Fiona Mozley Meet the Author


Fiona Mozley

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Now its time for Meet

the Author, with Jim Naughtie.

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Fiona Mozley's Elmet is a story that

you might describe as contemporary

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Gothic, raw and dark and lyrical

with a rich bit of melodrama, debut

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novel powerfully enough to take it

to the man Booker short list in the

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autumn, told by a 14-year-old, it

sets the here and now against a

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brutal and more elemental past and

explores a complex and ambiguous

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flesh ship between three members of

a family who are all in their own

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ways different -- ambiguous

relationship. Welcome.

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It's interesting that in trying to

write about the contemporary world,

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trying to say something about the

contemporary world, you were drawn

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to a wild past, a man who lives on

land that he doesn't own in a house

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that was built with his own hands.

How did you come to feel that that

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was the best avenue to write about

the here and now?

I think contrast

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is always a good two when trying to

talk about something very specific,

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and I did want to address the issues

of today. I think those are brought

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into relief by considering the

history of the place, kind of old

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ways of living, different ways of

living, and I wanted to place those

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things together and see what

happened.

To suggest although we

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think we are more civilised than

people were many years ago, that is

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not necessarily true?

Modes of

reality change, sometimes for the

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better and sometimes for the worse

and I wanted to examine that. I also

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wanted to suggest that the

boundaries of landscape have not

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always been the same. Borders

change. They are mutable. By giving

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the novel a older feel, I wanted to

suggest that not only things have

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been different in the past but they

can be in the future.

The question

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of ownership of land and property,

it produces a very dramatic even

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melodramatic ending which we won't

describe in detail, to spoil it for

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those who haven't read the book, but

let's talk about the plot. It is

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told by Daniel who is 14, and it is

a story that revolves around his

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slightly older sister and their

father. It is a very tight

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conception. The stage is not very

crowded.

I wanted to include these

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three characters and they are all

serving a different purpose, by our

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very different in temperament and

very different physically. I wanted

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to explore the relationship between

temperament and body and they are

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all trying to look at each other and

thing, how do you work, I can't

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understand it because I'm so very

different from you.

The father is a

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very Heathcliff type of figure.

Slightly unfair, but you know what I

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mean, there is a strength and

fearsome strength about him. The way

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he feels he can mould the world to

his purpose physically.

Yes. He's a

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masculine archetype, exaggerated and

deliberately exaggerated and there

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is much about this book which is

deliberately excite you read it. --

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deliberately exaggerated. He

embodies everything which is

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positive and negative about

masculine table top Cathy, the

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daughter, she rolls her own

cigarettes all the time. She does

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indeed. Her issue is that she takes

after her father in many respects

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but not physically, she can never

match his strength. She is

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constantly being underestimated by

those around her.

Daniel is stuck

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with telling the story which it does

worry touchingly and lyrically. When

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you have described it justifies the

phrase which are used moment ago,

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that it is a Gothic novel in many

ways. It uses extremists, almost as

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if it is lit in bright colours and

dark moustache extremes -- extremes.

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I do see this as a genre piece and I

was influenced by the narrative arc

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of Westerns, I was influenced by the

setting of Yorkshire, and because

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this plays with the genre there are

moments which are familiar in their

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in their extremity and melodrama.

There's a lot of touching the

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landscape involved in this. Elmet is

a place to this day, but it was the

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last Celtic kingdom?

That's right.

In around the seventh and eighth

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century, it was the last kingdom

that kept... In England, that is,

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that kept its Celtic heritage, and

that was a term which is problematic

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in many respects, but there is

something separate and distinct

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about it. Ted Hughes has written

about this.

Ted Hughes came from

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that soil and he did write about

this, do that influence you?

Yes and

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no.

-- deed.

I read his poems as I

was drawing to the end of the

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project. But I think that they did

influence it in some respects.

The

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passion that he instils in the

relationship between people and

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their surroundings, physical

surroundings, is one of his great

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characteristics, and that is clearly

what you are trying to get to here,

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there's a great deal of lyricism in

the course of a story which is

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sometimes quite dark and spare and

even brutal, and the plot, but you

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imbue this with a lyrical top

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even brutal, and the plot, but you

imbue this with a lyrical top.

I was

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aware there were so much darkness in

it, so much which was a pleasant and

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I really wanted to counter balance

it with some lightness -- on

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present. I wanted the description of

the place and the family

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relationships to have a warmth and

in terms of the landscape is so much

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about physicality and I wanted it to

be a landscape that you could reach

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out and touch, something that

appealed to all the human senses.

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Without going into the details of

the climax of the book, there is a

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sense with which there is a victory

of sorts but nevertheless the book

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has a feeling of something that has

been lost.

There is a sense of loss.

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So much of the book is about a lost

world, people trying to recover that

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lost world.

You are still in your

20s.

Just about.

So, this is a book

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that to some degree must be seen as

one that speaks of your generation.

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Do you think the sensibility you are

bringing to this is one which is

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quite common? That there is a

feeling as people of your age look

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forward, that it is inescapable that

something has gone?

I think so.

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Certainly in terms of forging a home

and finding a place to live, that is

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one of the greatest challenges.

That

is at the centre of the story.

It is

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a book set in Yorkshire but I

started writing it in London, so it

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has a double identity.

First novel,

you end up on the man Booker short

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list, alongside the winning book and

authors like Paul Auster,

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extraordinary.

Yes, it is. The

enormity of it only hit me at the

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ceremony, because part of me had

been trying to shut it down, and

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just take it one step at a time, but

when I got to the ceremony and all

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those people around me, that is when

it dawned on me, that my life had

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changed.

To put it crudely, it must

be encouraging, you want to write,

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you are doing a Ph.D. Part-time at

the University of York.

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Fundamentally you want to write

fiction and that is not bad way to

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start.

Yes, it is a pretty good way

to start, and one other thing is the

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short listing has done for me is

allowed me to be more daring in the

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future. There is an issue with who

gets to write, the sort of fiction

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that different people get to write

and feel entitled to write and this

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short listing allows me to be brave

in the future, I hope.

Fiona Mozley,

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author of Elmet, thank you very

much.

Thank

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