From the archives #11: Far-away places at Suffolk Book League.

Over the years Suffolk Book League [SBL] has seen visits from speakers who have travelled both physically in the real world and in imagination through their writing. For me, the most recent memorable example of this was Noreen Masud in March 2025, using an appreciation of various places in the world that share a single characteristic in her memoir A Flat Place: Moving Through Empty Landscapes, Naming Complex Trauma. She explores her own inner psychology in order to try to come to terms with a life of trauma.

In some ways this echoes a visit from the novelist Jenni Diski on 29^th September 1998, mainly discussing her non-fiction travel book Skating to Antarctica, based on a cruise she made in a rather battered old Russian ice-breaker, as I recall. The comment in BookTalk is that she ‘combines a journey to Antarctica, with memories of her unhappy childhood …readers have marvelled at Diski’s decision to lay bare her inner life in this way’ ⁽¹⁾. Both the talk and a subsequent reading of the book made a profound impression, although I also remember that the author dried up after about 20 minutes or so and only some adroit verbal tap dancing by our then Chair, Brian Morron, kept questions and comments going for the rest of the session.  

We seem to have had a number of authors who have either originally hailed from the Indian sub-continent, or who have written about it. In June 2006, Romesh Gunesekera, a writer with connections to Sri Lanka and the Philippines, spoke charmingly about his novels as part of IpArt, the long defunct Ipswich Arts Festival. The venue was the St Nicholas Centre, which I felt was rather unsuitable at the time, and the turnout disappointing. But, as Brian pointed out in BookTalk, ‘those who were there thoroughly enjoyed it’, including staff at the St Nicholas Centre ‘who stayed to boost the numbers and ended up asking several questions and buying the book’⁽²⁾. 

To write fantasy fiction is perhaps to journey as far as someone can in the imagination: on 3^rd October 1990, SBL scored a real coup by hosting the comic fantasy writer Terry Pratchett⁽³⁾, but I can find no detailed record of the event. On 12^th September 1995, Pamela Belle, a prolific writer of historical novels and some fantasy fiction gave a talk about the latter genre, with BookTalk observing that ‘she has moved into the world of fantasy …a world we do not often discuss in the SBL but which has many, many followers’⁽⁴⁾. She spoke about her research for the novel Silver City, which had a basically Bronze age setting, and I reviewed it⁽⁵⁾ as rather a good read, in a strain of fiction where sadly there is much quite poor writing.

References:

1. Parry, A. Tuesday September 29th, Jenni Diski reads and talks about her work, BookTalk, 1998, July/Aug/Sept, (91): 4.

2. Morron, B. For those who couldn’t make it….Romesh Gunesekera, BookTalk, 2006 December, (121): 3-4.

3. Editorial, The programme: Terry Pratchett, 3^rd October, BookTalk, 1990, September/October, (47): 1.

4. Parry, A. The programme, Thursday September 12^th: Pamela Belle speaks on ‘Fact into fiction’, BookTalk, 1995, September/October, (77): 1.

5. Bayliss, J. The Silver City by Pamela Belle, BookTalk, 1995, September/October, (77): 9. 

   
   

Janet Bayliss