What is Sarah Rayne reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Sarah Rayne, author of Chord of Evil.

One book she tagged:

Broome Stages by Clemence Dane

Written in 1930. Clemence Dane was a highly thought-of novelist and playwright of her era. (Best known plays are Will Shakespeare, Granite, and Bill of Divorcement).

I discovered this book about thirty years ago and lost an entire four-day bank holiday reading it. Saying you read a book in four days is a huge compliment to pay an author, but there’s a curious downside to it.  On the one hand it’s terrific that the book was so compelling you couldn’t put it down – on the other hand, the author probably spent a minimum of a year writing and researching it.

Broome Stages is a very long book indeed – 700 pages – and in a very general way is a family saga.  But it’s like no family saga I’ve ever read, before or since. It spans the years between 1715 and 1930, and it covers seven generations of a theatrical family.  The story begins with travelling players in tavern courtyards, and traces the family’s rise – through the marvellous fruity old Victorian actor managers who re-wrote Shakespeare to suit themselves, and into the early years of the 20th century, with the dawn of the early movies. It’s about the changing world of the theatre, but it’s also about the Broomes themselves – their loves and hates, and feuds and plots.  It’s about their fortunes in the theatre world – the buying of theatres, the building of a theatrical dynasty.

The writing is exquisite – polished and lovely, and the characters and their backgrounds are so...[read on]

About Chord of Evil, from the publisher:

A mysterious 1940s portrait leads researcher Phineas Fox to uncover a devastating wartime secret in this chilling novel of suspense.

Researcher Phineas Fox has agreed to help track down his neighbour's cousin, who has disappeared without trace, leaving a single clue to her whereabouts: an obscure 1940s portrait of an alleged murderess. What exactly happened back in 1941 - and what is the connection with Arabella's disappearance?

Visit Sarah Rayne's website.

Writers Read: Sarah Rayne.

--Marshal Zeringue