"I can answer that by talking about Undercurrents
(published by Little, Brown) if you like, because it's dear to
my heart. I love books which grow out of their own scenery and
this one did - it just rose up and hit me as a result of living
in the place where it is (loosely) set. The place has a pier and
a castle and a history: what more could I want? The ideal setting
for a story is a small community where everyone thinks they know
everything about one another, while really they miss the obvious.
It carries forward a central theme in all my books: nothing is
quite what it seems. The book features an American coming to a
small coastal town of a very English kind, and finding that the
English are not what they seem either: they are devious and decent.
"Choosing titles is a bugger. They never occur to me until
near the end, which is about the time I begin to know what the
whole thing is about. I wanted to call Undercurrents
by the title of I Can't Talk Now, but that was a bit unwieldy.
Unfortunately, when I start to think of titles, my sense of the
ridiculous comes into play, usually because I'm having the seventeenth
crisis of confidence by that stage anyway. Since Undercurrents
is a moody book, full of English winter climate, I did think of
calling it Under the Weather, which is where a good editor
with a sense of humour is a great asset.
"One of my worst editorial experiences in the past was telling
an editor that my working title for a book was Death by Blow
Job (Without Consent) and she didn't even laugh. I didn't
mean it: it's awful to be taken literally. Sometimes it's awful
to be taken seriously. Because you take writing seriously, it
doesn't follow that you take yourself seriously. The worst thing
about being edited is finding that someone is afraid to point
out the inevitable mistakes in case you get a fit of the vapours.
"Undercurrents is dear to my heart because
I enjoyed writing it, or at least part of it. Writing is hell,
let's face it. A bad day is one when I can't even spell 'and'.
Those kind of days are always made worse by remembering what it
was I meant to do in the first place, all those books ago, and
what a high aspiration it still is. I wanted to write the kind
of novel which keeps the reader glued to the page, not effortlessly,
but with real attention. I wanted to write the kind of novel which
had given me great pleasure, as well as insight, entertainment,
relief. I mean the sort of novel which when you read it, you identify
with it and get taken out of your own world into the world of
the novel, and when you get to the end, there's a kind of benign
grief because you have to come back.
"You always learn something from a good novel, because good
novels, whatever their genre, are truthful about the human condition,
however fantastical the fiction. Reading is a primary source of
education: it refines concentration, understanding and compassion,
and it underlines all the knowledge gained in so-called real life.
You can read a novel about people living at the extreme edge,
or about people who live next door, and you'll still absorb more
about humanity than someone who does not read. Which is why writing
is such a high and frightening aspiration, whatever you write,
because an author is a gateway to the world, giving another view
of it. The thought of reading becoming a peripheral activity,
indulged in by few, is frightening. There simply isn't enough
time to learn about life without reading being part of the process.
"There are no issues that an author should be afraid to
tackle in the context of telling a story. There's a sneaking political
correctness which suggests it is somehow morally wrong to dwell
on violence and sex and all the other taboos which are part of
daily life. The only limitation an author should feel about subject
matter is their own ability to illuminate and explain it. The
novelist's imperative is to turn the subject matter into as good
and convincing a story as he or she can make it. If violence and
sex, raped women and torture in the dental chair are integral
to that story, so be it. If it is a well told story, it will not
outrage because it has a human context and it is explaining human
impulses as well as exploiting them. What outrages is bad writing,
like the sort you might get in a porn mag.
"All an author should do is write to their own strengths
and acknowledge their weaknesses. I'd be glad to include scenes
of frank and erotic sex if I could, but it always makes me laugh.
I know I can write violence and I do. For no other reason than
that it belongs to a lesser or greater extent in my stories and
I think I understand the impact of it better than most. I want
the reader to share the horror of it, not to celebrate it."
