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Hello, everybody. Thank you very much indeed for coming. | 0:00:00 | 0:00:03 | |
It's a special Radio 2 Book Club Edinburgh exclusive. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:05 | |
Everything that we have done has always been live on Radio 2 | 0:00:05 | 0:00:10 | |
but tonight we have three authors and we are being live streamed | 0:00:10 | 0:00:12 | |
on BBC Arts. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:14 | |
Let me introduce them. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:15 | |
Our first author appeared on the Radio 2 Book Club | 0:00:15 | 0:00:18 | |
back in May 2013 with his book This House Is Haunted. | 0:00:18 | 0:00:21 | |
He is also the man responsible for the New York Times | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
number one bestseller, | 0:00:24 | 0:00:25 | |
The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, ladies and gentlemen, John Boyne. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:28 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:00:28 | 0:00:32 | |
They all like to get a little bit of applause just to | 0:00:35 | 0:00:37 | |
ease their way into this whole experience. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
All of our authors have been on the Radio 2 Book Club before. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:44 | |
Novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, short-story writer, | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
her debut novel was Eskimo Kissing. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
Back in October 2012 | 0:00:50 | 0:00:51 | |
she came on the Radio 2 Book Club with the concluding volume | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
of her French trilogy, Citadel. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:56 | |
Kate Mosse. | 0:00:56 | 0:00:57 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:00:57 | 0:01:00 | |
She was also on the Radio 2 Arts Show last Friday night with me and... | 0:01:02 | 0:01:06 | |
I'm stalking you! | 0:01:06 | 0:01:08 | |
So we're going to be talking about pretty much the same kind of stuff. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
I'm going to say different things, though. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:13 | |
OK. I'll ask the same questions, you change your answers, that's fine. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:16 | |
Finally, our third guest this evening published Three Day Road in 2005. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:20 | |
He was a Radio 2 Book Club author November 2013 with his third novel, | 0:01:20 | 0:01:25 | |
Orenda, please welcome Joseph Boyden. | 0:01:25 | 0:01:27 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:01:27 | 0:01:31 | |
We haven't done one of these before. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:35 | |
We are just going to talk about books for a while and then | 0:01:35 | 0:01:38 | |
if there's time, we'll take some questions from you guys. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:41 | |
I was just talking to John just before we came out that | 0:01:41 | 0:01:43 | |
when you do events, you tend to get asked the same kind of questions. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:48 | |
So let's get those out of the way first of all. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:51 | |
What do you get asked all the time? | 0:01:51 | 0:01:52 | |
You can answer it now and then you don't have to answer it when... | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
John, what do you get asked always? | 0:01:55 | 0:01:58 | |
I get asked where did I get the idea for Boy In The Striped Pyjamas? | 0:01:58 | 0:02:04 | |
But I recently got asked in a school, did I see | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
the film of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas before I wrote the novel? | 0:02:07 | 0:02:10 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:02:10 | 0:02:12 | |
Which is one of the best questions. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:14 | |
My other favourite question I ever got asked was, | 0:02:14 | 0:02:16 | |
"Do you know Wayne Rooney?" | 0:02:16 | 0:02:17 | |
Which is about as random as it comes. | 0:02:17 | 0:02:20 | |
- And what was the answer? - No! | 0:02:20 | 0:02:23 | |
No! | 0:02:23 | 0:02:24 | |
Kate, what is the thing you get asked all the time? | 0:02:24 | 0:02:27 | |
You can imagine the first thing is, "You're shorter than I thought | 0:02:27 | 0:02:30 | |
"you were going to be." | 0:02:30 | 0:02:31 | |
People always have a sense of... | 0:02:31 | 0:02:33 | |
They know I'm not a supermodel, you'll be surprised to know. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:36 | |
But there is always this thing that somehow they think | 0:02:36 | 0:02:38 | |
I will be slightly not a short, middle-aged woman. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:42 | |
They think I will be that person. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:44 | |
And the other one... No, you're exactly right. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:46 | |
You're always asked where you get your ideas from. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:48 | |
John and I were talking about this. We were both on University Challenge | 0:02:48 | 0:02:51 | |
and now that has become the most asked question for me. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:55 | |
What is Jeremy Paxman like? So that is the version... | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
- And what is your answer to that? - Well, he's shorter than you think. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:02 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:03:02 | 0:03:04 | |
Joseph, what do you get asked the most? | 0:03:04 | 0:03:06 | |
Kate stole it. "Where do your ideas come from?" | 0:03:06 | 0:03:09 | |
But the other thing is, "You're an Indian?" | 0:03:09 | 0:03:12 | |
And I'm like... And they say, "Why do you look Italian?" | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
It's... My mixture is actually Scotch blood, Irish blood | 0:03:16 | 0:03:19 | |
and Ojibwe blood. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:21 | |
I seem to remember that we talked a little about this. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:24 | |
So you are... So give us the full list of ingredients. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
The full list! Ojibwe Indian, Irish and Scottish. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:33 | |
OK. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:35 | |
- It is very nice to see all... - And Canadian, of course. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:39 | |
We are going to do some... | 0:03:39 | 0:03:40 | |
Our authors are going to do some readings. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:42 | |
It's entirely up to them which bit, a past book... | 0:03:42 | 0:03:47 | |
I think we are going to get an exclusive from Kate, | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
unless she changes her mind | 0:03:50 | 0:03:51 | |
and chickens out and reads something from Citadel. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:53 | |
Or something like that. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:55 | |
Here's my question to you. Have you written anything today? | 0:03:55 | 0:03:59 | |
- Yeah. Well, I've edited today... - No, that's not good enough. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
- Have you been creative today? - Well, that is creative. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
You are taking something which isn't yet ready, which is | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
still in a state of flux and you are trying to make it better. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:15 | |
So I did that. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:16 | |
Just explain what you did then and what is the book. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:19 | |
It's a new book for young people that I'm working on at the moment. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:22 | |
I'm on the second draft | 0:04:22 | 0:04:23 | |
so I brought a chapter with me on the plane from Dublin. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:28 | |
I was just scrawling all over it, cancelling sentences, | 0:04:28 | 0:04:30 | |
rewriting them so, yeah... | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
That is being creative, that is writing, I think. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:36 | |
Kate, have you written anything today? | 0:04:36 | 0:04:38 | |
No. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:39 | |
When was the last time... When was the last time you wrote a sentence? | 0:04:39 | 0:04:43 | |
I am trying. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:45 | |
I made a decision with my new book, which comes out in September, | 0:04:45 | 0:04:50 | |
that I was going to try and enjoy the book that was about to happen | 0:04:50 | 0:04:54 | |
rather than working on something new and getting in the way. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
I've discovered recently that I lose the joy of publication, | 0:04:56 | 0:05:00 | |
if I'm already onto something else. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:02 | |
So I made a decision this time that I was not going to start writing | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
the new thing till the one that was about to go had gone | 0:05:06 | 0:05:09 | |
and people had started to read it. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:11 | |
So it's quite strange. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:13 | |
So I prowl about the place because I get up really early | 0:05:13 | 0:05:15 | |
when I'm writing and I can't break the habit. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:18 | |
I get up at four o'clock and I'm like, "What am I going to do?" | 0:05:18 | 0:05:23 | |
- How long since you... - Since I wrote wrote? | 0:05:23 | 0:05:26 | |
Yeah, wrote wrote, yeah. | 0:05:26 | 0:05:28 | |
I gave in the final version of the book... | 0:05:28 | 0:05:32 | |
..in July. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:36 | |
So I've written articles and I've written pieces about it | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
but I haven't written anything that has come from nowhere, | 0:05:39 | 0:05:43 | |
nothing from imagination in quite the same sort of way. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:46 | |
And I miss it. I feel sort of a bit jittery. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:49 | |
- Sounds like a drug. - Well, it kind of is. I mean... | 0:05:49 | 0:05:53 | |
Towards the end, particularly, you're just... | 0:05:53 | 0:05:56 | |
Well, you know too. You can't think about anything else but that. | 0:05:56 | 0:06:00 | |
You live in this almost half state towards the end of a book, don't you, | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
when you're getting towards the end and it's going to happen. | 0:06:03 | 0:06:06 | |
And then suddenly it's gone. | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
And it's still quite private before you publish. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
So only about ten people have read the new book at the moment. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:16 | |
So it's still... You sort of feel like you're holding it. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:18 | |
I feel quite protective of it still at the moment. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:21 | |
And you've got a book out really soon as well, haven't you? | 0:06:21 | 0:06:23 | |
It's that thing. So I don't really want to write | 0:06:23 | 0:06:25 | |
and spoil that moment of this book about to go and do its thing. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:30 | |
I feel like writing to distract myself from that, you know, | 0:06:30 | 0:06:33 | |
the apprehension and the nerves about it - | 0:06:33 | 0:06:36 | |
is it going to be any good, are people going to like it? | 0:06:36 | 0:06:38 | |
Writing something else makes me think, | 0:06:38 | 0:06:40 | |
"If everybody hates this, I'll be writing something good!" | 0:06:40 | 0:06:44 | |
Joseph, have you written anything today? | 0:06:44 | 0:06:46 | |
E-mails. | 0:06:46 | 0:06:47 | |
No, we've all written e-mails today. | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
I know... | 0:06:50 | 0:06:51 | |
I wish I were sitting where Kate is because, | 0:06:51 | 0:06:53 | |
second time she just stole what I was going to say! | 0:06:53 | 0:06:56 | |
- We should swap! - We'll swap! | 0:06:56 | 0:06:58 | |
But the same thing. I finished a book. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:00 | |
I'm working on the adaptation for the book for a screenplay | 0:07:00 | 0:07:05 | |
so that's not quite creative in the sense that it's brand-new stuff, | 0:07:05 | 0:07:10 | |
it's a world I've already been living in my head for many years. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:15 | |
But dying to start again to... | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
I've got... Dying to start a new book again. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:21 | |
Have you got that story in your head? | 0:07:21 | 0:07:23 | |
I do. I have two, actually. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:24 | |
They are fighting for which one's going to win. In terms... | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
Young adult novel and adult novel. They're wrestling right now. | 0:07:27 | 0:07:31 | |
They're both burbling, which is really exciting. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:34 | |
How do you decide which one you're going to go with? | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
The voices, the characters decide. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:38 | |
When I start writing, it's very voice driven. Writing is | 0:07:38 | 0:07:43 | |
what I think I do | 0:07:43 | 0:07:44 | |
and it's the voice wins out and it's the one that calls me. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:48 | |
Every morning it gets me up early and gets me out of bed to get going. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:52 | |
When I was speaking to Kate and Patrick on Radio 2 on Friday, | 0:07:52 | 0:07:58 | |
they both agreed... | 0:07:58 | 0:07:59 | |
First of all they were saying there are no rules about this. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
Everyone can write in an entirely different way. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:04 | |
I'm going to ask you this first so Kate can't spoil it for you. | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
KATE LAUGHS | 0:08:07 | 0:08:08 | |
Kate and Patrick both said | 0:08:08 | 0:08:10 | |
when they're working on something they don't talk to anybody about it. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
It is secret, it's a private world and | 0:08:14 | 0:08:17 | |
until it's got to a particular point of view they won't discuss it. | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
Is that the same with you? | 0:08:20 | 0:08:22 | |
There is one... My wife Amanda Boyden is in the audience | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
and she's a novelist as well. We actually... | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
I don't know if your partners are writers or not. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:32 | |
Amanda and I are writers. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:33 | |
We write across the table from each other, which freaks out | 0:08:33 | 0:08:37 | |
other writer friends. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:38 | |
- That's amazing! - They're like, "What...?" | 0:08:38 | 0:08:40 | |
We are always giddily sharing the good stuff | 0:08:40 | 0:08:44 | |
and then sometimes saying, "I don't think this works." | 0:08:44 | 0:08:48 | |
What if one of you is tapping away and the other one is just going... | 0:08:49 | 0:08:52 | |
No, this happens! It's not necessarily this idyllic thing. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
There's a lot of tension sometimes but we write... | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
Is it a big table? | 0:08:59 | 0:09:00 | |
It's not that big. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:03 | |
And so we share with each other | 0:09:03 | 0:09:05 | |
and then we try to keep it our own little secrets. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:09 | |
So you are sharing specifically or vaguely? | 0:09:10 | 0:09:12 | |
"I'm doing a scene in a forest." "Oh, not another one." | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
Yeah... | 0:09:15 | 0:09:17 | |
Very specifically and also we talk about the global... | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
Amanda says, "Well, I really think | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
"this character arc for this novel I'm working on is this." | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
And I'm like, "I don't know." She'll... We'll do the same. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
We share a big global and then very specific. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
Would you find it more difficult to write on your own or... | 0:09:30 | 0:09:34 | |
I would feel... Yeah, I would feel... | 0:09:34 | 0:09:36 | |
I think I would feel a little bit wandering through the forest | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
kind of thing. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:41 | |
Amanda is a very good guide that way, though. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:44 | |
I trust her implicitly, obviously, in terms of... | 0:09:44 | 0:09:47 | |
She's steered me in a pretty good direction so far. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:49 | |
I think she feels the same way for me, in terms of... | 0:09:49 | 0:09:53 | |
But it's not always fun. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:56 | |
She would admit it. Sometimes it's very difficult to do this. | 0:09:56 | 0:10:01 | |
John, when you've got a new idea and if you're at the editing process, | 0:10:01 | 0:10:05 | |
do you discuss it with... | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
And since we met you've got married so congratulations. | 0:10:08 | 0:10:10 | |
Can you imagine, by the way, writing opposite? | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
I can't. I can't. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:16 | |
That sounds absolutely terrifying. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:17 | |
The only person in my room when I'm writing is the dog. But... | 0:10:17 | 0:10:22 | |
I don't talk to anybody about it except, yeah, | 0:10:22 | 0:10:24 | |
I got married six months ago and my now husband I would tell him | 0:10:24 | 0:10:29 | |
the idea but he's an engineer so... | 0:10:29 | 0:10:32 | |
He's not interested. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:33 | |
He just says, "Ah, that sounds nice." | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:10:35 | 0:10:37 | |
- Nice?! - But I don't really like... | 0:10:37 | 0:10:40 | |
I don't even like talking to my publisher about it until I have | 0:10:40 | 0:10:43 | |
written quite a lot of it so that I feel confident in what I'm doing. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:48 | |
I found in the past that if I share an idea before I've started | 0:10:48 | 0:10:52 | |
I lose enthusiasm and you don't want to go and say, "I've changed | 0:10:52 | 0:10:56 | |
"my mind about that. I'm going to write something else." | 0:10:56 | 0:10:58 | |
So I really just don't talk to anybody. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:01 | |
My husband is a playwright and a teacher and he is a brilliant editor | 0:11:01 | 0:11:06 | |
so once I've got the draft, I then share it with him. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:11 | |
But I don't want to tell anything before that because | 0:11:11 | 0:11:13 | |
I want to know if the book I've got in my head | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
I've made real on the page. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:18 | |
I fear that if I talk to him and say | 0:11:18 | 0:11:20 | |
this is what I'm doing that he's then got that | 0:11:20 | 0:11:22 | |
sound in his head as well so if it's not on the page, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
we're both missing it. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:27 | |
But the point at which I've got chapters, | 0:11:27 | 0:11:29 | |
and we write in different rooms, | 0:11:29 | 0:11:31 | |
which is a good way of keeping fit, actually, up and down. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:34 | |
That is really exhilarating, someone who knows you so well | 0:11:34 | 0:11:37 | |
and has a really good eye and a good ear | 0:11:37 | 0:11:40 | |
so running from room to room | 0:11:40 | 0:11:41 | |
throwing chapter 20 and then getting chapter 19 back. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:44 | |
That's really... I find that bit really wonderful. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
But then I go back into the private room again. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:50 | |
It's those moments I think we as writers live for that | 0:11:50 | 0:11:53 | |
when you really want to share it with your partner, "Look, read this." | 0:11:53 | 0:11:57 | |
And you just wait giddily, hopefully and nervously | 0:11:57 | 0:12:00 | |
for that person to say either, "Ah," or "Yeah." | 0:12:00 | 0:12:05 | |
I like the early funny ones. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:12:08 | 0:12:09 | |
Lee Child, who is a fabulously successful writer, is coming | 0:12:09 | 0:12:13 | |
on the show in a few weeks' time. Jack Reacher, that is his creation. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:16 | |
People love the Jack Reacher books. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
He said on the programme a couple of years ago now... | 0:12:19 | 0:12:21 | |
I'm going to take him up on this when he comes back | 0:12:21 | 0:12:24 | |
because I'm still not sure I believe him. | 0:12:24 | 0:12:26 | |
He says when he starts to write a book, he does no research, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
he just starts. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:31 | |
He sort of knows where he's going | 0:12:31 | 0:12:33 | |
and he just...goes where his head takes him. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:37 | |
Again everyone does it entirely differently. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:40 | |
Joseph, do you plot chapter by chapter? | 0:12:40 | 0:12:44 | |
William Boyd does this so he knows exactly where he is. | 0:12:44 | 0:12:46 | |
Chapter 23, that's going to be where that happens and then she's going to | 0:12:46 | 0:12:50 | |
fall off the cliff and... | 0:12:50 | 0:12:51 | |
I've made that bit up, that's not actually William Boyd. | 0:12:51 | 0:12:54 | |
So do you know what's happening or do you just... | 0:12:54 | 0:12:56 | |
None at all. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:57 | |
I jump into the deep end of the pool and hope I can swim. | 0:12:57 | 0:13:00 | |
Even in terms of research this latest novel is a research-heavy book | 0:13:00 | 0:13:04 | |
in terms of there's a lot I had to learn. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:07 | |
A lot I already knew so I always assume I know enough just to start. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:10 | |
I tend to know kind of big picture kind of foggy, | 0:13:10 | 0:13:15 | |
"Yeah, it's going to end up there, I hope. I think." | 0:13:15 | 0:13:18 | |
But I let the voices... | 0:13:18 | 0:13:20 | |
And the characters, have they come first? | 0:13:20 | 0:13:22 | |
The characters come first and they are always wanting to do something. | 0:13:22 | 0:13:25 | |
This is what I compare it to. It's like raising a child. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:29 | |
The child is born. You have to diaper and feed it or it'll die. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:33 | |
That's like my characters. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
But then they become teenagers suddenly and they're like, | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
"I'm not going to listen to you, I'm going to go in this direction." | 0:13:37 | 0:13:41 | |
You're like, "Good luck. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:43 | |
"But I might not be able to get you out of this one | 0:13:43 | 0:13:45 | |
"if you get in trouble." | 0:13:45 | 0:13:46 | |
The characters kind of make their way. They grow up. | 0:13:46 | 0:13:51 | |
Their voices grow up | 0:13:51 | 0:13:52 | |
and start going in directions that often surprise me. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
Can you explain a little bit? | 0:13:56 | 0:13:58 | |
How can they surprise you? Because they are your characters. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:00 | |
They are... We as writers are lucky. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:04 | |
We get away with being crazy but it's our profession. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:08 | |
We get to hear voices in your head... | 0:14:08 | 0:14:10 | |
Imaginary friends! | 0:14:10 | 0:14:11 | |
So these characters do things. | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
Every novel I've written the characters | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
have done something that absolutely surprised me. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
I'm kind of like the director watching things | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
unfold on the stage in front of me. | 0:14:22 | 0:14:25 | |
Once in a while the actors just do things that just shock me. | 0:14:25 | 0:14:30 | |
I'm like, "OK, go with it then." And they do. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:34 | |
They'll either lead me down a dead end | 0:14:34 | 0:14:36 | |
or they'll do something that really changes the novel in a good way. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:40 | |
John, do you plot meticulously or do you go where the mood takes you? | 0:14:40 | 0:14:45 | |
I'm quite like Joseph on this. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:47 | |
I know nothing really other than the basic idea of what the book | 0:14:47 | 0:14:50 | |
is about and I just start. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:52 | |
I think I know what it's about but at the end of the first draft | 0:14:52 | 0:14:55 | |
it turns out to have been about something else. | 0:14:55 | 0:14:57 | |
In terms of research, I don't know what I don't know | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
until I have finished that first draft. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:02 | |
So I would do a lot more research after a first draft than before it. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
But I don't really like to know anything. | 0:15:06 | 0:15:08 | |
I just know... If I say, "OK, it's a book about..." | 0:15:08 | 0:15:10 | |
If you could sum it up in a sentence, | 0:15:10 | 0:15:12 | |
this is what it's about, I'll just start. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:15 | |
And start writing. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:16 | |
John Irving, the American novelist, he won't start writing | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
until he knows his last sentence. | 0:15:19 | 0:15:21 | |
And when he gets the last sentence he works back from the last sentence | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
and he gets it all in his head and then he starts. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:27 | |
So, Kate, I know a little bit about your new book anyway | 0:15:27 | 0:15:30 | |
because you talked to us about it on Radio 2 | 0:15:30 | 0:15:33 | |
but just on this specific question about knowing... | 0:15:33 | 0:15:37 | |
Do you just know the general direction | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
or do you plan more meticulously than that? | 0:15:40 | 0:15:42 | |
I don't plan. I'm with these guys absolutely about that. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:46 | |
In a funny sort of way your characters have to | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
learn to act in character. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:50 | |
They have to be themselves. | 0:15:50 | 0:15:52 | |
There is that delicious moment in every book where | 0:15:52 | 0:15:55 | |
they step out from behind you and rather than you as the author | 0:15:55 | 0:16:00 | |
having your hands in the small of their back making them | 0:16:00 | 0:16:04 | |
move forward, they turn round and take your hand instead. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:08 | |
It sounds so pretentious but it is what happens. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:11 | |
We all know when a character is just | 0:16:11 | 0:16:13 | |
a list of characteristics, that they are this tall, that... | 0:16:13 | 0:16:16 | |
They are not characters that any of us care about. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:18 | |
All of those things I agree with but I do... | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
I don't plan but the research I do very meticulously first | 0:16:21 | 0:16:25 | |
because I feel I need to know the world completely before I can | 0:16:25 | 0:16:29 | |
start to play in it. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:31 | |
That is partly because I am often writing historical, | 0:16:31 | 0:16:34 | |
significantly historical, not 1975 as opposed to 2014. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:39 | |
Because I often have women heroes as I think of them | 0:16:39 | 0:16:43 | |
because for me the hero is the protagonist of the story, | 0:16:43 | 0:16:46 | |
not someone waiting to be rescued, which I'm afraid the word heroine | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
still carries that for me. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:52 | |
It makes a difference to everything that they do so | 0:16:53 | 0:16:55 | |
if I'm writing about a young woman in 1896... | 0:16:55 | 0:17:00 | |
if I don't know what she's wearing, I don't know if she can run. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:05 | |
Can she run? | 0:17:05 | 0:17:06 | |
Is she in a corset? Has she got enough breath? | 0:17:06 | 0:17:09 | |
So everything about how she would be | 0:17:09 | 0:17:11 | |
and behave will be influenced by me knowing or not knowing that. | 0:17:11 | 0:17:14 | |
Having said that, with The Taxidermist's Daughter, | 0:17:14 | 0:17:17 | |
which is my new one, | 0:17:17 | 0:17:19 | |
it's the fastest book I've ever written. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:21 | |
And I did. I liked that idea of jumping in the pool and I had | 0:17:21 | 0:17:24 | |
a sense of certain things I needed to know and then I went for it. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:29 | |
And that was exhilarating, to write like that, | 0:17:29 | 0:17:31 | |
because Citadel I researched for four years before I sat down at my desk. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:36 | |
And this one I thought, "OK. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:38 | |
"I'm off." And the pace in a thriller matters. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:42 | |
It's all about the pace, it's all about rushing to the finish line. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:46 | |
So I can see that I'm going to write slightly differently now. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
And you say this is the fastest book? So how fast is that? | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
Five months. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
- Wow! - I know! I know! I know! | 0:17:54 | 0:17:57 | |
John's face is, "Oh, my God!" | 0:17:57 | 0:18:00 | |
I've never done that. This is off the back of five years... | 0:18:01 | 0:18:04 | |
- This is my dream. To do that. - This is my dream. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:07 | |
I think this is the key. I suddenly thought, "My God. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:09 | |
"I'm 52 now. If I speed up like this I could write a few more books." | 0:18:09 | 0:18:13 | |
Otherwise I'll be one of those people - I've only got a few. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:17 | |
You interviewed Anthony Horowitz or Ian Rankin, these people... | 0:18:17 | 0:18:20 | |
You look at the front of their books and you go, "Oh, my God! | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
"They are younger than me! Look at all those books!" | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
I just thought I needed to speed up. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:27 | |
They don't research... I'm speaking on behalf of them. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:30 | |
They don't research for four years before they... | 0:18:30 | 0:18:32 | |
There you are. That's the killer, isn't it? | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
Research for me... | 0:18:34 | 0:18:35 | |
When researching a book it can become procrastination like that. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:39 | |
There is a fine line between research... | 0:18:39 | 0:18:42 | |
I'm not saying you did for four years procrastinate but I certainly... | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
I love reading nonfiction, reading about the worlds | 0:18:45 | 0:18:50 | |
and learning them. But it's like... | 0:18:50 | 0:18:52 | |
There's that side of me. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:53 | |
I can't write any more when I'm reading too much. It's interesting. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:57 | |
It's that wonderful Julia Margaret Cameron phrase. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:00 | |
"And the net will find you." And that's exactly what it's like | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
with research, that there is a moment at which you have to go, "OK. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
"Enough now." And then you go. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:08 | |
- May I ask a question? - Of course. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:10 | |
Do you all read fiction when you're writing your own fiction? | 0:19:10 | 0:19:13 | |
- Yes. - You do? | 0:19:13 | 0:19:15 | |
All the time. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:16 | |
I ask writer friends all the time and it's almost always 50-50. | 0:19:16 | 0:19:19 | |
I can't read other people's fiction | 0:19:19 | 0:19:21 | |
when I'm writing my own for fear that the voices... | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
Even if it's on a completely different subject? | 0:19:25 | 0:19:27 | |
Yes. A completely different subject. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:29 | |
I've heard some people say they can't read a first-person narrative | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
if they're writing a first-person narrative. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:34 | |
And the same with third person. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:36 | |
It's never bothered me. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:37 | |
I get lost in a world so easily I guess that | 0:19:37 | 0:19:39 | |
when I pick up a good book... | 0:19:39 | 0:19:41 | |
And then I think to myself, "How do I compare?" | 0:19:41 | 0:19:46 | |
My first novel, Three Day Road, I was writing that | 0:19:46 | 0:19:48 | |
and I finished it and someone said, | 0:19:48 | 0:19:50 | |
"Have you ever read Pat Barker?" I said, "Who's he?" | 0:19:50 | 0:19:53 | |
Thank God I hadn't read Pat Barker while I was trying... | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
cos it's a World War I novel I wrote, | 0:19:58 | 0:20:00 | |
because I would have said to myself, | 0:20:00 | 0:20:03 | |
"She's done something so incredible, | 0:20:03 | 0:20:07 | |
"why am I even bothering messing with that world?" | 0:20:07 | 0:20:10 | |
I can read fiction that I know really well, | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
so I read on a cycle all the Agatha Christie novels. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:16 | |
I've read all of the 77 of them many times, so I can do that. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:20 | |
But I think it's also about the voice that you have, | 0:20:20 | 0:20:24 | |
because it's very fragile, the voice that you have for your book. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:28 | |
Taxidermist's Daughter is set in 1912, | 0:20:28 | 0:20:31 | |
and the voice and the tone of 1912 in England is so not | 0:20:31 | 0:20:36 | |
the tone of 1915 in England, | 0:20:36 | 0:20:38 | |
because already everything to do with the war and the flexibility | 0:20:38 | 0:20:42 | |
and the way things fell apart is changing how people speak. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:45 | |
So that's the thing that I protect against - | 0:20:45 | 0:20:47 | |
the language becoming this sort of not quite as it would have been. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:52 | |
Can you...? Is it quite easy to be intimidated as an author? | 0:20:52 | 0:20:57 | |
If you're in the writing process | 0:20:57 | 0:20:59 | |
and you're not reading fiction or you are reading fiction, | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
do you ever read other people's work, John, and think, | 0:21:01 | 0:21:05 | |
"Well, that was just fantastic - | 0:21:05 | 0:21:09 | |
"I'm going to have to change what I do"? | 0:21:09 | 0:21:11 | |
No, I don't. I don't want to sound arrogant. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:14 | |
I read because I love reading. I love novels, | 0:21:14 | 0:21:17 | |
I love to read something that I fall in love with and admire, | 0:21:17 | 0:21:19 | |
and it doesn't make me feel good about myself or bad about myself | 0:21:19 | 0:21:23 | |
as a person or a writer. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
It just makes me love literature more. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:27 | |
Maybe it makes me want to raise my game more, | 0:21:28 | 0:21:30 | |
but it would never really intimidate me or make me think I should... | 0:21:30 | 0:21:34 | |
..get another job. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:38 | |
I was just struck by what James was saying talking about Pat Barker, | 0:21:38 | 0:21:40 | |
that you go, "Wow." | 0:21:40 | 0:21:42 | |
I don't think there's any subject that we're done with. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:47 | |
You know, I've written about the First World War | 0:21:47 | 0:21:50 | |
and of course I knew there's those books, | 0:21:50 | 0:21:52 | |
that there's All Quiet On The Western Front, there's Birdsong, but so what? | 0:21:52 | 0:21:56 | |
You contribute your piece of work to it. If it matches up, it does. | 0:21:56 | 0:21:59 | |
If it doesn't, it doesn't. You do your best. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
The only thing any of us can do is find our voice as a writer | 0:22:01 | 0:22:07 | |
and then try to be the best that we can be. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
We're not anybody else. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:11 | |
So there's no point comparing yourself to somebody else | 0:22:11 | 0:22:14 | |
any more than there's any point comparing yourself to someone | 0:22:14 | 0:22:17 | |
who runs faster than you or is taller than you or shorter than you | 0:22:17 | 0:22:20 | |
or any of those things, because it is simply about, | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
"Can I tell the story that I want to tell to the best of my ability?" | 0:22:23 | 0:22:27 | |
It's not... For me, it's never about not reading somebody else | 0:22:29 | 0:22:32 | |
because I would be discouraged. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:35 | |
It's more that it would stop me being myself while I was being a writer. | 0:22:35 | 0:22:41 | |
I don't know if you guys all feel this, | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
but it was a great surprise to me to discover, | 0:22:43 | 0:22:46 | |
to learn this thing that the person you are as a reader is not | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
necessarily the person you are as a writer. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:52 | |
So when I started out, I enormously like very lyrical, | 0:22:52 | 0:22:57 | |
beautiful literary fiction, and I love crime. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:00 | |
When I started I thought, "Well, I'll be one of those two things, | 0:23:01 | 0:23:04 | |
"because these are the things I love." | 0:23:04 | 0:23:07 | |
When I started, I realised that oddly I was a Gothic, historical writer, | 0:23:07 | 0:23:11 | |
because oddly the person I was as a reader bore no relation | 0:23:11 | 0:23:15 | |
to the person I was as a writer. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:16 | |
That was an amazing lesson to learn. | 0:23:16 | 0:23:18 | |
Once I'd learned that, I thought, "Well, that's OK, that's fine." | 0:23:18 | 0:23:22 | |
Because actually the books I most admire | 0:23:22 | 0:23:25 | |
are the ones that I'm not capable of writing. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:27 | |
Does that ring true with you, Joseph? | 0:23:27 | 0:23:29 | |
Yeah, I think, yeah. It resonates very strongly with me. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
It's funny... | 0:23:33 | 0:23:35 | |
When I read, when I pick up a novel, I become a critic. | 0:23:36 | 0:23:40 | |
I hate that. | 0:23:40 | 0:23:42 | |
"This person, let's see why I can turn this book down," kind of thing. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:47 | |
I don't know why that is. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:49 | |
But then a good book, within pages, grabs me and takes me in. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:55 | |
But it's the same thing. | 0:23:55 | 0:23:56 | |
My issue is reading other really... | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
engaging fiction when I'm trying to create that. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:05 | |
We'll get you to do some reading in just a moment. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:07 | |
Do you have a cut-off point? | 0:24:07 | 0:24:08 | |
Do you give a novel a certain number of pages before you give up on it? | 0:24:08 | 0:24:12 | |
My guess is everyone does. | 0:24:14 | 0:24:15 | |
- 50 pages. If I'm not in on 50. - John? | 0:24:17 | 0:24:19 | |
Not a certain number of pages, but if I'm bored and I know | 0:24:22 | 0:24:25 | |
that it's not going to get any better, | 0:24:25 | 0:24:28 | |
I feel no guilt about putting a book down. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:30 | |
There's so many books I want to read and life is short. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:33 | |
Once I know it's going nowhere, I'd stop. | 0:24:33 | 0:24:36 | |
Kate, do you have a cut-off point? | 0:24:36 | 0:24:37 | |
I've still got that awful good girl sitting in the classroom thing. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:42 | |
I've really tried to break it. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:43 | |
But the minute I start a book, I feel I have to finish it. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:46 | |
I have to see it through. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:48 | |
Well, also I suppose the thing is, we all know as writers, | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
I still think that it is a really hard thing to finish a novel | 0:24:52 | 0:24:59 | |
let alone two novels or three novels in terms of being a writer, | 0:24:59 | 0:25:02 | |
so there's always part of me that thinks, "You know what? | 0:25:02 | 0:25:05 | |
"I owe it to you to finish this, even though I'm not enjoying it | 0:25:05 | 0:25:10 | |
"and there are other novels that I could do." | 0:25:10 | 0:25:12 | |
So I do tend to... | 0:25:12 | 0:25:13 | |
I might skim a bit, but I do tend to see it through. | 0:25:13 | 0:25:16 | |
For years I had 100 pages as the cut-off point, | 0:25:16 | 0:25:19 | |
and that was only because I read The Perfect Storm, | 0:25:19 | 0:25:23 | |
and I found it difficult to get into, it was very mechanical and very dry. | 0:25:23 | 0:25:28 | |
I stopped at about 90. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
I'd never heard of it. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:31 | |
I'd just picked it up and read it, then put it aside for a while, | 0:25:31 | 0:25:36 | |
and then suddenly it was everywhere. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:38 | |
It was in big displays in shops, it was going to be a movie. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
I thought, "OK, it's clearly me." | 0:25:41 | 0:25:43 | |
I went back, picked it up on page 95, and it flew. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:47 | |
So I thought, "I'm going to have to..." It's completely arbitrary. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:50 | |
I had the same experience with the same book. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:52 | |
- Really? - I did, yes. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:54 | |
- The description of drowning... - Yes. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:57 | |
..that's when I was like, "Wow, this is something." | 0:25:57 | 0:26:01 | |
I haven't... | 0:26:01 | 0:26:02 | |
Just going back to Patrick Ness, who we were talking about on Friday, | 0:26:02 | 0:26:06 | |
the drowning section in Perfect Storm is extraordinary. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
Patrick was on the Radio 2 Book Club for his latest book, which is | 0:26:11 | 0:26:15 | |
More Than This. The first five pages, the main character drowns. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:20 | |
It's the most astonishing few pages. It's a tour de force, really. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:26 | |
I find that intimidating. I read those... | 0:26:26 | 0:26:29 | |
I found the whole book intimidating, but it's just a genius piece. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:34 | |
Of course, then the character is dead and has drowned, | 0:26:34 | 0:26:38 | |
but is the main character throughout the whole book. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:40 | |
You spend the whole time trying to work out | 0:26:40 | 0:26:42 | |
precisely what's happening. I hadn't thought of the comparison, | 0:26:42 | 0:26:45 | |
but that section in Perfect Storm was extraordinary. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:47 | |
So you've got books on your laps | 0:26:47 | 0:26:49 | |
and I think we're going to get an exclusive from Kate, | 0:26:49 | 0:26:53 | |
I think we're going to get an exclusive from John. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:55 | |
I don't think we're going to get an exclusive from you, | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
but I'm not trying to diminish or talk it down in any way. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:02 | |
But how long is it going to be | 0:27:02 | 0:27:03 | |
before we get something completely new from you? | 0:27:03 | 0:27:06 | |
Eh, I always promise myself things. I want to do what Kate did. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:09 | |
I want to turn something around in a year, write a book that I'm... | 0:27:09 | 0:27:13 | |
- Five months, five months. - Five months is... | 0:27:13 | 0:27:16 | |
- I won't be able to... - Five months to write. Edit... | 0:27:16 | 0:27:18 | |
If your editors are watching this, they're going to be saying, | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
"Did you see what Kate Mosse did? Five months? | 0:27:21 | 0:27:23 | |
"How come it takes you four years?" | 0:27:23 | 0:27:25 | |
Joseph, what are you going to read for us? | 0:27:25 | 0:27:28 | |
I thought I'd just do the prologue from this novel The Orenda. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:32 | |
The Orenda, this is a Radio 2 Book Club choice. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:36 | |
Just explain a little bit about it and then read for us. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:40 | |
The Orenda is a novel that takes place in the mid-1600s | 0:27:40 | 0:27:43 | |
in what is now North America | 0:27:43 | 0:27:44 | |
and what is now specifically the southern part of Canada. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:47 | |
It's about the clash of cultures. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:49 | |
It's about French Jesuit missionaries coming to the New World to bring... | 0:27:49 | 0:27:54 | |
"New World" to bring Christianity to the savages, | 0:27:54 | 0:27:57 | |
and that clash of cultures. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
This story's been told a couple of times, | 0:28:00 | 0:28:02 | |
but never through a native perspective. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:03 | |
I wanted to do it through a native perspective. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:06 | |
This novel is very classically structured. Three-act novel. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:10 | |
Each act has a prologue. I'm going to read the first prologue. | 0:28:10 | 0:28:15 | |
We had magic before the crows came. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:18 | |
Before the rise of the great villages they | 0:28:18 | 0:28:20 | |
so roughly carved on the shores of our inland sea and named with | 0:28:20 | 0:28:24 | |
words plucked from our tongues - Chicago, Toronto, Milwaukee, Ottawa. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:30 | |
We had our own great villages on these same great shores, | 0:28:30 | 0:28:33 | |
and we understood our magic. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:35 | |
We understood what the orenda implied. | 0:28:35 | 0:28:37 | |
But who is at fault when that recedes? | 0:28:38 | 0:28:41 | |
It's tempting to place blame, | 0:28:41 | 0:28:43 | |
though loss should never be weighed in this manner. | 0:28:43 | 0:28:45 | |
Who then to blame for what we now witness? | 0:28:45 | 0:28:48 | |
Our children cutting their bodies to pieces | 0:28:48 | 0:28:50 | |
or strangling themselves in the dark recesses of their homes, | 0:28:50 | 0:28:53 | |
or gulping your stinking drink until their bodies fail. | 0:28:53 | 0:28:56 | |
But we get ahead of ourselves. | 0:28:56 | 0:28:58 | |
This, on the surface, is a story of our past. | 0:28:58 | 0:29:00 | |
Once those crows flew over the great water from their old world | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
to perch tired and frightened in the branches of ours, | 0:29:04 | 0:29:07 | |
they saw that we had the orenda. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:09 | |
We believed. Oh, did we believe! | 0:29:09 | 0:29:13 | |
This is why the crows at first thought of us as nothing - | 0:29:13 | 0:29:15 | |
as little more than animals. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:17 | |
We lived in a physical world that frightened them | 0:29:17 | 0:29:19 | |
and hunted beasts they'd only had nightmares of, | 0:29:19 | 0:29:21 | |
and we consumed the mystery that the crows were bred to fear. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:25 | |
We breathed what they feared. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:27 | |
But they watched intently as crows are prone to do. | 0:29:27 | 0:29:30 | |
When they cawed that our magic was unclean, we laughed, | 0:29:30 | 0:29:34 | |
took little offence, even killed a few of them | 0:29:34 | 0:29:36 | |
and pulled their feathers for our hair. | 0:29:36 | 0:29:38 | |
We lived on, but that word - "unclean." | 0:29:38 | 0:29:41 | |
That word somehow like an illness, like its own magic, it began to grow. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:46 | |
Very few of us saw that coming. | 0:29:46 | 0:29:48 | |
So maybe this is a story of those few. | 0:29:48 | 0:29:51 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:29:54 | 0:29:55 | |
Listening to you read that, | 0:30:02 | 0:30:03 | |
I remember two things from when we had our conversation on the radio. | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
First of all, I remember thinking, "This guy's got a great voice | 0:30:06 | 0:30:08 | |
"and I could listen to it for a long time." | 0:30:08 | 0:30:12 | |
I also remember from reading that first page, instantly thinking, | 0:30:12 | 0:30:16 | |
"I'm not sure what you're writing about," but I was transported | 0:30:16 | 0:30:21 | |
and intrigued and needed to know more about that world. | 0:30:21 | 0:30:25 | |
How long ago did you write that? | 0:30:25 | 0:30:27 | |
That was written... Oh, boy. | 0:30:27 | 0:30:30 | |
A year and a half, two years ago. | 0:30:31 | 0:30:33 | |
- Did you write that first? - No, I wrote it last. | 0:30:33 | 0:30:36 | |
I wrote a version of it first | 0:30:36 | 0:30:38 | |
and then it was the last thing that ended up. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:40 | |
I went back to each prologue and corrected them - | 0:30:40 | 0:30:43 | |
made them into what they needed to be. | 0:30:43 | 0:30:45 | |
But I had the guts of it in that page, but I needed to work on it. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:50 | |
What was wrong with the previous prologue? | 0:30:50 | 0:30:52 | |
It wasn't sure what it wanted to say. | 0:30:52 | 0:30:55 | |
I actually had a fight with my publisher in Canada. | 0:30:55 | 0:30:58 | |
She said, "You don't need these prologues," | 0:30:58 | 0:31:00 | |
and I was saying, "I do, I need them. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:03 | |
"I can't explain to you why, but let me work them | 0:31:03 | 0:31:06 | |
"until I think they're right." | 0:31:06 | 0:31:07 | |
That's what I did, work those until I... | 0:31:07 | 0:31:10 | |
You know, the last thing I did. | 0:31:10 | 0:31:12 | |
Kate, you have your new novel sitting on your lap. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:15 | |
Well, I do, but I'm actually going to show Joseph the crow. | 0:31:15 | 0:31:18 | |
Oh, look at that! There's the crow. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:20 | |
Cos I have a fair few crows. | 0:31:20 | 0:31:22 | |
Bizarrely, actually, cos I'm doing a speech | 0:31:22 | 0:31:24 | |
at the book festival tomorrow, I have a stuffed crow in my room. | 0:31:24 | 0:31:27 | |
I had to pick it up from reception when I arrived at the hotel. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:29 | |
They said, "Madam, we were told that there | 0:31:29 | 0:31:32 | |
"was a stuffed crow waiting for you." I wish I'd brought it now. | 0:31:32 | 0:31:35 | |
So we're in the world of taxidermists. | 0:31:37 | 0:31:40 | |
We are. | 0:31:40 | 0:31:43 | |
The novel comes out the 11th of September. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:45 | |
It's called The Taxidermist's Daughter. | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
It's set in 1912 in Sussex, where I grew up, | 0:31:47 | 0:31:51 | |
Fishbourne and Chichester in West Sussex. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:54 | |
It's inspired by two things - one, | 0:31:54 | 0:31:56 | |
an extraordinary museum of taxidermy that we used to visit | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
all the time in the '70s which had all these tiny little animals | 0:31:59 | 0:32:03 | |
all dressed up in costumes and doing things, in drinking dens, | 0:32:03 | 0:32:07 | |
playing croquet, in orchestras. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:09 | |
I was obsessed with this museum. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:13 | |
Secondly, interestingly what you were saying about drowning and storms | 0:32:13 | 0:32:18 | |
and the power of that in narrative. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:20 | |
One of my very favourite novels still of all time is Mill On The Floss. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:26 | |
I love that sense that whatever any of us does, | 0:32:26 | 0:32:31 | |
the sea and the river and the rain can just take it all away like that. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:37 | |
So these things came together. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:38 | |
So it's a thriller, it's a whodunnit and a whydunnit. | 0:32:38 | 0:32:41 | |
I'm just going to read, for the first time, so if I stumble | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
and make a hash at it, particularly after that rather beautiful... | 0:32:44 | 0:32:48 | |
you will, I hope, all forgive me | 0:32:48 | 0:32:50 | |
and realise that I will get better as September 11th approaches. | 0:32:50 | 0:32:53 | |
And like you, I have a prologue and epilogue always. I have three parts. | 0:32:57 | 0:33:01 | |
It happens over four days in this wet summer of 1912. | 0:33:01 | 0:33:05 | |
The church of St Peter and St Mary, Fishbourne Marshes, Sussex, | 0:33:09 | 0:33:14 | |
Wednesday 24th April, 1912. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:18 | |
Midnight. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:20 | |
In the graveyard of the church, | 0:33:21 | 0:33:23 | |
men gather in silence on the edge of the drowned marshes... | 0:33:23 | 0:33:27 | |
watching, waiting... | 0:33:27 | 0:33:29 | |
..for it is believed on the Eve of St Mark, | 0:33:31 | 0:33:34 | |
the ghosts of those destined to die in the coming year | 0:33:34 | 0:33:37 | |
will be seen walking into the church at the turning of the hour. | 0:33:37 | 0:33:40 | |
It is a custom that has long since fallen away | 0:33:42 | 0:33:45 | |
in most parts of Sussex, but not here. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
Not here where the saltwater estuary leads out to the sea. | 0:33:48 | 0:33:52 | |
Not here in the old salt mill and the burnt-out remains | 0:33:52 | 0:33:57 | |
of Far Hills' Mill, its rotting timbers revealed at each low tide. | 0:33:57 | 0:34:02 | |
Here the old superstitions still hold sway. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:06 | |
Skin, blood, bone. | 0:34:07 | 0:34:11 | |
Out at sea the curlews and the gulls are calling, | 0:34:13 | 0:34:16 | |
strange and haunting night-time cries. | 0:34:16 | 0:34:19 | |
The tide is coming in fast, higher and higher, drowning the mudflats | 0:34:19 | 0:34:23 | |
and the saltings until there is nothing left | 0:34:23 | 0:34:25 | |
but the deep, shifting water. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:28 | |
The rain strikes the black umbrellas | 0:34:28 | 0:34:30 | |
and cloth caps of the farm workers and dairymen and blacksmiths, | 0:34:30 | 0:34:35 | |
dripping down between neck and collar, skin and cloth. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:39 | |
No-one speaks. The flames in the lanterns gutter and leap, | 0:34:40 | 0:34:45 | |
casting distorted shadows up and up along the flint face of the church. | 0:34:45 | 0:34:49 | |
This is no place for the living. | 0:34:50 | 0:34:53 | |
Skin, blood, bone. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:57 | |
A single black tailfeather. | 0:34:58 | 0:35:01 | |
Wow. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:05 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:35:05 | 0:35:06 | |
I'm going to need someone to walk me home tonight, | 0:35:11 | 0:35:13 | |
I'm not going home on my own after that. | 0:35:13 | 0:35:15 | |
How long ago did you write that? | 0:35:17 | 0:35:18 | |
Between February, March, April, May this year, | 0:35:20 | 0:35:25 | |
and then editing, June and July. | 0:35:25 | 0:35:27 | |
And exactly as John was saying, it changed shape. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:31 | |
The way that I always think of novels, | 0:35:31 | 0:35:34 | |
how a novel finds its form, is that you often have this wonderful moment, | 0:35:34 | 0:35:39 | |
and for me it was the end of the novel, | 0:35:39 | 0:35:42 | |
the sense of my lead character, Connie Gifford, | 0:35:42 | 0:35:44 | |
who is the character we want to know, is she a goodie or a baddie? | 0:35:44 | 0:35:48 | |
Are things going to happen to her or are things going to | 0:35:48 | 0:35:50 | |
happen because of her? | 0:35:50 | 0:35:52 | |
And I had this very clear image of this young woman | 0:35:52 | 0:35:54 | |
standing on the sea wall as the mill was being washed away | 0:35:54 | 0:35:57 | |
and the sea wall was washing away and the protagonists, | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
are they the murderers, are they not? | 0:36:01 | 0:36:03 | |
All of these things behind her, so there's the danger behind her, | 0:36:03 | 0:36:07 | |
but actually the sea is the real danger, and I worked back from that. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:10 | |
But I think always when you're writing you have that moment, | 0:36:10 | 0:36:14 | |
and for me it's like a walled garden. | 0:36:14 | 0:36:16 | |
Another favourite book, The Secret Garden, | 0:36:16 | 0:36:19 | |
I've always been very keen on this sense | 0:36:19 | 0:36:20 | |
of the enclosed space, and you could come into your novel | 0:36:20 | 0:36:24 | |
in any one of any number of doors that are around that wall. | 0:36:24 | 0:36:28 | |
So you might be finding yourself right at the end, | 0:36:28 | 0:36:31 | |
and that's your inspiration, | 0:36:31 | 0:36:33 | |
or you might come in a different door right at the beginning. | 0:36:33 | 0:36:35 | |
And until you've written your first draft, you don't | 0:36:35 | 0:36:37 | |
quite know the story you're telling. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:40 | |
So I knew it was going to start on the Eve of St Mark's, | 0:36:40 | 0:36:43 | |
I loved the idea that | 0:36:43 | 0:36:44 | |
people still believed you could sit there in a church porch - | 0:36:44 | 0:36:47 | |
even at the beginning of the 20th century people believed that - | 0:36:47 | 0:36:50 | |
and see those images of people who were to die, | 0:36:50 | 0:36:53 | |
I found that very arresting. | 0:36:53 | 0:36:56 | |
But I started there | 0:36:56 | 0:36:57 | |
and had no idea how I was going to get to the end, | 0:36:57 | 0:36:59 | |
and the 90,000 words between that prologue | 0:36:59 | 0:37:01 | |
and that epilogue were the discovery of the novel. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:05 | |
And that's why I wrote it fast, because I felt like if I didn't | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
start running I would trip over my own feet and the story would vanish. | 0:37:08 | 0:37:13 | |
So Kate has her new book, Joseph has a book on his lap, | 0:37:13 | 0:37:17 | |
you might have noticed John has an iPad. | 0:37:17 | 0:37:20 | |
I have to apologise. | 0:37:20 | 0:37:22 | |
KATE: Cos he's so modern! | 0:37:22 | 0:37:23 | |
No, I feel embarrassed, but I don't have finished copies yet. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:27 | |
That's how cool and exclusive this is. | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
Yeah, I had to get the publisher to e-mail it to me | 0:37:30 | 0:37:32 | |
today cos I didn't have it. | 0:37:32 | 0:37:34 | |
But I've never read from one of these before | 0:37:34 | 0:37:36 | |
and I don't feel good about myself. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:38 | |
It's all right, we forgive you. Explain what this is, John. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:42 | |
This is a novel that comes out on September 4th, | 0:37:42 | 0:37:45 | |
a week before Kate's, it's called A History of Loneliness. | 0:37:45 | 0:37:49 | |
It's the first novel I've set in Ireland, and this is a moment... | 0:37:49 | 0:37:54 | |
I've never read aloud from it either, so, we'll see. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:59 | |
But this is a scene quite late in the book where the narrator, | 0:37:59 | 0:38:03 | |
a priest called Father Odran Yates, is attending the trial of | 0:38:03 | 0:38:07 | |
another priest who is on trial for serial child abuse, | 0:38:07 | 0:38:11 | |
and he has left the trial because he can't hear any more. | 0:38:11 | 0:38:14 | |
A hand touched my arm and I almost jumped off my seat in fright, | 0:38:16 | 0:38:20 | |
but it was just the woman seated next to me. | 0:38:20 | 0:38:22 | |
She had a tired expression and not a hint of a smile on her face. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:25 | |
I thought she was going to say something like, | 0:38:25 | 0:38:27 | |
"Are you all right, Father?" But instead she just stared at me, | 0:38:27 | 0:38:30 | |
and I knew I recognised her | 0:38:30 | 0:38:32 | |
from somewhere, only I could not say where. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:34 | |
"You're Father Yates, aren't you?" she asked me finally. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:38 | |
"That's right", I said. "Do I know you?" | 0:38:38 | 0:38:41 | |
"You do", she said. "Do you not remember me?" I shook my head. | 0:38:41 | 0:38:46 | |
"I do and I don't, you look familiar but I can't place you." | 0:38:46 | 0:38:49 | |
"Kathleen Kilduff," she said, and I closed my eyes. | 0:38:49 | 0:38:53 | |
I thought I might be sick. | 0:38:53 | 0:38:54 | |
"Mrs Kilduff," I said meekly. | 0:38:55 | 0:38:57 | |
"We met in Wexford in 1990. You were down visiting your pal. | 0:38:57 | 0:39:01 | |
"I was the fool who was delivering her son into his hands | 0:39:01 | 0:39:04 | |
"every week for an hour." | 0:39:04 | 0:39:06 | |
I nodded. What could I say to justify myself? | 0:39:06 | 0:39:09 | |
"Of course," I said. "I remember you now." | 0:39:09 | 0:39:11 | |
"And you remember Brian too, don't you?" "I do," I said. | 0:39:11 | 0:39:14 | |
"I remember Brian." "Did you feel good about yourself, | 0:39:14 | 0:39:17 | |
"reporting him like you did? | 0:39:17 | 0:39:19 | |
"You know the gardai scared him half to death when they interviewed him | 0:39:19 | 0:39:22 | |
"about the damage he'd done to that monster's car." | 0:39:22 | 0:39:26 | |
"I'm sorry, I didn't know what to do at the time, | 0:39:26 | 0:39:28 | |
"I thought there was something wrong with the boy. | 0:39:28 | 0:39:30 | |
"I thought if Tom knew maybe he could help him." | 0:39:30 | 0:39:32 | |
"Oh, he helped him all right," she said, laughing bitterly. | 0:39:32 | 0:39:35 | |
"Sure, didn't he go to the gardai and tell them that if they just cautioned | 0:39:35 | 0:39:38 | |
"the boy he'd see to it that he never did anything like that again. | 0:39:38 | 0:39:41 | |
"And then he persuaded me to send Brian in to him | 0:39:41 | 0:39:44 | |
"Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, three days a week, | 0:39:44 | 0:39:46 | |
"for an hour every time, and of course I did what I was told. | 0:39:46 | 0:39:50 | |
"Brian," she added, "my little lad, | 0:39:50 | 0:39:52 | |
"who never did a bit of harm to anyone in his life. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:54 | |
"He wanted to be a vet, did you know that? | 0:39:54 | 0:39:56 | |
"He had a little dog that he just adored." | 0:39:56 | 0:39:59 | |
I stared down at the floor. | 0:39:59 | 0:40:02 | |
When I told that story earlier, when I told you about 1990, | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
did I mention that I took what I had seen and reported it to the gardai? | 0:40:05 | 0:40:09 | |
"Mrs Kilduff," I said, uncertain of what I was going to say next, | 0:40:09 | 0:40:13 | |
but she interrupted me. "Don't say my name," she hissed. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:16 | |
"And get off this bench right now! | 0:40:16 | 0:40:18 | |
"I don't want you sitting anywhere near me! You disgust me!" | 0:40:18 | 0:40:21 | |
I nodded and stood up, turning to walk away, | 0:40:21 | 0:40:24 | |
but before I could, I thought I should say at least something | 0:40:24 | 0:40:27 | |
to try to atone for what I had done. | 0:40:27 | 0:40:28 | |
"I hope Brian is doing all right," I said. | 0:40:30 | 0:40:32 | |
"I hope he's found a way to cope with what happened to him." | 0:40:32 | 0:40:36 | |
She stared at me as if I was deliberately insulting her. | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
"Are you trying to hurt me?" she asks. "Is that what you're doing? | 0:40:39 | 0:40:42 | |
"Are you deliberately trying to be cruel?" | 0:40:42 | 0:40:44 | |
"No," I said, failing to understand. "I only meant..." | 0:40:44 | 0:40:48 | |
"Sure, Brian is dead these last 15 years," she told me. | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
"He hanged himself in his bedroom. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:52 | |
"I went up one day after school to fetch him down for his dinner | 0:40:52 | 0:40:55 | |
"and there he was, his little legs dancing in the air, | 0:40:55 | 0:40:58 | |
"the poor little dog staring up at him, not knowing what to do. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:02 | |
"He killed himself. So tell me now, are you proud of yourself, Father? | 0:41:02 | 0:41:05 | |
"You and your pal in there, are you proud of yourselves, | 0:41:05 | 0:41:08 | |
"of all the things you and your pals have done? Do you even care?" | 0:41:08 | 0:41:11 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:41:13 | 0:41:15 | |
John, you were saying to us just before you came on | 0:41:22 | 0:41:24 | |
that you are slightly apprehensive about how your new book | 0:41:24 | 0:41:28 | |
is going to be received in Ireland. | 0:41:28 | 0:41:30 | |
- Yeah. - Can you just explain that? | 0:41:30 | 0:41:32 | |
Yeah, I am a bit because, em, | 0:41:32 | 0:41:33 | |
anyone who is familiar with my work will know that everything I've | 0:41:33 | 0:41:36 | |
written so far really has been historically based, | 0:41:36 | 0:41:40 | |
not, I would say, controversial-type novels, | 0:41:40 | 0:41:44 | |
and I've written a lot for young people as well | 0:41:44 | 0:41:46 | |
and I've never written about Ireland, as I mentioned. | 0:41:46 | 0:41:49 | |
I was saying to you earlier, Simon, that where I grew up, in Dublin, | 0:41:49 | 0:41:53 | |
the parish priest lived next door to me on one side | 0:41:53 | 0:41:55 | |
and eight nuns lived on the other side and... | 0:41:55 | 0:41:59 | |
Irish writers have not tackled the issue of child abuse | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
and the Catholic Church, they have steered away from it, | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
and I always said I wouldn't write about Ireland | 0:42:05 | 0:42:07 | |
until I had a story to tell and I felt this was the story | 0:42:07 | 0:42:11 | |
I wanted to tell, but I mean, you know, | 0:42:11 | 0:42:13 | |
it's a difficult subject to write about, | 0:42:13 | 0:42:15 | |
it's a very emotive subject and I guess what I fear is that... | 0:42:15 | 0:42:20 | |
I wanted to write a very balanced book where... | 0:42:20 | 0:42:23 | |
..both the victims of child abuse and also those priests who did nothing... | 0:42:25 | 0:42:30 | |
You know, there are good people in the world | 0:42:30 | 0:42:33 | |
and not everybody can be tarred with the same brush. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:36 | |
..where there would be a voice for everybody. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:38 | |
So I guess what I'm apprehensive about is victims reading the book | 0:42:38 | 0:42:42 | |
and feeling I haven't been hard enough on the Church | 0:42:42 | 0:42:45 | |
and people who, in Ireland, are very devoted to the Church | 0:42:45 | 0:42:48 | |
reading it and thinking that it's just an attack | 0:42:48 | 0:42:51 | |
and if that is what comes out of it, I will feel like I've failed. So... | 0:42:51 | 0:42:56 | |
Yeah, I am nervous and apprehensive, but in some way...it's good | 0:42:56 | 0:43:01 | |
because I haven't been nervous and apprehensive about a book in a while | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
and it's not a bad feeling to have in some ways. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:07 | |
Is Father Yates the main character? | 0:43:07 | 0:43:09 | |
- I'm sorry? - Is the father...? | 0:43:09 | 0:43:11 | |
Father Yates, yes, he's the narrator of the book and he is... He is... | 0:43:11 | 0:43:14 | |
He is a good priest, he's a guy who has... | 0:43:14 | 0:43:16 | |
He's never done anything wrong... At least, this is how I started. | 0:43:16 | 0:43:19 | |
We were talking earlier about, em, you start off with one idea | 0:43:19 | 0:43:23 | |
and it become something else. | 0:43:23 | 0:43:24 | |
I started off with the idea that this was going to be a good man | 0:43:24 | 0:43:27 | |
who has never done anything wrong and has got to a point in his life, | 0:43:27 | 0:43:30 | |
in his 60s, where he feels the institution has let him down, | 0:43:30 | 0:43:33 | |
but actually, as I wrote it, | 0:43:33 | 0:43:35 | |
I realised what the character was was actually somebody who was | 0:43:35 | 0:43:38 | |
completely complicit in what was going on because he has seen it all. | 0:43:38 | 0:43:42 | |
He has watched it happen in front of him and he has done nothing. | 0:43:42 | 0:43:45 | |
And this is the main problem in Ireland, | 0:43:45 | 0:43:47 | |
with the Church and the child-abuse scandals. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:50 | |
It's that there are a lot of people who didn't actively commit a crime, | 0:43:50 | 0:43:54 | |
but who knew exactly what was going on and did nothing | 0:43:54 | 0:43:58 | |
and that goes all the way to the very top of the Church. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:01 | |
People always say, you know, the Pope was definitely... | 0:44:01 | 0:44:04 | |
Pope John Paul II, that's where it went to, you know, | 0:44:04 | 0:44:07 | |
but it also went to the very bottom of the Church, you know, | 0:44:07 | 0:44:09 | |
to the people who were just regular priests | 0:44:09 | 0:44:12 | |
and who could see what was going on and did nothing | 0:44:12 | 0:44:14 | |
and then whole generations of young people in Ireland | 0:44:14 | 0:44:18 | |
have suffered from this, so a guy who I thought was going to be | 0:44:18 | 0:44:22 | |
a narrator who you would like and who you would care about | 0:44:22 | 0:44:25 | |
actually became somebody who, by the end of it, | 0:44:25 | 0:44:28 | |
you feel is just very complicit in the actions of other people. | 0:44:28 | 0:44:32 | |
- But it's such... Sorry, Simon. - Sorry. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:34 | |
But it's just such an interesting thing with characters, isn't it? | 0:44:34 | 0:44:37 | |
You know, that... We were talking about earlier, | 0:44:37 | 0:44:39 | |
about the life being breathed into them. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:41 | |
When you suddenly discover that the person | 0:44:41 | 0:44:43 | |
who was going to be your goodie or your baddie | 0:44:43 | 0:44:45 | |
actually turns out to be weak, not evil, | 0:44:45 | 0:44:49 | |
or, em, just a little bit self-serving rather than bad | 0:44:49 | 0:44:54 | |
and that can unbalance the whole novel, so... | 0:44:54 | 0:44:57 | |
But it can also be one of | 0:44:57 | 0:44:58 | |
the most exciting things, I think, about writing, | 0:44:58 | 0:45:01 | |
when it becomes something completely different and you were asking, | 0:45:01 | 0:45:04 | |
Joseph, earlier, about how can a character surprise you, | 0:45:04 | 0:45:07 | |
but, gosh, if they don't surprise you as you're writing it, | 0:45:07 | 0:45:09 | |
you are doing something wrong, you know. They should. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:11 | |
And you might like to know that, this hasn't been announced yet, | 0:45:11 | 0:45:14 | |
Joseph's new book is going to be a Radio 2 Book Club choice | 0:45:14 | 0:45:17 | |
and John is going to be coming on the show | 0:45:17 | 0:45:19 | |
and I'll be asking him exactly the same questions | 0:45:19 | 0:45:22 | |
and he will be generous and change the answer slightly... | 0:45:22 | 0:45:25 | |
But then you'll be able to say, "So, how did it go? What's the response?" | 0:45:25 | 0:45:28 | |
And they'll be saying, "So, number one again, John?" | 0:45:28 | 0:45:31 | |
Em... I... | 0:45:32 | 0:45:34 | |
I have other questions, but I'm aware that you are | 0:45:34 | 0:45:36 | |
an informed and educated audience and you wanted to be here | 0:45:36 | 0:45:39 | |
and if you have any questions, now is the time to... | 0:45:39 | 0:45:42 | |
As long as we haven't covered it already! | 0:45:42 | 0:45:45 | |
So, you know, we have already tackled a few of the questions, I think, | 0:45:45 | 0:45:49 | |
- right at the very beginning. - I don't know Wayne Rooney. | 0:45:49 | 0:45:51 | |
LAUGHTER I'm not a supermodel. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:53 | |
Yeah, and also, Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, | 0:45:55 | 0:45:57 | |
you didn't see the film before you wrote the book? | 0:45:57 | 0:45:59 | |
No, I didn't, no. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:00 | |
There was... There was a version of Emma, wasn't there, | 0:46:00 | 0:46:03 | |
that had sort of based on, | 0:46:03 | 0:46:05 | |
you know, the film was sort of based on something | 0:46:05 | 0:46:07 | |
and they'd got it the wrong way round, | 0:46:07 | 0:46:08 | |
so it had implied that the film had come first. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:11 | |
OK, we've got a question at the back. | 0:46:11 | 0:46:13 | |
Can you say who you are, please, and then the question? | 0:46:13 | 0:46:15 | |
Hi, my name is Juliet. | 0:46:15 | 0:46:17 | |
I'm intrigued by the question about when you give up reading | 0:46:17 | 0:46:20 | |
because I used to be a professional bookseller | 0:46:20 | 0:46:22 | |
and so I had to sort of decide what I would and wouldn't continue reading. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:28 | |
Three Day Road was one of the books I continued reading, | 0:46:28 | 0:46:31 | |
thank you, Joseph. | 0:46:31 | 0:46:32 | |
So I'd actually... I really want to put you on the spot | 0:46:32 | 0:46:35 | |
and ask you what the last book you stopped reading was. | 0:46:35 | 0:46:38 | |
- Oh! - Oh! | 0:46:38 | 0:46:39 | |
Mine was Emma Donoghue's The Room, | 0:46:39 | 0:46:42 | |
which I literally left on the Eurostar, I hated it that much. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:46 | |
My guess is that you're not going to get very far with this question, | 0:46:46 | 0:46:49 | |
- but anyway... Joseph? - I will freely admit | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
it was Gone Girl. I read... I got... AUDIENCE MEMBERS SHOUT | 0:46:52 | 0:46:57 | |
I got right to the point where she disappears and I'm like, | 0:46:57 | 0:47:00 | |
"I'm not buying it." And so I put it down. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:03 | |
I'm going to go back to it. | 0:47:03 | 0:47:04 | |
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's worth it in the end. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:06 | |
Don't! Don't say that! | 0:47:06 | 0:47:08 | |
Who else has...? Did you give up on Gone Girl? | 0:47:08 | 0:47:11 | |
I finished it. I'm a bookseller. | 0:47:11 | 0:47:15 | |
I finished it, but I hated all the characters. | 0:47:15 | 0:47:17 | |
OK, you... I just realised, of course, you need a microphone, | 0:47:17 | 0:47:20 | |
otherwise the people who are watching us on the live stream | 0:47:20 | 0:47:22 | |
are going to go, "I can't hear what you're saying!" | 0:47:22 | 0:47:24 | |
Sorry. I... I'm a bookseller. | 0:47:24 | 0:47:26 | |
I did finish Gone Girl, | 0:47:26 | 0:47:29 | |
but I hated all the characters | 0:47:29 | 0:47:31 | |
- and I wish I hadn't read it. - OK. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:33 | |
It is a phenomenally successful book, we should say. So, Gone Girl. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:38 | |
Joseph, good answer to... | 0:47:38 | 0:47:39 | |
I didn't think we'd get a straightforward answer to this. | 0:47:39 | 0:47:42 | |
- Kate Mosse? - I'm safe because I'd already said | 0:47:42 | 0:47:43 | |
that I ploughed on to the end and I do. | 0:47:43 | 0:47:46 | |
- You were always a goodie girl? - Oh, I... | 0:47:46 | 0:47:49 | |
I always thought there would be a moment where I would become cool | 0:47:49 | 0:47:52 | |
and would be a bad girl and it never... | 0:47:52 | 0:47:54 | |
I just carried on doing my homework, basically, regardless. | 0:47:54 | 0:47:57 | |
- John? - Oh, I really don't want to say. | 0:47:57 | 0:48:00 | |
There was a book I read recently, which... | 0:48:00 | 0:48:02 | |
It's not The Orenda, is it? | 0:48:02 | 0:48:04 | |
- Pardon? - It's not The Orenda, is it? | 0:48:04 | 0:48:06 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:48:06 | 0:48:07 | |
Taxidermist's Daughter? | 0:48:07 | 0:48:08 | |
..which was, you know, a highly literary book | 0:48:08 | 0:48:11 | |
that has been very successful in many award ceremonies | 0:48:11 | 0:48:14 | |
and I read it and I'm not going to name it because... | 0:48:14 | 0:48:17 | |
I just wouldn't, but I read it | 0:48:17 | 0:48:19 | |
and I just thought, "I do not get it. I do not see it." | 0:48:19 | 0:48:23 | |
I thought there was sort of an emperor's new clothes thing to it. | 0:48:23 | 0:48:26 | |
Who was the author again? KATE LAUGHS | 0:48:26 | 0:48:29 | |
I'm not going to say his/her name. So, you know... But... | 0:48:29 | 0:48:33 | |
I just didn't get it and I thought, "Is it just me?" | 0:48:33 | 0:48:36 | |
And maybe it was just me, but... No, I'm just not going to name it. | 0:48:36 | 0:48:40 | |
But it doesn't matter really, does it? | 0:48:40 | 0:48:41 | |
- I'll tell you backstage. - Yeah, exactly. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:43 | |
Yes, a fiver and I'll tell all of you and the live stream. | 0:48:43 | 0:48:46 | |
But... But in a way, that... | 0:48:46 | 0:48:48 | |
There's a wonderful book by Margaret Atwood called... | 0:48:48 | 0:48:51 | |
Is it Negotiating With The Dead or Talking With The Dead? | 0:48:51 | 0:48:55 | |
Two booksellers. Her book about writing. And it's wonderful. | 0:48:55 | 0:48:58 | |
The last chapter is... | 0:48:58 | 0:49:00 | |
It's not quite a spoof of Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan, | 0:49:00 | 0:49:04 | |
but it's exactly that | 0:49:04 | 0:49:05 | |
and it's her talking to the little book - | 0:49:05 | 0:49:07 | |
"Now it's your time to go out into the world | 0:49:07 | 0:49:09 | |
"and I've given you your knapsack and everything on your back | 0:49:09 | 0:49:11 | |
"and some people will like you and some people won't." | 0:49:11 | 0:49:14 | |
And I think that is the joyous thing. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:16 | |
In a way, the question is always the wrong one - | 0:49:16 | 0:49:18 | |
"Do you LIKE that book or not?" | 0:49:18 | 0:49:20 | |
Does it fit you? And if it doesn't, it doesn't matter, does it? | 0:49:20 | 0:49:24 | |
You know, I... I think it's much better to just think in that way. | 0:49:24 | 0:49:28 | |
Is there a fit between us? | 0:49:28 | 0:49:30 | |
And when I'm writing, you know, | 0:49:30 | 0:49:31 | |
I feel...the book is finished by the reader | 0:49:31 | 0:49:35 | |
and the exciting bit about waiting for a book to come out | 0:49:35 | 0:49:38 | |
is that the white space that you leave as a writer, in your book, | 0:49:38 | 0:49:41 | |
is for the reader to participate in, so the minute you've got your book, | 0:49:41 | 0:49:45 | |
it sits there and it belongs equally to the reader and to the writer | 0:49:45 | 0:49:49 | |
and so it's just that, we won't all fit every reader | 0:49:49 | 0:49:52 | |
and we won't all fit every writer. | 0:49:52 | 0:49:53 | |
There is a lot of classic, great writers | 0:49:53 | 0:49:55 | |
and classic novels that, you know, | 0:49:55 | 0:49:57 | |
just haven't worked for... for you as a particular reader, | 0:49:57 | 0:50:00 | |
but you recognise that they are great writers. | 0:50:00 | 0:50:02 | |
For example, I have never been able to finish a Virginia Woolf novel, | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
but I know that's just me. | 0:50:05 | 0:50:06 | |
- I recognise that... - JOSEPH: It's not just you! | 0:50:06 | 0:50:08 | |
Well, it might not just be me! | 0:50:08 | 0:50:10 | |
But, you know, I wouldn't sit here and say Virginia Woolf is rubbish. | 0:50:10 | 0:50:13 | |
I know it's just not... She's just not a writer that I can... | 0:50:13 | 0:50:17 | |
I'd read a sentence and I don't even know what it means. | 0:50:17 | 0:50:19 | |
You know, I just... I get completely lost. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:21 | |
There always The Lighthouse, just remember. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:23 | |
I've tried a few times, I just don't get it! | 0:50:23 | 0:50:26 | |
Anyone else with a question before we run out of time? | 0:50:26 | 0:50:29 | |
Anyone got anything that they are desperate to ask? | 0:50:29 | 0:50:31 | |
Yes, gentleman there? | 0:50:31 | 0:50:33 | |
Can you say who you are first, please, sir, and then your question? | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
Yes, my name is Fred Chorlton. Em... | 0:50:36 | 0:50:39 | |
I saw Diana Rigg this afternoon and she had asked a lot of famous | 0:50:39 | 0:50:45 | |
of her compatriots and colleagues to relate their worst notices. | 0:50:45 | 0:50:50 | |
I wondered if the panel here may dare to relate theirs | 0:50:50 | 0:50:56 | |
and also what do they feel about critiques anyway. | 0:50:56 | 0:50:59 | |
OK, so, Diana Rigg has built her entire show out of terrible reviews, | 0:50:59 | 0:51:04 | |
so would you, as a nice, positive way to conclude... | 0:51:04 | 0:51:08 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:51:08 | 0:51:10 | |
So, it's a two-part question. | 0:51:10 | 0:51:12 | |
What do you think of the reviews | 0:51:12 | 0:51:13 | |
and what is the worst one you've ever had? Kate Mosse. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:16 | |
Well, em, I'm glad to say | 0:51:16 | 0:51:18 | |
that I am not somebody who learns off by heart the bad reviews | 0:51:18 | 0:51:22 | |
and actors absolutely do. | 0:51:22 | 0:51:24 | |
You know, they can quote every sort of piece of vitriol | 0:51:24 | 0:51:28 | |
that drips from a pen. | 0:51:28 | 0:51:29 | |
I stay away from reviews until my skin has grown back again | 0:51:29 | 0:51:34 | |
and I think that however successful you are or feel you are, | 0:51:34 | 0:51:37 | |
at the point a book is coming out you feel nervous and failed | 0:51:37 | 0:51:41 | |
and a bit stripped raw and so I stay away utterly from reviews | 0:51:41 | 0:51:45 | |
when a book is published because they bubble up after a while. | 0:51:45 | 0:51:49 | |
But there was one that I loved | 0:51:49 | 0:51:51 | |
but everybody else thought I should have been offended by, | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
which was when my novel Labyrinth came out in 2005. | 0:51:54 | 0:51:59 | |
It was described, I thought, in a really - | 0:51:59 | 0:52:02 | |
and it was a very positive review - | 0:52:02 | 0:52:03 | |
as that it was chick lit for girls with A levels. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:06 | |
LAUGHTER And I thought that was great! | 0:52:06 | 0:52:09 | |
But everyone was going, "God, that's really insulting." | 0:52:09 | 0:52:11 | |
So, even there, you see, you can't choose. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:14 | |
I should... I should say that an awful lot of authors | 0:52:14 | 0:52:17 | |
would just be thrilled to be reviewed, period. | 0:52:17 | 0:52:19 | |
Because so many newspapers and magazines are just giving | 0:52:19 | 0:52:23 | |
less and less space to any kind of reviews, | 0:52:23 | 0:52:25 | |
particularly if you write for children. | 0:52:25 | 0:52:27 | |
Some of them just don't bother at all, so it may well be that | 0:52:27 | 0:52:30 | |
many authors go, "I've never had any reviews, so I don't really..." | 0:52:30 | 0:52:33 | |
I know John has had plenty of reviews, so... | 0:52:33 | 0:52:35 | |
I thought you were going to say, "I know John has had | 0:52:35 | 0:52:37 | |
- "a lot of bad reviews." - No, no, no! | 0:52:37 | 0:52:39 | |
- He's ideal to...! - I kind of sidestepped. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:41 | |
So, what do you think about reviews | 0:52:41 | 0:52:43 | |
- and your worst...? - No, I've got... | 0:52:43 | 0:52:44 | |
I love this question because I have never been asked this before | 0:52:44 | 0:52:47 | |
and I think it's a really good question. | 0:52:47 | 0:52:49 | |
I've got two for you and they are both for the same book | 0:52:49 | 0:52:52 | |
and they are both for The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas | 0:52:52 | 0:52:54 | |
and the first one was, when I wrote it first and gave it to my agent, | 0:52:54 | 0:52:57 | |
because it was my first book for young people, | 0:52:57 | 0:52:59 | |
it was given to a children's agent who read it and came back | 0:52:59 | 0:53:02 | |
and said that she had been representing children's books | 0:53:02 | 0:53:05 | |
for about 30 years, had read tens of thousands of them | 0:53:05 | 0:53:08 | |
and this was, without doubt, | 0:53:08 | 0:53:09 | |
the worst book she had ever read in her life. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:11 | |
No-one will buy it, no-one will publish it and that if my agent... | 0:53:11 | 0:53:15 | |
My agent would not give it to his son | 0:53:15 | 0:53:17 | |
who was around the same age at the time. | 0:53:17 | 0:53:19 | |
So that was pretty... That was... That was good. | 0:53:19 | 0:53:22 | |
And then, before the book came out, | 0:53:22 | 0:53:24 | |
in the run-up to the publication, | 0:53:24 | 0:53:26 | |
I was very excited about that book, | 0:53:26 | 0:53:28 | |
I really thought it was going to do something for my life | 0:53:28 | 0:53:31 | |
and the week before it was published, | 0:53:31 | 0:53:34 | |
the very first review went into the Times, the UK Times, | 0:53:34 | 0:53:37 | |
and I don't remember any good lines of any good reviews | 0:53:37 | 0:53:41 | |
that have ever been there for my books, | 0:53:41 | 0:53:42 | |
but I remember this and it called it "a novel of blush-making vulgarity." | 0:53:42 | 0:53:47 | |
KATE GASPS | 0:53:47 | 0:53:48 | |
And I always thought that... There is for the paperback. | 0:53:48 | 0:53:52 | |
"A novel of blush-making vulgarity." | 0:53:52 | 0:53:54 | |
Six million copies sold, New York Times number-one bestseller | 0:53:54 | 0:53:58 | |
- and a movie. - Well, so... | 0:53:58 | 0:53:59 | |
But, you know, why not say it? | 0:53:59 | 0:54:02 | |
You know, it's a good question and... | 0:54:02 | 0:54:04 | |
Joseph, what do you think about reviews and bad ones? | 0:54:04 | 0:54:06 | |
I love them when they are good. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:08 | |
Er... | 0:54:10 | 0:54:11 | |
You've got to take them with a grain of salt. | 0:54:11 | 0:54:14 | |
I think the worst review I ever got was by a Canadian writer, | 0:54:14 | 0:54:19 | |
with my first story collection, said that I'm a great example | 0:54:19 | 0:54:22 | |
of what he was trying to coin as McCanlit, McCanadian lit, so... | 0:54:22 | 0:54:28 | |
And then I found out... | 0:54:28 | 0:54:29 | |
I was like, "Why did he think that about this book?", | 0:54:29 | 0:54:31 | |
because this was as not-that as you can possibly see, I would think, | 0:54:31 | 0:54:36 | |
but then I got to become friends with him and he, one night, | 0:54:36 | 0:54:39 | |
drunkenly admitted to me, | 0:54:39 | 0:54:41 | |
"I didn't even read your book when I reviewed it. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:43 | |
"I was under a deadline, I didn't read it." | 0:54:43 | 0:54:46 | |
- SIMON: That's terrible! - Yeah, it's terrible, | 0:54:46 | 0:54:47 | |
but you know what, I... | 0:54:47 | 0:54:48 | |
But that happens all the time, doesn't it? | 0:54:48 | 0:54:50 | |
What, you mean people review books without actually reading them? | 0:54:50 | 0:54:53 | |
It... It's not unheard of. You know, they read the beginning, middle, end. | 0:54:53 | 0:54:57 | |
Yeah. And he... He freely admitted. Cos I asked him directly. He said... | 0:54:57 | 0:55:03 | |
He used an example of a character | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
who was what's called a shape-shifter in Ojibwe, | 0:55:06 | 0:55:08 | |
somebody who can become a crow or... | 0:55:08 | 0:55:11 | |
that can change, literally, from a person into an animal | 0:55:11 | 0:55:15 | |
and he was saying that this character was a great example of...something. | 0:55:15 | 0:55:20 | |
I said, "But this character is a shape-shifter." | 0:55:20 | 0:55:23 | |
He was like, "Oh." And then he proceeded to admit. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:26 | |
No, one of the worst reviews ever was for Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:33 | |
And, of course, they had kept their identities secret | 0:55:33 | 0:55:36 | |
and it was always thought | 0:55:36 | 0:55:38 | |
that Emily Bronte lived so totally outside of the world | 0:55:38 | 0:55:40 | |
that she wouldn't actually mind about the reactions | 0:55:40 | 0:55:42 | |
and it was this heartbreaking thing | 0:55:42 | 0:55:44 | |
that when she died, some of the reviews | 0:55:44 | 0:55:45 | |
were clipped out and in her desk and they were found by her sisters. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:49 | |
But there was one, | 0:55:49 | 0:55:51 | |
when it became clear that it had been written by a woman, | 0:55:51 | 0:55:53 | |
that said that the book was so appalling, | 0:55:53 | 0:55:56 | |
I can't remember the exact thing, that if they had written it, | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
they would feel that the author should kill themselves. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:01 | |
And I feel that really is a bad review. | 0:56:01 | 0:56:03 | |
It's so bad, you should kill yourself. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:06 | |
No, you really can't go further than that. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:08 | |
- That's about as bad as it gets. - That's as bad as it gets! | 0:56:08 | 0:56:11 | |
In the good old days. | 0:56:11 | 0:56:12 | |
The good old days, back in the 19th century. | 0:56:12 | 0:56:14 | |
We are completely out of time and we're about to get replaced by the... | 0:56:14 | 0:56:17 | |
Lady Boys Of Bangkok or something like that, so... | 0:56:17 | 0:56:20 | |
Were you not asked to stay on for that? | 0:56:20 | 0:56:22 | |
Oh, yes, that's right, that's the next job, I didn't mention that. | 0:56:22 | 0:56:26 | |
Joseph Boyden, Kate Mosse, John Boyne, thank you very much indeed. | 0:56:26 | 0:56:30 | |
Thank you very much for coming. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:31 | |
Thank you very much indeed for your questions. | 0:56:31 | 0:56:34 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:56:34 | 0:56:37 |