Some people choose to spend their Saturday evenings perched on a brown faux leather cube-stools bingeing on over-priced drinks in ultra-modern bars where you can’t talk to anyone because the DJ is making their ears bleed. Not me (far too old, you see ;-) ). No, this Saturday evening saw me attending an evening with Hilary Mantel (part of this year’s Durham Literature Festival).
I love Hilary Mantel ~ not least for the breath-taking quality of her prose, whereby electricity pylons “lift their skirts in a ferrous gavotte”. Also, we both went to Sheffield University (although some years apart, and in different departments ~ she studied Law, I studied English Lit) and we both lived in Roebuck Road in Sheffield (and its not a huge street, so it is a fairly impressive coincidence, to me at least).
So, she read some sections from “Beyond Black” (if you haven’t read it do so as soon as is feasibly possible!) and discussed some aspects of the novel, such as her research processes, the character balance and back-story, and then finished up with a brief Q&A.
Being a swotty Eng lit graduate I took along a notebook and made some notes, as I knew I’d never remember it all afterwards. They’re fairly illegible and incoherent, but here are a few of the more salient points:
· Psycho-geography ~ she is interested in “what lies beneath the soil…..Every place is seething with potential, beautiful or otherwise.”
· In “Beyond Black” the character of Colette operates as the reader’s ‘way in’ to Alison’s world. Alison and Colette were there from the start, and their experiences are somewhat circular
· Is Alison a fraud? We don’t know, and it is not something that Mantel consciously addresses in the book. However she does think that the comparison of writer and medium is a viable one: both listen to the voices in their heads and spend large portions of their time engaged with characters that no-one else can see. As a predominantly historical novelist Mantel feels that she herself is often “talking to the dead” (and alluded to the fact that she had brought most of the court of Henry VIII with her to the reading, as that is the setting for her next work.).
· She doesn’t work to a pre-prepared plan, but explores themes. And she’s not looking to provide redemption for her characters, but to observe their actions, citing Waugh’s advice to“Write what they say and what they do” . Her task isn’t to educate her characters, but to see where they take themselves, and she demonstrates her characters’ intentions rather than their psychology
· “Beyond Black” is a black farce (and those who have read it will testify that humour imbues every page), and the consequences of the action pay off after the book finishes, which leaves some work for the reader to do. Not all of the loose ends are tied up. Alison and Colette redeem each other, to an extent, but their relationship is a tied and somewhat poisonous one.
· With regard to the haziness of Alison’s childhood: “recall does not always bring benefits in its wake.”
· One of many ‘laugh out loud’ moments: whilst researching mediums, psychics and their ilk for this book one lady took her hand, looked at her palm and said “Oh, what a shame! You have no imagination whatsoever!”
· Her characters tend towards a condition of marginality ~ she likes to operate in the space created by ambivalence
· Don’t spoonfeed the reader ~ they get bored. But don’t give them too little ~ they’ll be baffled. The craftsmanship is to give them just enough information. She feels she got this balance wrong in “Eight Months on Ghazzah Street”.
· Her next novel is set in the court of Henry VIII and will be publshed in 2009
· “Nobody is clever enough to write a novel” ~ at least, not all off the top of their head. It comes form a deeper place.
Well ,that’s it as far as I can make out , I was scribbling pretty fast! And annoyingly I cannot decipher my last comment, which appears to read “Sit down to write ~ no idea her mind of day” (??) .
A summary of the evenign with A S Byatt will follow in the next day or two. Although be warned, for that event I was not only scribbling quickly but in the dark too, so it may all be a bit “fax me a haddock”....
