Here
are some of the questions journalists asked
me around the time of The Dead Fathers
Club back in 2007/8:
Q.
What prompted you to write novels? What
have been the defining moments in your career
so far?
A.
Nothing beats that first phone-call when
you find out your book is going to be published.
But generally the best moments are those
when everything just clicks and the idea
for a novel is suddenly complete in your
head. It feels like reaching the top of
a very steep hill and finally being able
to take your backpack off. As to the prompt,
well I’d always had ideas for stories
but had never sat down to do it. It was
a few years ago when my long-term girlfriend’s
mum was diagnosed with cancer and we took
quite a bit of time off to be with her.
It was at that point, I decided to put something
down on paper.
Q.
Who are your biggest literary and non-literary
influences?
A.
Anxiety is my main influence. I think, really,
anxiety is the key mood at the beginning
of the twenty-first century, so being a
naturally anxious person helps capture that
kind of feeling. I think if you're writing
about troubled adolescence the masters have
to be S. E. Hinton and J. D. Salinger. Maybe
I need initials.
Q.Do
the ideas for your stories come first –
and the link to Shakespeare later - or do
you have a conscious project to recast Shakespeare
for the modern age?
A.
With The Last Family in England
the initial idea was to tell a story of
a family. The dog stuff, and the Shakespeare
stuff, came later. With The Dead Fathers
Club it happened very naturally. It
was a father-son story that migrated slowly
towards Hamlet. I believe all writing
is based on other writing, and if you’re
conscious of where it’s coming from
you should acknowledge your sources. Once
I was being honest about it, it gave me
a free reign to mine all the big and limitless
themes that are in the plays.
Q.
In The Dead Fathers Club you write
from an adolescent’s perspective.
Why does this age group hold such a fascination
for authors?
A.
I suppose it’s the age between innocence
and experience, and as most fiction deals
with character transformation to some extent
you’re on fertile ground from the
start. I think it also helps with observational
stuff, to put yourself inside a younger
mind, because the world instantly looks
a bit newer.
Q.
On the page, Philip’s narrative is
a hyperactive, unpunctuated stream of consciousness;
disorientating at first, but inevitably
drawing the reader into Philip’s nightmarish
world. Was this the intention all along,
and were there any editorial upsets over
this?
A.
No. It wasn’t my original intention.
I experimented with various different ways
of expressing Philip’s state of mind
but this one somehow worked best. And thankfully,
my editor didn’t have a problem with
it.
Q.
Unlike poor old Hamlet, Philip lives in
an age when mental stability comes in little
bottles. But the drugs really don’t
work, do they?
A. In 1999, when I was living in Spain,
I was prescribed diazepam for anxiety, but
I didn’t get better until I stopped
taking them.
Q.
What sort of research into child psychology
did you do in preparation for writing this
novel? Have you ever experienced any form
of mental illness?
A.
I used to suffer from panic attacks, but
gradually realised the worst thing that
could happen was that I could make a fool
out of myself.
Q.
One thing I particularly liked about Dead
Fathers Club is that you don’t
rely on lots of topical references to TV
or toys in order to make Philip sound realistic
as an 11 year-old; this is done completely
through his ‘voice’ alone. How
did you establish this authenticity, through
research or personal experience?
A.
Not through research, so I guess it was
personal experience. I grew up in Newark-on-Trent,
and went to a school like Philip’s,
so it was relatively easy to conjure that
world. And as I was a rather anxious eleven-year-old
I drew a lot from my own feelings from that
time.
Q.
The Dead Fathers Club made me think
of the psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who argued
that when people seem to be ‘mad,’
they’re just articulating underlying
worries and anxieties that they are prevented,
by circumstance or convention, from articulating
normally. Would you agree that Philip’s
madness (like Hamlet’s) is a kind
of coping mechanism?
A. I think it is. He clearly can’t
come to terms with the sudden absence of
his father so he ends up over-compensating
through the creation of a world that only
he can see. Grief’s a bit like that,
isn’t it? It’s like the ‘phantom
limb’ amputees feel. Your mind takes
a while to get used to a devastating new
reality.
Q.
There are no exact correspondences to Hamlet
in The Dead Fathers Club. Philip
has lost his father, and his uncle Alan
has usurped his mother’s affections
and the proprietorship of the ‘Castle’.
However, without giving away the end of
the novel, is it safe to say that Philip
breaks free of Shakespeare’s narrative,
and if so, why is this significant for you?
A. Influence can’t be a straight-jacket,
and I never feel obliged to stick rigidly
to any plot structure. I didn’t want
there to be a straightforward happy ending,
but I wanted there to be some kind of hope.
Q.
Your books deal with big, difficult issues
in a way that appeals to both adults and
teenagers. In regard the latter, do you
feel that the reason a lot of young people
don’t take to reading is because they
feel that traditional teen-lit is a bit
patronising? Is this something you have
consciously addressed?
A. I wouldn’t say I was consciously
trying to write a certain way, but yes,
I do feel that a lot of writers underestimate
teenage readers. Teenagers are among the
best kind of readers, because they have
the intelligence to understand big ideas,
combined with that open-mindedness you tend
to shed with age.
Q.
There’s talk about a film! How involved
would you like to be in this project?
A. I’m not too precious. As someone
who plays fast and loose with the Shakespearian
canon, it would be a bit hypocritical of
me if I stopped other people interpreting
my own work in a different way to how I
envisaged. And David Heyman, the film producer
who has optioned The Dead Fathers Club,
has a lot of great ideas of how he sees
the film, so I’m happy to leave it
in his capable hands.
Read more FAQs in The
Dead Fathers Club's Reading Guide
and there's more general stuff here.