A book tour stop for Wyld promoting her second novel, ‘All the Birds, Singing’, at Toppings & Co. in Bath. 11th Sept, 2013
Drizzle. Autumn has arrived. On the blackboard paneling of the book store frontage the names JEREMY PAXMAN and DAVID GOWER shine in the gloom.
Ten minutes early. Surprise bowls of crisps and olives on offer alongside the usual free wine. Scoop a handful of each. Inside, tables have been set up. Layout offsets the small crowd. Older, 50 and up. Shiny black pumps with bows. Chopped curly grey hair. No frills, Atlantic-blue mackintosh. Two college-aged girls at the back who may have mistaken the book store for a concept bar.
People have taken their own bowls of crisps and olives! Too late to go back, everyone's watching - squeeze into a nook in front of generous old man who doesn’t seem to mind having his view blocked. “Do you know this author?” he asks. The generous old man turns out to be a botanist who lives nine months of the year in Uganda, three months in his house in Bath. I think about the imperious local housing prices and wonder if he’s going to share his address. A squatting fantasy plays out in the back of my mind as I tell him that I was hooked by Wyld’s extract in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists issue.
Wyld’s introduced by Toppings staff member who looks like a twenty-something prophet just returned from the wilderness. He trips up his intro, begins again with admirable grace.
“She’s been compared to early Iain Banks, early Ian McEwan.”
Wyld enters. Dressed mostly in blackish shades. Pirate boots. Twice mentions the loveliness of the flowers that have been bought for her. She’s begins talking about how her first book was set entirely in Australia (where she grew up). Her second novel: half in England, half in Australia. Third to be set entirely in England (where she lives now, running a bookstore in Peckham).
“The more distant the landscape, the easier it is to put a character to it.”
The English island on which the protagonist is marooned in All the Birds, Singing is "an intense version of the Isle of Wight.”
She reads an extract: a dog cries. An egg is thrown up. A much older man controls a young woman. Undercurrents of abuse and exploitation.
Q: How did you figure out the structure?
A: No planning, I work best when thinking on the page.
After the first draft, I made a big plan of the dual narrative created and worked it out, made charts like a maths problem.
I was resigned to two narrative strands, UK and Australia. In the later stages, the plot folded over onto itself. This improved the tension, which was lacking before that. It’s satisfying putting two chapters that don’t go in order together, as they create a third space that has nothing to do with me.
Fingers crossed the next novel will be linear.
Q: You work in a bookshop. Is it difficult to be disciplined surrounded by all those books?
With the three and a half years it took to write the first book, I was very disciplined. Living at home, it felt like my only chance to make this work. Disciplined in a way that I can’t imagine now…
For the second book, I went to some writers’ retreats which helped, but I’m not sure anything I wrote while at a retreat actually made it into the final book. But you have to do a certain amount of work before the good stuff comes out.
If you can stand to put it away for six months, you can see all the terrible crap you’ve written.
Q: Where do your ideas come from?
My first book (After the Fire, A Still Small Voice) was scantily based on my Australian family. Very close relationship with an uncle who’d been in the Korean War, and I came to realize that he must have done some terrible things in the war. That made me ask the question: Are people the sum of their actions? And the first book was sort of an examination of that.
This novel reflected my early discomfort as the woman I was, my tough upbringing.
I also get ideas by buying anonymous snapshots from the flea market.
Q: Where did you get the title for the first book?
A: I was working at an art gallery, and this etching came in of Elijah emerging from the flames with his arms around his head. Seemed to be the same as emerging from war.
Aside related to character of Otto in All the Birds, Singing who is an awful character, but one she empathises with: Just returned from Moscow - I’ll crowbar that in – and on a show called Moscow FM, I think, with author of Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell - the nicest man. The DJ was this brash, sexist, racist ex-pat, they must’nt have known what he was saying otherwise they would have sacked him. I had steam coming out my ears. But David Mitchell asked him his story, and the ex-pat described how he’d been an ex-preacher, lost his faith, went to Nicaragua to drink and finally moved to Russia so that his family couldn’t visit him.
Aside related to name of Jake assigned to a female protagonist: Friend of the family’s name. Met her again, and she mentioned how it was strange that my protagonist was called Jake when she was called Jake as a nickname by her family. I thought it was her real name!
She reads an extract: Are local kids ripping up sheep? Frightened dog. Frightened woman. Is something stalking her? Dream of all the sheep in the bathroom, turning to look at her.
In my haste to beat the queue to purchase the second novel, I forget to say goodbye to the botanist.
As she signs the inside page, we make small talk about the difference between the Australian cover of her book and the English version. The Australian is much more romantic: bold red with blackbirds flocking.
She says she thought the woman on the cover was pregnant at first, but actually it’s her bum.
When I get home, I realize I’ve bought her first novel by mistake.
http://www.ma-agency.com/authors/evie_wyld
