I'm delighted to bring you Cold Fire by
James Hartley. This is the second in a new series of books which aims
to introduce Shakespeare, to a young audience in a more accessible and
relatable way. Set in the same boarding school, each book will centre on a different Shakespearian play. Book 1, The Invisible Hand was written with Macbeth in mind. I am lucky to have an extract from Cold Fire to share with you today. There is also a great International Giveaway. You will find details on how to enter at the foot of this post. First though, a little about Cold Fire:
Set in the magical boarding school of St Francis', Cold Fire
centres around a group of teenagers who become involved in the tale of Romeo
and Juliet in this contemporary re-telling of the classic story. Meanwhile,
four hundred years earlier, a young teacher from Stratford Upon Avon arrives at
the school. His name is Will...
From the author of The Invisible Hand comes the
second book in the spellbinding Shakespeare´s Moon series.
Extract
This is the start of the book. It introduced Gillian, the
main character in the book, who is feeling that life and her emotions are very
difficult to control. She catches a fleeting glimpse of a pair of eyes, windows
to a soul, which are also a window into another world of possibilities.
Moods are the weather of the soul, Gillian thought.
The car was cresting a steep hill and beyond her elbow,
through the open window, the Adriatic twinkled out to the melting sun. The road
snaked ahead down the coast in a series of bumps and curves and the dry,
olive-tree wind blowing through her hair cooled her sunburn.
I am a complete person, always the same, but I can be so
different. I can be calm and perfect like the sea tonight or I can be dark and
frightening like the sea at home. It all depends on my mood. And sometimes I
can´t control my moods. Sometimes everything is fine but I feel terrible.
Sometimes the sun is shining but it rains inside. These days it always feels
like it´s raining. Everywhere.
Gillian
concentrated on the music flooding from her white ear-buds: anything except the
real world. Anything except the argument she could see going on in the front
seat. A hand was waving on one side, arms firmly crossed on the other, faces
turning to bark in turn. They looked like animals when they were angry and
snarling. Why couldn´t they just shut their mouths and look at the beauty all
around them? Or split up if everything was so bad? Why stay together and make
each other unhappy?
I feel calm and content in myself. I am a planet moving
through space, through the universe, as it should do, made up of many tiny
parts. I am a gorgeous, chaotic creature connected to others both bigger and
smaller. But the weather here on my planet is terrible. The storms are
relentless. It´s hard to enjoy this place in these conditions.
I´m like a beautiful city drowning under tides of melting
ice.
I´m like a shimmering coral reef being suffocated by a
floating island of plastic.
I´m a peaceful, sleepy town engulfed in the smoke of war.
I used to be happy.
I was happy when I was younger. I didn´t even have to think
about it, I just was. What planet was that?
I know I can be happy again. I have been happy once. I know
what it is.
Otherwise what´s the point of all this?
Why am I here?
Must I always hide inside? Deep inside, away from the sound
of the storms?
Later they sat at a white plastic table in the main square
of a small town and had wagon-wheel pizzas. Gillian had never felt so
miserable. Was there anything worse than feeling lonely when you were with your
family? Feeling lonely when you were surrounded by the people you were supposed
to love the most?
No-one was
talking. Mum was drinking red wine, her face changing only when the waiter
approached: suddenly charming and quick to laugh. When he left, all the fake
emotion dripped off her chin, her eyes rolled upwards and an ugly blankness
swamped her features.
Dad sipped his beer, smoked his cigarettes and sometimes
tipped up his phone to look at the screen. He seemed to hope Gillian wasn’t
noticing anything was wrong and occasionally asked: “Pizza alright, princess?”
or “Want a top up?”
Gillian ate
mechanically. As soon as possible she´d retreat back into the world of books or
music but first this. Slapping at nibbling mosquitoes. Wafting a sticky,
laminated menu to ward off the stifling summer-night heat. Ignoring the local
lads leering from mopeds as they droned by with loud, broken exhausts. “I´m
going to the toilet,” she said, walking towards the bar and straight into a
noisy party.
Pushing through the boisterous crowd, some in fancy dress,
Gillian came face to face with a gorilla mask. She stared into the eye-slits
for what might have been eternity. Surprise, pleasure, knowledge, confusion,
elation and then a gorgeous, warm current of connection passed between her and
the eyes behind the mask. She knew him, somehow, the owner of those eyes. And
he seemed to know her. She´d never felt as close to anyone as she did to that
stranger.
Someone shouted:
the barman.
The music came back: thumping, awful techno. The lights
flashed purple, red and yellow and Gillian tasted dry ice. Someone jumped on
the gorilla´s back and almost knocked her out with a bottle of beer.
The bathrooms were
dead ahead and her feet walked her there. When she came out the music was
blaring and the bar was empty but for a mute television showing Italian
football. Gillian squeezed by a skinny waiter coming in with a tray of drinks
above his head. Outside was sweaty hot. Stars glowed in the night like phones
at a concert.
Her father was counting out coins, holding them up to work
out the denominations. “Your mum´s gone back to the villa in a taxi,” he
reported, as if this was perfectly normal. “Do you want anything else before I
pay up, princess? An ice-cream or something?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“No. Can we just
go?”
As she sat in the
car, her father outside, leaning on the roof, making a call, Gillian looked out
at the black, bejewelled sea. She couldn´t imagine how it would be to float in
the middle of it, lost among all that water, far away from the lights of the
land, bobbing in the troughs of a slick, near-silent, liquid world. What
loneliness that must be, to be lost in the middle of the sea!
Or to be the sea itself, sucked this way and that, free but bound,
wild but trapped.
I want to be like
the sea tonight, she told herself in her mind, in that same voice she´d spoke
to herself with since she could remember. She felt in love and at peace with
the calm, dark ocean; a part of it. You are my real family, she thought. Nature
is my real family.
Gillian noticed
the moon hanging low over the horizon and it seemed to cast a direct,
bright-white trail, almost a pathway, across the waves to where she was.
For one weird
moment she felt the urge to stand up, scramble down to the beach and run along
that shining path right out to the moon. For a second it felt possible, as if
the moon itself were urging her on. But then her father was climbing back
inside the car smelling of smoke, the engine started and the spell was not only
broken but well and truly smashed to bits.
My Thoughts
Read alongside Shakespeare's text, this would be a thought provoking and interesting read for Young Adult readers. To get the most out of it, I do think that you need to know the original story as it contains elements and themes found in Romeo and Juliet which enrich your reading of both. Star cross'd lovers abound in Cold Fire which has several sub-plots. You slowly begin to understand how their stories interact and are linked.
The story feels fresh to my probably jaded eyes and captures the feelings of magnetic first love in the original play. I found the final few chapters particularly satisfying, without giving away any spoilers. The other aspect of the writing which I appreciated is the descriptive phrasing used and the way the scenes are evoked so clearly through the details and words chosen.
In short: Fresh, innovative writing which captures the essence of Shakespeare's play.
About the Author
James was born on the Wirral, England, in 1973 on a rainy
Thursday. He shares his birthday with Bono, Sid Vicious and two even nastier
pieces of work, John Wilkes Booth and Mark David Chapman.
His mother was a hairdresser with her own business and his
father worked in a local refinery which pours filth into the sky over the
Mersey to this day. They married young and James was their first child. He has
two younger brothers and a still-expanding family in the area. As an Everton
fan he suffered years of Liverpool success throughout the seventies and was
thrilled when his father took a job in Singapore and the family moved lock,
stock and two smoking barrels to Asia.
He spent five fine years growing up in the city state before
returning to the rain, storms, comprehensive schools and desolate beauty of the
Scottish east coast. Later years took he and his family to baking hot Muscat,
in Oman, and a Syria that has since been bombed off the surface of the planet.
James lives in Madrid, Spain, with his wife and two
children.
Do check out these other brilliant bloggers!
Giveaway (International)
Win 5 x Signed copies of Cold Fire with a special tactile
pen (Open Internationally). To enter, just follow the link below and good luck!
*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box
below. The winner will be selected at
random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter
and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right
to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the
competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with
third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed
to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after
which time I will delete the data. I am
not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Comments
Post a Comment