Leo Benedictus Meet the Author

to get in en masse development. --

might want to get in on this

development.

We shall see. Thank

you.

Thank you.

Now it's time for Meet the Author.

We all watch other people, but most

of us feel uncomfortable when we

become too curious about them.

Why they're doing this or that,

what they're thinking.

Consent by Leo Benedictus

is a novel that describes

the nightmare of a curiosity that

becomes an obsession.

Cruel and destructive,

it takes us into the

mind of a stalker whose

life is shaped by his

targets, his victims.

Quite simply, it is

a contemporary horror story.

Welcome.

The central figure in this

book has got a mind

which is clearly disturbed.

And you had to get inside it.

Because you're telling

the story from his point of

view for most of the book.

How difficult was it to do that?

I suppose the honest answer is it

maybe wasn't as difficult as I'd

like it to have been.

What does that say about you?

Well, I know, I mean,

I think for me...

In a way the primary

aspect of the book was the

way that I am going to talk

to readers, and the way that he is

going to talk to readers.

And I found that by

talking in that intimate,

deeply present way, that

I

think he feels in relation to

the people that he stalks, I found

myself quite naturally

talking like him.

I mean I spent a long time writing

the book, about five years,

and I think it probably

grew over time.

But by the end of it I could talk

like him at the drop of a hat,

a bit too easily.

We're talking about a man

who is a stalker, who

stalks dozens and dozens

and dozens of people,

remembers the first one and so on.

It then becomes a violent

obsession late in the book.

But what fascinates me,

as we were saying at

the beginning there,

is that we are all,

to some extent, curious in that way.

You can sit opposite

somebody in the train

and you think, why are

they reading that,

where are they going,

what are they doing?

But we all know there

is a point beyond

which you don't go.

And imagining what happens

when you don't have

that control mechanism is really

quite terrifying, isn't it?

I think so.

I certainly felt that way.

Do you know, I'd be

interested to know

how many other novelists feel this

way, because being a novelist

especially, I've found,

after my first book,

I was looking at people

all the time, and making little

mental notes all the time

about details of behaviour and...

Someone would say something

in a conversation

and secretly I'd be

at

work thinking, that would be

good, I can use that.

I think all of us are

stalkers in that way.

In one sense, this character

does some dreadful

things in the second half

of the book, it's just doing that,

it's just that it becomes a habit

and he

thinks it's quite normal.

Yeah, he clearly never

notices a moment when

he goes off the rails,

and I think really

struggles with the idea

that

maybe he has gone off the rails,

but he could put his finger

on exactly when it happened.

And I do like that idea as well

of how blurred the line

is between being interested

in someone, maybe fancying someone,

maybe wanting to talk to someone,

maybe finding out a little bit more

about them before you do.

And before you know it

you're standing outside

their house.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, I think that's

how it works for him,

yeah.

Do you have an attraction to horror?

I mean here we have a situation

in which he is inside

people's bedrooms,

inside their heads,

watching their most intimate

behaviour, you know, their

conversation with

a lover for example.

It's terrifying stuff.

I suppose I must do, yeah.

I don't know exactly why.

I know that for a long time

I felt when writing novels

actually a sense of guilt

about what I'm doing,

because I know that I'm not doing it

in the interest of

readers, I'm not trying to bring

them something generous and mind

expanding, I'm just

writing because I need

to and I'm writing

about what interests me.

I'm hoping that I can

grip their attention for long enough

to make them interested.

So he's just a writer

who's gone a little

bit further.

Well, yes he is, though I don't

think I'm likely to go that

far myself.

But it's a way, certainly,

of exploring those

feelings I've always

had about writing.

When you began the story

with the idea of getting inside the

head of a man who is behaving

in this very odd way, did you always

know that it was going to end

with some scenes that are difficult

to read and must have

been difficult to write?

I got...

I can't say I always knew, no.

I think I knew he was going to lose

control of himself, and I think

probably if I'd analysed that

I would have known, but in a way

maybe I didn't want to know,

just like he doesn't.

Well, I think to the reader,

when you open this book,

you do sense that it is going

to end rather badly.

I mean you don't think he's

going to stop doing it.

No, I wouldn't have thought so,

and I don't think he has

the ability to control himself,

and I think he makes it clear

from the beginning that he is trying

to justify his own behaviour,

trying to understand what he's

done, hopefully make

people understand him.

There is an intriguing

note on the dust cover

of the book where you say,

this book is an experiment.

What exactly do you mean by that?

Well, to my mind it's an experiment

between me and the reader.

He is conducting experiments

of various kinds on the people

that he stalks, but it's also

an experiment I think I'm making

really to see how people

will respond to this book.

I won't necessarily know,

of course, but I want to take

people to the point,

this involves stuff

towards the very end of the book,

where they've had a creepy

and maybe horrifying experience.

Maybe they discover that it's been

creepy and horrifying in a way

they hadn't realised all along,

and that is where it comes

into the relationship

with me writing a book.

It's fascinating, I said

at the beginning, that it was

a contemporary horror story.

And really, what you're

talking about here,

is a world in which,

you know, individuals

are moving in different ways,

apart from being quite lonely,

even in the context of,

you know, their social lives.

And this guy is somehow

exploiting that.

The solitary nature

of contemporary life.

Were you very conscious of that?

Well, I was, I think particularly...

The book is really, we talked

all about him and it's a book

split into two halves,

really, between him and her.

particular.

Frances, the woman that he stalks

in She is, I think,

quite a lonely person.

I think a lot of people

are quite lonely.

We indeed have a lot of research

on how widespread loneliness is.

And that's her

vulnerability, really.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean I think he wants

to connect with people just

as I do by writing novels,

just as she does

by making friendships

and forming relationships.

So there's a desperation

about his position.

Yeah, very much.

I think lonely people are always

desperate to make that kind

of connection and sometimes

something goes wrong,

as it does with him.

He can't do it and he tries these

terrible ways to feed this craving.

He is unusual because by accident,

completely unexpectedly, he becomes,

suddenly, very rich.

He doesn't have to work he doesn't

have to worry about money.

The world is his oyster.

In a way that releases him to be

the man he really is underneath.

In that sense we are

not all like him.

No, we're lucky because we don't

suddenly inherit millions of pounds.

I think for him it is a tragedy

that he becomes as rich as he does.

For a lot of people that

are extremely rich,

it is a severe problem.

I know that sounds ridiculous.

It's many of our greatest dreams

to become as wealthy as he is.

But I think when suddenly you don't

have to work you do have to think

about how to your life,

and that's a hard

question to answer.

And he doesn't know the nature

of his tragedy, but we do.

Yeah, exactly.

I hope...

You know, I do, in spite

of everything he does,

feel a lot of sympathy for him.