Margot Livesey and Jo Page Yesterday

We had a wonderful pair of events with Margot Livesey and Jo Page yesterday.

In case you neglected to get your book signed by Margot, here's a photo.

Read more about Margot Livesey and Jo Page here.

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"I Had a Very Severe Stepmother"

Elizabeth Floyd Mair interviews Scottish author Margot Livesey (who visits tomorrow) in the Times Union:

Q: What has the book Jane Eyre meant to you, and how is it connected to "The Flight of Gemma Hardy?"

A: I read Jane Eyre precociously when I was 9 years old. I pulled it out of my father's bookshelf, because it had a girl's name on the cover. And then, of course, it turned out to be about someone who was just about my age, and that was very appealing.

At the time, I was living with my father and stepmother on the grounds of the boys' school where my father taught in the Scottish Highlands. I could see the moors outside our living room window, and the school itself was a Gothic building with battlements that I could easily imagine as Thornfield Hall. I had a very severe stepmother, and it wasn't hard to turn her into Jane's aunt. Then, the year after I read the book, we moved to the south of Scotland, and I went to a very difficult boarding school. More.

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Livesey: Music to Read By

Margot Livesey, who visits Thursday, March 20, recommends a playlist of music to accompany her novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, on the blog, Largehearted Boy.

"Gemma's earliest years are spent not in Scotland but Iceland - her father is Icelandic – and in thinking about that lonely, volcanic country I spent a good deal of time listening to the Icelandic band Sigur Ros (Victory Rose). The voice of the lead singer, Jonsi Birgisson, has an almost other worldly quality which seems to fit perfectly with the fact that many Icelanders believe in the existence of elves. And Jonsi himself is obsessed with birds and animals. Two evocative songs stand out for me: 'Go Do' in which Jonsi insists 'You should always know you can do anything,' and 'Saeglopur' which means lost at sea, or shipwrecked." More.

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More Than a Match for Jane Eyre

Writing in The Daily Beast, Jane Ciabattari names Margot Livesey's new book a "Must Read."

Livesey visits Tuesday, March 20.

"Reinventing a beloved classic is a risky business, but it will come as no surprise to Margot Livesey’s admirers—a small but fervent group likely to be greatly enlarged by her wonderful new novel—that this abundantly gifted writer is more than a match for Jane Eyre. It’s not necessary to have read Charlotte Brontë’s protofeminist masterpiece to enjoy The Flight of Gemma Hardy, which works splendidly on its own terms, but the resonances and dissonances between these two compelling works enrich our appreciation of both." More.

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Hiding from Bullies

Margot Livesey (who visits 3/20) talks with Bookpage about some of the inspirations for her new novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a Scottish girl's coming-of-age story that pays homage to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Like the author herself, the novel's protagonist is the product of a rough, working class Scottish school for girls....

"....Livesey had no difficulty imagining a crumbling Scottish boarding school. As a girl, she herself was enrolled in one as a day student. Her father taught at the neighboring boys’ school and her mother was the school nurse. "

"'I ended up in a class with girls three years older than me. It was just an enormous gulf,' the author recalls. 'There were long, dark corridors, cloakrooms and stairwells. I was always hiding in some stairway trying to avoid some particularly hefty girl.'"

"The school eventually went bankrupt. 'It was one time I felt my prayers were answered,' she says, laughing at the memory." More.

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