05/10/06 - Lionel Shriver
Lionel Shriver's (winner of the Orange Prize for fiction, 2005) debut at Crowthorne Library was a sold out affair, with double the amount of requests for tickets than those available. Such is this lady's current fame.
Lionel Shriver's writing life has had its ups and downs, and mostly its downs. Looking back over the years (she doesn't look much older than 30) to when she was 7, asserting to her parents that writing was what she wanted to do, she can trace exactly why her father had wanted her to study nursing at university instead. "It is so hard for anyone to get into print, even more difficult to become successful at it," she says in the self-assured American tone of a woman who has really been through it and worked hard for success.
Typically - this is becoming a bit of a cliché with authors that I meet - Lionel is shorter than expected (she doesn't seem even five foot tall) and conducts her frail looking frame, for the most part, as if overwhelmed by public speaking. But that view, like her publishing history, belies the truth. She's no celebrity and doesn't wave around airs and graces. You can tell she does this for the love of writing and allowing others to see her work. And, when she does get up and speak, she does so with commitment - answering questions that range from feminism to her recent responsibilities in the news.
Lionel has had a slow rise to the spotlight, having written five novels previously, she built up a steady fan base, but nothing that could secure her the benefits of a full time writer. She's had to go back to work to pay her way whilst book sales dwindled and on several occasions she's had to change publishers to release new works. "Publishers aren't prepared to commit to a poor sales author," she says. But Lionel lives for writing, believing, "Writers of novels want to get published because they want people to read their books. Anyone who tells you otherwise is kidding themselves. If you're not interested in others enjoying your work, write a short story, or a journal, or something."
And she takes her time over it too. "Two years it takes me to write a novel. Admittedly I'm working during this time as well, but it's about two years, and I'm an overwriter. I never have trouble with finding what to say, or having writer's block. It's always too much. For my next novel I've had to cut out 200 pages, and that's difficult to do. That's really painful. But, I had to do it to Kevin."
"We Need To Talk About Kevin" is the set piece in Lionel's portfolio, a novel so powerful it won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005, so hot that it's sparked a release of her previous novels that hadn't yet been released in the UK because they hadn't found a publisher (damn that low-yield track record). Kevin, about an apparently troubled boy who eventually shoots his classmates, is so controversial that it's a subject that keeps coming up in the press time and again, and led Lionel to interview after interview with news programs across the country.
From the blurb:
Kevin Katchadourian killed seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher, shortly before his sixteenth birthday.
He is visited in prison by his mother, Eva, who narrates in a series of letters to her estranged husband Franklin, the story of Kevin’s upbringing.
A successful career woman, Eva is reluctant to forgo her independence and the life she shares with Franklin to become a mother.
Once Kevin is born, she experiences extreme alienation and dislike of Kevin as he grows up to become a spiteful and cruel child. When Kevin commits murder, Eva fears that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become. But how much is she to blame? And if it isn’t her fault, why did he do it?
Speaking of the recent shootings in America, Lionel said, "You don't have any experts in school gun-crime over here. Unfortunately that means I'm it. So they've wheeled me out to talk about these shootings, and I don't really know much beyond my own research - and that's not as good as it was. The last interview I gave was for BBC News 24, and the news reader was asking me, 'What lessons can we learn from this?', and I said, 'There's nothing to learn. We can't give credence to these people because there never is an explanation for what they do. We can't tell ourselves there are lessons to learn just to make ourselves feel better about something that's without sense'.
"When the interview was over the news reader said to me, 'Well, that was depressing'. But, I'm not prepared to paper over these random acts as if they're preventable just like that. And it makes me feel like kind of a hypocrite that here I am, I've done really well with Kevin and I'm on all these shows talking about these issues saying, 'We shouldn't be giving these people any airtime. If I had my way their stories would get only a couple of lines, because all we're doing is helping to justify and to give them ideas'."
But Kevin isn't just hot topic for her readership. Lionel's agent passed on it, describing the subject matter as horrible and disturbing. When Lionel couldn't then find another agent she sent the work straight to an editor. It finally took thirty publishers to reject the book before it was optioned. "Lucky thirty-one." Lionel stuck with her personal belief that the book was publishable, and then she had to go through the whole process again when it reached the UK.
But, Lionel doesn't like it easy. Speaking to identitytheory.com she said of investing her energies in Kevin: "It takes some emotional toll. I found the writing of the book very heavy. It wasn't always something I looked forward to getting back to. There were certain scenes that I was writing up to that I dreaded, partly because I knew they would be technically difficult. They would, again, address experience that I didn't have very much first-hand knowledge of. I knew they would strain my imaginative powers. And I was glad to have it finished. I found having to read it over and over again in the proofs and the galleys went on forever. I have not written a single book that I was not thoroughly sick of by the time it came out."
Lionel discussed some points on research. She doesn't do any! In Kevin, the narrator, Eva, is filled with angst about her detachment from her son and her dislike of him. "Psychologists call it attachment disorder, but I quickly realised that it's just a label. You can't sum something up; package all the associated emotions into a two word label. It doesn't mean anything, least of all to the reader. So, I threw out any idea of research on the mother and child relationship."
Lionel doesn't have children. She doesn't choose to either, and Kevin was her way of exploring her issues with parenting. But, coming from the outside and without research she might have been setting herself up for a fall. Couple that with her choice to focus the book upon the anxieties and failings of the mother of a murderer and she could have failed in a big way. It's paid off in spades. Lionel chose to put herself in the shoes of her parents, asking herself what were they like when she was a kid? What were their worries?
What's interesting is that without psychological or parental research, Kevin is now a textbook on two university courses - psychological courses. Lionel is more surprised than anyone. But, this goes to show that her books are deeply emotional stories that look beyond the standard plot devices of some novels to flesh out her characters. She does this in her next book… erm… previous book: Double Fault (published in the US before Kevin, only now is the UK market ready to open up for it).
Synopsis:
'Love me, love my game', says twenty-three year-old Willy Novinsky. Ever since she picked up a racquet at the age of four, tennis has been Willy's one love, until the day she meets Eric Oberdorf. She's a middle-ranked professional tennis player and he's a Princeton graduate who took up playing tennis at the age of eighteen. Low-ranked but untested, Eric, too, aims to make his mark on the international tennis circuit. Willy beholds compatibility spiced with friendly rivalry, and discovers her first passion outside a tennis court. They marry. Married life starts well, but animated shop talk and blissful love-making soon give way to full-tilt competition over who can rise to the top first. Driven and gifted, Willy maintains the lead until she severs her knee ligaments in a devastating spill. As Willy recuperates, her ranking plummets whilst her husband's climbs, until he is eventually playing in the US Open. Anguished at falling short of her lifelong dream and resentful of her husband's success, Willy slides irresistibly toward the first quiet tragedy of her young life.
And, next up Lionel will be releasing her seventh book The Post-birthday World in March 2007, published by HarperCollins. It's touted to be another big discussion book. Lionel doesn't fancy resting on her laurels.
- Richard Howse
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