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Thank you both very much. Now it's time for this week's Meet | :00:00. | :00:11. | |
the Author with Nick Higham. Tom Rob Smith's first novel was an instant | :00:12. | :00:17. | |
hit. Child 44. It has spawned two sequels and is currently being | :00:18. | :00:22. | |
filmed. His latest book, The Farm, is different. It is a literary | :00:23. | :00:28. | |
thriller set in Sweden. It is about madness, fairy stories and secrecy. | :00:29. | :00:34. | |
Tom Rob Smith also writes to the vision script and screenplays. He is | :00:35. | :00:39. | |
how Swedish. There is more than a touch of autobiography about The | :00:40. | :00:45. | |
Farm. Tom Rob Smith, letters start with | :00:46. | :00:53. | |
the opening scenario of this book. What was the situation? The main | :00:54. | :00:57. | |
character, Daniel, lives in London. His parents have retired to Sweden. | :00:58. | :01:02. | |
His mother is Swedish and his father is English. Everything seems very | :01:03. | :01:09. | |
happy. He gets a call from his father saying his mother is in an | :01:10. | :01:16. | |
asylum, he needs to fly home immediately. He set about doing so. | :01:17. | :01:24. | |
On the way to the airport, he gets a call from his mother who says she is | :01:25. | :01:31. | |
fine and she is leaving the hospital. She says that everything | :01:32. | :01:38. | |
his father told him was a lie and that his father was involved in a | :01:39. | :01:44. | |
conspiracy. They go to his apartment and she tells this elaborate story. | :01:45. | :01:49. | |
The question throughout the book is, is there really a conspiracy? Yes. | :01:50. | :01:54. | |
Who do you believe, your mother or your father? Is she right or is she | :01:55. | :02:00. | |
a. Is there something terrible at the heart of this? Your publishers | :02:01. | :02:04. | |
are calling this a literary thriller. It is a thriller. We have | :02:05. | :02:17. | |
not one but two unreliable narrators. The mother, who tells | :02:18. | :02:23. | |
much of the story, is potentially unreliable. So too is Daniel, who | :02:24. | :02:29. | |
narrates this overarching structure of the book. Yes. There are two | :02:30. | :02:36. | |
first person narratives. Daniel is the traditional first person | :02:37. | :02:42. | |
narrator. The mother's is raw speech directed right at the sun. It is | :02:43. | :02:47. | |
meant to capture the immediacy. It is very different. I think it's | :02:48. | :02:58. | |
impossible to put down Ms Boyce and not try and work out what is behind | :02:59. | :03:01. | |
the voice, whether cracks -- put down this Boyce. Very obviously, | :03:02. | :03:13. | |
there are things about Daniel's upbringing he was never told. Yes. I | :03:14. | :03:19. | |
love that about this story. When his mother comes to him, he is not sure | :03:20. | :03:23. | |
whether she is mad or not, but he's a job at her character. He realises | :03:24. | :03:27. | |
there is so much he does not know about her. There is this ignorance. | :03:28. | :03:35. | |
I love that idea of growing up, having spent so many time with his | :03:36. | :03:39. | |
people but not in fundamental questions about where they came | :03:40. | :03:43. | |
from, the darkness in them as one as a happiness. Your publishers | :03:44. | :03:47. | |
obviously have a lot of faith in this. They have spent money on big | :03:48. | :03:54. | |
advertising posters. There is a very elaborate cinema style trailer, | :03:55. | :04:00. | |
which I think all your publishers have contributed to, which you | :04:01. | :04:09. | |
undertook to produce. Everything you father told you is a lie. What | :04:10. | :04:22. | |
happened? I must warn you, if you refuse to believe me, I will no | :04:23. | :04:26. | |
longer consider you my son, just as I no longer consider that man to be | :04:27. | :04:32. | |
my husband. One of the things that comes across from the trailer, you | :04:33. | :04:40. | |
could be accused of climbing onto the Swedish black bandwagon, but | :04:41. | :04:49. | |
this story has a very real star. The story is a fiction. The premise, I | :04:50. | :04:57. | |
experienced. I was working on a novel, and I got a car from my | :04:58. | :05:05. | |
father, they had moved to Sweden -- I got a call from my father. He said | :05:06. | :05:10. | |
my mother had been institutionalised. I made | :05:11. | :05:15. | |
preparations to go over when I got a call from my mother fainted | :05:16. | :05:18. | |
everything my father told me was a lie. She flew to London and I met | :05:19. | :05:22. | |
her at the airport, thinking I would know immediately. She came out of | :05:23. | :05:29. | |
the doors in the arrivals lounge, and I didn't know. She was a | :05:30. | :05:34. | |
brilliant storyteller. She was very convincing. Nothing she said was | :05:35. | :05:37. | |
implausible. It was very hard for me to be sure what the truth was. Not | :05:38. | :05:42. | |
everybody would have turned an experience like that into fiction. | :05:43. | :05:44. | |
What are your parents think of the book? They were involved in reading | :05:45. | :05:50. | |
the first draft, then they met the publisher and my agent. They were | :05:51. | :05:56. | |
involved in the advising in the final draft. The key was, this is a | :05:57. | :06:02. | |
positive story. It is about optimism and recovery. I think the message is | :06:03. | :06:12. | |
an uplifting one. I think that is one they working to get across. The | :06:13. | :06:18. | |
event is brought us closer. I drifted apart from my mother for | :06:19. | :06:21. | |
lots of reasons. The first book, Child 44, set in Stalinist Russia, | :06:22. | :06:29. | |
was followed by two successive box. It is being filmed currently. It is | :06:30. | :06:36. | |
being produced by Ridley Scott. Some of the critics said they read more | :06:37. | :06:44. | |
light screenplays and novels. You are a screenwriter, you have written | :06:45. | :06:52. | |
screenplays. This one, it would be very difficult. Yes. Because this | :06:53. | :07:03. | |
book is about storytelling, in a way, I used to love as a child | :07:04. | :07:09. | |
hearing people telling me stories. Within hours my first encounter with | :07:10. | :07:15. | |
narrative. This is a mother talking to this sun and trying to convince | :07:16. | :07:21. | |
them of something which is exciting and scary. I was going back to that | :07:22. | :07:31. | |
sort of instinct. That is harder in cinema. It is hard to get across | :07:32. | :07:37. | |
narrative, storytelling as a verbal thing. It is hard to bring in the | :07:38. | :07:45. | |
question of reliability. Are you showing the audience and that isn't | :07:46. | :07:50. | |
real? Having said that, it has been optioned for a movie. I think it is | :07:51. | :07:56. | |
a great power for an actress. I think it will be difficult, but we | :07:57. | :08:02. | |
will see. Tom Rob Smith, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. | :08:03. | :08:08. | |
There is another storm approaching the UK. Not as severe as the one we | :08:09. | :08:14. | |
saw yesterday but there might | :08:15. | :08:15. |