When you write a novel, I suppose it’s inevitable that at some point in the process, you start imagining the things you hope people might say about your book and the reactions they might have when they read it. I’ve been very lucky, and have had some lovely reviews for ‘His Last Duchess’, and I’ve been amazed and delighted by every one of them … but last night a comment appeared in my email inbox, directed there from my website, and, to be frank, it has completely blown me away!
I decided I’d like to share it with you. It’s from a gentleman called Richard Finch.
He says: “After many years teaching Drama and some English, for a while Director of the Ashcroft Arts Centre in Fareham, and then a deputy in a large Southwark comprehensive, I retired and set off for Africa. Namibia to be exact, where from 2008, I taught at the University in the North and supported teachers – many in bush schools – in the teaching of English and helping them to develop more interactive teaching.
I was approached by some teachers who were struggling with a prescribed text for Second Language learners at Higher Level. It was Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’. I had not encountered this work before. My initial reaction – why set a text written by a Victorian British poet who in turn had set its subject in Renaissance Italy – a far cry from the flat desert plains and villages of the mainly Oshiwambo people.
This powerful dramatic monologue quickly caught my imagination as I decided to approach it as a mystery-thriller, woven with sensuality and romance. There were distinct resonances as feudal values and attitudes, gradually but not entirely, are replaced by contemporary perspectives on life in a newly de-colonised society.
Teachers and learners alike embraced the poem with enthusiasm and made it their own. I left Namibia last November, sold my house in Fareham, and have just relocated to Kwa Zulu Natal.
Imagine my excitement and curiosity when, in a Durban bookshop, the title of a new publication – His Last Duchess – jumped out at me. From the cover place to the final words it had me gripped and enthralled. I returned to the poem, and then back to the novel. Everything in the story seemed as it would and should have been. I want so many to read it. it would make a dark and powerful stage play … and a sumptuous film. Thank you for your inspired creation.”
Crumbs … it’s really worth having written the book, just for that, I reckon. It’s not just the praise – it’s also the fact of reading about someone else’s equally enthusiastic response to Browning’s wonderful poem, and the poem’s being discussed and explored … in the deserts of Namibia! How Browning would have loved that! I can only imagine that Mr Finch is a wonderful teacher. On top of everything, too, I’m just gobsmacked by the surreality of my novel’s being discovered in a bookshop in Durban! My emailed response to Mr Finch, though heartfelt, felt dreadfully inadequate after all that!
Have any of you out there had reactions to your books that have left you similarly speechless? I’d love to hear them, if you have!
