:00:00. > :00:11.Thank you both very much. Now it's time for this week's Meet
:00:12. > :00:17.the Author with Nick Higham. Tom Rob Smith's first novel was an instant
:00:18. > :00:22.hit. Child 44. It has spawned two sequels and is currently being
:00:23. > :00:28.filmed. His latest book, The Farm, is different. It is a literary
:00:29. > :00:34.thriller set in Sweden. It is about madness, fairy stories and secrecy.
:00:35. > :00:39.Tom Rob Smith also writes to the vision script and screenplays. He is
:00:40. > :00:45.how Swedish. There is more than a touch of autobiography about The
:00:46. > :00:53.Farm. Tom Rob Smith, letters start with
:00:54. > :00:57.the opening scenario of this book. What was the situation? The main
:00:58. > :01:02.character, Daniel, lives in London. His parents have retired to Sweden.
:01:03. > :01:09.His mother is Swedish and his father is English. Everything seems very
:01:10. > :01:16.happy. He gets a call from his father saying his mother is in an
:01:17. > :01:24.asylum, he needs to fly home immediately. He set about doing so.
:01:25. > :01:31.On the way to the airport, he gets a call from his mother who says she is
:01:32. > :01:38.fine and she is leaving the hospital. She says that everything
:01:39. > :01:44.his father told him was a lie and that his father was involved in a
:01:45. > :01:49.conspiracy. They go to his apartment and she tells this elaborate story.
:01:50. > :01:54.The question throughout the book is, is there really a conspiracy? Yes.
:01:55. > :02:00.Who do you believe, your mother or your father? Is she right or is she
:02:01. > :02:04.a. Is there something terrible at the heart of this? Your publishers
:02:05. > :02:17.are calling this a literary thriller. It is a thriller. We have
:02:18. > :02:23.not one but two unreliable narrators. The mother, who tells
:02:24. > :02:29.much of the story, is potentially unreliable. So too is Daniel, who
:02:30. > :02:36.narrates this overarching structure of the book. Yes. There are two
:02:37. > :02:42.first person narratives. Daniel is the traditional first person
:02:43. > :02:47.narrator. The mother's is raw speech directed right at the sun. It is
:02:48. > :02:58.meant to capture the immediacy. It is very different. I think it's
:02:59. > :03:01.impossible to put down Ms Boyce and not try and work out what is behind
:03:02. > :03:13.the voice, whether cracks -- put down this Boyce. Very obviously,
:03:14. > :03:19.there are things about Daniel's upbringing he was never told. Yes. I
:03:20. > :03:23.love that about this story. When his mother comes to him, he is not sure
:03:24. > :03:27.whether she is mad or not, but he's a job at her character. He realises
:03:28. > :03:35.there is so much he does not know about her. There is this ignorance.
:03:36. > :03:39.I love that idea of growing up, having spent so many time with his
:03:40. > :03:43.people but not in fundamental questions about where they came
:03:44. > :03:47.from, the darkness in them as one as a happiness. Your publishers
:03:48. > :03:54.obviously have a lot of faith in this. They have spent money on big
:03:55. > :04:00.advertising posters. There is a very elaborate cinema style trailer,
:04:01. > :04:09.which I think all your publishers have contributed to, which you
:04:10. > :04:22.undertook to produce. Everything you father told you is a lie. What
:04:23. > :04:26.happened? I must warn you, if you refuse to believe me, I will no
:04:27. > :04:32.longer consider you my son, just as I no longer consider that man to be
:04:33. > :04:40.my husband. One of the things that comes across from the trailer, you
:04:41. > :04:49.could be accused of climbing onto the Swedish black bandwagon, but
:04:50. > :04:57.this story has a very real star. The story is a fiction. The premise, I
:04:58. > :05:05.experienced. I was working on a novel, and I got a car from my
:05:06. > :05:10.father, they had moved to Sweden -- I got a call from my father. He said
:05:11. > :05:15.my mother had been institutionalised. I made
:05:16. > :05:18.preparations to go over when I got a call from my mother fainted
:05:19. > :05:22.everything my father told me was a lie. She flew to London and I met
:05:23. > :05:29.her at the airport, thinking I would know immediately. She came out of
:05:30. > :05:34.the doors in the arrivals lounge, and I didn't know. She was a
:05:35. > :05:37.brilliant storyteller. She was very convincing. Nothing she said was
:05:38. > :05:42.implausible. It was very hard for me to be sure what the truth was. Not
:05:43. > :05:44.everybody would have turned an experience like that into fiction.
:05:45. > :05:50.What are your parents think of the book? They were involved in reading
:05:51. > :05:56.the first draft, then they met the publisher and my agent. They were
:05:57. > :06:02.involved in the advising in the final draft. The key was, this is a
:06:03. > :06:12.positive story. It is about optimism and recovery. I think the message is
:06:13. > :06:18.an uplifting one. I think that is one they working to get across. The
:06:19. > :06:21.event is brought us closer. I drifted apart from my mother for
:06:22. > :06:29.lots of reasons. The first book, Child 44, set in Stalinist Russia,
:06:30. > :06:36.was followed by two successive box. It is being filmed currently. It is
:06:37. > :06:44.being produced by Ridley Scott. Some of the critics said they read more
:06:45. > :06:52.light screenplays and novels. You are a screenwriter, you have written
:06:53. > :07:03.screenplays. This one, it would be very difficult. Yes. Because this
:07:04. > :07:09.book is about storytelling, in a way, I used to love as a child
:07:10. > :07:15.hearing people telling me stories. Within hours my first encounter with
:07:16. > :07:21.narrative. This is a mother talking to this sun and trying to convince
:07:22. > :07:31.them of something which is exciting and scary. I was going back to that
:07:32. > :07:37.sort of instinct. That is harder in cinema. It is hard to get across
:07:38. > :07:45.narrative, storytelling as a verbal thing. It is hard to bring in the
:07:46. > :07:50.question of reliability. Are you showing the audience and that isn't
:07:51. > :07:56.real? Having said that, it has been optioned for a movie. I think it is
:07:57. > :08:02.a great power for an actress. I think it will be difficult, but we
:08:03. > :08:08.will see. Tom Rob Smith, thank you very much indeed. Thank you.
:08:09. > :08:14.There is another storm approaching the UK. Not as severe as the one we
:08:15. > :08:15.saw yesterday but there might