Underwater Breathing - Cassandra Parkin - BLOG TOUR!

Be gentle with me. This is my first ever blog tour!  And I couldn't be happier that it's for this writer and this book. I read the The Winter's Child last year and loved it. So I jumped at the opportunity to read Underwater Breathing.

So let's begin with a little of the blurb..........

On Yorkshire’s gradually-crumbling mud cliffs sits an Edwardian seaside house. In the bathroom, Jacob and Ella hide from their parents’ passionate arguments by playing the ‘Underwater Breathing’ game – until the day Jacob wakes to find his mother and sister gone. 

Years later, the sea’s creeping closer, his father is losing touch with reality and Jacob is trapped in his past. Then, Ella’s sudden reappearance forces him to confront his fractured childhood. As the truth about their parents emerges, it’s clear that Jacob’s time hiding beneath the water is coming to an end. 

Here's what some other people had to say about the book.

 ‘A dark, powerful and emotional novel with hauntingly beautiful prose. It will compel you to read on even as it sends chills up your spine’ Nicola Moriarty 

‘This is a glorious, emotional novel about who we really are, where we belong in the world, and how truly at mercy we are to the events that shape us. I can't recommend it enough’ Louise Beech 

And if that hasn't whetted you appetite maybe my own review will?

Underwater Breathing - Cassandra Parkin

Oh, Cassandra Parkin, you’ve done it to me again. Only this time you’ve really done it! I am wrecked after reading this book! Which is as good a way of putting it as any, given the theme. Sort of. In a nutshell the book is about love. About the fragile, crumbling, tempestuous madness of love. In one long, glorious metaphor using the sea and its relentless power Cassandra Parkin has constructed a fiction of chilling beauty. 

If a missing child was at the heart of The Winter’s Child then missing persons are at the heart of this gripping new novel. Not necessarily physically missing though.  An onion story where layers are peeled off to reveal the truths that hide within these delicate hearts. Such tenderness nestling against such sharpness, the juxtaposition of the two states twirls your emotions around.

There are few characters in the book but without exception they are superbly drawn. Once again Ms. Parkin has demonstrated that ability which allows you to feel what her characters are feeling. Although the story seems to be Jacob and Ella’s story there is another marvellous character in Mrs. Armitage. Fascinating in her complexity and such a wonderful example of how love can wear many faces she is a support that keeps the whole story together and offers both the other characters and readers too a refuge against the storms of life that batter the people in this story. 

Impressive, too, are the vivid descriptions of the sea and the land and the battle between them. I often wonder what this poor writer has put herself thought to be able to describe these scenes and situations with such clarity and authenticity. In fact the sea is there as as one of the main characters possibly the ‘baddie’ of the book. 

There are writers and there are storytellers and sometimes you’re lucky enough to get them both within one author and I think it fair to say that of Cassandra Parkin. This is one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. Thanks to Imogen Harris at Legend Press for the opportunity to read an advance copy. 

Do you still need convincing that you simply must read this book? I've saved the best till last!! An interview with the lady herself. Cassandra Parkin answers the questions I put to her.

1. I’ve just finished reading Underwater Breathing and i thought it was marvellous. Some 
powerful themes for a reader to absorb. So I am wondering where the inspiration came for this
 story?

Oh, thank you so much – I’m thrilled you enjoyed it! 

I’m a bit of a magpie when it comes to ideas – something will grab my attention for a moment and I’ll hoard it away along with all the others, until one day it comes to the surface again. The seed for Underwater Breathing was a story on the news, years ago now, about an East Yorkshire village that was falling into the sea. The residents had always known this would happen, but the erosion was much faster than anyone had predicted. There was this one couple who’d retired there. They’d bought their house knowing perfectly well it would fall in the end, but they were gambling on them both being dead by the time the sea came for their home. They said they’d made a bet with the sea, and lost.

That seemed like such a strange and powerful bargain – the inevitability of your own death, staked against the power of the sea. I scribbled down the words family make bet with sea and lose, and then promptly forgot about them, until one day the entire plot of Underwater Breathing came to the surface and I had to write the story.     

2.Your characters are all so believable and as a reader it is easy to engage with them, especially Jacob and Ella. Jacob broke my heart he was so full of love despite his troubled childhood and adolescence. They both grew and developed before our very eyes. Is this part of your planning before you start to write or do characters evolve as you’re writing ?

For me, one of the joys of writing is getting to know the characters, and having them “take over” the story. The best moment for me is when they start telling me that no, it happened this way, not that way; that they wouldn’t do that, but would do this instead; that this is how they really felt at the time. There’s a scene in Alice Through The Looking Glass that describes this perfectly for me. The White King is trying to make a note in his diary, but Alice, invisible, stands behind him and starts guiding the pen so that it writes her words, not his. I feel as if the story and the people in it already exist, somehow, and my job isn’t to create them but to describe them, as accurately as I can.

I’ve said this to a few people, and got varying reactions (other writers tend to know exactly what I’m on about, whereas non-writers just nod respectfully in a don’t alarm the madwoman way and change the subject). I will admit it sounds weird. But then, how can I possibly have made it all up using just the pink squishy stuff between my ears? That seems far weirder to me.

3.Jacob’s relationship with his father is so touching. Despite the volatile and changeable behaviour, for the most part, he maintains such outward tenderness. What kind of research did you do in regard to memory loss conditions and the management of them by carers?

Lots of reading, to start with, from as many sources as possible. Oliver Sacks wrote some beautiful case studies about memory loss that show you the condition but also the person living with it. Then, lots of NHS advice leaflets and websites (to get a feel for what it’s “supposed” to be like), and lots of blogs and personal testimonies (to get under the skin of the reality). Finally, most families are touched by memory loss or dementia at some point, and my family has been too. So some of what Jacob feels, that combination of love and guilt and exasperation, is based on personal experience. 

4.I found the character of Mrs. Armitage absolutely fascinating. It’s easy to focus so much on Jacob and Ella that you can almost forget that here is another story running parallel to theirs. Another story of love. Her pragmatism and controlled emotions were masterful. And yet the latent care and love she had for the children was extremely moving. Is she based on anyone you know? 

Mrs Armitage came to me as a very complete person – I didn’t have any sense at all that I was creating her. It was more like having someone wander in to the narrative and say, Actually, you need to hear my version to properly understand what’s going on here. I really enjoyed getting to know her, although I’m not sure what she’d make of me in return.

5. The underwater descriptions when the children are holding their breath are so vivid and believable that it made me wonder if you practised yourself in order to write with such authenticity!!

Actually I did! Once you get used to the feeling of being completely submerged, it’s a very peaceful place to be. Sadly, as Jacob and Ella both know, it’s not possible to stay underwater for ever.

6. For me the book had two dramatic peaks, the sibling relationship, and the disintegration of the land into the sea. The descriptions of the latter were so graphic one could almost feel oneself at the risk of drowning! It’s a wonderful piece of visual writing too. Was it difficult to write that part?

It was challenging, because I wanted to get the atmosphere right. It’s terrifying, but also sort of glorious – the moment you’ve dreaded is finally here, and now you can finally discover what comes next.

7. I saw the crumbling of the mud cliffs as a sustained metaphor for how aspects of our lives can crumble and we are powerless to stop it. The sea certainly felt like a threat throughout the book. It felt like an additional character, a villain almost. Was this your intention?

It definitely was, and I’m so glad this came through for you in the story! My grandfather was in the Merchant Navy, and although he loved every minute of his seafaring life, he also told me that the most important advice he had for me was “never turn your back on the sea”. He thought of the sea as a living entity, with its own will and its own plans, that might coincide with our plans or might conflict with them. He said there was no point trying to fight the sea, because it would always, always win – all we could do was work with it as best we could.

8.I read A Winters Child last year which also impressed me and I was quite surprised to see another book which seemed hot on its heels! For novels of such depth and substance you seem very prolific!  Do you have ideas already stored up just waiting to be written?

I always feel as if I’m being way too lazy and not doing enough, so you can’t imagine how much it means to me to have you say this – thank you! I constantly collect little seeds and nuggets of ideas, but I only have room in my head to plant and nurture one at a time into a novel. In this industry, people quite often (and quite reasonably) ask you, “have you got any ideas for the next book?” Although I try and come up with some sort of answer, the truth is that generally speaking, I don’t, and will continue not to have, until about a month after I’ve finished the current one. (Which I find pretty terrifying, because maybe one day there will be no more ideas, and then what on earth will be the point of me?) So while I was writing The Winter’s Child, I had absolutely no idea that the next one would be Underwater Breathing. 

I must admit, writing Underwater Breathing was incredibly tough (in contrast to The Winter’s Child, which came very easily), and right up until the moment when I finished it, I wasn’t sure if I could make it work. I actually got forty thousand words into my first draft, then realised I hated every word of it and was going have to start again from scratch. I told my best friend this and she said it made her feel quite ill to think about it, but it was one of the best and most liberating experiences of my life – accepting that it was okay to fail, and start again, and do better. 

9. How do you write? By that i am wondering if you have a special place, special time, any special routines and rituals? 

I don’t think of myself as having much of a routine, but when I stop to think about it, I definitely do. I always start by building an outline, using post-it notes and sheets of A4 paper. This has to happen in the afternoon, on the living-room floor, and it’s absolutely critical that my cats come and sit on it, move things around a bit, steal post-it notes, and generally bless it with their presence. (The only time they didn’t, I wrote the first draft of Underwater Breathing that I had to throw away and start again. Moral of the story: Cat Blessing is clearly a vital part of my creative practice.)

The actual writing part tends to happen in the mornings. I have a target of between 1,000 and 2,000 words a day, depending on what else is happening and where I am at the time, and given the choice, I’ll always write at a dining-room table, in my pyjamas. 

I write my first draft like a cat crossing the road – top speed, straight ahead and don’t look back until you reach the other side. So my first drafts are always an utter unholy mess of repetition, contradictions, out-of-order events and general over-writing. I think most writers would agree that editing is when you really bring something together, and I’m no exception. 

10. I know that being an avid reader is almost compulsory for a writer so a question I always ask is if you can remember the first book you read that moved you to tears, if any?

What a beautiful question. So many books have moved me to tears, but the first one I remember is the end of “Watership Down”, when El-Ahrairah comes for Hazel. I was about six, and it was the most grown-up book I’d ever read. Hazel looks back for a moment at all the rabbits he’s leaving behind, and El-Ahrairah says, “You needn’t worry about them…they’ll be all right, and thousands like them.” That image of Hazel, setting off on his last journey but still needing to check that his family are all right before he can go…it still makes me cry now. 

11. And finally having enjoyed this novel so much I am bound to ask when we can expect another new one!

I’m currently working on the first draft of a new novel, provisionally called The Slaughter Man, about a family who have suffered the death of one of their identical twin teenage daughters. It’s about the ways we reconstruct ourselves in the wake of devastating personal loss, and how we accept that we’re allowed to survive even when the people we love the most have left us. At the moment it’s in its this-is-awful, I-can’t-do-this, what-on-earth-made-me-think-I-could-do-this awkward teenage phase, but I have faith. And at least I haven’t had to throw it all out and start again. 

I'd like to thank Cassandra for her time and her fascinating answers. (I was delighted that her work is underpinned by feline presence!)

If you've read this far, thank you very much. Be sure to check the rest of the blog tour.

 Now please,  go get yourselves a copy of this wonderful book!!