:00:07. > :00:11.surrounding Liam fast. -- Liam Fox. Now it is time for HARDtalk. It was
:00:11. > :00:17.word of mouth that propelled the novel We Need to Talk About Kevin
:00:17. > :00:20.onto the best seller lists. It had been given very little publicity.
:00:20. > :00:27.Its author, Lionel Shriver, had struggled to find a publisher in
:00:27. > :00:31.the first place. It was deemed too dark and uncomfortable a read. The
:00:31. > :00:35.musings of a mother on the son she never really liked who turns into a
:00:35. > :00:45.mass killer. Now the story has been made into a critically acclaimed
:00:45. > :00:46.
:00:46. > :00:56.film and is about to reach even larger audiences. Why has such an
:00:56. > :01:13.
:01:13. > :01:20.unnatural tale proved so Welcome to HARDtalk. A pleasure to
:01:20. > :01:25.be it. Does what it is like to be watching your novel turned into a
:01:25. > :01:33.film with notable actors and the notes that only eight years ago you
:01:33. > :01:41.were struggling with a manuscript and a publisher? Life has improved.
:01:41. > :01:45.It must be an amazing feeling. is exciting, but at the same time
:01:45. > :01:52.it is strangely distance. Not just because I wrote the novel some time
:01:52. > :01:58.ago, but it was the film is not my creation. It uses my characters,
:01:58. > :02:08.plot. But it is not mine in the same way. There is their release in
:02:08. > :02:10.
:02:10. > :02:15.that. I enjoyed the dispassion with which I greeted. Many novelists
:02:15. > :02:20.describe how they dislike watching the film because it is so different.
:02:20. > :02:30.She was true to the scenes in New York and he seemed happy so far
:02:30. > :02:34.
:02:34. > :02:40.about the way that the book was portrayed. By an. Many novelists
:02:40. > :02:44.are not happy but this is not the case here. It is a fine film. It
:02:44. > :02:50.has its own slant, but that is to be expected. There are your
:02:50. > :02:54.characters on the screen. And it makes up a few scenes, but for the
:02:55. > :02:59.most part a recognise the scenes from the book. It was hilarious for
:02:59. > :03:05.me seeing the name of the shabby travel agent that the main
:03:05. > :03:15.character works at in the present tense. It is called trouble or us,
:03:15. > :03:17.
:03:17. > :03:23.which is meant to be tacky. -- Travel or us. It was a name I grab
:03:23. > :03:29.doubted the air. And then be film- makers have to construct the whole
:03:29. > :03:37.thing. And see these things materialise, the small and often
:03:37. > :03:45.arbitrary choices, is hilarious for a fiction writer. The woman who
:03:45. > :03:50.made the film decided she wanted to make that will be for the book was
:03:50. > :03:56.a commercial success. Yes, she took a shine to it before it was on the
:03:56. > :04:03.bestseller list. That was a process repeated many times. You approach
:04:03. > :04:07.to 30 publishing houses? I tried to get an agent for this book. Went
:04:07. > :04:13.through 17 agents in the US before I finally went directly to a
:04:13. > :04:19.publisher. To that woman's credit, she read it over the weekends and
:04:19. > :04:24.bought it on Monday. In the UK, once we started to sell the British
:04:24. > :04:33.rights it went to 30 different companies before this little
:04:33. > :04:39.attention that could, serpents tail, Baltic for a small fee. --
:04:39. > :04:44.purchased it. It was something like �2,000, pathetic. I live in the UK
:04:44. > :04:52.and it was important that it was published he Timmy. Though he
:04:52. > :04:56.accepted an arrest these history. You wrote your literary agent and
:04:56. > :05:03.received back a way of dismay and a request that you pay your
:05:03. > :05:08.photocopying bills. She did not like it. She hated it. And therein
:05:08. > :05:15.up. They thought it was Ziebell. She honestly thought it what the
:05:15. > :05:25.will and that it suggested that I was Ziebell. So, have you had
:05:25. > :05:29.
:05:29. > :05:39.communication with the scenes? thought it was e -- the opposite of
:05:39. > :05:40.
:05:40. > :05:48.poorly. There was an article suggesting that women in New New
:05:48. > :05:55.York where very excited are the book. Not only women but parents
:05:56. > :06:00.and prospective parents were great for to see parents were depicted in
:06:00. > :06:08.fiction in a way that the way the rose-coloured glasses. It is de
:06:08. > :06:12.romanticised. It is not simply a book about a high school killer. It
:06:12. > :06:19.is also about the early stages of breaking a kid and how frustrating
:06:19. > :06:25.it is. And frankly how boring it is also you might have a master's
:06:25. > :06:29.degree and you're make teaching you what I'll be a off of it. It is not
:06:29. > :06:34.necessarily exhilarating. I think that readers were grateful to see
:06:34. > :06:39.at Port Vale of a family that was not just little kids around the
:06:39. > :06:44.dinner table saying what he thinks be on the years. But it was more
:06:44. > :06:49.than that. It was so much that he did not like a child. A novel that
:06:50. > :06:59.recognises that just because a child is wrong it does not mean
:06:59. > :07:05.that they are relate it you emotionally. That children are no
:07:05. > :07:11.strangers that you have it done up. You may or may not like them. Most
:07:11. > :07:21.parents probably do have at least those of dislike and frustration
:07:21. > :07:26.with their children. This book gives people like that permission
:07:26. > :07:32.because previously we have been told: You have this underlying, on
:07:32. > :07:35.pop art, unconditional love for your child. And when he did not
:07:35. > :07:40.always experience that, you think there is something wrong with you.
:07:40. > :07:50.The media has always told me that if you do not feel that way, you
:07:50. > :07:50.
:07:50. > :07:55.had better keep your mouth shut. This is a novel that finally gate
:07:55. > :08:00.mother's permission to think that will stomp you breached what he
:08:00. > :08:10.described as the Last obit. It is amazing that I could find eight her
:08:10. > :08:16.
:08:16. > :08:22.view that we had not broken. -- fined eight had be --.
:08:22. > :08:28.You became what you described as a postal or maternal ambivalence. But
:08:28. > :08:32.people look at New York and I am said, how an inner because it has
:08:32. > :08:37.got any children. That is written about in the latest versions of the
:08:37. > :08:44.book. That was where the main reasons he did not have children,
:08:44. > :08:48.may be acting in I Love You it up. I concede that it was Sheekey of
:08:48. > :08:53.mid to write a novel about a mother-some relationship when I did
:08:54. > :08:58.not have any children myself. But I think that the fact that it not
:08:58. > :09:04.have children, especially in up to a son, make it possible to write
:09:04. > :09:10.his book. If I had ace who I knew would grow up and read it I think
:09:10. > :09:15.it would have been inhibiting. is interesting to see their
:09:15. > :09:20.reaction from women. It was polarising in many ways.
:09:20. > :09:26.Interestingly, what polarise the leadership was the issue of
:09:26. > :09:35.responsibility. It is the end of will that poses the question, drily,
:09:35. > :09:40.nature vs nurture. Whose fault was this atrocity put an was the
:09:40. > :09:46.problem that this poor little boy grew up with that Loveless mother
:09:46. > :09:55.and was distorted into a monster? All was be something wrong with him
:09:55. > :10:03.from but and that is not his mother's fault's and the readership
:10:03. > :10:07.really gathered in two years go at us. At Gatt that at this year's ab
:10:07. > :10:11.Matt King Paul Potts. I have been told over and over again that they
:10:11. > :10:18.got into ferocious bite. Half of them thought it was the mother's
:10:18. > :10:21.will. The other half said that the boy was it. That among the main
:10:21. > :10:27.gates soldier be at that but she could not have done anything to
:10:27. > :10:33.prevent what happened. I love this DUP. I like to sit on the sidelines
:10:33. > :10:39.and watch them fight it out. you did sit on the sidelines.
:10:39. > :10:44.is always a point when I do an event and someone says, now that we
:10:44. > :10:48.have you here, could you please settle this issue? Was said Kevin's
:10:48. > :10:58.fault, was there something wrong with him, or was it a mother's
:10:58. > :11:01.
:11:01. > :11:11.fault? And I pretty reliably say: I have not told you in 400 pages. I
:11:11. > :11:11.
:11:11. > :11:18.am not going to enough. You said he decided at the age old seven that
:11:18. > :11:25.she did not want to put children. There was never a moment of
:11:25. > :11:33.breeding a singer alive? I would not call it broodiness, at the
:11:33. > :11:38.moment I came to reviewing that decision was in this book. Let's
:11:38. > :11:44.not let it eight-year-old vows go unexamined in adults. So I had to
:11:44. > :11:49.think about it. Most of all the book is a contemplation of what he
:11:49. > :11:53.was about motherhood which frightened me. It to answer the
:11:53. > :11:59.degree deliver much of what frightens me. His original
:11:59. > :12:02.manuscript was 200 pages longer. what is it about mother put that
:12:02. > :12:12.right and you? Despite the boredom of teaching the alphabet to wait
:12:12. > :12:13.
:12:13. > :12:17.for up? These subsidiary nature of it, if that is a word. The putting
:12:17. > :12:23.someone else first. I know that does not make me sound very good,
:12:23. > :12:27.but that's all right. I am not used to putting someone else first and
:12:27. > :12:35.being morally obliged to put some as those. I was anxious that it
:12:35. > :12:41.would disturb my sense of be why was. That the invasion of another
:12:41. > :12:51.person and in needs would obliterate me in some ways. I think
:12:51. > :12:56.women often have this experience of having who they understand the p,
:12:56. > :13:01.unsettled. Having a child completely shakes their confidence
:13:01. > :13:07.about the rain identity. It was such an unusual argument to hear
:13:07. > :13:13.when you came out with Kevin and you made his point. Did you get a
:13:13. > :13:18.response to someone who haven't had children? Saying, at last, I could
:13:18. > :13:24.have been here for another reason. ID get any number of people, and
:13:24. > :13:30.still do, coming up to me and saying: You have justified my
:13:30. > :13:34.decision or what is even worse, my boyfriend and I read that book and
:13:34. > :13:39.now we have decided we are not having kids. It was never the
:13:39. > :13:49.purpose of the novel. I never intended to become a poster girl
:13:49. > :13:49.
:13:49. > :13:54.for barren women. I am not on a campaign to stop reproduction and
:13:55. > :13:59.therefore to bring the human race to a conclusion. You talked about
:14:00. > :14:05.the idea of what it means to be a female. When you were 15 you
:14:05. > :14:15.changed your name from Margaret and to Lionel. You are quoted as saying
:14:15. > :14:16.
:14:17. > :14:24.that you always resented the Of course we are all confined by
:14:24. > :14:29.one thing or another. I do not have children. It is the experience of
:14:29. > :14:38.parenthood, and of lineage, Charing on a lineage, it is closed off to
:14:38. > :14:47.me. That is a kind of confinement. You did not feel any more confined
:14:47. > :14:53.being a woman? You changed your name to a man's name, you want to
:14:53. > :15:00.be a man? I want to be everybody. I want to be both genders. That is
:15:00. > :15:04.what fiction writing is about. It's an exploration. It is trying to get
:15:04. > :15:10.out and understand what it is like to be other people. That is true
:15:10. > :15:19.for the writer and the reader. I am a big reader as well. When we look
:15:19. > :15:26.at the other subjects you have done, you are described as a fairly
:15:26. > :15:36.merciless, unrelenting, what you did with a perfectly good family,
:15:36. > :15:37.
:15:37. > :15:46.was right about one family and inheritance... You are one of three
:15:46. > :15:51.children, it caused great tension within your own family. You
:15:51. > :15:55.described it as entering perilous territory. That is when it starts
:15:55. > :16:05.getting interesting. That is the only book I have ever written that
:16:05. > :16:11.was more or less based on people I knew, in this case my family. The
:16:11. > :16:14.setting is made up. It is a fight between three siblings over the
:16:14. > :16:19.inheritance of the house in which they grow up. This is not the house
:16:19. > :16:24.in which I grew up. Your parents are still alive? My parents are
:16:24. > :16:32.very much alive. There was the story in the book and then there is
:16:32. > :16:38.the story of the book. The story of the book was as big as the one in.
:16:38. > :16:44.My family was very upset by that. It was one of those damned if you
:16:44. > :16:50.do, damned if you do not things. If you change lot of things, you
:16:50. > :16:56.change the professions and the plot, you changed everything. Then they
:16:56. > :17:00.say, I did not do that, I did not say that, it is a total distortion.
:17:00. > :17:06.But then if you use anything from real life it is a betrayal and
:17:06. > :17:11.exposure. Your parents threaten to disinherit you, you're younger
:17:11. > :17:21.brother did not speak here for a couple of beers. Has your
:17:21. > :17:21.
:17:21. > :17:24.relationship with your family been patched up? Yes, it has. Everyone
:17:24. > :17:34.remembers. Things were said they should not have been said. I am
:17:34. > :17:41.glad that we have all got past dead. It gave me some pause. -- got past
:17:41. > :17:45.it. If somebody read a book in which I was a character and not
:17:45. > :17:51.portrayed it in an entirely flattering light, I do not think I
:17:51. > :17:56.would like it either. If there is any justice in this world, someone
:17:56. > :18:03.is out there writing about me. Unfortunately, there is not usually
:18:03. > :18:09.justice in this world. You said, even knowing, if he knew what was
:18:09. > :18:15.going to happen, you still would have written the book? Yes, that is
:18:15. > :18:21.right. It is a good book as far as I am concerned. It is funny. It
:18:21. > :18:29.gets out an interesting issue about inheritance. But it damaged your
:18:29. > :18:34.relationship with your family irrevocably. I do not know who said
:18:34. > :18:40.it was that writers have to have a piece of ice in their heart, I
:18:40. > :18:45.suppose I do. Yes, I would make the emotional sacrifice to write the
:18:45. > :18:51.book. I do not think that reflects well on me. But I liked the book
:18:51. > :19:01.and I am glad I read it. That said, if I had to do it again, I think I
:19:01. > :19:03.
:19:03. > :19:10.would find five or six lines that I would get rid of and the ball would
:19:10. > :19:16.still be... It would give justice to it without those lines. That is
:19:16. > :19:22.not the kind of perspective you often achieve by publication. That
:19:22. > :19:27.is the perspective you get ten years later. You say you like
:19:27. > :19:34.perilous territory, you like the difficult things. Many people might
:19:34. > :19:43.wonder what is driving you? Your treatment of every story is hard,
:19:43. > :19:49.it is difficult. It makes difficult reading. My goodness, many people
:19:49. > :19:54.who read your books want to put it down because it is so tough to read.
:19:54. > :19:58.We do not need more books in which boy meets girl, boy and girl breaks
:19:58. > :20:02.up, boy and girl gets together again. There are a lot of books out
:20:02. > :20:07.there, I want to make some contribution in the short time I am
:20:07. > :20:16.around. I am looking around in the dark corners where nobody has
:20:16. > :20:19.explored before. That way I am serving a purpose. I am interested
:20:19. > :20:26.in the difference between what life is supposed to be like and what it
:20:26. > :20:32.is really like. Kevin, very example, is an explanation of that
:20:32. > :20:36.dissonance. It is a dissonance that most normal people feel. It is not
:20:36. > :20:40.just something for fictional characters all writers. You are
:20:40. > :20:47.always dealing with the intention between your expectations and what
:20:47. > :20:50.you have been told, what adulthood is like, what getting married is
:20:50. > :20:58.like, then you find out for yourself and it is very different.
:20:58. > :21:03.Could you write about your husband? Sure, I would. He is incredibly
:21:03. > :21:09.generous on that point. He has made an appearance from time to time in
:21:09. > :21:16.one form or another. He says that his fiction and that is your job.
:21:16. > :21:24.He has never said, you'd better take that out. He is very open
:21:24. > :21:34.hearted on that one. You have been writing about obesity, Europe elder
:21:34. > :21:42.brother... That is a book that I have not completed yet. It is
:21:43. > :21:51.almost finished. Your brother died young as a result of obesity?
:21:51. > :22:00.are complications of morbid obesity. He had diabetes. Your particular
:22:00. > :22:05.concern is the movement within the US in particular, saying, this is
:22:05. > :22:10.an acceptable way to live? I am not writing about the fat pride
:22:10. > :22:15.movement. There will come a time when I am more interested in
:22:15. > :22:20.talking about this, but this book is not finished yet. This is the
:22:20. > :22:26.subject that I am always on the lookout for. On the one hand, this
:22:26. > :22:32.is a huge social problem, it is an economic problem on the health
:22:32. > :22:37.service in the UK as well as the US. It is also an extremely personal
:22:37. > :22:41.problem and an emotional one. People have intense feelings about
:22:42. > :22:47.their weight these days. Because of that, that is what I am always
:22:47. > :22:54.looking for. It has some social ramifications, but it is perfect
:22:54. > :22:59.for fiction because it is a private source. What seems strange about
:22:59. > :23:08.you is that you write this difficult subject, you write them
:23:09. > :23:18.in a difficult way, in an unforgiving way, yet you are quite
:23:18. > :23:23.thin-skinned with critics... remember the bad reviews rather
:23:23. > :23:32.than good ones. If you talk to most writers, they say the same thing. I
:23:32. > :23:35.do not think I am particularly thin-skinned. It is ludicrous to
:23:35. > :23:40.pretend if someone says incredibly mean things about something that
:23:40. > :23:48.you worked incredibly hard on, it does not affect you. On the other
:23:48. > :23:57.hand, my experience with Kevin has been that I have now read, sorry to
:23:57. > :24:03.sound arrogant, so many positive reviews of that book that when I
:24:03. > :24:10.trip across a negative one, I blow it off. There was one from the
:24:10. > :24:20.Irish Times that was so over-the- top, she hated it so much! It made
:24:20. > :24:20.