MUSIC AND LOVE

Can you tell I'm absolutely loving this?


Anyway... my next invited quoter is Tiffany Murray.



She has not only written one of the books I've enjoyed most for a long long time but it features one of the wildest old woman I've read about recently. And I thought my Mrs Oliver in GETTING THE PICTURE was wild.



Diamond Star Halo is completely enchanting, every bit as good as I Capture The Castle, and even Cold Comfort Farm - two of my favourite books so that's a big claim for me. Tiffany's main character, Halo, was born to be a drummer. Literally. When she was born she bounced off some drums in her parents recording studio. She lives on Rockfarm in Wales, which is just that - a farm for rock stars - and it's the story of what happens after an American band come to record there. Or more importantly, who is left behind after the band have gone.

Music runs through it, which isn't surprisingly when Tiff's biography drops in about how part of Bohemian Rhapsody was written in her house when she was a child. Here are her choice of the ten best Rock'n'Roll novels.

Anyway, as I said, in Diamond Star Halo Tiffany has created the BEST old woman ever. Here's what she says about her...

Nana Lew, who from the age of seventy to one hundred years old, has a live in lover, Rhysie the postman, (a man who delivers more than her letters). Nana has a red silk silk petticoat. Nana worships Johnny Cash.

Yes! I love her!

She also has her very own capel lined with bones*.

(*Nana Lew, that is, not Tiffany. I don't think so anyway.)

And Tiffany has chosen two songs for the competition.

The first is Old Friends/Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel. She says, "since I was a kid I've always pictured this song as a short story about two old lovers (I think some songs are the best short stories)." And the bit of the lyrics she picked goes:

'Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends.'

Tiffany comments: "There's something so beautiful about two old lovers sitting there as the buzz of the city whisks about them."

and here's her second...



Oh, does it get better?

IT'S COMPETITION TIME!!!!

So, as mentioned in the last post, my third novel GETTING THE PICTURE comes out at the end of this month.

HURRAH!

It's the story - in mostly letter form - of love, life and sex in an old people's home. The genesis of it began when an elderly woman turned to me at a poetry reading and said she hoped she would never get too old to cry over love.

I suddenly realised that I did too, but more importantly that I had only really thought of writing about love in youthful terms before. And once I started thinking, I realised how limited that approach was.

Publishers Weekly have said this about it:

'Salway (Tell Me Everything) refutes the adage about old dogs and new tricks in this breezy epistolary novel set in a British retirement home. Not that the residents of Pilgrim House don't know plenty of old tricks already: Salway's appreciation of her characters is refreshingly nonpatronizing—her oldsters have rich and naughty pasts, but live in the present, very much alive and eager to gossip, conspire, and seduce... relationships and characters evolve nicely in this lighthearted novel about family and lovers and the not-so-lighthearted secrets that separate them.

Anyway, now I'm offering you the chance to win one of my very first copies - signed and dated. All you have to do is to send me - either by email (sarahsalway - at - googlemail.com) or in the comments box - your favourite quote about love and old age. It can be old, new, or you can even have made it up yourself.

Here's one of mine: Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. Dorothy Canfield Fisher

I'm compiling a panel of over-eighty year olds to judge this, and they are fierce so no quarreling with them please. As we all know, and as GETTING THE PICTURE begins with: Old ladies must never be crossed: in their hands lie the reputations of the young ones. (Pierre Ambroise Laclos)

My panel will pick their favourite, and the bonus is I'll put up all the quotes on the blog so we get to have beautiful words too.

And thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I asked Alain de Botton for his recently and this is what he came up with ...

Some people would never have fallen in love if they hadn't heard there was such a thing La Rochefoucauld

So what's yours?

Entries should be in by 26th March, please. Winners announced on 6th April. If two people choose the same quote, the one who sends it in first, gets to enter - but I'll let the second one know. You can enter as many quotes as you like!