![]() ![]() I took a break here to write the scripts for – quite coincidentally – the BBC adaptation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I wrote the first half quite happily and quickly, right up until the day in 1995 when Emma and Dexter end their friendship in a Soho restaurant. This one would be about the 20 years after – how do we change as we approach middle-age, how do we remain the same?īut how does a novelist sum up 20 years? How is the material selected and contained? That passage from Tess provided a clue, and the novel became 20 snapshots of a seemingly ordinary day, the significance of which would lie, sly and unseen, throughout the novel. My first novel had been about a 19-year-old, stumbling through university. ![]() I had recently turned 40, was about to become a father for the second time, and it felt vaguely inappropriate to write about young love in that same tone of voice. While I remain fond of my first two books, I didn't want to write another romantic comedy with an affable, accident-prone, self-deprecating male lead. ![]() In 2007, I found myself casting around for an idea for my third novel. ![]() For a while, I think I may even have taken to quoting it at parties. To my 17-year-old self, this seemed a thrillingly morbid idea, the notion of an anti-birthday lurking sly and unseen in the calendar. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |