“Captivating…Enchanting…Evocative…

Compelling…”

Does this ever happen to you? How do you handle “the question”? You know, it goes like this. You’re in the garden, deadheading your petunias while mentally planning your grocery list, or you’re walking into a party, clutching a bottle of wine while you try to fumble your keys back into your clutch when the next door neighbor or a group of gals approach you with “the question”.

“Jena loves to read. She can recommend a good book for us.”

Yes, Jena does love to read, and she’s read over 100 books this year, but when she’s on the spot, can she think of one title? No, here’s what Jena says. “Oh, yes, so many good books, uh there was the one by uh… no the one about the horse or I mean dog!”

But no more!

Now when I am asked, I have a great answer. “The Tyre! By E. C. Huntley and C. J. Dubois. “

Satisfied, I smile and go back to my fumbling until I get “the second question.”

What’s it about?

The Tyre is a fable or a Just so Story or a fairy tale with fascinating characters. The Tyre is evocative and lyrical, while at the same time down to earth and rooted in the timelessness of India. The book has sadness and despair, but also wry humor and whimsy. On one side of the coin we see greed and cruelty, and then it flips to love and respect.

The Tyre deals with someone striving to move beyond the limiting constraints of society and tradition to improve his life, and in doing so finding new strengths and capabilities within.

 

I was so taken with this book that I contacted the authors to learn more about it.

Author Elizabeth Huntley summed up what is unique about this book. She says, “I’ve always loved stories set in exotic locations, in worlds very unlike my own, but stories that reaffirm that human nature is the same wherever you are in the world—that love, loyalty, grief, even despair are experienced the same whether you are rich or poor, privileged or facing unimaginable challenges just to survive.”

 

*** Time out for a bit of rambling*** Before we talk more about what’s inside the book, let’s look at the title. The Tyre

Why in America (and Canada) do we spell it “tire”? Google didn’t help me. The best I could come up with was that the word may come from “attire” or “tie,” so “tire” makes sense. But, apparently the word has been around since the 15th or 16th centuries, and in England, “tyre” may have been the original spelling.

Ok, let’s keep rolling along.

So how did these two people come to collaborate and write The Tyre?
According to Elizabeth, it all started back in the 1980’s. She was in London, teaching English to overseas businessmen. At the time, she dreamed of writing books, but a different career opportunity soon came her way when she won a short story contest and ended up working- for a book company- but in sales. Actually, her own life would make a good book, wouldn’t it?

C. J. “Christian” DuBois was one of her English students back in the 1980’s. A few years ago, he contacted her through LinkedIn and asked if she remembered him. He had left his career in the oil industry and had just written a novella called Le Pneu, which he was keen to get translated into English to getting it published.

Yes, Elizabeth DID remember Christian. Again, this would make another great story, right?

“We met up and talked it through… and the project started to grow. We discussed how we might re-structure the story. New characters emerged, new sub-plots too. Passages were cut, and new ones added. And slowly a French novella morphed into an English novel.

Both of us were thrilled with the result and even more delighted when Thistle Publishing agreed to publish it.”

Just as in The Tyre, those chance meetings, those little moments of serendipity, those twists and turns of fate really can change your life. But perhaps we never know quite how, until a long time later!

 

I don’t want to spoil the story for you so I won’t tell you much more about the plot of The Tyre, but here’s a charming bit from Author C.J. Dubois that will give you the flavor of the book.

 

Christian Dubois was a teenager when he followed his parents to India where his father had been stationed. His first year was spent in Delhi, the second in a town in the Punjab called Nangal.

 

In the passage below Christian tells the story of the incident that inspired him to write the original French novella Le Pneu.

I was sixteen years old. I was traveling between Nangal and Chandigar, sitting alone in the back seat of my father’s American car: a beautiful white Studebaker with leather seats and a black top. Meenon, the driver, a Brahmin born in Kerala, dressed as always in his white uniform with the gold buttons, and peaked cap in the same colour, was taking me to visit an Indian friend, the son of an architect who had worked with world famous Le Corbusier and Jeanneret creating the city of Chandigarh.

Arriving on the outskirts of a small village we stopped in a traffic jam. As was usual in India, some children were wandering along the road, looking at the cars. On seeing our car, it was normal for them to try to see inside, asking endlessly for “bakshish sahib, backshish sahib.” Meenon would order them away somewhat sharply.

That day, in that village, only one child dared to come close to the car to find out who was the notable person being driven in such style. He must have been seven or eight, dressed in filthy shorts and a torn long-sleeved shirt, much too big for him. I looked at him; he stared back at me, and I could not discern from his dark eyes at that moment if his emotion was curiosity, astonishment, admiration or jealousy. But I have never forgotten his reaction: He lowered his head to look at his shirt, and then swiftly buttoned up the single button remaining on it. Then he looked back at me again and smiled.

If I had been able to, I would have given him a few annas, a sweet or something else, but I could do no more than smile back at him. The car moved on. We both made a friendly gesture towards each other through the window – on one side air-conditioned, clean, luxurious; on the other heat, dirt, and poverty.

The desire to pay tribute to this impoverished child has haunted me ever since, but without knowing how. When returning from a recent journey through Tamil Nadu, shocked and appalled to discover that such poverty is still very much a feature of the present, I started to write this story: a tribute to the nobility of people poor in material possessions.

What a marvelous story! What a beautiful distillation. And you can expect more of this in The Tyre.

 

After I read and reviewed The Tyre both Elizabeth and Christnas emailed me to thank me, which shows you how professional, and kind they both are. Monsieur Dublois apologized for his English, but of course, his command of this second, (or third or fourth language) is much, much better than my high school French. Although lucky for me since I’m a reader and a reviewer, I still remember the first sentence I ever learned, “Ou est la Biblioteque?”
I’m always looking for tantalizing books in the online “biblioteque”.

Many thanks to Ms. Huntley for supplying me with the information that is the basis of this post. Thanks to NetGalley and Thistle Publishing for a review copy of this book.

Christian J Dubois
A French citizen, Christian was born in Morocco, and lived in India, Belgium, and Luxembourg, before settling in Provence. After studying architecture and business in Marseille and Paris, he worked as an architect specializing in Roman and Greek marine archeology – the subject of his very first book, published in 1976. He then moved into industry and joined a major petroleum company with whom he traveled around the world for many years. His observations and experiences from this time formed the basis of a number of award-winning short stories, as well as his first novel, Lignes de terre, which was published in 2011. He also continued to write non-fiction and in 2013, his biography Clot Bey, médecin de Marseille, was awarded the Prix Félix de Beaujour by the Academy of Marseille.

His second work of fiction, a novella Le Pneu was self-published in French in 2015, and he jumped at the chance to work with Liz Huntley on writing an English version. Christian and Liz both share a passion for travel, a keen interest in cultural differences and a love of great stories that follow a classic narrative arc.

 

Elizabeth C Huntley
After completing a Psychology degree and spending a few years teaching English in Greece, Liz returned to England and started a sales career in educational publishing. She now works as Head of European Sales for a major international publisher and makes regular visits to about a dozen countries every year. While in the UK she divides her time between her home in North London and her seaside flat in East Devon.
She has always read widely and realizes that the novels that have stayed with her have all been set in exotic locations with strong characters at their heart. Creating the English version of The Tyre, which started out as a favour to a friend, has developed into a fascinating creative project.