• Editor’s Blog: March

Editor’s Blog: March

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At The Desk

We’re condensing Gallipoli: the Fatal Shore by Harvey Broadbent, in time for the April Encounters and Anzac Day. Harvey was born in England, and the first time he learned about the ANZACs, he happened to be in the Dardanelles. At the age of 22, sitting on a beach near Kaba Tepe, he heard the story of Gallipoli from a Turkish friend. Later, having graduated in Turkish ­language and history from Manchester University, he came with his family to settle in Australia. He has spent much of his career working at the ABC in radio and TV, for which he has received many awards. Now a recognised authority on the Gallipoli campaign, he wanted his book to convey ‘a perspective sympathetic to the three main actors—British, Turkish and Anzac’. He reveals some startling new findings. Did you know that the Turkish defenders had forewarning of the landings on 25 April 1915, hours before historians previously believed? Gallipoli: the Fatal Shore is a searing description of what really went on above Anzac Cove, and a tragic picture of the Australians and New Zealanders who gave their all against courageous Turks fighting in grim defence of their homeland.

In The Comfy Chair

I’m into The Help and I have to say that it’s almost impossible to put down. First-time author Kathryn Stockett recently saw her novel reach the top of the New York Times best-seller lists despite having had close to 50 literary agents reject it when she was trying to get it published. It’s about three women in a town in Mississippi during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Two are black maids working for white families; the third is the daughter of white farmers who wants to write down the facts about the maids’ hardships. She secretly interviews thirteen women, at some risk to herself and huge risk to them, and in consequence changes all their lives. Along with getting caught up in the story, I kept wondering what black women in today’s USA would think of the ‘voices’ of the maids, Aibileen and Minny, and whether these readers would be quite as moved by them as I was. Erin Aubry Kaplan asked in Ms magazine, ‘Why must blacks speak dialect to be authentic? Why are Stockett’s white characters free of the linguistic quirks that white Southerners certainly have?’ Fiction is fiction—but it’s always discussable. We in the Reader’s Room would love to receive some commentary on this book, particularly from African-American readers. Click here.

Around The Table

We were sad to hear last month about the death of Dick Francis at 89; one of our favourite Select Editions authors; a kind, amusing and generous man; and one of the best mystery writers the world has known. We’re now in the midst of a debate about detective stories, and about a dividing line that goes back a long way in this enormously popular genre of fiction. Who make the best detective heroes, the characters like private eye Philip Marlowe, the redoutable Miss Marple, or Dick Francis’s Sid Halley, who stick to their own methods, mount their own investigations, take all the risks and gallop ahead, leaving the police force floundering in their wake—or the police detectives like Adam Dalgleish, Inspector Morse or Harry Bosch, who are wedded to their calling, determined to close every case, and are not afraid to bring their considerable personalities into their job, however much trouble this might cause their colleagues—or the criminals? In May’s Select Editions volume we star one of each: Clive Cussler’s adventurer and crime fighter Kurt Austin, alongside Peter Lovesey’s dedicated, eccentric head of CID in Bath, England. We’re giving you two sneak peeks of the moment when each man realises something criminal might be happening on his patch. Who would be your hero?
Kurt Austin makes a dangerous dive.
Peter Diamond gets an uneasy introduction to a murder.
Click here to read the Dick Francis biography we attached to the Editor’s Blog in November last year

From Reader's Digest Interactive