What We're Writing--Debs Tromping on Literary London

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've been fascinated for years by the idea of literary Bloomsbury. This part of London near the British Museum is famous for its literary associations with the "Bloomsbury Set", a group of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers, and artists, which included Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster, and John Maynard Keynes, among others. Many of the group lived near 51 Gordon Square. Charles Dickens lived for a time in Doughty Street, and Charles Darwin in Gower Street. This was all heady stuff for me and these associations influenced my decision to move Duncan Kincaid to the police station in Holborn, right in the heart of Bloombury. 

But Bloomsbury had surprises for me! In the book-in-progress, I put two of my characters in a flat in Guilford Street, the location chosen one night when I was walking in London in the rain. Imagine my delight when I discovered just recently that in the 1920s both Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Sayers had lived literally around the corner from my fictional characters in Mecklenburg Square (although not at the same time.) 

We usually see photos of both writers--especially Sayers--when they were older, but I like to think of them as they might have looked in the Mecklenburg Square period, when they were both establishing  independent and creative lives. Here's Sayers as a young woman.

The Mecklenburg Square connection drove me back to Sayers' biographies, which I hadn't read in decades, and I'd forgotten that she had a couple of passionate affairs and an illegitimate child. It was only when she found herself pregnant that she learned her lover was already married, and it was her lover's wife who arranged for her to bear her child in secret. Now that's the stuff of fiction! In Gaudy Night Sayers used her own first floor flat in Mecklenburg Square as Harriet Vane's home.

And then I discovered that Sayers later lived for many years at 24 Great James Street, which is right behind Holborn Police Station. How did I not know this before?

When I can go to London again, I'm going to be walking in Sayers' footsteps!

But in the meantime, here's a little snippet that introduces the flat in Guilford Street, which is not nearly as elegant as the one in the photo above.

 

Melody settled into the back of the panda car beside Kincaid. He was on his mobile again, now talking to someone that she assumed was his team’s case manager. “Who’s available as FLO?” he asked, then nodded as he listened. “McGillivray? Good. Tell her to stand by until we get an address for the family.”

Of course, they would need a family liaison officer to inform the next of kin, Melody thought, and she didn’t envy whoever had caught the rota on that job. Dealing with bereaved relatives had never been her strong suit, and she’d often envied the easy way Gemma seemed to connect with the families they interviewed.

As Kincaid continued organizing his team, Melody realized that her feet felt like blocks of ice. She hadn’t been prepared for standing in puddles in the park and her ankle boots were soaked. Beside her, Kincaid’s coat gave off the distinctive aroma of wet wool as it steamed in the blast from the car’s heater. She thought of Gemma, going home to a warm, dry house, and wondered if she’d been a bit hasty in asking to tag along on this interview when she could be home and dry as well. But the rain-blurred streets zipped by and in moments the car was pulling to a stop, just as Kincaid ended his call.

Glancing out, Melody saw the bulk of Great Ormond Street Hospital rising on the south side of the street. On the north side was a rather grim-looking building in dark brick, its color indistinguishable in the gloom. Kincaid scrolled through his mobile, apparently checking the address. Nodding as if satisfied, he said, “Let’s see if Doug is here yet,” and tapped out a text.

Melody realized this was the first time she’d been alone with Kincaid since the weekend in Gloucestershire when she’d made such a disastrous hash of her life, and felt herself coloring with sudden awkwardness. Kincaid, however, seemed oblivious, and when his mobile pinged with a reply, he put it away and leaned forward to speak to the driver. “If you could wait, I don’t think we’ll be long. And then we’ll need a run to the station.” To Melody, he added, “Doug says he’ll buzz us in.”

Melody followed him as he slid out of the car and crossed the street, picking her way around the rivulets running in the gutters.

The fanlight-topped black door buzzed open as they reached it, and they stepped into a dingy hallway with a scuffed linoleum floor. The door to the ground floor flat opened, framing Doug Cullen. His eyes widened as he took in Melody. “What are you—” He shook his head. “Never mind. You’d better come in.”

He stepped back to allow them into a sitting room. The place was furnished in student chic—including the rice-paper globe covering the hanging ceiling bulb—but looked clean and relatively tidy. A rolling rack filled with women’s clothing had been positioned in front of the window, providing a curtain of sorts. There were a couple of squashy armchairs and a futon covered with layers of Kantha throw blankets and some sequined pillows. The flat smelled faintly of curry.

A high, shallow shelf above the futon held a row of the oddest dolls Melody had ever seen. They had distinctly individual clay faces, some with hats, some with molded hair, and they were dressed in random scraps of colorful cloth. Melody had the uncomfortable feeling that they were watching her.

REDS and readers, do you enjoy walking in literary footsteps? What famous writers' homes have you visited?

Karin Salvalaggio--Pilgrimage to Greenway

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Karin Salvalaggio is one of the rising stars of the last couple of years in crime fiction. Karin is a bit of a cultural mish-mash--born in the US, she had a peripatetic childhood thanks to her military family. She's now lived more than twenty years in London, but she sets her books in Montana. (And you thought I was confused!)  She's  also my London tour guide, pub crawl buddy, and Thames Walk task master (I swear she broke my Fitbit when I was there in January...) Her books are riveting and evocative, bringing her detective, Macy Greely, and small-town Montana to brilliant life. I was not at all surprised to find that she was inspired by none other than Agatha Christie. And she's promised to take me to Devon to see Greenway! If you're not jealous yet, you will be when you've read about her own visit.

KARIN SALVALAGGIO: Pilgrimage to Greenway

‘I never had a definite place which was my room or I retired especially to write … All I needed was a steady table and a typewriter.’

– Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, 1977

Agatha Christie’s words seem to stand in stark contrast to Virginia Woolf’s assertion that a woman must have ‘a room of her own if she is to write fiction’ but I would argue that Christie actually takes Virginia Woolf’s premise to a whole new level. In Greenway, her historic holiday home overlooking the River Dart in England, Christie created not only a room of her own, but a world of her own. It is where she found inspiration, solitude and a comfortable space to spend time with her family and friends. Greenway is a truly idyllic hideaway that plays a part in at least 2 of her 66 detective novels – as Nasse House in Dead Man’s Folly and Alderbury in Five Little Pigs. With surroundings such of these and a typewriter at the ready there was no reason for the world’s most famous crime writer to confine herself to a room. 

The Georgian house was built in the 19^th Century, but there have been homes on the same site since the 1500s. Now a National Trust property, the home is a time capsule filled to the brim with all that Agatha Christie and her extended family held dear. The visitor gets much more than a glimpse into Christie’s private life. It is a place bursting with artefacts belonging to five generations of a family of avid collectors. The gardens and surrounding woodlands have been carefully tended for hundreds of years. In all 2700 plant species can be found there.

Greenway is a short ferry ride away from the town of Dartmouth, a historic port on the south coast of England. Full of tradition, the Britannia Royal Naval College still sits smartly on the hillside overlooking the river and the seafaring town. The tall ships that protected English sovereignty and transported Pilgrims to America have given way to sailboats, ferries and pleasure cruisers of all shapes and sizes. During the summer the town is chalk full with visitors and locals jockeying for space on its maze of streets and in the many pubs, bars and restaurants. A steady schedule of sailing regattas, music festivals and food festivals keep the area buzzing well into the autumn.

I am fortunate enough to have friends in Dartmouth who own a home that overlooks the inlet so I visit often. Last summer I went to the town’s quay and climbed aboard a charming twin-decked passenger ferry called the Christie Belle and sailed inland for about twenty minutes to Agatha Christie’s former summer home. From the River Dart I had views of the property’s gardens, boathouse and eventually the house itself. Greenway is a very grand white fronted Georgian residence that radiates out from the verdant hillside like a beacon. The ferry drops you off on a modest patch of ground across the river from a lovely village called Dittisham where a couple of excellent pubs can be found. 

As a crime writer I viewed my journey to Greenway somewhat like a pilgrimage. Though the guidebooks stress that this is a space shaped by not just Agatha Christie but 400 years of history, you can’t help but be swept up by the thrill of knowing that she once inhabited this place. There is the chair where Agatha sat, the piano where she played, the living room where she read her unpublished manuscripts aloud to family members, the gardens where she wandered, the dining table where she celebrated her 80^th birthday and the boathouse where she drank hot chocolate while plotting a murder scene that would play out in Dead Man’s Folly. 

Writing novels requires so much more than a room of one’s own. In this day and age we are often on the road. Our writing space may be an airplane seat one day, a café the next and a kitchen table on another day. We need to be flexible as we work around our family commitments and increasingly hectic schedules. There is something special about being able to carve out one’s own room whatever our circumstances. I’d like to think that Agatha Christie was a pioneer of sorts. This was a woman who wrote 66 novels and 14 short story collections. If she says all that is required is ‘steady table and a typewriter’, I’m inclined to listen.

 

Karin was born in West Virginia in the 1960s. Her father was career military and her mother was a homemaker. Karin has fond memories of her nomadic childhood - the hours spent on the road, the anticipation of a new life, the unpacking of the old one. She’s lived in places as climatically diverse as Alaska and Florida and as culturally distinct as California and Iran. Karin attended the University of California Santa Cruz, graduating in 1989, but aside from two years in Italy, she has lived in London, England since 1994. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Her short story “Walleye Junction” was published in the Mechanics Institute Review in 2011. Her novels featuring Montana detective Macy Greely include Bone Dust White and Burnt River. Walleye Junction will be available May 10th, 2016.

DEBS: Here's more about Walleye Junction:


When outspoken radio talk show host Philip Long is kidnapped and murdered, Detective Macy Greeley leaves her young son in the care of her mother and heads up to remote Walleye Junction, Montana to take charge of the investigation. It is initially believed that Long’s murder is the result of a controversial radio show he’s done on the rise of far right militias in the state. Within days the two kidnappers are found dead following a massive heroin overdose, and the authorities are hopeful the investigation is finished. But there are too many discrepancies for Macy to settle for obvious answers. The kidnapper’s bodies have been moved, their son is on the run and a series of anonymous emails point investigators toward the murky world of prescription painkiller abuse. Macy soon finds herself immersed in small town intrigues as she races to find who’s really responsible for Philip Long’s murder.

Meanwhile, Philip Long’s daughter Emma is dealing with her own problems. It’s been twelve years since she left Walleye Junction after her best friend died from a drug overdose. Emma finds that little in Walleye Junction has changed in her absence. She is also becoming increasingly uneasy as the familiar surroundings stir up memories that are best forgotten.

DEBS: And I particularly love this last photo of Karin at Greenway, doing what any writer would do...

REDS and readers, would you make this pilgrimage? Just seeing the photos gave me goosebumps.

And how do you feel about "a room of one's own"? 

Books I Think I've Read--but I haven't.

RHYS BOWEN: Earlier this week I wrote about de-cluttering. That included mercilessly weeding out books from my many bookshelves.  In doing this I came across books I'd stare at and ask myself "Did I read this or not?"
In some cases the story was so unmemorable, but other books were classics that I've kept because one should have sufficient classics on the shelf to prove that one is a cultured person--right?
So I'm looking at Moby Dick. Of course I know the beginning--Call me Ishmael. Of course I know that Captain Ahab fought the great white whale and succumbed to it in the end. But as I turn the pages now I find myself asking "Did I actually ever read this?"

Then I started considering other classics and wondering "Have I been faking it all these years when I have joined in discussions on Dickens or George Eliot? So which books do I know that I've read?  Every term at school we had one Shakespeare play, on classic novel, one group of poems and sometimes one more modern work. So I really can claim to have studied much of Shakespeare, some Dickens, Eliot, Thomas Hardy etc. Also some George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde (those counted for modern at my school).

But when I think about it I've never read Tom Brown's Schooldays. I've never read The Last of the Mohicans or the Legend of Sleepy Hollow or the Pickwick Papers or even Bleak House (although I've seen the latter on Masterpiece). I know the story line of each of them but as I turn the pages I know I've never read them.  When I was a student I had to read so much in German and French that I had no time for pleasure reading. And pleasure reading would never, never NEVER have included a long, meaty, boring classic.

it was only when I matured that I chose to read all of Jane Austen and loved them so much that I've read them over and over. I chose to revisit Middlemarch that had bored me to tears in school and actually enjoyed it.  So now I'm thinking I should make a list of books I need to read before I die.

The only problem is that my friends in the mystery community keep turning out such good books that there never seems to be time to tackle old ones. Maybe when I retire (which my husband tells me is never)!

So, fellow Reds--which books do you think you've read, (but you haven't)? Which books do you still want to read?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  That happened to me with Edith Wharton. In high school, I was about to stab myself in the throat, I thought her books were so boring. Now she's my idol. But what do I think I've read that I haven't? The Fountainhead (But do I need to read that?). Maybe...what's the one in the Spanish Civil War?...For Whom the Bell Tolls. Again, because of the movie, I think I know it.  Oh--I bet I've never actually read Gone With The Wind. Huh, funny! Gosh, I'm sitting here, surrounded by books I haven't read. (LIke The Goldfinch. I know, I know.)  I can;t even think about the ones out of sight, out of mind.

HALLIE EPHRON: Oh, Hank, I haven't read "The Goldfinch" or "Secret History," either, though I have read "Gone with The Wind." My eighth-grade teacher Mrs. Diebold took it away from me as inappropriate reading.

I have not read anything by Edith Wharton, I'm ashamed to admit. And I think I started "Moby Dick." I have however read virtually all of the Greek tragedies and comedies and most of Shakespeare. And of course all of Austen (several times) and most of Alcott. And, I'm proud to say, I got all the way through 600+ pages of Günter Grass's "The Tin Drum."

The author I wish I could say I've read is Virginia Woolf. I've listened to "A Room of One's Own" on tape and read "Mrs. Dalloway" right after reading Michael Cunningham's "The Hours." To paraphrase what Salieri supposedly said (in the movie Amadeus) about Mozart, there are simply too many words in her sentences. But I know I'm missing out. Maybe I should alternate reading a novel by Woolf with a novel by Hemingway... as a palate cleanser?

RHYS: So which books do you think you've read, but haven't?
Which books are on your "to be read before I die" list?

And a message from Cindy Brown : her favorite comment from her guest blog on Wednesday was by Pat D.  So Pat D please contact Cindy at info@cindybrownwriter.com and Cindy will send you a copy of her new book, MacDeath.

The Bechdel Test — Do Your Favorites Pass?

Yesterday's post by Hilary Davidson on HBO's crime drama True Detective reminded me of the Bechdel Test.

What's the Bechdel Test? 

Simple — does a story have two women, who are named, who talk to each other, about something other than a man? 

Think about it. 

Alison Bechdel came up with the test in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985. In it, one woman explains her "rule" about watching movies to another:

The Bechdel Test may have given a name to a phenomenon, but it's hardly the first time women's marginal status in fiction has been noted. In A Room Of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s essay about the challenges women writers face, she notes that women characters  are “almost without exception [...] shown in their relation to men. [...] And how small a part of a woman’s life is that.” 

Most of the discussion of the Bechdel Test focuses on films and television shows. But we're readers here. How about novels?Off the top of my head, I can think of many big-name thriller/mystery authors whose books fail the Bechdel Test: Dan Brown, Stephen King, Scott Turow. (And yes, many of them have been made into movies.) But there are so many more. Any Ian Fleming novel. Any novel where a "beautiful woman" (nameless) apprears on the back cover description.

Why do so many works of art/entertainment fail the Bechdel Test?

Well, often, it's because there is only one woman. ONE. (My take on Star Wars: "Seriously? Is there only one woman in the entire UNIVERSE?")

 

And then, when there are more than one female character, the work fails because the female characters never talk to each other.       (I'm taking my son to see the Broadway musical Les Misérables this summer. Think about it — the men sing about human dignity and basic rights and war and revenge and forgiveness and fallen comerades. Oh, and the plot. And the women sing about — the men.)

Once you start looking at the world through the lens of the Bechdel Test, it's hard to stop. The kiddo loves a certain snowboarding video game. There is one woman. One. Even in the snow, she's scantily dressed. And her only line is about liking attention from boys. You'd better believe he and I had a long talk about that!)

The Bechdel Test helps us measure how marginal women characters still are. Applying this test to works of art isn't an end in itself  — but it is a way to see the entertainment we consume in a new way and start asking questions. Important ones. 

Because, although some disagree, I do think it's important. Stories are important. Fiction reflects our world and how we see it and how we're seen. Reading stories affects how we tell our own stories, about ourselves. I don't know about you, but I'm not happy with a walk-on part as "the girlfriend," "the wife," and "the mother."  If women don’t have a place of importance in our imaginations, then how can we have have a place of importance in the world?

And so, Reds and lovely readers, I ask you — when choosing books (or movies or television shows or plays), do you care if they pass the Bechdel test?

A Room of One's Own

RHYS BOWEN: A Room of One's Own.Remember that wonderful essay by Virginia Woolf on a writer, especially a female writer's need for personal space. That made a profound impression on me when I was in college and was sure I was destined to become a writer. Well, I've been thinking about it recently.
I love to follow my friends on Facebook and have been bemused by Nancy Pickard always going to a coffee shop to write. (Hey, I know J.K. Rowling did it too and it didn't exactly hurt her). But there is no way I could sit in a noisy, public environment like that and get any work done. I need my own confined space and no distractions. I can't have music playing or I'd listen to it. I can't be facing the window or I'd stare at the view. We have quite a big house and in theory I could choose any one of five empty bedrooms as my office. In fact I still keep to the smallest of those rooms because I have everything around me where I need it. I can swivel my chair to reach a bookcase or the credenza or either printer or the white board on which I jot notes. I have my award certificates on the wall to remind me what I can achieve if I do my best work. And in full confession mode I have a few toys to play with: the hologram top to spin, the wind-up teeth.. I won't go on. Too embarrassing.
I have to know that I'm in MY space, where I can talk through scenes out loud if necessary, swear if necessary, bang my head against the desk if necessary, or even do a happy dance when my agent phones with good news. When things aren't going smoothly I take to my car, another confined space, and drive around in my car, talking though scenes out loud. Thank God Bluetooth was invented because now nobody thinks I'm a dangerous lunatic if they see me mouthing and gesticulating while driving.
So it was interesting to me, a couple of weeks ago, to read that Nancy Pickard has finally succumbed and rented an office to work in. I've been threatening to do this for years - the actual process of "going to work" and being in a space where I can't be interrupted by husband asking where we put a particular file he needs. I've never gotten around to it although the condo in Arizona was intended to be that kind of space, far from telephone calls and obligations. Now if only I could get John to take up a time-consuming hobby...
So Sister Reds: where do you work at your best?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: You'd think I'd have figured this one out by now. Like you, Rhys, I can't write with what I think of as immediate distractions. No TV, no music. But I can do coffee-shop writing, although I don't do it as often as I used to. That's a different kind of distraction--white noise, really, while at the same time I feel free from household demands; ringing phone, dogs barking, the UPS man, husband wanting to know what's for lunch . . . But I'm basically lazy and I like being home. And I do have a lovely, cozy office (my daughter's old bedroom) redesigned for no purpose other than WRITING, with a lovely BIG desk that I can spread all my stuff out on and my favorite London photos and maps on the walls.
The last couple of years, however, I've developed a sort of seasonal migration technique. I write in my office (upstairs) in the winter. It's warm and if I want to take a thinking break I can curl up on the chaise in the window and watch the bare tops of the trees. But as soon as our back garden turns green in the spring I move down to the sunporch, where I have another Aeron chair and a little rolling laptop table I bought at Office Max for $30. And ten windows, so it's like being in a green sea. And I like being close to the kitchen, which to me always feels like the heart of the house. I suppose in my ideal world, I'd have an office that was next to the kitchen, with windows on the garden and opening onto a screened porch for nice weather, and a woodburning fire for chilly winter days...
But my prime rule is that the writing space can't be used for any other kind of work. No filing or bill-paying or business stuff. Just writing.

RHYS: Me too, Deb. Good rule.

JAN BROGAN: How do you write in the sunporch Debs? Doesn't the glare drive you crazy? I love our sunporch, but haven't figured out how to write there (although I do read and edit hard copy there). Particularly if I'm writing non-fiction, which I am now, I need to be next to my boxes and boxes of files. Even with fiction, I tend to have a lot of research accessories I need. But I would like writing in a coffee shop theoretically (never done it) because it seems so COMPLETELY HIP!

HALLIE EPHRON: The first thing I did when I decided to "be a writer" was set up an office. Fortunately I have a sister who told me: "If you don't take yourself seriously, no one else will."
And step one in taking yourself seriously: set up a space where nothing else takes place but you writing. Mine is a little sun porch. For awhile I wrote in a baseball cap because of the glare; pleated window shades were my first investments in my career.

LUCY BURDETTE: Funny I remember very clearly when I started writing (mid 90's), we had only one computer and it was in the living room. So I had to share that iMac with stepkids and husband, the television and all the other family racket. We finally moved to a new house that had a writing cubby built in it just for me. I keep my junk spread out there, but I still usually write with laptop in bed. (Debs, I think that makes me even lazier than you!) And I would no more share my computer now than my underwear...
DEBS: Lucy, did I say I got dressed?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Working in my pjs is half the reason I became a writer. I am, in fact, writing this in my pajamas.
RHYS: How primitive, Julia. At least I'm in my robe!

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I love my office - two walls of books and two walls of windows which look down on my garden and a slider that leads to a covered platform fringed with chimes and in the evening candles. Sometimes I put up the mosquito net and work out there because it's away from the computer and the phone. But my absolute favorite place to write is on a plane. There are no distractions. They don't need me to fly the plane or to tell them where the butter is. I can't decide I need to see where the owls are or need to water the plants or check email.
Strangest place I've ever written - on the ferry from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar.
DEBS: I want Rosemary's office. Jan, I have Roman blinds in my sunporch so just move them up and down according to the time of day and the angle of the sun. But I still want Rosemary's office . . .

JULIA: I have that woodburning fire you want, Deb. In the winter, I've taken to working in my kitchen, next to the wood stove, within easy reach of hot tea. Since my faithful dog and the cats like to congregate there, it's very companionable.
Technically, my office is in the parlour, complete with my reference books, research papers, business-related stuff, etc. However, it gets VERY cold and drafty in the winter, and in the summer, with the kids home from school, it's impossible. Even with the doors shut, everyone barges in and out to share their vital mother-related needs with me. So during the warm-weather months, I often decamp to one of the local university libraries. Quiet, air-conditioned, and there's no chance I'll be lured away from the writing by a load of laundry or a sudden spurt of guilt over the dust in the living room. (It's amazing how tempting housework can be when you're hitting a hard patch in the work, isn't it?)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I love my writing office. It used to be OUR office, Jonathan's and mine, but now I fear it's manifest destiny and it's all mine mine mine. Sometimes Jonathan tiptoes in and asks to use the computer--it's all I can do to keep the flames from shooting out of my mouth.
But it's a lovely lovely tawny-colored room with a fireplace, and floor to ceiling book-and-Emmy shelves, and my desk, which is an antique horseshoe-shaped thing, is tucked into a bay window. Outside is massive and ancient maple tree. Yes, I battle the sun situation in the summer, but I also wear a baseball cap for that one glary hour.
All my stuff is on the desk--the bottle of wine Sue Grafton gave me, and a rock that's carved with "imagine" and "patience" and a feng shui mirror because my back has to be toward the door, and I know that's not good.
I love to write on the Acela train in the quiet car--the landscape zooms by, and it's gorgeous, and peaceful, and it makes me feel like Agatha Christie.

RHYS: I usually get the crying baby in the next seat, or the large guy on the plane whose elbows make it impossible to write! But I also have the feng shui mirror. See pic. Also note Celtic harp for momentary distraction, plus pic of Robert Redford with his shirt open in far left corner!

And it's really cool how different and personal our personal spaces have to be. And aren't we lucky to live in an age when a woman can demand and expect her professional life to be taken seriously!

So, dear readers, any really unusual writing spaces? Anyone write in the bathtub? On mountain tops?

On Jo and Joy and Irene and Elizabeth and Piglet...

HALLIE: "I'm Hermoine!" comes the breathless announcement. Another person with too much time on his/her hands has taken the Harry Potter Personality Quiz. Or "I'm Ginny." Or "I'm Harry!" God forbid you turned out to be Hagrid.

But it gets me thinking about the March sisters as Louisa May Alcott fictionalized her real sisters in "Little Women." She certainly gave her readers a choice of characters to relate to. There was Jo, the tall gangly one (I used to think of myself as tall and gangly), prickly and rebellious, who wrote in her journal and yearned for an independent life. Louisa May, a spinster, based Jo on herself, and said that if it weren't for her readers' expectations she'd never have had Jo get married.

Like Jo, Louise May was the second oldest of four sisters, a 'middle' child. Jo is especially close to Beth, her gentle, shy, sickly and doomed younger sister. The youngest, the artistic Amy with her blond curls, is vain and spoiled and adorable. The oldest, Meg, is nurturing, rule-bound and proper.

Researching the entry for "Little Women" in "The Bibliophile's Devotional" which comes out next month, I discovered that Louise May was pressured by her publisher to write "Little Women." In her journal she wrote, "I don't enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters, but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it." (I also discovered that Virginia Woolf doubted the staying power of her own work. Of her "A Room of One's Own," Woolf wrote: "I forecast, then, that I shall get no criticism, except of the evasive jocular kind." Fortunately she was dead wrong.)

So are you a Jo or an Amy? An Alice (in Wonderland) or a Dorothy Gale? A Tarzan or a Jane? Or what other character from literature do you identify with?

RO: I never identified with any of the Little Women...they were all such goody goodies..and the whole Marmy thing put me off. Although my circumstances weren't quite so dire I did have a brief identification with Francie, the little girl in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I didn't have to sell scrap metal as a child but it was the only book I knew of that was set in Brooklyn...and we were - if not quite as poor - certainly not well off. Then again..I also identified with Joy Adamson who wrote "Born Free." I wasn't exactly an Englishwoman living in Africa and raising lion cubs, but I thought I might be one day. I think it was the fact that she had no real job and got to hang out with animals all day that attracted me. It still does.

JAN: Elizabeth Bennett in "Pride and Prejudice." The intelligent form of Cinderella, isn't that every little girl's dream?? But to show you where my mind is at -- I had to really scrounge around for a female protagonist to relate to, but could immediately tick off three fictional male characters I was in love with....but hey, that's another blog.

HALLIE: That IS an interesting question. I carried the torch for ages for Gilbert Blythe. Points to anyone who remembers whose main squeeze he turned out to be.

ROBERTA: I think I'd have to go with Mole in "The Wind in the Willows." He was very interested in adventures with his pals, especially if they included picnics, but basically a homebody--not a river animal at all. Or maybe Piglet in "Winnie the Pooh":).

HANK: Little Women, no, never connected with them, somehow. Too sad.

I wanted to be Irene Adler, you know? Sherlock Holmes' nemesis and maybe-love? (In Pooh, I'm definitely Eeyore. Roberta, you are, as always, wonderful.) This is an interesting question, actually, since when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a character I can't remember the name of--she was voted the class president in some coming-of-age series of books about teenagers. She was always working really hard, and doing her best, all that. It wasn't Trixie Belden, but it was something like that. And there was some horse-owning girl in a series back then--I think her name was Connemara McGuire. (Oh. And I named my main character Charlotte McNally. I have not thought about that until this second.)

But as a high-schooler, oh, I was in LOVE with Henry V. I mean, I dreamed about him. So I guess I wanted to be...Eleanor of Aquitaine or whoever that was. And oh, Maid Marian, definitely. And Rowena in Ivanhoe.(Or Rebecca, I could never decide.)

HALLIE: Oooh, Irene Adler -- great choice! And I do see Roberta as sweet Piglet or Mole. This question is something of a Rorschach. Does it make you think of the adventures or the clothes or the food or the pets or the men in the characters' lives? Hmm.

So, gentle and not-so-gentle readers... which character is your alter ego? And first person who posts a comment identifying Gilbert Blythe's plucky girlfriend gets a copy of The Bibliophile's Devotional.

And stay tuned. Wednesday we hear from author/chef Lora Brody on cooking for Julia Child (it involves a rubber chicken). Friday Elizabeth Benedict talks about her new book of essays, "Muses, Mentors and Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives."