**Giveaway** Bitter Greens Blog Tour - Interview with Kate Forsyth

Welcome to my stop on the Bitter Greens Blog Tour. I'm happy to include a very in depth and interesting interview with Kate Forsyth and Kate's publisher St. Martin's Press is offering one Print Copy US ONLY as a giveaway.
Details below!
Enjoy!

• ISBN-13: 9781250047533
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 9/23/2014
• Pages: 496

 

Overview

The amazing power and truth of the Rapunzel fairy tale comes alive for the first time in this breathtaking tale of desire, black magic and the redemptive power of love

French novelist Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. At the convent, she is comforted by an old nun, Sœur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens...

Read an Excerpt:

A Heart of Gall

Château de Cazeneuve, Gascony, France – June 1666

I had always been a great talker and teller of tales.

‘You should put a lock on that tongue of yours. It’s long enough and sharp enough to slit your own throat,’ our guardian warned me, the night before I left home to go to the royal court at Versailles. He sat at the head of the long wooden table in the chateau’s arched dining room, lifting his lip in distaste as the servants brought us our usual peasant fare of sausage and white-bean cassoulet. He had not accustomed himself to our simple Gascon ways, not even after six years.

I just laughed. ‘Don’t you know a woman’s tongue is her sword? You wouldn’t want me to let my only weapon rust, would you?’

‘No chance of that.’ The Marquis de Maulévrier was a humourless man, with a face like a goat and yellowish eyes that followed my sister and me as we went about our business. He thought our mother had spoilt us, and had set himself to remedy our faults. I loathed him. No, loathe is far too soft a word. I detested him.

My sister, Marie, said, ‘Please, my lord, you mustn’t mind her. You know we’re famous here in Gascony for our troubadours and minstrels. We Gascons love to sing songs and tell stories. She means no harm by it.’

‘I love to tell a gasconade,’ I sang. ‘A braggadocio, a fanfaronade . . .’

Marie sent me a look. ‘You know that Charlotte-Rose will need honey on her tongue if she’s to make her way in this world.’

‘Sangdieu, but it’s true. Her face won’t make her fortune.’

‘That’s unfair, my lord. Charlotte-Rose has the sweetest face . . .’

‘She might be passable if only she’d pluck out that sting in her tail,’ the Marquis de Maulévrier began. Seeing that I had screwed up my face like a gargoyle, waggling my tongue at him, he rapped his spoon on the pitted tabletop. ‘You’d best sweeten your temperament, mademoiselle, else you’ll find yourself with a heart of gall.’

I should have listened to him.

Palais de Versailles, France – January 1697

Full of regret, I clung to the strap as my carriage rolled away from the Palais de Versailles. It was a bleak and miserable day, the sky bruised with snow clouds. I was sure my nose must be red; it certainly felt red. I drew my fur-edged cloak closer about me, glad that I would not, at least, arrive at my prison looking like a pauper.

I still could not believe that the King would order me to a nunnery. Apparently, it was in punishment for some impious Noëls that I had written, but all the women of the salons made subtle mock of the church. It seemed a harsh punishment for such a petty crime. Surely the King did not believe the rumours that I was having an affair with his son? The Dauphin and I were friends, drawn together by our love of art and music and novels, and our hatred of the King. Perhaps I had been too bold in expressing my views. Perhaps my tongue – and my quill – had grown a little sharp. I had thought myself safe under the Dauphin’s protection. The Dauphin always said, though, that the one way for him to ensure his father punished someone was to beg his father to offer that man a favour.

Perched on the other seat, my maid, Nanette, gazed at me unhappily but I would not meet her eyes.

‘It’s all a great misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘The King will soon summon me back.’ I tried to smile.

‘Couldn’t you have gone to him and begged his pardon, Bon-bon?’ Nanette asked.

‘I did try,’ I answered. ‘But you know the King. He must be the most unforgiving man in Christendom.’

‘Bon-bon!’

‘It’s no use scolding me, Nanette. I’m simply telling the truth.’

‘But to be locked up in a convent. To become a nun.’ Nanette’s voice was faint with horror. ‘Your parents must be rolling in their graves.’

‘What were my choices? Exile or the convent. At least, this way, the King will still pay my pension and I’ll be on French soil, breathing French air. Where else could I have gone? What could I have done to support myself? I’m too old and ugly to walk the streets.’

Nanette’s face puckered. ‘You’re not old or ugly.’

I laughed. ‘Not to you, perhaps, Nanette. But, believe me, most people at Versailles consider me a hideous old hag. I’m forty-seven years old, and not even my closest friends ever thought I was a beauty.’

‘You’re not a hideous old hag,’ Nanette protested. ‘Not beautiful, no, but there’s better things than beauty in this world.’

‘Belle laide, Athénaïs calls me,’ I replied with a little shrug. The expression was usually used to describe a woman who was arresting despite the plainness of her looks. My guardian had spoken truly when he said my face would never be my fortune.

Nanette made a little tsk tsk with her tongue. ‘You’re worth twice the Marquise de Montespan. Don’t you listen to a word she says. And don’t you go thinking you’re a hideous old hag either. I wouldn’t permit anyone to say that about me, and in my case it’s true.’

I smiled despite myself. Nanette was not the most attractive of women. She was tiny and gaunt, dressed always in black, with sparse white hair screwed back into a knob at the back of her head. Her face and body were so thin that you could see all the bones underneath her withered skin, and she had lost quite a few teeth. Her black eyes were fierce, but her hands were always tender and her brain quite as nimble as it had ever been.

Nanette had been my maid ever since I was weaned from my wet-nurse. As a child, I would lie in my vast shadowy bed, a flame floating in the old glass lantern, and sleepily listen as she sang, ‘You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.’ Nanette was like the Lord in that psalm. Before a word was on my tongue, she knew it completely. She hemmed me in behind and before, and her hand held me fast.

‘You’d best write to your sister straightaway and let her know what’s happened,’ Nanette went on.

‘Marie’s not clever like you, but she’s got a good heart. She’ll beg that fat husband of hers to petition the King.’

‘I’ll write to the Princesses too,’ I said. ‘They’ll be furious with their father. He simply cannot go around banishing all the most interesting people from court, can he?’

Nanette humphed, but the thought of the King’s three pipe-smoking, bastard-born daughters lifted my spirits a little. Born of two of the King’s mistresses, they had been legitimised and married off to various dukes and princes, and they enlivened the court with their scandalous love affairs, their extravagance, their gambling and their constant bickering over precedence. Although they were much younger than me, we had become good friends, and I often attended their soirées and salons.

My smile slowly faded. The Princesses de Conti were no longer in favour with the King and his reigning mistress, Françoise de Maintenon, who had been queen in all but name for more than fifteen years now. Some even whispered that Louis had married her in secret. Yet Françoise had none of the beauty and brilliance of the King’s earlier mistresses. Not only was she over sixty, but she was also rather plain and dumpy, and altogether too pious for the King’s bastard daughters.

Remembering the Princesses, it occurred to me that their mothers, the royal mistresses, had all ended their dazzling careers within the austere confines of a convent.

Louise de la Vallière, the King’s first mistress and mother of Princess Marie-Anne, had been transformed into Sœur Louise de la Miséricorde.

Athénaïs, the Marquise de Montespan, mother of Princess Louise Françoise and Princess Françoise Marie, had been forced to the nunnery by scandal and rumours of black magic and poison.

The frivolous Angélique de Fontanges, the girl who had supplanted Athénaïs in the King’s affection, had died in a convent at the age of twenty. Poisoned, it was said.

I was a fool. Why would the King hesitate to banish me to a nunnery, when he had no problem sending his discarded mistresses, the mothers of his children? Women were locked up in convents all the time. Younger daughters sent as babies, so their parents did not have to pay so rich a dowry as they would for their wedding day. Rebellious young women, cloistered away to punish them for disobedience. Widows, like my poor mother, banished by the King to a convent, even though she was a Huguenot and so feared and hated the Roman Catholic Church with all her heart.

Even though I was pretending not to care, my stomach was knotted with anxiety. I knew little about convents except that once a woman disappeared inside, she stayed inside. Nanette had often told me the story of how Martin Luther’s wife, a former nun, had only been able to escape by hiding in an empty fish barrel. Certainly, I had never seen my own mother again.

The only life I knew was the court of the Sun King. I had lived at court since I was sixteen years old. What did I know about spending my days on my knees, praying and clicking away at a rosary?

I’d never make love again, or dance, or gallop to the hounds, or smile as I made a whole salon of Parisian courtiers laugh and applaud one of my stories. I’d never rest my folded fan against my heart, saying in the silent language of the court that my heart was breaking with love. I’d never be kissed again.

The tears came at last. Nanette passed me the handkerchief she had kept ready on her knee. I dabbed at my eyes, but the tears kept coming, making my chest heave in its tight cage of lacing, and no doubt making a terrible mess of my maquillage.

The carriage paused and I heard the sound of the palace gates being opened. Casting down the handkerchief, I swung aside the curtain that hid the view from my sight. Footmen in curly wigs and long satin vests stood to attention as the side wing of the golden gates was swung open by guards. Crowds of shabby peasants shoved forward, eager to see what fine lord or lady was leaving Versailles.

Holding my lace headdress in place, I leant out the coach window for one last glimpse of the palace at the end of the avenue, the marble forecourt, the prancing bronze horse, the green triangles of topiary in pots marching past like dragoons. The carriage rolled forward, the sounds of the wheels changing as they left the smooth marble flagstones and began to rattle over the cobblestones of the Avenue de Paris. I sank back into my seat. ‘Adieu, Versailles, adieu,’ I cried.

‘Come, my little cabbage, you must stop.’ Nanette took her handkerchief and mopped my face as if I was a child. ‘I thought you hated court. I thought you said it was filled with empty-headed fools.’

I jerked my face away and stared out at the tall crowded houses of Versailles. It was true that I hated the royal court. Yet I loved it too. The theatre, the music and dancing, the literary salons . . .

‘I should’ve whipped you more often as a child,’ Nanette said sadly.

‘More often? You never whipped me, though you threatened to often enough.’

‘I know. That’s what I mean. Such a tempestuous little thing you were. Either up in the boughs or down in the dumps – there was never any middle ground for you. I should’ve taught you better.’

‘Well, Maulévrier did his best to beat some sense into me.’

‘That cold-hearted snake.’

‘I always thought he looked more like a goat.’ I took the handkerchief back from Nanette and blew my nose.

‘Yes, a goat, an old devil goat. I bet he had horns under that velvet hat of his.’

Normally, I would have said, ‘Yes, and cloven hooves instead of feet, and a tail sticking out of his arse.’ Instead, I sighed and leant my aching head against the cushion. All I could see out the window were dreary fields under a dismal sky. Snow floated past, melting as soon as it hit the wet cobblestones. The clop of the horses’ hooves and the rattle of the wheels were the only sounds.

‘Ah, my poor little Bon-bon,’ Nanette sighed, and I passed her back her handkerchief so she could mop her own eyes.

Soon, we passed the turn-off to Paris, and I caught my breath with pain. Would I ever see Paris again? I remembered when I had first come to the royal court, still resident then in Paris. My sister had warned me to be careful. ‘It’s a dangerous place, Bon-bon. Keep a guard on your tongue, else you’ll be in trouble, just like the marquis says.’

I had been on my best behaviour at first, charming and amusing at all times. I had thought the court like a gilded cage of butterflies, all beauty and wonder and movement. I had grown careless. I had enjoyed my own sharp wit, my boldness. I had played with words like a jongleur juggled swords, and I had cut myself.

A fool’s tongue is long enough to slit his own throat, the Marquis de Maulévrier had always said. I hated to admit that he could be right.

We crossed the River Seine and headed south through a dark and dripping forest. Although Nanette had packed a basket of provisions, I could not eat. The carriage came slowly down a hill, the postilion dismounting to lead the horses, and then we swayed and jolted forward on execrable roads into an early dusk. I shut my eyes, leant my head back against the wall and determined to endure. My name meant strength. I would be strong.

When the carriage came to a halt, I jerked awake. My heart constricted. I peered out the window but all I could see was the hazy yellow light of a single lantern, illuminating a stone wall. It was freezing.

‘Quick, my powder, my patches!’

Nanette passed me my powder box and I flicked the haresfoot over my face, squinting into the tiny mirror at the back of the box. My hands were deft and sure; this was not the first time I had had to repair my maquillage in the dark.

I snapped my powder box shut and thrust it at her, snatching the small jewelled container in which I kept my patches, the little beauty spots made of gummed taffeta that were very useful at hiding pimples or smallpox scars. My fingers were trembling so much I could hardly pluck out one of the tiny black shapes. For a moment, I hesitated. Normally, I would press my patch to the corner of my mouth, à la coquette, or beside my eye, à la passionnée, but it was a convent I was about to sweep into, not a salon or ballroom. Carefully, I fixed the patch in the centre of my forehead, just under my hairline, à la majestueuse.

I was Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force. My grandfather had been the Marshal of France, my cousin was a duke, my mother second cousin to the King himself. If I must enter a nunnery – quite against my own wishes – it would be in my finest clothes, with my head held high and no traces of tears on my face.

The postilion opened the carriage door. I descended as gracefully as I could in my high heels, though my feet were numb and my legs trembled after the long hours rattled over potholes. Nanette caught up my train to stop it dragging in the snow.

The yard was deserted, a lantern hanging above a barred oaken door providing the only light. Above the door were carved rows of stern-faced saints sitting in judgement upon cringing devils and sinners, who pleaded for mercy below. In the wan and flickering light, the sinners’ stone limbs seemed to writhe and their faces grimace. Some had bat wings and goblin faces. One was a woman on her knees, hair flowing unbound down her back. Many had their noses smashed away, or their pleading hands broken. It looked as if the Huguenots had been here with their hammers and slingshots, seeking to destroy all signs of idolatry.

The postilion rang a bell beside the doorway, then came back to heave my trunk off the roof of the coach. Then we stood waiting, the postilion, Nanette and I, shifting from foot to foot, rubbing our hands together, our breath hanging frostily in the air before us. Minutes dragged by. I felt a surge of anger and lifted my chin.

‘Well, we shall just have to return to Versailles and tell the King no one was home. What a shame.’

As if in response to my words, I heard keys being turned and bolts being drawn. I fell silent, trying not to shiver. The door opened slowly, revealing a bent woman shrouded all in black. The glow of the lantern showed only a sunken mouth drawn down at the corners by deep grooves. The rest of her face was cast in shadow by her wimple. She beckoned with a bony hand and reluctantly I moved forward.

‘I am Mademoiselle de la Force. I come at the bidding of the King.’

She nodded and gestured to me to follow. Gathering up the folds of my golden satin skirt, I swept forward. Nanette came after, carrying my train, while the postilion struggled with my trunk and portmanteau. The bony hand was flung up, in a clear gesture of refusal. The postilion halted, then shrugged, letting fall the end of the trunk.

‘Sorry, mademoiselle, I guess no men allowed.’

I stopped, confounded. ‘Who, then, will carry my trunk?’

The black-clad nun did not speak a word. After a moment, Nanette released my train and bent to take hold of the end of the trunk. The postilion saluted and ran back to his horses, standing with heads bowed in the dusk, snorting plumes of smoke like ancient dragons. Biting my lip, I draped my portmanteau over my arm and seized the other end. Thus burdened, we crossed the step into a dimly lit corridor, as cold as the yard outside. The nun slammed the door shut and bolted it, secured three heavy iron locks and returned the jangle of keys to her girdle. I saw a flash of a scornful eye and then the nun jerked her head, indicating I should follow her. As we walked, she rang a handbell, as if I was a leper or a plague-cart. Swallowing angry words, I followed her.

I now understood what my guardian had meant by a heart of gall.

***

Copyright © 2012 by Kate Forsyth. All rights reserved.

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Kate welcome to The Reading Frenzy, tell my readers about Bitter Greens.

Thank you so much for having me!

BITTER GREENS is a historical novel for adults, which weaves together a retelling of the Rapunzel fairy tale, set in Renaissance Venice, with the story of the woman who first wrote the tale, the 17^th century French noblewoman, Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force. She was the cousin of Louis XIV, the Sun-King, and wrote her story after being banished to a convent after scandalizing the royal court of Versailles with her wild and wicked ways.

Was the Rapunzel story something that always intrigued you?
Yes, always. I first read ‘Rapunzel’ when I was a little girl in hospital. I had been attacked by a dog as a baby. Among many other injuries, my tearduct was destroyed and so I spent a lot of time in hospital with chronic infections and high fevers. ‘Rapunzel’ is the story of a girl locked away from the world just like I was, and in the tale her tears heal the wounded eyes of the prince, just as I wished to be healed. The story therefore had a great deal of personal significance for me, though I did not consciously realise this for a long time. I just knew I found the tale both beautiful and puzzling. I first tried to write a retelling of it when I was twelve, so you can see it haunted my imagination for a long time.

Why did you choose this storyline?

I always knew that I wanted to retell ‘Rapunzel’ from the point of view of both the maiden and the witch, but I felt I needed something more. Another narrative strand so I could braid them together like a long plait, the most visually arresting motif of the story. I wanted something surprising and unexpected, because the hardest thing about rewriting a fairy tale is that everyone knows what happens. I’m a storyteller as well as a writer (in that I tell stories to a living, listening audience as well as write them down on paper), and so I wondered: who first the tale? My search to find the answer to this question led me to discover the extraordinary life of Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force. As soon as I read about her, I knew I had found my missing narrative strand. She was brilliant, witty, sardonic, and fought hard to live a self-determined life against the strictures of the patriarchal 17^th century society in which she lived. Her life was a gift to a novelist!

What kind of novel research did you do?

BITTER GREENS was an extremely complex and challenging book to write. Each of my three points of view lived at different times – Selena, my witch, was a Venetian courtesan in the early Renaissance Venice, and Margherita, my maiden, was the daughter of a poor mask-maker in the same city a considerable time later. Charlotte-Rose lived in 17^th century France, a very different society and culture. I needed to bring each place and period vividly to life, which meant I needed to know everything there was to know – what they ate and how they ate it, what they wore, what they believed, where they went to the toilet.

Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force was a real woman, too, which meant I had to research her whole life. She is only remembered in footnotes and small academic treatises, and so it took me a long time to track down and timeline the events of her life. I don’t speak French, and so I needed to hire a translator who helped me.

On top of that, I needed to research the origins of the fairy tale, which led me to do my doctorate on ‘Rapunzel’! So it was a very busy few years. 

Kate your bio says you wrote your fist book at age 7. What was it about?
It was called ‘Runaway’ and tells the story of a brother and sister who run away from their mean auntie and have all sorts of adventures on their way to find their nice auntie. I wrote it in a school exercise book, and it had a title page, and a publication page, and chapters, just like a real book. On the title page, it said it had been published in Sydney, London and New York, so I was very ambitious even as a seven year old!

Did you ever re-write and publish it?

Oh no. I wrote many novels as a kid – about half a dozen of them. None of them are publishable. You can see my development as a writer in them, though.

So it sounds like you’re living your dream.
I am! I’ve never wanted to do anything but write, and so I feel incredibly lucky that I get to do what I always longed to do,

How long have you been a published author?

My first novel was published 18 years ago! It doesn’t feel that long ago. In that time, I’ve had more than 30 books published, including picture books, a collection of poetry, children’s books, young adult and adult books. 

Was it a long road or something that came relatively easy for you?

Well, I first sent out a novel manuscript when I was 16, and didn’t get published until I was 30 and so it seemed a long road to me at the time! I realize now how very lucky I am, though, to have been published at a relatively young age and to have been able to keep on writing and being published ever since.

Kate you write for both children and adults.
Do you as an author take on a new persona for each age group you write for?

I don’t think so. In a way, I think I am writing for myself at different ages. When I write a children’s book, I remember all the books I adored when I was only 11 and I try and write something I would have loved back then. And now I’m an adult, I write the kind of books I like to read.

Kate I would love to read all your adult novels, but not all of them are available in the US. Will they be at some time?

I think so. ‘The Wild Girl’, which retells the love story of Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild, the young woman who told him many of the world’s most famous fairy tales, comes out in the US in early 2015. I hope you love it!

Kate what books/authors do you enjoy reading?

I love writers of historical fiction, like Sarah Dunant, Tracy Chevalier, Susan Vreeland, Geraldine Brooks, and Christopher Gortner. I love parallel stories, by writers like Kate Morton, Susanna Kearsley, Kimberley Freeman, and Lauren Willig. I love historical murder mysteries, with favourites including C.J. Sansom, Deanna Raybourn, C.S. Harris, and Sharon Penham. I love fairy tale retellings, particularly those written by Juliet Marillier, Jane Yolen, Margo Lanagan, and Robin McKinley. And I love fantasy, by writers like Susanna Clarke, Garth Nix, Nail Gaiman, and Lian Hearn. I’m also a big reader of children’s and YA fiction, and love Kate di Camillo, Cornelia Funke, Eva Ibbotson, Geraldine McCaughrean, and many more.

Kate have you ever had a character that you weren’t  ready to let go of?
Did he/she get his/her own book?

I have great trouble letting go of many of my characters, and always grieve for a while after I have finished a book. The only time a minor character ran away with a story and ended up with her own book is in my first fantasy series, ‘The Witches of Eileanan’, when a feisty girl called Finn the Cat ended up being the heroine of an unexpected book, ‘The Forbidden Land’.

Kate your 50-50 project is your bucket list How many have you conquered?

Only one! That was to sell more than a million books, and I achieved that this year. I’m rather excited about that.

The 50/50 Project rose out of my last birthday when I turned 48 and realized my 50^th birthday was only 2 years away! I decided to draw up a list of all the things in the world I would like to do. My poor husband turned pale when I showed it to him, thinking I meant to do it all before my 50^th birthday. The idea is I will gradually try and do some of the things and I’ll blog about it as I do.

I’m very close to another of them (getting my doctorate)! I hope to achieve that in the next few weeks.

What’s the reality of finishing it?

Well, considering I have a section of the 50/50 Project called ‘Improbable Dreams’, highly unlikely, I’d say! That section includes things like owning a castle, having a maze in my garden, and appearing as a character in a film made from one of my books. Though you never know – maybe I’ll achieve those things one day!

Kate thank you for answering these questions, good luck with this novel and all your endeavors. Will you be pond hopping over to the US anytime soon?

I’d love to come to the US! Maybe next year …

 Praise for Kate Forsyth’s BITTER GREENS 

“Forsyth reflects her depth of knowledge in this captivating novel that enchants with its gorgeous narrative and memorable characters…Full of palace intrigue, dark magic, romance, and lush, evocative descriptions, this is historical fiction at its finest.” 

--Library Journal* 

“…richly imagined…fans of this type of fiction will doubtless be enchanted by the operatic nature of the stories and the fascinating historical details of life at Louis’ court.” 

--Booklist 

“Forsyth undertakes an ambitious plot and, with a creative presentation, makes it work. She convincingly conveys a fairy tale-like quality in her writing and peppers the narrative with historical detail and some interesting twists that neatly tie together the strands of the story. This unconventional spin on a children’s classic is a captivating read and unquestionably aimed toward adults.” 

--Kirkus Reviews 

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MEET THE AUTHOR: 

Kate Forsyth is the bestselling and award-winning author of more than twenty books, ranging from picture books to poetry to novels for both children and adults, including the Witches of Eileanan series. She is the only author to win five Aurealis Awards in a single year and was voted one of Australia’s Favourite 25 Novelists. Her books have been published in fourteen countries. She completed her doctorate in fairy tale retellings at the University of Technology in Sydney in 2014. Kate lives in Sydney, Australia. 

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