Book Of The Month September, 2007
Going UnderRay French
The future looks bleak for Aidan Walsh. He stands to lose his job as the last major employer in a dead-end Welsh town prepares to close its factory and relocate to India. Then Aidan hatches a startling plan. He buries himself alive in a coffin in his back garden, announcing that he s not coming back up until everyone s job is saved. Publicity is everything these days, and Aidan knows he must attract the attention of the media if he is to have a chance. Slowly, people warm to his cause, locally at first, and then from further afield, as news of his remarkable protest travels. And so begins a titanic battle of wills between an unlikely hero and a powerful corporation. Going Under explores the ties of love, friendship, family and community in a story full of humour, human frailty, resourcefulness and ultimately triumph.
What We Think
Ray French on his book Going Under:
Going Under is the story of an ordinary man who does something extraordinary for the first time in his life, and the effect it has on him, his family (Dad has gone mad), and his friends. It seems that if you want to publicise your cause nowadays, you need to come up with something outlandish in order to catch the attention of the media. Remember the Greenpeace activist who abseiled down Big Ben? Or Friends of the Earth fitting solar panels to energy-guzzling John Prescott’s house? So when Aidan comes up with his own bizarre stunt, he is joining a growing trend.
This is not just a carefully calculated strategy to gain maximum publicity, but a raw, highly charged emotional response of a man with his back to the wall. Aidan shutting himself in a coffin is a metaphor for his loss of hope and buried emotions. About to begin his protest, he squirms uncomfortably as he remembers his wife saying ‘You know your problem, Aidan? You bury things.’ I wanted to take a character who has reached rock bottom at the beginning of the novel, and then see if he could regain his pride and self-respect. It was clear to me that once I put Aidan down in that hole, he would have to be profoundly changed by the experience, in order for it to be worth writing about.
I was fascinated by the idea that Aidan becomes the centre of attention for the first time in his life by digging a hole and climbing into it. Of course this presented me with a major problem. How to write the kind of novel I had in mind, one with a pacey, humorous plot containing lots of twists and turns, when my main character was stuck in a coffin for two thirds of the book? My previous novel, All This Is Mine, was written in the first person, and I’d always felt most comfortable writing that way. So when I began writing Going Under it was as a first person narrative, from Aidan’s point of view. However I soon regretted denying myself the opportunity to describe the bigger picture. For instance I grew very interested in the relationships between the other characters, and realised that they were a very important part of the story. His daughter, Shauna, thinks that Aidan’s peculiar protest is a sure sign that he’s cracking up, but his son, Dylan, is so excited by the idea he appoints himself campaign manager and media strategist. Which of them would Aidan listen to?
Charting the reaction of the wider community was something else I wanted to do. After all, Aidan is doing this not just to save his own job, but the jobs of all the other people who work in the factory. He has seen what has happened to other towns nearby when the last major employer has pulled out, and the prospect of the same thing happening to Crindau scares him. Crindau is based on my home town, Newport, in south Wales. The people of that much maligned place are a rough, tough, tender, funny, loud and colourful bunch, and they were soon banging on the door, clamouring for their place in this story. Switching from the first to third person allowed me to go wherever I wanted. It was a huge relief, I was getting very claustrophobic in that box.
I wanted to see how a fundamentally decent and modest person like Aidan would cope with such intense and intrusive interest in his personal life. People who would previously have passed him by in the street without a second glance now queue up to wish him good luck and ask his advice, as if sudden fame bestowed great insight. And while he attracts plenty of wellwishers, a fair number of perverts, flashers, maniacs and ageing Smiths’ fans also descend on him. The price of fame.
The novel explores the human cost of globalisation – the effect onrelationships of the relentless drive for greater profits. The family and wider community are at the heart of both my novels, and in both I explore the way in which their ties can bind people closer and empower them, or rob them of their individuality and suffocate them. That tension between being on the inside or the outside, of connecting or failing to connect with others, runs through much of what I write. Maybe it’s a reflection of the position of the writer in society.
First published in newbooks magazine, July/August 2008 issue. For a FREE introductory copy of the magazine or to subscribe go to newbooksmag.com.