Pallisers and stories of married life

I’ve been watching “The Pallisers” on TV lately and remembering how much I loved the novels when I was a kid, even though they were long and heavy going for a young person. I like Antony Trollope, because while he is in many ways a quintessential Victorian, in his attitudes, he is also much more tolerant than many Victorian writers. Trollope realises that people are flawed and foolish, and make mistakes. He knows that most people aren't wondrously virtuous, that marriage isn’t always a happy bed of roses and that love doesn’t always solve problems. He described marriages of various kinds, and his favourite female character was the flawed but charming Glencora Palliser, a young woman who is forced into a marriage. She marries a serious and dull young man whom she does not love.. called Plantagenet Palliser. She is in love with a “bad lot”, the gambler, Burgo Fitzgerald. In the first years of her marriage, she wants to leave her husband and run off as Burgo's mistress. Plantagenet persuades her to stay and give their marriage a chance, because he loves her, although she is different from him. She is flighty, and often vulgar and wilful. Plantagenet is cool and unemotional and finds it hard to relate to people, even his wife and children. She is very human and at times, he is “something more than human,” very virtuous and serious. I have hoped to write some fiction about married life, rather than the courtship stage, and show marriages that are in trouble, marriages that are not too good and not too bad, and to try and show people as they really are. I don’t claim to be as good a writer as Trollope, but I hope that some may like my newer fictions about married life... So far, I have two stories, “Beds and Blue Jeans” and “Rough Music”. They are available on Amazon.

Beds and Blue Jeans Romance

Beds and Blue Jeans is a sort of “anti-Romance” story about a couple – Sam and Pattie, who wind up living together almost by accident. They have a baby and Sam tries to be a good father, but he is bored with his girlfriend and she seems to just about tolerate him. So he keeps on with his work of playing in a band and finds that women throw themselves at him because he is a musician. He enjoys the thrill of secret flings, and dodging being found out by his bad tempered girlfriend. But by and by, the flings are less satisfying because he wants something more from a woman, but he thinks that Pattie is too immature to provide him with any real companionship. By Nadine Sutton. Available on Amazon

Maura Laverty Irish Romance Author

Maura Laverty was born in Ireland, in County Kildare, in 1907 and was educated in a convent. Her father was a gentleman farmer. Like many middle class girls of the time, she went to Spain in the 1920s as governess to the children of a Spanish upper class family. Career opportunities for girls in Ireland were almost non existent. But girls, who had some education but not much money, chose to spend a few years in Spain, to give themselves some freedom and work experience. At the time, just after Ireland had achieved independence, there was a low marriage rate. The custom was that the family farm would go to the eldest son, and the younger children would not get anything much. The eldest son usually did not marry, until he had inherited. This meant that many young Irish women felt they had no hopes of marrying. So they moved abroad, hoping it would improve their chances. The country was extremely poor and emigration became a way of life. Matters were not helped by the fact that birth control was illegal and considered immoral, and so families were large. Many went to England or to America, but many middle class girls chose Spain. This was because it was seen as a safely Catholic country, where an Irish girl could work, earn a living and not be subjected to the pagan influences of England or the US. Their families and religious advisers could recommend a safe job in Spain. Working for well to do families gave them hopes of finding a husband, but still the chances were very slim. There was an English queen on the Spanish throne at the time, and an English community living in the country, who had their own social life. Irish governesses were not usually invited to their events. Spanish aristocratic families saw the governess as very little higher in social position than their servants. So the governesses and chaperones and English teachers were a lonely set of women, who had dull and restricted social lives. They often lived their whole lives in Spain because they had no hope of returning home. They became bitter about their limited life. Maura Laverty, like Kate O’Brien, was intelligent and literate and adventurous. She did not stay long as a governess but instead became a secretary to the Princess Bibesco and worked in journalism. She found a fiancé, a Hungarian, but then realised that she wanted to marry James Laverty, an Irishman who had been her pen friend during her years in Spain. So she went back to Ireland and they married. She had children and went on writing, to support her family, as her husband was not a steady provider. She worked as a journalist, as a script writer for the TV series, Tolka Row, and as an “Agony Aunt”. She did not write as many novels as Kate O’Brien but two of her books “Never No More” (about her childhood) and “No More than Human” were well known and loved. She also wrote children’s fiction and about cookery. “No More than Human” is a favourite book of mine. Like O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle, it is set in Spain in the 20's and based on Maura Laverty’s experiences as a governess. While the Spanish were Catholics, the upper classes took a more elastic attitude to sex than the puritanical Irish Catholics of that time. Mary Lavelle and Laverty’s Delia Scully learned more about the wilder side of life and love than they might have done in Ireland. Mary Lavelle falls in love with and sleeps with her employer’s married son. Delia falls in love with a young man Rafael. She thinks he wants to marry her, but he only wants to set her up as his mistress, while he marries another girl for her money. I think that, in the social climate of Ireland at that time, it was only by setting the novels abroad, that writers could get away with writing about adultery and illicit sex (let alone homosexual love). Even then, Laverty, like Kate O’Brien and other writers, was often “banned” in her native country. I wish that Laverty had written more fiction, as she was a talented and intelligent writer and if Delia Scully is a self-portrait, she was also a charming and likable woman. She was saddened and depressed when her books were banned, especially some that had been admired by Catholic organisations in America. She died in her 50s, in 1966. Some of her books were reprinted in the 1980s, by Virago Press. Others can be found on Amazon, in old editions.

RICH MAN POOR MAN American saga by Irwin Shaw

I must confess to not knowing much about American literature. I like some of the more serious works, such as the novels of F Scott Fitzgerald, but I can’t read Hemingway, or Faulkner. I’ve struggled to appreciate other novels like Upton Sinclair or Theodore Dreiser, but I just find them too wordy and hard to “get into”. My favourite American novels tend to be from the “second rate” type of literature, a good interesting story, like Gone with the Wind. Irwin Shaw was a journalist and when he took to writing novels, he went for telling a good human interest story, rather than fine writing. Rich Man Poor Man was televised in the 1970s and was his best known novel. The TV version was immensely popular. Like many American writers, he lived in Europe much of the time, and was a liberal who disliked the McCarthyite years in his native country. The story begins in 1945 on the last day of World War Two. It focusses on two brothers, Rudolph and Tom Jordache, from a German American working class family, in a small town in upstate New York. Rudy, the elder, is intelligent and ambitious. Tom is younger, an angry teenager who loves to fight and is always at odds with the world. Rudy’s ambition is to go to college and make a fortune. His brother has no ambitions. Their sister, Gretchen, is beautiful, intelligent and artistic minded, but sensual. Their parents are unhappily married and they only unite in love for their favourite child, Rudy. Both mother and father want him to get on. They ignore Gretchen and Tom. She rebels by taking a rich lover, the town’s “wealthy WASP”, Teddy Boylan. Although she has ambitions to go into the theater, her sexually passionate nature makes her fall into bed with many men, whereas Rudy maintains a strict control over himself and works his way through College and into a position of trust in a large business. Tom's life goes from bad to worse. When his first real love affair ends badly, he becomes a sullen young man who earns his living with his fists as a boxer. He gets into trouble constantly. Rudy supports his mother, when his father commits suicide and his brother and sister leave town, and he manages to achieve his ambition of making a fortune in business. In the TV version of the book, Rudy’s character was changed somewhat, making him more selfish and cold hearted than the Rudy of the book. In the TV series, Rudy is seen as refusing to help someone he knows, who has fallen foul of the Communist Witch hunts in the 50s. Generally until later in the series, he comes across as hard and completely self-interested, while Tom is gradually made more of a hero. However, Shaw’s original Rudy is (while ambitious and hard headed) an essentially decent man who takes responsibility for his family, makes a good living and does not refuse to help his college tutor who is being hounded for supposed communist leanings. The novel covers the post war period, and outlines Rudy’s progression to a wealthy businessman and then a husband and father. He retires from business and goes into local politics. Tom gets mixed up with the mafia, during his boxing career and to escape them, becomes a merchant seaman. Even then his violent past sometimes catches up with him. Eventually he becomes a calmer happier man, and settles abroad, in the Mediterranean with his son and his new English girlfriend, Kate. They run a small business, takning tourists on sea trips. Then, Rudy’s marriage hits a bad patch and his wife’s drinking causes a tragic incident. Tom invites Rudy and his wife to come to his wedding, in France... After the marriage, Jean has a small drink and it sets her off on a binge. Tom goes into town to rescue her when she goes off with a seedy man... and gets her back safely. But the man and his thugs come after him, and beat him up. He dies. It's hard to say why I like this story so much. The characters are well drawn, and there is plenty of drama and human interest. And the post war epoch, in America is interesting. Unlike some writers, Shaw was unpretentious and simple in his writing.

Rough Music a sexy non romance! just coming out

Although I’ve been ill for some weeks, I have now published “Rough Music”. It’s available for sale on 21st January. It’s not a romance; it’s about people who are a bit older than the “very romantic” age, who are 30-ish and trying to sort out problems in life, rather than looking for a perfect love affair or marriage. Jeff and Brandon are two guys, who are good friends, and work together. They are both trying to work out how far they compromise in their work lives and how they try and manage a music career, with its frequent traveling and still maintain contact with their wives and families. They want to do real music that they love, rather than concentrate on commercially successful stuff, but they also need to earn a living. This is basically a historical story, set in the late 1970s, so attitudes are not the same on many issues as they are now, but there’s fun, sex and I hope some real life in there! You can find it on Amazon, by Nadine Sutton.

Beds and Blue Jean, a sexy modern romance

Beds and Blue Jeans is the story of a young American couple, who are not a perfect romantic pairing.  They have a baby, and that is the main reason that they have ended up living together.  Sam is a handsome young man, who appeals to middle aged women, and who is happy to spend his time with them rather than with his girlfriend.  He loves his music and works hard at it, but he’s not sure if he should throw it all up and look for a conventional job, now that he is a father. Pattie is pretty but not very clever, and she’s letting herself go, in terms of her looks. She doesn’t seem to have any ambitions. Sam is thoughtless and selfish, but he is lonely.  Pattie is not much of a companion for him and he is tempted by other women who offer interest and companionship as much as sex. Over a few months, things slowly change….

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beds-Blue-Jeans-everyday-mayhem-ebook/dp/B01370SMFO/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1451048583&sr=1-2-spell&keywords=nadina+sutton

Beds and Blue Jeans a sexy non romance

I am presently working on a couple of stories, which I hope to publish in the near future.
But for the moment, I’d like to say a word about my latest story “Beds and Blue Jeans.”  It’s not a romance with a happy ever after ending.  I wanted to write something that was  more realistic, than the usual romances.  I wanted to explore a story, where people face real life problems and make mistakes and don’t always find it easy  to put the mistakes right.   Sam is a selfish, average young man, who uses his looks and sex appeal to get plenty of action.  Like a lot of men. He tries to be a good father, and he tries to live with the difficult young woman that he ended up in a relationship with.  He’s very far from perfect.  But I wanted to write about someone ordinary and average, who had real faults, not very minor ones.
I realise that many people won’t like a story like this, but I wanted to write it and publish it, and I hope that some people will find it interesting.

. http://www.amazon.com/Beds-Blue-Jeans-everyday-mayhem-ebook/dp/B01370SMFO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1443024514&sr=1-1&keywords=beds+and+blue+jeans