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117 pages

English

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'Madelaine and the Forest' is a remarkable book that plunges the reader into a world inhabited by poets and madmen. Madelaine Parker is bright and funny. She has lived the life of a struggling poet and recently found commercial success without too much compromise. As she tells a press conference, she believes in happy endings. But when a central relationship crumbles, Maddie's mind and her life start to fragment. She tries to claw back, as her subconscious becomes the landscape of her life. But the forest won't be banished. It lives, it breathes, and it waits.

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Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	23 novembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839785825
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Madelaine and the Forest
Beth Wood

Madelaine and the Forest
Published by The Conrad Press Ltd. in the United Kingdom 2022
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874
www.theconradpress.com
info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-839785-82-5
Copyright © Beth Wood, 2022
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

Chapter 1
Marriage is always a jenga puzzle.
Your reality.
My reality.
Your reality.
My reality.
How many turns can we take before it all falls down?
……
M adelaine Parker smiled at Alice as she took her place at the press conference. Her first press conference. She placed her hands on the table either side of her and made the world stop for a moment to take it in. She had done this at her wedding. A technique given to her by a drama teacher friend, so that she would have clear ‘snap shots’ to remember properly, and treasure. She would remember today, this excitement.
Another smile to Alice.
‘Ready?’ Carianne. Her agent.
‘Ready.’ Should she be funny? Humble? Poetic?
The previous night Maddie Parker had won the prestigious International Poet of the Year Award. If the adrenalin was not still kicking through her veins she would have to have taken something for the hangover. Or perhaps not, it had been good quality champagne. They had drunk late into the night, she, Sampson and Alice. And a myriad of friends and celebrities, at a very expensive bar. It was not a world Maddie usually inhabited.
Carianne pointed to a smart woman at the front. Suited and booted with several pieces of jarring but stylish ethnic jewellery.
‘Maddie. When you published your first work five years ago did you think you would win one of the top literary prizes?’
‘No.’ A lie, she laughed at it. ‘Of course I hoped. But I never expected. The competition is very fierce. Especially over the last few years. People are writing poems in extreme situations all over the world.’
Carianne pointed. Another woman.
‘I assume you are referring to the poetry of Ibrahim Vendar, the runner up. What do you think of his work?’
Maddie was aware of Carianne. She would not be pleased if she spent her first press conference talking about the work of another poet.
‘He and others. Ibrahim’s work is shocking. And beautiful. I first fell in love with Iraqi poetry, Gilgamesh, when I was twelve. In fact, it probably inspired my love of mythology, of legend.’
‘Why?’
‘The universality, I think. Realising that symbols can cross religions and continents. In Gilgamesh the deluge; then finding out that there is a great flood in almost every culture’s mythology. It made sense. One deluge. One deluge, one God.
‘Is that what makes you write about fairy tales?’
Three people in the conference pack laughed. They hadn’t read her work. They didn’t know she wrote about the tales. She picked them out. She smiled.
‘One of the things perhaps.’ She waited. ‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yes.’ The woman at the front. Several people. ‘Yes.’
A small silence. She believed them. She carried on.
‘Fairy tales engage the subconscious. We become familiar with the content of our subconscious by spinning out dreams and stories and testing our reaction to them. It gives us a safe space to imagine the things that are at once totally impossible and so real that they exist already. Like a scientist when they invent. Find a world to imagine, feel it. Then plan your journey.’
She looked again at one of the three and smiled, inviting a question.
‘Why do you think your fairy tales sell to adults?’ There was no hint of cynicism in the words. A small triumph.
‘The tales have a simple plot. It’s an existential drama in its most essential form.’ The questioner smiled. ‘Oh I see. You mean why is it that I’m one of the few very successful living poets.’
Everyone smiled.
‘I don’t know that it’s a different answer. But I stuck to what I wanted to write about when lots of people were telling me to change.’
‘Even me!’ Carianne. ‘Even agents make mistakes. It’s a happy ending!’
There had been an article, badly written, in a tabloid a week or so ago, on the subject of her happy endings.
The laughter folded into a question.
‘Like in your poems? There’s terror and loss, but it always ends well.’
Of course. Maddie had known it was a question that was going to come up.
‘Fairy tales are written over centuries to satisfy our deepest insecurities. It’s how we learn as children to face the monster under our beds. Whatever we go through, it will be ok. I believe that everyone who genuinely tries deserves a happy ending.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
Maddie considered. ‘Yes, actually I do.’
An older questioner, a Miss Marple character, from the back.
‘If you take your material from stories that have been built up over time does that mean that you don’t people-watch like other writers?’
Just one laugh, a joyful burst, from the side of the room.
Maddie explained it. ‘My daughter Alice. I used to take her when she was small to sit in stations and airports just watching. She says it amounted to cruelty.’
They both laughed. Then the audience.
‘Just because it’s the forest doesn’t mean it isn’t also the world. A wolf is a predator with or without his fur. Poetry is always watching people and writing about them inside out.’
There was a sigh of gentle understanding.
Carianne pointed at the first man.
‘Miss Parker. Madelaine. You’ve never come clean about the father of Alice.’
Everyone in the room turned to look at Maddie’s daughter, twenty years old, beautiful.
Since Maddie had started to sell wholesale, the rumours had flown. It was reputedly someone famous though no two magazines had agreed on who.
‘As I’ve said before, Sampson is. He has been there since Alice was three.’
Carianne. ‘Back to questions on the work ladies.’ She pointedly looked at the men. The women laughed.
‘Make up a poem.’
‘Who said that?’
A man at the back put up his hand. Maddie knew him. He had done an in-depth interview the previous year.
‘Sneaky Bradley! This gentleman did an interview with me over a couple of days and I made up a few lines. That’s different to being at a press conference after drinking a lake of champagne.’ They laughed, Bradley loudly. ‘But I’ll tell you how I write. I imagine the forest, the world, as alive. Everything has a personality that feeds in energy.’ She looked around at them. ‘You collectively have a personality that is greedy but not aggressive; this is not the tabloids!’
They laughed with genuine pleasure. And they were flattered.
‘My husband’s study is confident but overall, our flat is cute. It has a sense of humour that cheers me up. A jealous god. An angry picnic. The forest where my poems takes place, breathes. I have to hear it breathe. When I leave it between poems, it waits. It’s not uncommon to see things that way. What estate agent doesn’t sell a house by saying it’s welcoming?’
They laughed. Then considered.
‘Ideas too are alive. We give birth to them like children and then we hand them on to the next person who nurtures them and sometimes makes them grow.’
Carianne. ‘Two more questions.’
‘What else are you interested in Maddie?’
‘I love the stars.’ She glanced to Alice. ‘My other cruelty was getting her up at midnight to go to a park with the telescope. It started when I was at primary school. I remember the exact moment when, at ten, I found out that we are all made of stardust.’
More hands went up.
‘Sorry. Last one.’
‘Your work is rooted in the deep world, the old world. What do you think of the modern world?’
‘The deep world. That’s a nice phrase. I shall have to remember that. I don’t know. Technology has made the world bigger by making it smaller.’ The questioner smiled but the woman behind him looked confused. ‘What do I mean? Well, social media is a way of making people fit into our world. We can tag them. My Peter. My Jane. It’s what we did as children when we owned an army of soldiers or a wardrobe of dolls.’
‘But you’re on Twitter. Some of your quotes have been re-tweeted millions of times.’
‘Even by presidents.’
Maddie giggled.
‘One president, one time.’ She paused. ‘I don’t hide from the world. And if I didn’t love it I couldn’t share it with Sampson and Alice. It just angers me that with the opportunity for real shared thought we are becoming such fundamentalists.’
Carianne. ‘That’s it for today, folks. Thank you for coming.’
……
As the press left chattering happily and making quick calls to editors, Maddie, Alice and Carianne went to the hotel lobby for a coffee. Carianne shooed away the last few photographers who had taken their picture as they got out of the elevator.
‘Whoah! Comfy seats!’ Alice was thinking that she could get used to posh London hotels. She watched people notice them, a couple shared whispers behind their guides to London. She was proud of her mother. And looking forward to the holidays they had always had on a to-do list if Maddie made it big.
Carianne went to make some calls. She had to follow up on an email from Maddie’s editor that had come in at seven that morning. Maddie hadn’t yet told Alice about it. They sat down at a table. Alice kicked off her shoes. A mock-stern look from Maddie stopped her tucking her feet up on the seat.
‘Alice, we had an email last night. The publishers want six poems over six months for worldwide release.’
‘Hey! Worldwide! That’s brilliant, Mum.’
‘And they’ve had a request from Dubai to do a poem based on the Arabian Nights, to be part of an anthology. Shifting Sands.’
‘Even more brilliant. You’ll have to go of course, for research. And take me!’ Alice’s eyes caught a newspaper stand. ‘