Readers Place

1. Where did the idea for setting a novel during the gold rush era in New Zealand come from?

I was travelling in NZ in 2000 and came across (quite by chance) a small museum, which laid out for the visitor, in photographs and artefacts, a brief history of the 1860s gold rush. I immediately understood that there was a potentially spellbinding novel to be written around the dilemma which faced the English and Scottish immigrants when gold was discovered on the West Coast of the South Island: should they stay with their safe but arduous farming life on the East Coast, or should they risk everything (even their lives) to go in search of gold?

2. What are the best and worst things about being a bWhat writers/ books do you particularly enjoy reading?

I love books which take me far away from my everyday life and far away from England. Certain American writers always engage my attention: Cormac McCarthy,

Philip Roth, Jonathan Franzen, Annie Proulx, Louise Erdrich and, recently Tobias Wolff. I think I like them particularly for the wild and new landscapes they enable me to inhabit. I also admire the work of Nadine Gordimer, Penelope Fitzgerald, Peter Carey and Jim Crace.

3. When is your next book being published? Can you tell us anything about it?

I have a new ‘big idea’, but I’m a long way from beginning to write it. When I do begin, it will have as its setting the East Anglian Coast and I hope to terrify the reader with some of the ingredients of the classic ghost story. I’ve always wanted to write a ghost story and this will be it – but with a serious contemporary twist about our collective state of mind and our discontent in the midst of material wealth.. Meanwhile, I’m trying to complete a collection of short stories. These may appear in 2005, if I can deliver on time.

4. I’ve heard that you are developing The Colour into a feature film. When you were writing the novel did you ever visualise it as a film? When do you imagine we will be able to see it on the big screen?

I think The Colour if a very filmic story and I think I was already aware of this when writing the book. After Lord of the Rings, the landscape of New Zealand is a star in itself! But I’m at an early stage with this project. All being well, we should get to the production stage at the end of 2005, but first I have to get the script into perfect condition. Watch this space…

5. How much research did you do for this novel? Did you spend any time in New Zealand?

I found the idea when I was in New Zealand, then I came home with a suitcase full of books and photographs and immersed myself in these for about a year.

I intended to go back to New Zealand, to verify whether my research was real and true, but then I decided against going back; when I’m writing about a distant place, my ‘imaginative understanding’ of it becomes very strong and, sometimes, revisiting the reality can disturb – or even destroy – that personal vision.

6. I’ve read Music and Silence and Restoration and found The Colour to be very different in many ways – What were the main differences for you when writing The Colour?

I try to visit a new place (both actual and emotional) with each of my fictions, so that I’m not repeating old ideas or re-examining the same myths. An additional but very significant difference between the three books you list is the way I decided to tell each story. Restoration has a classic, fallible, sometimes amusing, sometimes tiresome ‘unreliable narrator’. Music and Silence is told in an ‘orchestral’ way, with many different voices and colorations of tone. In The Colour I am the cool omniscient narrator, knowing everything that everybody thinks and feels. The texture of the prose aims to be unfussy and stern (the antithesis of Merivel’s prose in Restoration.) I try to be even-handed to all the characters all the way through The Colour, but I think my fondness for Harriet probably shows.

7. At the end of each chapter there is a jump in timAre there any authors who you feel have shaped your writing?

I was very lucky, as a young student, to be taught at UEA by Angus Wilson.

I never aspired to poach on his territory, but I think he gave me the courage to become a writer. Writers I admire very much include William Golding, Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, Annie Proulx, Peter Carey and Jim Crace. All are AMBITIOUS and never repeat themselves or get stuck in a familiar groove.

8. It must be a magnificent achievement to be shortlisted for the Orange Prize, what does this mean to you as a writer?

Well, now the prize has come and gone and Andrea won it and I’m really pleased for her because this is a good moment in her career to get something this big. But prize psychology is interesting. You start out just being pleased to be on the long list, then thrilled to be on the shortlist and then – on the night, with a colossal media excitement surrounding you – you suddenly start desperately wanting to win! But, hey, I’m a grownup: I’ll get over it.

9. I loved Harriet’s strong and independent character, was she based on someone you know? Where did you get the idea for her character from and how did it develop?

I think Harriet is really me – or rather, she’s the young woman I would like to have been. I took some unexpected and possibly ‘brave’ decisions in my young life, but none as brave or as risky as those taken by Harriet. I’ve always admired strong women and I’ve wanted to find the perfect story for a person like Harriet for some time. She has some characteristics of a close friend, Charlotte, but mainly she’s an invention.

10. Have you had much feedback from readers in New Zealand? Is the book as great a success there as it is here in the UK?

The book has been well-received in New Zealand. One critic said I had some of the wild-life wrong (no voles in NZ, toe-toe grass too springy to sit on etc etc) but this was about the only quibble. I’ve had some very positive letters from NZ readers and no furious ones – as yet. But they will come. When you inhabit a place which belongs to another culture, there are always those who feel that you have no imaginative right to be there.