Angelika and the Forgers
AatF has a story involving mis-placed artworks, and this is one of them, entitled Fall.
Extract from a 2010 e-mail to a writer friend: 'I think I may have mentioned to you once that I had started a novel about a woman who wakes from a five-year coma. It's called Angelika and the Forgers. That is a working title, I guess, and it sounds like an homage both to Tintin - Herge's unfinished Tintin book had the working title, in English, of Tintin and the Forgers, though it never got past the first few pages, and remained with the French title Tintin et l'Alph Art - and to the Angelique series of bodice-ripping pot-boilers around in the 50s and 60s; translated in German as Angelika - though I know nothing about them apart from remembering their lurid-looking covers and, for some reason, have not tracked them down. I began AatF in 1990, wrote around 300pp, part 1 and most of part 2, and then abandoned it, for no particular reason. It was the book that took up all my writing time in my two years in Istanbul. When I got to Poland in 1993 to spend my first 6 months there, I got carried away with the ideas I had accumulated in Istanbul, and began writing the equally mammoth-length Istanbul Song instead of continuing with Angelika. It only existed as an old-fashioned typescript, though a few years ago I keyed all of part 1 and some of part 2 onto a computer. I recently found the remaining typescript, and found it interesting reading, firstly as a window into my thinking 20 years ago, and secondly seeing it (almost, maybe) as a disinterested reader might - I'd forgotten most of it. So I began working on it again recently.'
The novel was meant to be short, snappy, disturbing and Kafkaesque. Instead it turned into a sort of Dickensian sprawl with lots of light-hearted moments and occasional slapstick. I can't even begin to sum it up right now, so I'm going to list the Wh- questions and see if they will prompt some short points.
What? A novel tracing the development and back-story of a girl who wakes from a coma.
Where? London, specifically Greenwich and SE London and somewhere near Old St. I have gone into extensive descriptions of places around Greenwich, and believe that if a disaster levelled it tomorrow, planners could read my book and rebuild at least some of it as it was when I wrote it. The area around Old Street would now be utterly unrecognisable to anybody who knew it in the 1980s. The action moves to Karlovy Vary and Prague, then in Czechoslovakia, and now of course in the Czech Republic. Somewhat arrogantly, maybe, I'd never been to Czechoslovakia when I started the book, but by the time I wrote the relevant parts I'd been to both Karlovy Vary and Prague, on an insane trip with the friend on whom Don Darius (see Laikonik Express) is based.
When? 1990.
Who? Angelika Dormer, who is a bit of a celebrity patient when she wakes, at the age of 19 or so, from a six-year coma. Inevitably various doctors and psychologists feature. Angelika is sort of adopted by a woman called Esther Valens, who knew Angelika as a child, and knew her parents briefly, though has no clue as to why they have disappeared. Anton Gabel is a private investigator with a very large family firm, and he is interested in Angelika's case. Various London people feature too, of course, flit in and out of Angelika's developing life. She gets a job as a kind of office girl at a firm called Prevezer Import Export, and becomes very attached to its chief, Harald Prevezer, who knew Anton Gabel in Israel after the Second World War. She makes a close friend in a girl called Amy, who works in Tesco's at Surrey Quays, and she is befriended by a guy called Bogdan, who works in a travel agency that has something to do with Prevezer, and who may be involved in shifting dodgy passports around London. Meanwhile, in Karlovy Vary, Anna Gabel is seeing various psychiatrists - she has been very badly affected by something that she did in her past; Anna is Anton Gabel's daughter and, not so coincidentally, Angelika's school friend; their friendship was curtailed abruptly one night about six years before, when their boarding school burned down.
How? Third-person narrative to cover the range of characters, the author - me, of course - trying to adopt different tones in which to tell different characters' stories, with questionable (I think) levels of success. But remember, most of this was done on one of those twentieth century artefacts, a typewriter.
Why? I suspect I'll never be able to answer that one. I have no recall of what prompted this story, other than - maybe - a desire to paint a picture of London and its people, and the relationship some of them will have to eastern Europe - I'd been interested in eastern Europe, its music, culture, politics, from my early twenties, at least. Angelika is described as looking like Vermeer's model for his painting The Girl With the Pearl Ear Ring, but that's so corny now after the book and the film (one of the worst I have ever seen), but she was also based on a woman called Angelika who ran the hotel in which I stayed in Berlin, New Year 1989 - however, I still don't remember thinking, 'I'll base a whole novel on this hotel-keeper...'
Despite the last line of my e-mail, I never did start work on it then - I read through the whole of it, but wasn't tempted to put it to the top of the pile, so I have no idea what will happen to it.
The novel was meant to be short, snappy, disturbing and Kafkaesque. Instead it turned into a sort of Dickensian sprawl with lots of light-hearted moments and occasional slapstick. I can't even begin to sum it up right now, so I'm going to list the Wh- questions and see if they will prompt some short points.
What? A novel tracing the development and back-story of a girl who wakes from a coma.
Where? London, specifically Greenwich and SE London and somewhere near Old St. I have gone into extensive descriptions of places around Greenwich, and believe that if a disaster levelled it tomorrow, planners could read my book and rebuild at least some of it as it was when I wrote it. The area around Old Street would now be utterly unrecognisable to anybody who knew it in the 1980s. The action moves to Karlovy Vary and Prague, then in Czechoslovakia, and now of course in the Czech Republic. Somewhat arrogantly, maybe, I'd never been to Czechoslovakia when I started the book, but by the time I wrote the relevant parts I'd been to both Karlovy Vary and Prague, on an insane trip with the friend on whom Don Darius (see Laikonik Express) is based.
When? 1990.
Who? Angelika Dormer, who is a bit of a celebrity patient when she wakes, at the age of 19 or so, from a six-year coma. Inevitably various doctors and psychologists feature. Angelika is sort of adopted by a woman called Esther Valens, who knew Angelika as a child, and knew her parents briefly, though has no clue as to why they have disappeared. Anton Gabel is a private investigator with a very large family firm, and he is interested in Angelika's case. Various London people feature too, of course, flit in and out of Angelika's developing life. She gets a job as a kind of office girl at a firm called Prevezer Import Export, and becomes very attached to its chief, Harald Prevezer, who knew Anton Gabel in Israel after the Second World War. She makes a close friend in a girl called Amy, who works in Tesco's at Surrey Quays, and she is befriended by a guy called Bogdan, who works in a travel agency that has something to do with Prevezer, and who may be involved in shifting dodgy passports around London. Meanwhile, in Karlovy Vary, Anna Gabel is seeing various psychiatrists - she has been very badly affected by something that she did in her past; Anna is Anton Gabel's daughter and, not so coincidentally, Angelika's school friend; their friendship was curtailed abruptly one night about six years before, when their boarding school burned down.
How? Third-person narrative to cover the range of characters, the author - me, of course - trying to adopt different tones in which to tell different characters' stories, with questionable (I think) levels of success. But remember, most of this was done on one of those twentieth century artefacts, a typewriter.
Why? I suspect I'll never be able to answer that one. I have no recall of what prompted this story, other than - maybe - a desire to paint a picture of London and its people, and the relationship some of them will have to eastern Europe - I'd been interested in eastern Europe, its music, culture, politics, from my early twenties, at least. Angelika is described as looking like Vermeer's model for his painting The Girl With the Pearl Ear Ring, but that's so corny now after the book and the film (one of the worst I have ever seen), but she was also based on a woman called Angelika who ran the hotel in which I stayed in Berlin, New Year 1989 - however, I still don't remember thinking, 'I'll base a whole novel on this hotel-keeper...'
Despite the last line of my e-mail, I never did start work on it then - I read through the whole of it, but wasn't tempted to put it to the top of the pile, so I have no idea what will happen to it.
One of the paintings that feature in AatF, described prosaically as 'a dog in a party dress'.