Vanishing Acts

Now you see her, now you don't.....I expect you might have been thinking that if you've logged into my blog over the past couple of weeks expecting to find a new posting! Sorry about that! But I'm back and raring to go, after a bit of a break to look after myself (I wasn't feeling so well) and to devote my time to scrutinising my class's portfolios - a very enjoyable and engrossing experience as they have produced a mountain of excellent writing: short stories, non-fiction, drama, analyses of markets and writing. Well done them!

Oh, and I also paid a trip to Huddersfield Town Hall for the Kirklees Community Learning Awards Ceremony to see my class win an award for Learning Group of the Year and one member of the class, Charlotte Thorpe, win an individual award for Best Returner. We had a fantastic evening and it was a fitting conclusion to a year in which my class has constantly amazed me with their enthusiasm, persistence and imagination.

I'm about to join yet another new group for writers - a novel-reading group where the emphasis is on spending each meeting analysing one novel in depth, to help us with our own writing. We are due to meet in a couple of weeks' time for our first discussion and the chosen novel is Jodi Picoult's Vanishing Acts. It's the first Picoult book I have read, although my writing partner Kimm is a great fan of hers and had read virtually all her books.

I avoided Picoult's books for ages thinking that they would be terribly depressing, but I was pleasantly surprised by Vanishing Acts. Yes, it does deal with extreme human predicaments, but the writing is absolutely beautiful and it really sweeps you along. In my class, we discussed similes and metaphors a few weeks ago. I pointed out how important it is to choose a simile that is fresh rather than trotting out old cliches. Vanishing Acts is stuffed fuller than a horsehair sofa with lively and original similes - for example, she says the wrapped-up bales of hay in a field are like giant marshmallows. I think that once I have got to the end of the book, I shall have to go back and re-read it with a notebook in my hand, recording her fantastic use of language so that I can share it with my classes next year.

I hope that you have been enjoying your reading and writing while I've been off-line. Do please e-mail me and let me know what you've been working on. I would be especially interested in knowing which novels you would recommend to my new reading/novel-writing study group and what lessons we could learn from them.

Happy reading!