Highbrow Lowbrow: The Reckoning vs Dirty Weekend
The latest episode of Highbrow Lowbrow is now live. Today’s theme is revenge films. Yup, getting even is better than getting mad. My choice is The Reckoning starring the wonderful, irascible, mercurial British actor Nicol Williamson. Williamson plays Michael Marler, a successful London businessman who returns to his home town of Liverpool to visit his ailing father, only to discover his father is dead and was murdered by a local thug. Marler will risk everything he has to exact revenge on his father’s killer.
My podcast co-host Dan Slattery’s pick is Dirty Weekend. One of the best films directed by Michael Winner, Dirty Weekend is a female vigilante ‘Dirty Harriet’ tale based on a novel by Helen Zahavi. Lia Williams plays Bella, a woman who goes on a killing spree after deciding she’s ‘had enough’ of daily misogyny.
You can listen here.
Jill Dearman is one of the most innovative noir authors writing on sexuality and gender today. I have covered her excellent novels The Great Bravura and Jazzed on this site before, so I was thrilled to receive an advance copy of her latest novella The Uncanny Case of Gilles/Jeannette. In this tale, Jill reimagines Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Gothic novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde into a queer gender-swapped tale of transitioning.
Ella’s partner Simon (formerly Simone) is transitioning. While Ella is supportive, she misses the woman that she fell in love with. Around the same time, Ella inherits an old inn from her grandmother in Hudson, New York. At the inn she discovers a diary from 1933, telling the story of Jeannette, daughter of the original innkeeper. Jeannette has romantic feelings for Dahlia, who has rebuffed her on the grounds that she is only interested in men. Jeannette takes a novel approach to overcome the dilemma, she decides to become a man, but this unleashes an increasingly dark side of her character and… well, I won’t say anymore to avoid spoilers.
The Uncanny Case of Gilles/Jeannette is a gripping, twisted tale, brilliantly rendered by Dearman, that should appeal to anyone interested in sexuality and gothic fantasy. I was delighted when Jill agreed to talk to me about writing the novella.
Interviewer: Where did you first get the idea of framing a gender transition narrative around the Jekyll and Hyde premise?
Much like the way Robert Louis Stevenson spoke of Jekyll and Hyde coming to him in a fevered dream, Gilles/Jeannette came to me in a sort of waking dream. It happened on March 3rd and 4th, 2020, a week or so before New York City was about to go into COVID lockdown. I wrote it out in bed in a mad rush, as a detailed treatment, much like one would do for a screenplay. I had lived (as had my parents and their parents) in New York City my whole life, but was transitioning to moving upstate to the Hudson Valley with my child. We were going upstate on weekends and planning to move up permanently in six months for the school year. But on these early days of March there was no official crisis yet, just incredible tension in the air.
I thought about where to set the story – having previously set all my fiction in New York City – and the idea of placing it in the Hudson Valley really set me on fire. I’ve always loved the gothic trope in which a character from the so-called “civilized” city moves up to the country and finds themselves not just “in the wild,” but face to face with the wild animal within.
Since Jekyll and Hyde is about transformation, it seemed so exciting to explore the transformation from female to male, so I came up with the framing story first. A young Brooklynite lesbian inherits an old Inn and in the basement she finds a diary filled with a horror tale from the past. As she reads about the dual characters from the past, she herself is dealing with the complexities of a changing relationship, as her lesbian lover is transitioning to male.
And to add to the “uncanny” throughline, we left New York City for the Hudson Valley just twelve days after I wrote the bones of the story down, never to return! That had not been the plan, but that’s what occurred. And then at the end of the following year, my child came out as genderfluid and took the name “Phoenix.” Phoenix ended up doing the cover art for the novella when it was complete! Phoenix’s journey was not one I expected, but this is not the first time for me that life has imitated art – a story comes to me and something in real life mirrors it.
Interviewer: Has the story of the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde always been an important one to you emotionally, and how do you rate the work of Robert Louis Stevenson?
Oh absolutely. Both of Stevenson’s characters are so vivid and real; they are separate and yet the same. We all have our inner demons and our public persona. When I was in college, my thesis project was on “the double.” I often teach the prose poem “Borges and I” on my first day of writing class at New York University. I do like the short works that are included in the Penguin edition of the novella too. But Stevenson as a character himself is who I find truly fascinating. I include a brief author’s note in Uncanny which quotes the homophobic Labouchere Amendment passed in the U.K. the year before Jekyll and Hyde’s publication. There has long been curiosity about Stevenson’s sexuality, and that certainly stoked the fires for me as I wrote my novella.
Interviewer: The Uncanny Case of Gilles/Jeannette jumps between two timeframes as it alternates between the story of Ella and Simon and Jeannette and Dahlia. Why did you pick the present day and the 1933 setting to tell this transition love story?
The idea of a present-day character discovering a diary from the past was always in my mind. And I really wanted to explore the moment we are living in – in which trans lives that were once hidden are being revealed – and how polarized the reactions are. Of course, I support all trans people, especially kids, but like Robert Louis Stevenson, I am also a Scorpio – ha! – and am the most interested in the complexities of sexuality. I wanted to explore the subject in a physical as well as an emotional way.
And as for the 1933 story, my previous novel Jazzed, was set in the 1920s, and the novel before that, The Great Bravura, in the 1940s. The first half of the American century has a lot of juice for me, probably because of my parents and their strong association with those times. I also had a feeling that writing about the Great Depression would be fascinating, thus I was pulled to the 1930s. And then lo and behold when I started to research Hudson in that era, it turned out it was known for vice and gambling – much more debaucherous than it is now. And of course I loved that! Add to this, the fact that the town itself had something of a split personality then – the gamblers and prostitutes on one side and the Quakers on the other. Doing historical research to truly capture an era is one of my favorite activities, so I was really lit too while writing. Add to that that there is a specific bit of racist and criminal history from Hudson circa 1933, that I felt even more compelled to explore the labyrinth of connections through fiction.
Interviewer: When I see the name Dahlia, I can’t help but think of James Ellroy. Was he an influence, however allusive? If not, can you name some other authors that were your main influences?
I love how we always come back to Mr. Ellroy, Steven! I do love the name! And interestingly, my late wife Anne and I were considering it as a middle name when our child was born. Where I think I most connect with James Ellroy is through his memoir My Dark Places, in which he talks a lot about the similarity between his mother’s murder and that of “the Black Dahlia” true crime case. So that name is very loaded and very thrilling for me. There are aspects of his personal obsession with one of his dead parents that resonate for me. I also really like playing with names in a mischievous way. The main character in the 1933 tale is Jeannette. She’s the “Jekyll.” And the object of her desire is Dahlia. J&D, my initials. And the “Hyde” character she transforms herself into is the male “Gilles,” French for “John.” Gilles is pronounced “Jeel,” and is easy to free-associate with my first name. I liked the idea of Gilles charming Dahlia in ways that Jeannette couldn’t, and the phrase “Sunday Botanist” came to me. He calls himself one and plants dahlias for her. When I scampered down the rabbit hole of studying the onomatology of “Gilles” I discovered the renaissance musician Gilles Binchois, and so I wrote a scene in which Gilles serenades Dahlia with a Binchois song, “Triste Plaisir” or “Sad Pleasure,” which I think is a theme I always enjoy exploring in fiction. The more I explored, the more the idea that identity is fluid kept coming up. And I believe it is. As much as I enjoy my own character – “Jill Dearman!” and my fictional characters – I am also of the belief that there is no actual “I.” We are all part of the same whole.
Interviewer: Why the novella form?
Well, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a novella, though longer than mine. And so many great gothic and horror tales are short and chilling. But once again, my unconscious served as Boss. Even though I had come up with the whole story in detail in a day and a half, the actually writing of Uncanny did not come as easily as I’d hoped. During the pandemic I met monthly on Zoom with the Exiles, a fabulous writers group based in Brooklyn (where I was no longer based, so virtual meetings were a gift). After making headway on Uncanny, I reached a brick wall of sorts. I experienced a compulsion to work on another project – nonfiction and based in metaphysics – and felt a little torn about how to move forward. When I came upstate I went underground for a couple of years so to speak (like so many during Covid), and my lifelong study of metaphysics took a much deeper turn. I wove in the ancient hermetic text The Kybalion, and that definitely helped me move forward with Uncanny, but at some point I just didn’t know how to complete it. Then I literally woke up at 3am with a “download from the universe.” I got up to write it down because it was so striking. I felt like I received my marching orders and what I was told was: finish Uncanny as a novella not a novel, and then get to work on a nonfiction book sharing your comprehensive knowledge of esoterica, which is exactly what I’m doing. Thanks, universe!
Interviewer: This is your second gender-swapped take on a traditionally male narrative after the excellent Jazzed. How would you describe the appeal of gender-swapped narratives in reimaging classic tales for contemporary readers?
It’s funny, because we live in an era where white men, particularly straight white men, are being judged pretty harshly. Historically it’s a time of reckoning, and I stand on the side of #MeToo, and feminism. I even wrote a book on the history of feminism for teenagers. But I have always had a great soul connection with men. I get a great deal of nurturing from the guys in my life. My own father was a very nurturing man. At the same time, the close men in my life all seem very comfortable showing their vulnerability to me; they know they will never be judged, and it’s very easy to share unconditional love. I think they get to see the feminine side of me much more than most do, as well. So, perhaps there is something about having a natural compassion for how tough it can be to be male in this world, mixed with my innate fascination with the mystery of sexuality and gender that compels me to conjure up these re-imagined takes on these classic male narratives. And on a global level, I feel passionate about sharing more non-mainstream stories like these because I want to open the Pandora’s Box to those conversations. More than anything, I feel there is no shame in anyone’s sexuality or gender, just as there is no shame for these things in the animal world. So I hope that someone reading my fiction is gifted with a sense of permission to live a more natural, more uninhibited life.
For more on Jill Dearman: http://www.jilldearman.com.
The latest episode of Highbrow Lowbrow is now live. The theme is cinematic innovation. My choice of film is John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye which was originally shot in an all-gold colour palette. Dan’s pick is Searching, in which a missing-person story is told entirely through the perspective of online forums and social media.
You can listen here. Enjoy!
John Cho is Searching for his missing daughter online.
A James Ellroy Playlist – The Enchanters Edition
James Ellroy’s new novel The Enchanters is due to be published in September. Ellroy recently revealed to Michael Connelly that he will not be completing the Second LA Quartet as he had originally envisioned. Instead, the quartet will be remoulded into a Quintet with the remaining volumes set in the early 1960s. Ellroy initially planned for the entire series to be set during World War Two. Knopf are apparently delighted with this change of direction and, let’s face it, many readers will be as well. Perfidia and This Storm were a collective slog; challenging, maddening, sometimes brilliant, but they never left me with that compulsive urge to revisit them or read Ellroy’s next novel. Ellroy’s change of direction makes The Enchanters his most anticipated novel in over a decade, and we won’t have to read Kay Lake’s diary entries anymore!
The following piece is an attempt by me to predict the musical influences in The Enchanters, as part of my ongoing series on Ellroy and music. The tone below is speculative and a little playful, but as Ellroy’s biographer and one of the few people to have read the outline to The Enchanters, perhaps I know whereof I speak.
Papa Loves Mambo
Eddie Fisher is one of the real-characters who makes an appearance in The Enchanters. Ellroy’s opinion of Fisher is low, describing him as a ‘loser’ and ‘a faded recording artist’ in the novel’s 1962 setting, more famous for being Elizabeth Taylor’s husband #4 than for his singing ability. But a sleazy showbiz reputation is far from being a impediment to appearing in Ellroy’s world. It’s practically a qualification! Fisher was quick to cash in on the ‘Mambo Craze’ which began in New York in 1947, and lasted right through until the end of the 1950s. Mambo was naturally popular in Ellroy’s preferred setting of LA given the City of Angels’ sizable Latin population. Sadly, I don’t think Fisher had the panache to pull off mambo. Here he is singing a very ropey rendition of ‘Papa Loves Mambo’ on his musical variety series Coke Time with Eddie Fisher.
No wonder Liz Taylor left Fisher for the baritone-voiced Richard Burton.
Mambo Santa Mambo
The title The Enchanters was chosen by Ellroy to evoke the punchy definite article / noun titles of such Harold Robbins’ bestsellers as The Adventurers, The Carpetbaggers and The Inheritors. But it’s worth remembering that there was a doo-wop vocal group called the Enchanters who were active and popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The timing is important as Ellroy identified 1958-63 as a very formative time for him in terms of the music he absorbed. It remains the only time period which produced popular music Ellroy still listens to and enjoys. His tastes now veer almost exclusively towards classical music. Below is the Enchanters contribution to the Mambo craze, ‘Mambo Santa Mambo’.
Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy is published by Bloomsbury.
The Last Songbird by Daniel Weizmann – Review
Annie Linden was a music icon of the 1970s whose star faded in old age. Adam Zantz is a Lyft driver and aspiring songwriter who had a chance encounter with Annie when he picked her up one day at her Malibu mansion. Soon they develop a beautiful friendship, and Zantz becomes Annie’s confidante and she his guru. But when Annie disappears, Zantz is left heartbroken. Then Annie’s corpse is washed up under a pier, and Zantz finds himself implicated in her death. To absolve himself of any suspicion, Zantz must interview Annie’s friends, colleagues and family, and in doing so, he discovers a side to the music idol that he never knew in life. But it isn’t long before the stakes get even higher. Zantz isn’t just fighting to prove his innocence, he becomes involved with dangerous people who have the same fate in mind for him as the ill-fated Annie.
I’m going to come right out and say that I loved The Last Songbird and devoured it in a couple of sittings. The novel works beautifully on several levels. Firstly, as a crime narrative Weizmann unravels the mystery with a solid pacing and confident hold on the reader. Just when you think a resolution is approaching, Zantz is floored by a witness confession that turns the story and his perception of Annie on its head. Each person Zantz meets, and every interview he conducts, is a lovingly rendered character sketch. The more damaged the characters, the more Weizmann seems to empathise with them. He has created a portrait of Southern California and the Pacific Coast Highway that rivals the best work of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. This is a world of showbiz hangers-on, grasping agents, failed artists and strange cults. The latter of which are portrayed through a misogynistic men’s club which is both sinister and pathetic.
Ultimately, everything in The Last Songbird merges seamlessly as Weizmann knows this world, having been part of the LA cultural scene for decades. The relationship between Annie and Zantz will break your heart as, I suspect, we have all had an Annie Linden in our lives. A star from a bygone age, back when there was a worrying lack of accountability in showbiz, but also no internet to eat into the profits of struggling artists. This is a novel that will make you recall your treasured conversations with that mentor and your secret crush. As a torch song to that person in your life and their era, The Last Songbird is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Highbrow Lowbrow: Michael Caine Special
The latest episode of Highbrow Lowbrow is a Michael Caine Special. My podcast co-host Dan Slattery and I look at two lesser-known films from the legendary Cockney actors career. My pick is the multi-genre film The Wilby Conspiracy. It’s an adventure road movie and political thriller in which Caine and Sydney Poitier play two mismatched men on the run from the South African Police. Dan’s pick is the black comedy A Shock to the System, in which Caine plays an aggrieved businessman who decides to murder his way to the top after being passed over for promotion.
You can listen to the full episode here.
Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy was published by Bloomsbury in February of this year. I have done a number of publicity events to promote the book, but if you still need persuading then have a read from this extract from the introduction to the biography, and then do yourself a favour, and buy the book!
“James lives life like he was shot out of a cannon,” Helen Knode, his ex-wife, tells me. Of the many women in Ellroy’s life, Helen has come closest to understanding him. Understanding Ellroy, both the scope and the meaning of his extraordinary life, is a task I have spent more than a decade undertaking. I first met Ellroy in person in 2009. I was an unknown PhD candidate back then, and I was amazed at the generosity he extended towards me when there was little I could give him in return. Over the next ten years I stayed in Ellroy’s orbit, authoring three books on his work and hundreds of articles before I had an epiphany: someone needed, hell, I needed, to write James Ellroy’s biography.
In one sense James Ellroy needs no introduction. To be even remotely knowledgeable of twentieth-century American literature or crime fiction is to know Ellroy. With his garish Hawaiian shirts, lanky physique, mesmerizing speaking style, and penchant for barking like a dog, Ellroy makes sure he won’t go unnoticed. However, his distinctive and self-styled Demon Dog persona runs deeper than its physical manifestation. It’s all there in his ferocious competitiveness, tireless work ethic, and prodigious output. His writing has pushed the boundaries of genre, and he has never given up on striving for new literary achievements. This ambition, in part, stems from his struggle with addiction. His mother was a heavy drinker and, after her murder and the death of his father, Ellroy fell into a spiral of alcohol and drug abuse as a young man. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous at the age of twenty-seven and, barring a couple of relapses, has been sober ever since. But the addictive side of his character remains in everything from his unyielding ambition, voracious appetite for women, right down to the copious amounts of coffee he consumes daily.
While remarkable and often inspiring, the story of Ellroy’s life is also tinged with melancholy, and not just by the various traumas he has endured. Rather, Ellroy’s seven decades cover a rapidly vanishing world. He has lived through and profited from the rise and fall of Hollywood and publishing. It would be impossible for another Ellroy to ascend in the same circumstances today, but if society was to become too safe and monotonous it might create the conditions to which a self-styled polemicist like Ellroy could step into the void.
Ellroy is a brilliant reader of people’s thoughts and motivations. As such, he is skilled at giving people what they want, whether it be outrage or empathy, and that sort of talent rarely goes out of style. Humor is present in everything he does. He can take sheer glee from his capacity to offend, and yet he can be equally kind and thoughtful. Ellroy has been so candid to me there were times I was unsure whether he had appointed me as his biographer or executioner, but that is entirely in keeping with his character.
Joyce Carol Oates described Ellroy as “the American Dostoyevsky.” The comparison is not merely a literary one. Ellroy’s extraordinary, harrowing, and inspiring life has been so mythologized, demythologized, and re-mythologized in the public eye, not least by the author himself, that it is difficult to believe that this book is his first full-length biography. All I ask is that, whether you are an admirer or a detractor of Ellroy, take all your preconceptions of him and leave them at the door. Perhaps the biggest irony of all is that, in my view, Ellroy’s life is the great untold story of American literature.
For the multitude of interviews I have conducted with Ellroy’s friends, colleagues, and ex-partners, my subjects seemed relieved to finally give their testimony and part with the history they had witnessed in the life of an author who can be equally dazzling and infuriating. With such an abundance of voices in this story, I have avoided any ham-fisted attempts to psychoanalyze Ellroy. He is not introspective. His character can be deduced through his actions, and as such, I don’t always follow a strict chronology. The structure of the book is broadly sequential, but Ellroy is often juggling a dozen projects and people at once. It is more appropriate to focus on one episode of his life at length, before moving onto another.
I feel I have talked enough about my own hand in the book and can feel Ellroy peering over my shoulder and saying, “Steve, you slimy limey, stop talking about yourself and get to the part about me.”
Here goes.
Love Me Fierce in Danger – Book Launch Video
The book launch of Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy took place at Linghams Booksellers in Heswall on February 28th and was a truly extraordinary evening. It was heartening to see so many people attend who are fascinated by Ellroy’s life and work.
The event was filmed by my good friend Radu Spulber. He edited the film into six easy to digest parts. Part one is below. You can find the full playlist on YouTube. I hope you enjoy these videos of me describing Ellroy’s life and the writing process behind his biography. And if you do, why not buy the book!
Alice and the Fly is the debut novel of James Rice. It is a haunting tale, written from the point of view of a cripplingly shy young man named Greg, which touches on themes such as loneliness, isolation and mental health. It’s a terrific read: sometimes funny, sometimes sad. I’ve known James for some time. He is charming and self-deprecating, but I’ve never been in any doubt of the burning talent that drives him as an author. James agreed to be interviewed by me about the genesis and writing process of Alice and the Fly.
Interviewer: Tell me about the genesis of Alice and the Fly. How did you get from the germ of an idea to what every writer covets – a book deal?
Rice: I first started Alice… as a teenager. I can’t remember exactly where the idea came from, but there were various versions of it – a short story, a screenplay, a concept album (don’t ask). None of them ever really worked. A few years later I was studying for an MA in Creative Writing and I decided that I wanted to use that time to work on a novel, so I was looking back through old ideas. I came up with an opening chapter, with Greg and Alice on the bus, and I was quite pleased with that, but I didn’t really understand how I could go from this one scene to a whole novel.
Around the same time, I heard about Writing on the Wall’s “Pulp Idol” writing competition, so I submitted to that. Which was a turning point for me. The judges liked my opening. I had to perform readings in front of large groups of people and it kept getting a good reaction and that was a huge boost in confidence. One of the judges was an editor at Tindal Street Press. He was very encouraging – gave me his card and told me to keep writing. And so I did. For the next four years. I think I’d have probably given up if I didn’t have that card.
In the end Tindal Street were bought out by another publisher and the editor I knew left long before I finished Alice…, but I kept writing. I submitted to several agents. Eventually I managed to convince one to read it, and her reaction was encouraging. There was a lot of back-and-forth there – the novel was too long, it was too short, there was too much humour, too much sadness, etc. There were several six-hour Megabus trips to London. Everything she said was 100% correct though, so I appreciated that. Some people don’t like their writing being edited but I’ve always found it incredibly useful – someone taking the time to sit down and look at your work, try and make it the best possible version of itself.
Eventually we had something that felt like a novel and she agreed to submit it for publication. Then the emails stopped and there was just this deadly silence for what felt like years (but was probably months). I didn’t want to hassle the agency, so I just waited, wondering if I’d ever hear from them again. And then one evening I got the call. Hodder and Stoughton had said yes and wanted to meet me. A week later there I was, eating croissant in the office of a publishing house. It was all very surreal. There’s still a part of me that doesn’t believe any of it really happened. That’s mostly been my experience of writing novels – 99% of it is staring at a word document for hours on end, but occasionally there are moments like that that which make it all worthwhile. Although, maybe not. If I’m honest with myself, when it comes down to it, I’m definitely more of a sit-down-with-a-word-document kind of guy.
Interviewer: Name some writers you grew up reading. Who were your first loves as a writer, and did any of them work their way into Alice and the Fly as influences?
Rice: I didn’t read that much growing up, if I’m honest. There was a teacher who got me to read a few children’s novels. I remember her giving me The Indian in the Cupboard and Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet books – I enjoyed them. And there were these Bruce Coville books about aliens that my dad bought me. But I wasn’t one of those Matilda-type children who carries piles of books everywhere and make friends with their local librarian. I wrote a lot as a child, even without being much of a reader. I had a big imagination.
I was in my late-teens when I started to properly read, and I made up for it then. I read a lot of American stuff; I remember working my way through all of those masculine authors like Bukowski, McCarthy, Hemingway. Then I remember trying to counter that with yet more Americans, only this time of the opposite sex: Flannery O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Homes. After that I tried to broaden my horizons.
I always find this question difficult because the truth is I’ll read anything and everything as long as it’s well-written, and I believe everything I read influences my writing. I did an exercise in a class I was teaching once where I picked out every book from my shelves which had a direct link to something in my first novel. So, not just an influence, but a specific example whereby I could pick out something that I used (i.e. stole) whilst writing Alice…. The pile got very big. After a while it fell over and it was at that point I gave up. Lesson is: everything is an influence, in one way or another. So read everything.
Interviewer: Greg is a painfully shy young man, and a lot of his story inevitably brings up issues of mental health. Both in how it affects individuals and how society reacts to it. Did you do a lot of research in the mental health field?
Rice: I did all the usual stuff; I read, I watched documentaries, I researched case studies. But a lot of this was near the end, to be honest – I avoided trying to get too much into the medical side of things early on because I didn’t really want the book to be about that. I wasn’t trying to do one of those mental health books that get put on an NHS reading list to help people better understand specific medical conditions. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (other people do those books much better than I ever could) – but that wasn’t what I wanted to write. Greg had these ‘visions’ and people didn’t understand them and a doctor would more than likely diagnose them as a form of psychosis, and that’s as much as I wanted to get into it, in terms of ‘mental health writing’. To Greg they were real, and they were real for me too. Most of the research was done to make sure the story I was telling was believable in the ‘real world’ – even if that isn’t the world I was really interested in.
In terms of shyness – I knew where I was with that. I was shy as a child and awkward in my teenage years. I felt out of synch with everyone and everything – I think that’s a pretty universal experience, so a lot of the novel was a reflection on that. And how what’s happening inside someone’s head can be very different to how everyone else is perceiving them.
Interviewer: You incorporate different medium into the novel, from journals to transcripts of police interviews. Why did you decide on this innovative approach?
Rice: The idea of the book being a journal came early on. I wanted it be first-person, but addressed to Alice because there’s a certain sweetness to that. The word ‘you’ is very romantic when used in this way (e.g. 90% of love songs are addressed to “you”). But there are some drawbacks to this format. Just having the world as seen from Greg’s p.o.v. is quite limiting. Also teen-narrated novels can get a bit repetitive. I read a lot of teen-narrated novels at the time of writing Alice… and by the end these sorts of narrators where always starting to grate on me.
Also, my editor thought the novel needed more momentum. She thought the reader needed a sense of the drama to come. So the idea for police transcripts came along quite late in the writing process, as a way of addressing both of these issues; they give the reader a break from Greg’s voice, whilst letting them know something dramatic is coming in the final act. It also gave me the opportunity to write some dialogue, which was nice. (I like writing dialogue.)
Interviewer: Alice and the Fly garnered some terrific reviews which must be very gratifying. Did you receive any feedback from readers who personally identified with Greg’s struggles?
Rice: The reviews were good, yes. I try not to read them because I have that irritating author knack for just concentrating on the negative – so a review will be gushing with praise but then have one suggestion for something that could have worked better and I’ll fall into this utter pit of despair over it. I have a friend who reads them and sends me anything he thinks I’ll find interesting or funny (e.g. the reviewer who accused me of product placement because I mention Waitrose).
I did have readers contacting me, and still do, from time to time. (There was a little boost during the covid lockdown, which was I think due to everyone finally getting round to reading all those books they bought over the last few years.) Sometimes it’s because of the mental health aspect but usually just because they really connected with Greg and want to tell me they enjoyed the book and that’s always nice. I never know what to say though. I’m not very good with compliments.
Interviewer: Your follow-up novel Walk approaches a somewhat different subject – two friends walking across Wales. But digging deeper, it appears there are some parallels. What inspired you to write this novel?
Rice: I wrote Alice… because I wanted to write about a particular time in my life – those awkward teenage school years – but in a way that felt authentic. It was very much a reflection on a particular period of life – even if the end product was complete fiction.
Walk is the same. It’s a reflection on those early-twenties years; that post-university time when you have to get on with the business of living. The horrible grinding struggle of that. I knew that’s what I wanted to write about for my next novel, but I didn’t have any structure or format for it. Then my friend asked me to walk Offa’s Dyke with him and it was as we were walking that I decided this was going to be the basis for my next novel: two dumb city-boys trying to cross a country together and failing at every turn.
I thought it was going to be easy. I struggled writing Alice… because I had never written a novel before, so I was very ill-disciplined when it came to structure, whereas the path they take in Walk is a sort of structure in itself. I had a timeframe and a geographic location to plan the novel along. It made it seem a bit less abstract for me. Turned out I was wrong – Walk was the most difficult thing I’ve ever written. Some of this is for technical reasons (the footnoted sections were challenging…) but there’s also the inbuilt need for a writer to try and push themselves beyond their abilities. I think this was true in the case of Walk. I think there’s a really good novel there, but I spent the entire process unsure as to whether I was quite good enough to write it. Hopefully I did ok.
In the latest episode of Highbrow Lowbrow our theme is conflict on film. My pick is the cynical WWII film Play Dirty starring Michael Caine. Dan talks about the cult dieselpunk classic Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
You can listen to the full episode here. Enjoy!
The Venetian Vase 