News, Prizes and Reviews
News
NEW WEBSITE FOR MONTMORENCY FANS
Josh M, one of Montmorency’s admirers, has set up a site on the ’Gather’ network where Montmorency fans can talk to each other. It’s already attracted a lot of interest. If you contact me through this site, or email me on eleanor@eleanorupdale.com , I will arrange for you to be invited to join the group.
Many thanks to everyone who wished me well with the PhD. At last it’s all over, and I am now a doctor -- though I am not going to change my name to Farcett (you’ll have to read the Montmorency books to understand why I say that).
MONTMORENCY’S REVENGE has been put on a list of Riveting Reads by the School Library Association. The Department for Education and Skills wants everyone to read all the books on the list. It’s strange having official approval. Don’t let it put you off! To read more about the list, see http://www.sla.org.uk/boys-into-books-overview.php
I’ve been having fun, and working very hard, as a judge in two big book prizes. I chaired the panel for the Royal Society Science Book Awards. The winner was ’Can You Feel the Force?’ by Richard Hammond of ’Top Gear’ You can find out more about that at http://www.royalsociety.org/bookspage.asp?id=6415 .
I’m also one of the judges for the Guardian Fiction Prize. Our choice of books for the longlist has been announced, and you can see it at http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2094928,00.html. The winner will be announced in September.
Good news from America. MONTMORENCY AND THE ASSASSINS has been chosen by New York Public Library as one of their ’Books for the Teen Age, 2007’
You can see a list of other prizes my books have won lower down this page.
All four MONTMORENCY books have been re-issued in the UK in new paperback editions. You can see the new covers on the BOOKS page of this website.
I’ve just received copies of the Brazilian edition of MONTMORENCY, to put on my shelf alongside all the other international editions. Welcome to anyone joining this website from South America.
Here in Britain, a short story by me is included in a new book called MIDNIGHT FEAST. Other contributors include Eoin Colfer, Darren Shan and Jamie Oliver. My story is about spies and headlice (you’ll hae to read it to find out why). The book is being published by HarperCollins in support of the charity, Warchild.
You may remember that, MONTMORENCY had his first stage outing at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland. The Arkle Theatre Company put on two performances of a short version of some of the events in the first book. Now we’re talking about turning it into something more substantial...
I had a great time at the festival, which I’m visiting again this year. I had a fun, if muddy, time at Hay on Wye, and will be at Edinburgh in August. I was recently back in Oxford, where I gave a talk in an old courtroom very like the one in the first Montmorency book.
MONTMORENCY’S REVENGE had a fabulous review by Amanda Craig in the Times. I won’t post it here, because it gives away rather a lot of the plot (including the end), but those of you who have already read the book, or don’t mind missing out on surprises, can find it at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-2187076,00.html
MONTMORENCY’S REVENGE is out in the USA now, as is the paperback of MONTMORENCY AND THE ASSASSINS. In both books Montmorency visits America, and I’d love to know what readers there think of them. For that, or anything else, you can contact me on eleanor@eleanorupdale.com
If you want to find out about Montmorency and the Assassins see the (wonderful) review Philip Ardagh wrote for the Guardian. It’s at the bottom of this page.
Because of the events in Montmorency on the Rocks, I was invited to see the Chinese Ambassador reopen the Pagoda in Kew Gardens. I had a great time, and was able to climb to the very spot where Montmorency deals with the Bag Man. Have a look on the Kew Gardens website to find out more at www.rbgkew.org.uk/ .
If you click on the About Me page of this website, you will see some pictures I was sent by on of Montmorency’s first fans, Orlando Weeks. Orlando was an art student then, but now he is the lead singer of a band that’s taking Britain by storm. They’re called the Maccabees, and the website ’Gigwise’ said of them "The last time we witnessed such unexpected and undiluted adulation for a band was last summer, just before Arctic Monkeys took over the World." It’s nice to bask in their reflected glory. You can read about Orlando and his band, and hear some of their music on www.myspace.com-themaccabees .
As you may know, I’m a trustee of the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries -- the biggest arts prize in Britain. This year, one of the shortlisted museums was the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. It’s the nearest thing we have to la Specola -- the museum that plays such a big part in Montmorency and the Assassins. It’s much more modern and bright, and doesn’t have the waxworks, but there’s a wonderful collection of anatomical specimens in glass jars. Have a look at their website at www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums , where you can take a virtual tour.
Prizes and Reviews
I have been very lucky. The books are very successful. So far I have won four prizes in Britain:
The Nestle Smarties Silver Award
The Blue Peter Prize for ‘The Book I couldn’t Put Down’
The Medway Award
The Southern Schools Book Award.
I was also shortlisted for the Askew’s Torchlight Award, the Branford Boase Award, and longlisted for the British Book Awards.
Montmorency was chosen as a Recommended Read for World Book Day, and in America, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) unanimously voted it onto its 2005 recommended list of Best Books for Young Adults.
The Children’s Laureate, Michael Morpurgo, chose MONTMORENCY as one of his top ten books for inspiring children to read. To see the full list, which includes some really juicy classics, see ’The Times’ online
In America there have also been some awards:
American Library Association: Best Book for Young Adults
School Library Journal: Best Book of the Year
Book Sense 76 Pick
National Public Radio: Recommended Summer Read
The Children’s Book Council of the USA has chosen Montmorency on the Rocks as one of the Outstanding International Books for 2006.
What really thrills me is that all my British prizes were voted for by children. When I was first trying to get a publisher, I was repeatedly told that you couldn’t have a book for children with no child characters. Until then, I hadn’t even noticed that there were no children in Montmorency. It’s wonderful that children themselves have proved the critics wrong.
Even though some people tried to persuade me to write some children in to the first story, I decided to stand firm. I’m glad I did. All those children who have supported the book have proved that young readers can deal with any subject matter. It’s the story that’s important, and anyway, children can understand adults – after all they see enough of them in their daily lives!
But lots of grown ups write to me about Montmorency, too. It may be from a children’s publisher, but it certainly isn’t just a children’s book. When Stephen Fry reviewed it, he said:
Montmorency is one of the most original, witty and delicious books to have arrived for a very long time. At the same time macabre, funny, suspenseful and humane, Eleanor Updale¹s book for the young is in reality a book for all. At no time does the prose patronise or the story compromise itself to second-guess the sensibilities of childhood: instead history, medicine, crime and adventure blend into a unique and brilliant fable that is set to become an instant classic.
You can imagine how thrilled I was by that—and why the publishers took bits of it to put on the cover of the book!
Because of what he’d said, BBC Audio asked Stephen Fry to read my book on tape for them, and he said yes! The first two books are already out on tape. Stephen reads them right through, with nothing cut out, and he does it brilliantly – so brilliantly that I now find I can hear his voice in my head as I write. You may have heard Stephen’s wonderful version of the Harry Potter books – well his reading of Montmorency is even better!
BBC Radio 7 serialised the first Montmorency book on the Big Toe Radio Show. That was an abridged version, read by Paul J Medford.
My latest book, Montmorency and the Assassins, has a different quote on the front. This time it’s from the Children’s Laureate, Michael Morpurgo, and this is what he has to say:
Through the stunning sewers of London, along the corridors of power, here at last is a series that thrills from first page to last. And here is a terrific writer, who can tantalise and tease and tickle and terrify. Bravo!
I love everyone who has said nice things about my books. Here’s Joan Bakewell on the new one, Montmorency and the assassins:
Once again Montmorency sweeps us along in a thrilling adventure. Eleanor Updale's exhilarating narrative carries us through late Victorian life, with hectic visits to Florence Milan and a Scottish island. Tasty nuggets of history - Italian anarchists, early x-rays , and deadly flu epidemics - are thrown in for good measure. The pace is thrilling, the intrigue absorbing and the outcome a surprise. She's done it again!
This is the Guardian review in full:
Philip Ardagh is delighted by Eleanor Updale's latest, Montmorency and the Assassins
Philip Ardagh
Saturday May 14, 2005Guardian
Montmorency and the Assassins
by Eleanor Updale
357pp, Scholastic, £12.99There are some authors for whom writing is simply one of the many strings to their bow, and Eleanor Updale is a prime example of this breed. When not writing, she, among other things, works at the University of London, sits on the clinical ethics committee at Great Ormond Street Hospital, is a trustee of the Gulbenkian Museum Prize, and panel-beats the dents out of Chinook helicopters at her local RAF base. I made that last one up, but you get the idea.
How she finds the time to write, I don't know, but the results are mightily impressive, that's for sure. Some people just write very well. I don't mean that they're necessarily good at plot or characterisation or whatever, I simply mean that they have a way of putting words on the page that immediately communicates with the reader, and Updale certainly has that talent in spades. The fact that she also does great characters and plotting makes reviewing this book a pleasure.
Montmorency and the Assassins is the third book in which her protagonist, Montmorency, appears. In a former life he was Scarper the thief but, having been badly injured in an accident and nurtured back to health by Dr Farcett, he has reinvented himself as a wealthy gentleman (with the affectations of no first name and always travelling with large amounts of luggage), though his seedy alter ego "had crept up on him time and time again". In previous encounters, Montmorency has done undercover work for the British government. Here he starts off working a private case.
This particular adventure is set at the very end of the 19th century, as Queen Victoria's reign is drawing to a close. Updale is not afraid to mix real people with her fictitious characters and to give us an insight into Victorian ideas, events and inventions, though her writing rarely preaches and, even more importantly, never veers into pastiche. Here we spend time with prospective assassin Gaetano Bresci, meet Puccini and Thomas Edison, and encounter some ingeniously employed X-rays.
Montmorency and the Assassins is a thumping good story told with consummate skill. There's pace, action, excitement and humour, with characters you really care about. This time around, what starts out as a hunt for some rare specimens stolen from an eminent naturalist soon turns into a tale of international socialist revolt when Frank (Francis), the nephew of Montmorency's friend and companion Lord George Fox-Selwyn, gets mixed up with a bunch of student anarchists. This at a time when Europe is undergoing not only upheaval and assassinations but also a flu epidemic, which reaches US shores just as Montmorency does.
The story portrays both sides' points of view and is laced with a melancholy rarely present in children's literature today. There's great sadness on many levels and a shocking ending even for those familiar with what history had in store. Death stalks historical and fictitious characters alike, in the form of illness, murder and bloody suicide. Updale doesn't pull any of her punches.
There's no need to have read the previous two books to appreciate this adventure, so, in that sense, it's a stand-alone title. But it'll be an even richer, more moving experience should you read all three chronologically. I've no doubt that Updale is already working on a fourth ... along with 101 other things, of course.