Back to the Past?

Whenever groups of romance authors in the UK get together and the conversation turns to favourite writers from the past, a name that almost invariably comes up is that of Mary Stewart – particularly if the writers concerned are penning romantic suspense. Her books – contemporary in the immediate post war period - are still loved and enjoyed today. Her first lines are legendary and are still quoted in seminars and workshops for aspiring writers. Her titles, many lifted from myths, or Shakespeare, including The Moonspinners, Airs Above the Ground, Wildfire at Midnight, This Rough Magic and Touch Not the Cat, are evocative of the magic world she managed to create. Often there is a supernatural tinge to the story that puts them alongside the paranormal romance of the present day.

Frequently set in what would then have been exotic locations in mainland Europe and particularly in Greece and her islands, they must have provided a window onto a very different world in the grey days of the late 1940s and 50s. Her heroines were modern and independent and possibly rather daring in the standards of the time.

But – when you read the novels now they are definitely period pieces. Often they contain lengthy and elegiac descriptions of places and scenery that these days would end on the cutting room floor, but which contribute vastly to the atmosphere of the story.

Contemporary novels are expected to move at a much faster pace. I presume this is dictated by the pace of the ‘real world’. But have we lost something along the way? How often have you opened a book that starts with a frantic action scene that leaves you confused? And possibly, quite cold towards the protagonists? You’ve had no time to make an emotional connection to these people, so why should you care about them?

Where do we go from here? Can the pace of novels get faster? Is flash fiction the way forward - literature, sound-bite size? Or could a more leisurely style of writing ever make a comeback?

Stones that dance?

I first got into the idea of stone circles when I was a child. There was a small park near where I lived -- climbable trees, with the added attraction of a ring of tall grey stones in the centre. We always called them the Druid Stones and imagined that they had been there for centuries. It was years before I discovered the proper name of the park. I know now that the circle was a modern Gorsedd -- not ancient and not much to do with druids, but erected to commemorate the holding of an eisteddfod -- a traditional Welsh celebration of music and poetry.

In due course, I visited the ultimate UK stone circle -- Stonehenge. In those days you could still walk amongst the megaliths. They were huge, and imposing, but I found them disappointingly un-atmospheric. That part of the country is strewn with stones and circles and I have to say that I found other, less well-known sites, often come upon unannounced in the middle of a field, to have more magic. Particularly if you happened on them when the sun was beginning to set…

Wales has a number of sites with standing stones -- including two near where I live, which I've never visited, but are on my list for this summer, though not at midnight! The Tinkinswood Burial Chamber dates from 3,500 BC and the capstone is thought to be the largest in Europe. Like most circles, they have their own share of creepy stories attached to them. The St Lythan’s site, which has never been excavated, has a saddled horse that cannot be ridden, which appears on moonlit nights. On Midsummer Eve the capstone is reputed to twirl around three times, while the stones go to the river to bathe, and at Halloween wishes whispered to the stones are granted.

The magical stories about the origins of stone circles usually involve giants being caught by the first rays of the rising sun, or groups of women turned to stone while dancing. The historical reality, to me, is no less fascinating. Massive structures that are thousands of years old, put in place at a time when the only way of maneuvering them would have been by manual labour. Created for purposes we don't really understand, frequently associated with significant events in the calendar, such as the summer or winter solstice, many containing old burial chambers -- I think that this ‘history in the mists of time’ element attracts me, as a writer, more than the myths and ghost stories.

I am not the only one who finds these stones intriguing. Standing stones and stone circles occur in some of my favourite reading. I think that it was Mary Stewart's fictional account of Merlin bringing the stones from Ireland to create Stonehenge, told in her book The Crystal Cave, that first made me want to visit. In Nora Robert’s Circle trilogy a stone dance is the portal into Geall. The work of British thriller writer Robert Goddard, often set in the West Country, draws on the atmosphere of the Avebury stones in Sight Unseen, a story that begins with the disappearance of a child. I’d be interested to hear if anyone knows of any more examples.

As far as I'm aware, standing stones are a particularly European phenomena, appearing most significantly in a swathe from Scotland to Brittany, on the French coast -- but I'd love to know if there are any similar or comparable sites elsewhere in the world.

I suspect that at some stage a book will come to me that has a stone circle in it -- and it will probably be one out of my imagination, so that I can give it all the characteristics and atmosphere that I want. Tall stone pillars, looming out of a chilly mist, waiting for the first thin, pale touch of the rising sun. Or maybe silent and watchful, bathed in bloody light as the sun dips down over the horizon. Or under a new moon, or a single star. Or maybe just sitting in a field, grey, sleek and dripping, on a typically wet Welsh morning …

Image of Stonehenge: FreeFoto.com