mystery, and two timelines which mirror each other, made the book come to life in my mind. In essence it’s a dialogue between two women who are both wrestling with their times.

Also a plot device, I’ve always been intrigued by dual timelines. I remember reading Anya Seton’s Green Darkness when I was very young (it moves between the 16th century and the 1960s) and I was absolutely fascinated by it. But it’s very hard to do, I discovered!

Kate: What were the inspirations behind the book and why did you choose the periods you did?

Sophia: The voices of Livy and Charlotte were very clear to me from the beginning, so I was lucky with that, so although they weren’t based on real people, they came to life very quickly. In terms of themes, the book really is a depiction of passion – and there are so many books which do that beautifully and which I’ve been inspired by, such as The End of The Affair by Graham Greene.

Place is really important in the book, and the Mirrormakers’ Club is inspired by some archival research I did at London’s Goldsmiths’ Hall, on the architect Philip Hardwick and his building of the Hall. For Charlotte’s home, I visited Waddesdon Manor – Redlands doesn’t look like that, but the atmosphere – sequences of perfumed rooms, and the Bachelors’ Wing – is inspired by it.

My wish is always to create a kind of complete world, which the reader feels they can walk into, and I love the juxtaposition between the two worlds here. There is the 1940s: rationing, bombing, shock, contrasting with Charlotte’s 1840s life, which is full of luxury and decadence – she has too much of everything, which is its own problem too: she has to create her own sense of urgency.

Kate: Who was your favourite character and why?

 Sophia: It’s so difficult because I feel affection for all of my characters. At a push my favourite is Henry Dale-Collingwood, the architect of the Mirrormakers’ Club. I love him because of his sarcasm, and because he’s a bluff workaholic who finds himself absolutely blindsided by his feelings for Charlotte. There’s something about that helplessness in the face of emotion which is very endearing. Also, I had to make Charlotte fall in love with him, so I suppose it’s good I like him too!

Kate: Do you think historical fiction has any relevance for today, i.e. is there any correspondence for example between the hardships endured during the Blitz and our current 'lockdown' situation?

 Sophia: I think history always has parallels. What I always try to remember when writing is that the people living in that time didn’t know what the ending was. During the Blitz, lots of people had their bags packed in case of invasion. The victory narrative that we’re all so familiar with was way in the future for them. So that sense of adversity, and uncertainty, chimes with what we’re feeling now – and the fact that many people endured it and carried on their lives is a comfort. I do think that uncertainty is something we’re not really used to now, and we have the illusion of control. Whereas in the past, that was built into life, in a way: the expectation, perhaps, of illness or ill fortune, and the countering of that in the culture, whether through religion, or through rituals such as mourning. We think of the Victorians always wearing black, and sometimes they’re mocked for that, but in fact that mourning was a signifier of loss. It gave someone space to grieve and was an outward sign of the process they were going through. I’m not sure we give each other that space, these days. We don’t allow for uncertainty and loss, and it shocks us hugely when disaster comes.

One more thing: it’s a huge comfort to compare medicine today with the medicine of 150 years ago – once you’ve studied history you can only be crawling-on-your-knees-with-gratitude at the advances which have been made.

Kate: What was the most difficult part of writing the book?

Sophia: I found it hard to balance the writing with my day job. I have written all of my books whilst working full time, but this book felt particularly grueling, perhaps because I wrote a lot of it during the winter, and the last thing you want to do at 8pm on a winter’s evening is turn on the computer! There is always a difficult point for me, in each book, when the first draft is done (I love writing the first draft) and you have to start wrestling, really wrestling with the material and editing it in quite a brutal way. There was a long editing process with this book, and although I felt every moment of it, it was worth it. It always is.

Interview With Actor Rosie Jones

You may have winced as she interrupted a musical concert to distribute white feathers to “cowards” in an episode of Downton Abbey, or your sympathies may have risen to her touching portrayal of a mother left destitute and forced into prostitution in Call the Midwife, or, you may have seen her most recently as needlewoman Patricia in the TV series The Collection, co-produced by Amazon and BBC Worldwide.

When I listened to actor Rosie Jones read the first few pages of my novel The Parentations I knew absolutely that her voice, her interpretation, pacing, and understanding of the text had created a thrilling, beautiful audio version of the book. I am further delighted that Rosie has agreed to answer a few questions about her experience of audiobook narration.

 Narrating an audiobook requires a different set of skills, doesn’t it? Would you agree that it’s not quite reading and not quite acting? How would you describe your approach to audiobook narration?

For me, narrating an audiobook is very much an acting experience – not in the traditional sense of seeing and hearing a body in space – but certainly in terms of performing a story and investing in character. I tend to do quite a lot of prep for my books, so although I am sight-reading, I know the characters quite well; their journeys and roughly what will happen to them next. There’s something utterly joyful about delivering a story in its entirety and playing all the parts! There is freedom in not worrying about where the camera is or whether the back row of the balcony can see your face – the microphone connects you to your audience and becomes your best friend; you can make vocal choices that you can’t make in other mediums.

 The art of narrating is a rigorous endeavour that requires gargantuan focus over a period of days, or possibly weeks, how do you keep the momentum going?

Yes absolutely – being in a black box talking to yourself all day long is demanding both physically and mentally! When you’re reading a really compelling story, you can enter the world of the book and get lost in it. But it’s not always easy. Occasionally you can find yourself drifting off or thinking about the next cuppa, and in those moments you have to pull yourself together and remember that you’ve got to focus and reconnect with the material – you owe it to your audience. The way to keep momentum is to invest in the storytelling.

 Which do you find easier, third person narration, or first person, and why?

I find first person narration tends to be easier to record, because you can enter the mind of the character. First person novels often contain less external description and concentrate more on evoking an interior world which can make life simpler for a narrator. That said, it’s easier to invest in character voices and differentiating in third person narrative because you come at them from outside (rather than hearing them through the mind of the protagonist) which allows more opportunity to be playful.

 In your narration of The Parentations your character voices were wonderfully subtle with just a hint of suggestion of changing characters. Is this your preferred and intentional approach to dialogue?

In general, I probably do more rather than less with character voices because I love dialects and one of the great joys of narrating books is getting to experiment with different sounds. But The Parentations was trickier in that regard! With some of the book being set in Iceland there are a number of Icelandic characters, and it’s not an accent I have easy access to. I didn’t want to do a disservice to that sound but I did want to make the two worlds distinct. So I tried to give those characters a different flavour without attempting a cod Nordic accent… I hope it’s worked! And for the sake of consistency, I tried to apply the same logic to the English characters too. Some characters come easier than others – I had really clear pictures of the Lawless sisters and the Fowlers.

 What was your favourite scene or chapter in The Parentations to narrate?

I really enjoyed the opening of the book – it’s such a captivating start that lures you in – a beautifully drawn, detailed scene. I also loved Willa turning the tables – I won’t say any more because I don’t want to give away the story!  

 Thanks very much for taking the time to enlighten us on the audiobook narration process.

Rosie Jones is currently recording the Little Brown Bear children’s book series and will be directing Hansel and Gretel at the Rose Theatre Kingston during Christmas 2018.

Listen to an excerpt of Rosie narrating The Parentations here