Author Talk: May 2009

Q: Your new novel, A Girl’s Guide to Modern European Philosophy,has a unique structure: it’s an entertaining narrative effortlessly interspersed with heavy-laden philosophy lessons from the masters --- Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard. Was it difficult to make these complicated ideas so accessible? How did you come up with the idea?

A: I didn’t find it difficult with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, as their writing is quite literary. It was easy to incorporate quotations from them into the text, and to weave them in with the narrative. Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, in particular, fitted exactly with my story. It’s about the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac, when God tells Abraham to kill his son, and my story was about a young woman considering abortion. So the focus in both is on the question of how it can ever be moral to kill a child. Heidegger was more difficult to present, and I didn’t actually quote from him (if you read his major work, Being and Time, you will understand why; it’s hardly entertaining prose). But I thought some of his ideas were relevant to the discussion of abortion, and provided a new way of thinking about it. So that’s why I included them.

As regards coming up with the idea, I wanted to write a novel in which the heroine is learning, not just from her experiences in life, but from her philosophy studies, and making my heroine a philosophy student seemed a natural way to do this.

Q: Have you ever used the lessons of any of the philosophers to help solve a problem or make a decision in your own life?

A: Yes, very much so. Existentialism in general, with its emphasis on moral choice, self-determination, going one’s own way, following a path without necessarily having the support of the social world around one, has been very important to me, both in my personal life and in my creative work.

Q: Your description of a 1970s university town is alive with authentic details. Did you draw from any of your own college experiences to achieve such a vivid sense of setting in A Girl’s Guide?

A: The book is set at Sussex University, near the seaside town of Brighton. This was the university I attended. At that time, in 1974, it was a new university with an ethos that was very much in keeping with the radical spirit of the period. (Unlike Oxford and Cambridge, which were considered to be more traditional.) I based many of the scenes in the novel on the university and the town. My college years were a very exciting and formative period for me.

Q. As the story progress, Susannah finds herself in a love triangle with Jason, her sophisticated older boyfriend, and Rob, fellow student and philosophy enthusiast. When fashioning these characters, did you play up to any stereotypes? Did you find either character to be a better choice for Susannah?

A: I tried not to play up to stereotypes. Jason turns out to be gay, a fact which is obvious to the reader, perhaps, but not to Susannah. I wanted to communicate the idea that Jason is quite a complex character, who doesn’t want to acknowledge his sexuality, so he is often unreflective and insensitive. Clearly, there is no real future in his relationship with Susannah. On the face of it, Rob looks like a better bet, but he is not fully mature. I saw Rob as the kind of partner who might seem ideal for Susannah --- the right age, common interests, etc. --- but we don’t really know how he is going to develop, and they are too early on in their relationship to make a commitment to having a child. The tutor, Belham, would probably make a better partner for Susannah, but he’s not interested. Life’s like that sometimes.

Q. Feminist overtones preside over the book, placing the story in a larger social context. Did you intend to comment on the gender politics of the 1970s through Susannah and her dilemmas and decisions?

A: Yes. I wanted to communicate the sense that beneath all the political posturing, men were still very sexist at that time. And that, while young women were trying their best to be sexually liberated, there was an abiding sense of disquiet about being taken for granted, disrespected, etc. It was a confusing time for women: most of us had been raised in the repressive era of the 1950s and 1960s (women’s liberation in the sixties was for the minority), and had been taught that sex before marriage was wrong. Then, in the early 70s, we found that men expected the opposite from us --- to be sexually available without the promise of any emotional commitment whatsoever (let alone marriage). We were all struggling to place ourselves within this context: to “go with the flow,” respond to the demands of the counterculture, and at the same time to maintain our sense of independence and self-respect. It wasn’t easy.

Q. Susannah has a series of dreams that plague her throughout the book. Why did you include these?

A: Susannah’s father has recently died. Her mother is emotionally absent to her, as she is dependent on heavy tranquilizers (another feature of the period). I wanted to show that Susannah is somewhat traumatized by this situation, and that her turmoil comes out in her nightmares. Like many young people --- and older people --- she is able to ignore her grief in her daily life, but it catches up with her at night, and in her occasional sense of being cut off from the people around her. I’m not sure whether all this comes over very clearly in the book. The problem was, I was writing it in the first person, and I had to make the reader understand Susannah without Susannah understanding herself.

Q. You’re also a successful songwriter and folksinger. How did you come to have such varying interests --- and talents --- as writing, philosophy, and music?

A: Well, I blame existentialism! I’ve always followed what seemed important to me at the time. As a child, I loved music, but I always wanted to be a writer. Writing was like a companion to me, another voice. Then, at university, I became besotted with philosophy. Later, I worked as a music journalist, and from there my interest in traditional music developed. I started to sing and to write songs, and ended up recording five albums. Now I’ve gone back to writing, but I’m still very involved in music.

Q. Do you have any favorite authors? Have you been influenced by another other writers?

A: I read a huge amount of fiction as a child. My nose was never out of a book, much to the irritation of everyone around me. My grandfather had been a scholar, and I plundered his library, reading everything from Dickens to Balzac to James Baldwin. Most of it I completely misunderstood. As an adult, I have tended to read more non-fiction. The great philosophers. Freud. I’m very interested in psychoanalysis. I’ve just started to read Lacan. I probably misunderstand most of this, as well.

Q. Are you currently working on anything new? Can you share any details?

A: I’ve almost finished a new novel. It’s set in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France, and concerns a character, Faye Hamilton (nicknamed Faye Dunaway), who makes a brief appearance in A Girl’s Guide. The book has some disturbing themes. But there are also many joyful passages about the beauty of Provence, of playing music, of falling in love … not to mention some great recipes!