Writers Read: Frances Brody

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Frances Brody

Frances Brody lives in Leeds where she was born and grew up. After leaving school at 16, she worked and traveled, including a spell in

New York. She then won a place at Ruskin College, Oxford, and afterwards studied at York University. Before creating the Kate Shackleton mysteries, Brody wrote historical sagas, winning the HarperCollins Elizabeth Elgin award for most regionally evocative debut saga of the millennium. When not writing or reading, Brody likes to test her less than brilliant map reading skills by walking in the Yorkshire Dales.

A Mansion for Murder is the new Kate Shackleton Mystery.

Recently I asked Brody about what she was reading. Her reply:

Ulysses by James Joyce

I have a dog-eared copy of the 1969 Penguin paperback edition of this book, so why am I reading it again?

For my birthday, I was given the Penguin Clothbound Classics edition, published in 2022 to mark the centenary of the book’s publication. What makes reading this edition a great pleasure is that I am not reading alone. I am listening on my iPad, to the recording made by RTÉ Radio, a division of the Irish national broadcasting organisation Raidió Teilifís Éireann.

I read, and I eavesdrop. Dublin voices bring Bloomsday to life.

The Introduction by Declan Kiberd is informative and enlightening about ‘The Book’, ‘The Structure’, ‘The Language’. He begins in a way that encourages the reader to be undaunted by the prospect of reading this iconic book.

Here’s a quote from the opening of that Introduction:
“It is no accident that the last lines of Ulysses read ‘Trieste-Zurich-Paris, 1914-1921’. Joyce had to scurry with his family from city to city, in his attempt to avoid the dangers of World War I, as he created a beautiful book in a Europe bent on self-destruction. He seems from the outset to have anticipated Tom Stoppard’s brilliant joke in Travesties:

‘What did you do in the Great War, Mr Joyce?’

‘I wrote Ulysses. What did you do?’.”
Joyce’s story and the radio cast bring Dublin and Dubliners to life. Reading and listening is like watching a film. I love the language, whether it’s the description of a stalking black cat or seeing Leopold Bloom’s deflation when he is belittled by the newspaper editor. The combination of vivid narrative and mythical underpinnings make reading/listening to Ulysses a treat.

The Dubliners is my favourite story anthology. Reading A Portrait of the Artist was a pivotal moment for me. As a Northern English working-class city girl brought up Catholic, when I went to work in Washington DC at the age of 19 and 3 months, I shared a room with Mary and Theresa from Dublin and began to feel that I knew the atmosphere, the voices and the humour of Dublin.

Here’s another quote (of a quote) from Declan Kiberd: “Frederich Engels had complained that the object of British policy was to make the Irish feel like strangers in their own land, but he had underestimated their capacity to colonize the culture that was used to colonize them.”