Tom Rob Smith Meet the Author


Tom Rob Smith

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Thank you both very much. Now it's time for this week's Meet

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the Author with Nick Higham. Tom Rob Smith's first novel was an instant

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hit. Child 44. It has spawned two sequels and is currently being

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filmed. His latest book, The Farm, is different. It is a literary

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thriller set in Sweden. It is about madness, fairy stories and secrecy.

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Tom Rob Smith also writes to the vision script and screenplays. He is

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how Swedish. There is more than a touch of autobiography about The

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Farm. Tom Rob Smith, letters start with

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the opening scenario of this book. What was the situation? The main

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character, Daniel, lives in London. His parents have retired to Sweden.

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His mother is Swedish and his father is English. Everything seems very

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happy. He gets a call from his father saying his mother is in an

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asylum, he needs to fly home immediately. He set about doing so.

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On the way to the airport, he gets a call from his mother who says she is

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fine and she is leaving the hospital. She says that everything

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his father told him was a lie and that his father was involved in a

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conspiracy. They go to his apartment and she tells this elaborate story.

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The question throughout the book is, is there really a conspiracy? Yes.

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Who do you believe, your mother or your father? Is she right or is she

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a. Is there something terrible at the heart of this? Your publishers

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are calling this a literary thriller. It is a thriller. We have

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not one but two unreliable narrators. The mother, who tells

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much of the story, is potentially unreliable. So too is Daniel, who

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narrates this overarching structure of the book. Yes. There are two

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first person narratives. Daniel is the traditional first person

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narrator. The mother's is raw speech directed right at the sun. It is

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meant to capture the immediacy. It is very different. I think it's

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impossible to put down Ms Boyce and not try and work out what is behind

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the voice, whether cracks -- put down this Boyce. Very obviously,

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there are things about Daniel's upbringing he was never told. Yes. I

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love that about this story. When his mother comes to him, he is not sure

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whether she is mad or not, but he's a job at her character. He realises

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there is so much he does not know about her. There is this ignorance.

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I love that idea of growing up, having spent so many time with his

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people but not in fundamental questions about where they came

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from, the darkness in them as one as a happiness. Your publishers

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obviously have a lot of faith in this. They have spent money on big

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advertising posters. There is a very elaborate cinema style trailer,

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which I think all your publishers have contributed to, which you

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undertook to produce. Everything you father told you is a lie. What

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happened? I must warn you, if you refuse to believe me, I will no

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longer consider you my son, just as I no longer consider that man to be

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my husband. One of the things that comes across from the trailer, you

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could be accused of climbing onto the Swedish black bandwagon, but

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this story has a very real star. The story is a fiction. The premise, I

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experienced. I was working on a novel, and I got a car from my

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father, they had moved to Sweden -- I got a call from my father. He said

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my mother had been institutionalised. I made

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preparations to go over when I got a call from my mother fainted

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everything my father told me was a lie. She flew to London and I met

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her at the airport, thinking I would know immediately. She came out of

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the doors in the arrivals lounge, and I didn't know. She was a

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brilliant storyteller. She was very convincing. Nothing she said was

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implausible. It was very hard for me to be sure what the truth was. Not

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everybody would have turned an experience like that into fiction.

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What are your parents think of the book? They were involved in reading

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the first draft, then they met the publisher and my agent. They were

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involved in the advising in the final draft. The key was, this is a

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positive story. It is about optimism and recovery. I think the message is

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an uplifting one. I think that is one they working to get across. The

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event is brought us closer. I drifted apart from my mother for

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lots of reasons. The first book, Child 44, set in Stalinist Russia,

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was followed by two successive box. It is being filmed currently. It is

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being produced by Ridley Scott. Some of the critics said they read more

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light screenplays and novels. You are a screenwriter, you have written

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screenplays. This one, it would be very difficult. Yes. Because this

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book is about storytelling, in a way, I used to love as a child

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hearing people telling me stories. Within hours my first encounter with

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narrative. This is a mother talking to this sun and trying to convince

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them of something which is exciting and scary. I was going back to that

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sort of instinct. That is harder in cinema. It is hard to get across

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narrative, storytelling as a verbal thing. It is hard to bring in the

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question of reliability. Are you showing the audience and that isn't

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real? Having said that, it has been optioned for a movie. I think it is

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a great power for an actress. I think it will be difficult, but we

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will see. Tom Rob Smith, thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

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There is another storm approaching the UK. Not as severe as the one we

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saw yesterday but there might

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