Lionel Shriver - Author HARDtalk

surrounding Liam fast. -- Liam Fox. Now it is time for HARDtalk. It was

word of mouth that propelled the novel We Need to Talk About Kevin

onto the best seller lists. It had been given very little publicity.

Its author, Lionel Shriver, had struggled to find a publisher in

the first place. It was deemed too dark and uncomfortable a read. The

musings of a mother on the son she never really liked who turns into a

mass killer. Now the story has been made into a critically acclaimed

film and is about to reach even larger audiences. Why has such an

unnatural tale proved so Welcome to HARDtalk. A pleasure to

be it. Does what it is like to be watching your novel turned into a

film with notable actors and the notes that only eight years ago you

were struggling with a manuscript and a publisher? Life has improved.

It must be an amazing feeling. is exciting, but at the same time

it is strangely distance. Not just because I wrote the novel some time

ago, but it was the film is not my creation. It uses my characters,

plot. But it is not mine in the same way. There is their release in

that. I enjoyed the dispassion with which I greeted. Many novelists

describe how they dislike watching the film because it is so different.

She was true to the scenes in New York and he seemed happy so far

about the way that the book was portrayed. By an. Many novelists

are not happy but this is not the case here. It is a fine film. It

has its own slant, but that is to be expected. There are your

characters on the screen. And it makes up a few scenes, but for the

most part a recognise the scenes from the book. It was hilarious for

me seeing the name of the shabby travel agent that the main

character works at in the present tense. It is called trouble or us,

which is meant to be tacky. -- Travel or us. It was a name I grab

doubted the air. And then be film- makers have to construct the whole

thing. And see these things materialise, the small and often

arbitrary choices, is hilarious for a fiction writer. The woman who

made the film decided she wanted to make that will be for the book was

a commercial success. Yes, she took a shine to it before it was on the

bestseller list. That was a process repeated many times. You approach

to 30 publishing houses? I tried to get an agent for this book. Went

through 17 agents in the US before I finally went directly to a

publisher. To that woman's credit, she read it over the weekends and

bought it on Monday. In the UK, once we started to sell the British

rights it went to 30 different companies before this little

attention that could, serpents tail, Baltic for a small fee. --

purchased it. It was something like �2,000, pathetic. I live in the UK

and it was important that it was published he Timmy. Though he

accepted an arrest these history. You wrote your literary agent and

received back a way of dismay and a request that you pay your

photocopying bills. She did not like it. She hated it. And therein

up. They thought it was Ziebell. She honestly thought it what the

will and that it suggested that I was Ziebell. So, have you had

communication with the scenes? thought it was e -- the opposite of

poorly. There was an article suggesting that women in New New

York where very excited are the book. Not only women but parents

and prospective parents were great for to see parents were depicted in

fiction in a way that the way the rose-coloured glasses. It is de

romanticised. It is not simply a book about a high school killer. It

is also about the early stages of breaking a kid and how frustrating

it is. And frankly how boring it is also you might have a master's

degree and you're make teaching you what I'll be a off of it. It is not

necessarily exhilarating. I think that readers were grateful to see

at Port Vale of a family that was not just little kids around the

dinner table saying what he thinks be on the years. But it was more

than that. It was so much that he did not like a child. A novel that

recognises that just because a child is wrong it does not mean

that they are relate it you emotionally. That children are no

strangers that you have it done up. You may or may not like them. Most

parents probably do have at least those of dislike and frustration

with their children. This book gives people like that permission

because previously we have been told: You have this underlying, on

pop art, unconditional love for your child. And when he did not

always experience that, you think there is something wrong with you.

The media has always told me that if you do not feel that way, you

had better keep your mouth shut. This is a novel that finally gate

mother's permission to think that will stomp you breached what he

described as the Last obit. It is amazing that I could find eight her

view that we had not broken. -- fined eight had be --.

You became what you described as a postal or maternal ambivalence. But

people look at New York and I am said, how an inner because it has

got any children. That is written about in the latest versions of the

book. That was where the main reasons he did not have children,

may be acting in I Love You it up. I concede that it was Sheekey of

mid to write a novel about a mother-some relationship when I did

not have any children myself. But I think that the fact that it not

have children, especially in up to a son, make it possible to write

his book. If I had ace who I knew would grow up and read it I think

it would have been inhibiting. is interesting to see their

reaction from women. It was polarising in many ways.

Interestingly, what polarise the leadership was the issue of

responsibility. It is the end of will that poses the question, drily,

nature vs nurture. Whose fault was this atrocity put an was the

problem that this poor little boy grew up with that Loveless mother

and was distorted into a monster? All was be something wrong with him

from but and that is not his mother's fault's and the readership

really gathered in two years go at us. At Gatt that at this year's ab

Matt King Paul Potts. I have been told over and over again that they

got into ferocious bite. Half of them thought it was the mother's

will. The other half said that the boy was it. That among the main

gates soldier be at that but she could not have done anything to

prevent what happened. I love this DUP. I like to sit on the sidelines

and watch them fight it out. you did sit on the sidelines.

is always a point when I do an event and someone says, now that we

have you here, could you please settle this issue? Was said Kevin's

fault, was there something wrong with him, or was it a mother's

fault? And I pretty reliably say: I have not told you in 400 pages. I

am not going to enough. You said he decided at the age old seven that

she did not want to put children. There was never a moment of

breeding a singer alive? I would not call it broodiness, at the

moment I came to reviewing that decision was in this book. Let's

not let it eight-year-old vows go unexamined in adults. So I had to

think about it. Most of all the book is a contemplation of what he

was about motherhood which frightened me. It to answer the

degree deliver much of what frightens me. His original

manuscript was 200 pages longer. what is it about mother put that

right and you? Despite the boredom of teaching the alphabet to wait

for up? These subsidiary nature of it, if that is a word. The putting

someone else first. I know that does not make me sound very good,

but that's all right. I am not used to putting someone else first and

being morally obliged to put some as those. I was anxious that it

would disturb my sense of be why was. That the invasion of another

person and in needs would obliterate me in some ways. I think

women often have this experience of having who they understand the p,

unsettled. Having a child completely shakes their confidence

about the rain identity. It was such an unusual argument to hear

when you came out with Kevin and you made his point. Did you get a

response to someone who haven't had children? Saying, at last, I could

have been here for another reason. ID get any number of people, and

still do, coming up to me and saying: You have justified my

decision or what is even worse, my boyfriend and I read that book and

now we have decided we are not having kids. It was never the

purpose of the novel. I never intended to become a poster girl

for barren women. I am not on a campaign to stop reproduction and

therefore to bring the human race to a conclusion. You talked about

the idea of what it means to be a female. When you were 15 you

changed your name from Margaret and to Lionel. You are quoted as saying

that you always resented the Of course we are all confined by

one thing or another. I do not have children. It is the experience of

parenthood, and of lineage, Charing on a lineage, it is closed off to

me. That is a kind of confinement. You did not feel any more confined

being a woman? You changed your name to a man's name, you want to

be a man? I want to be everybody. I want to be both genders. That is

what fiction writing is about. It's an exploration. It is trying to get

out and understand what it is like to be other people. That is true

for the writer and the reader. I am a big reader as well. When we look

at the other subjects you have done, you are described as a fairly

merciless, unrelenting, what you did with a perfectly good family,

was right about one family and inheritance... You are one of three

children, it caused great tension within your own family. You

described it as entering perilous territory. That is when it starts

getting interesting. That is the only book I have ever written that

was more or less based on people I knew, in this case my family. The

setting is made up. It is a fight between three siblings over the

inheritance of the house in which they grow up. This is not the house

in which I grew up. Your parents are still alive? My parents are

very much alive. There was the story in the book and then there is

the story of the book. The story of the book was as big as the one in.

My family was very upset by that. It was one of those damned if you

do, damned if you do not things. If you change lot of things, you

change the professions and the plot, you changed everything. Then they

say, I did not do that, I did not say that, it is a total distortion.

But then if you use anything from real life it is a betrayal and

exposure. Your parents threaten to disinherit you, you're younger

brother did not speak here for a couple of beers. Has your

relationship with your family been patched up? Yes, it has. Everyone

remembers. Things were said they should not have been said. I am

glad that we have all got past dead. It gave me some pause. -- got past

it. If somebody read a book in which I was a character and not

portrayed it in an entirely flattering light, I do not think I

would like it either. If there is any justice in this world, someone

is out there writing about me. Unfortunately, there is not usually

justice in this world. You said, even knowing, if he knew what was

going to happen, you still would have written the book? Yes, that is

right. It is a good book as far as I am concerned. It is funny. It

gets out an interesting issue about inheritance. But it damaged your

relationship with your family irrevocably. I do not know who said

it was that writers have to have a piece of ice in their heart, I

suppose I do. Yes, I would make the emotional sacrifice to write the

book. I do not think that reflects well on me. But I liked the book

and I am glad I read it. That said, if I had to do it again, I think I

would find five or six lines that I would get rid of and the ball would

still be... It would give justice to it without those lines. That is

not the kind of perspective you often achieve by publication. That

is the perspective you get ten years later. You say you like

perilous territory, you like the difficult things. Many people might

wonder what is driving you? Your treatment of every story is hard,

it is difficult. It makes difficult reading. My goodness, many people

who read your books want to put it down because it is so tough to read.

We do not need more books in which boy meets girl, boy and girl breaks

up, boy and girl gets together again. There are a lot of books out

there, I want to make some contribution in the short time I am

around. I am looking around in the dark corners where nobody has

explored before. That way I am serving a purpose. I am interested

in the difference between what life is supposed to be like and what it

is really like. Kevin, very example, is an explanation of that

dissonance. It is a dissonance that most normal people feel. It is not

just something for fictional characters all writers. You are

always dealing with the intention between your expectations and what

you have been told, what adulthood is like, what getting married is

like, then you find out for yourself and it is very different.

Could you write about your husband? Sure, I would. He is incredibly

generous on that point. He has made an appearance from time to time in

one form or another. He says that his fiction and that is your job.

He has never said, you'd better take that out. He is very open

hearted on that one. You have been writing about obesity, Europe elder

brother... That is a book that I have not completed yet. It is

almost finished. Your brother died young as a result of obesity?

are complications of morbid obesity. He had diabetes. Your particular

concern is the movement within the US in particular, saying, this is

an acceptable way to live? I am not writing about the fat pride

movement. There will come a time when I am more interested in

talking about this, but this book is not finished yet. This is the

subject that I am always on the lookout for. On the one hand, this

is a huge social problem, it is an economic problem on the health

service in the UK as well as the US. It is also an extremely personal

problem and an emotional one. People have intense feelings about

their weight these days. Because of that, that is what I am always

looking for. It has some social ramifications, but it is perfect

for fiction because it is a private source. What seems strange about

you is that you write this difficult subject, you write them

in a difficult way, in an unforgiving way, yet you are quite

thin-skinned with critics... remember the bad reviews rather

than good ones. If you talk to most writers, they say the same thing. I

do not think I am particularly thin-skinned. It is ludicrous to

pretend if someone says incredibly mean things about something that

you worked incredibly hard on, it does not affect you. On the other

hand, my experience with Kevin has been that I have now read, sorry to

sound arrogant, so many positive reviews of that book that when I

trip across a negative one, I blow it off. There was one from the

Irish Times that was so over-the- top, she hated it so much! It made