Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Anna Lawrence Pietroni: Ruby's Spoon

Ana Lawrence grew up outside of Birmingham England. She's a graduate of Oxford University and she worked for several years in the British prison system before turning to writing. Let's hope she tells us about that experience this evening for those of us who don't know about it already. Of her first novel Publishers Weekly writes a mystery witchcraft and a precocious young narrator and live in pitch Ronis debut. It really is one of those bright narrators whose insights into the treacheries of the adult world are heart rending. In a starred review booklist writes this and crawling suspenseful debut novel has the feel of a grim fairy tale of the many riches it offers. It is the winning lead character a lonely teen brave enough to have a dream despite her impoverished circumstances who will capture readers hearts and historical novels review has this to say. The mystery at the core Ruby spoon is complex and layered. The attorney keeps ice a fly a mystery about the townsfolk and the reader throughout the book Saving the big reveal for a very satisfying ending in turns modern and folkloric the sex and

vicious and unique debut. Please welcome Ana Lawrence Petrone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much of the Harvard bookstore for inviting me to come and talk here today and thank you very much for coming through the rain on this probably the most hideous night so far this year. Thank you very much. In a moment I'm going to invite you to create a cross in 1933. The town where our protagonist is trapped and longs to leave. I'll tell you a little of the elaborate fantasy that she's constructed for herself of a life by the sea and her really embraces the hope of escape. With the arrival of a stranger I see a fly. And I hope that when I'm finished you'll want to step into cradle cross yourself to explore the entryways behind the houses the hills and gets filled in with bricks and sheds and chimneys to walk along the cut to get a custard from the Baker made on

Hester's and to climb the steep large hill to Barbara's the high dry little air at the Priory. The spin is a novel about running away. It's about austerity and social order. It's about grief and loss and unpaid debt but it's also about disguise double's transformation. We have intimations of which is a play in the labyrinths event she ways and backyard fantasies of mermaids swimming at polluted canals. It's about superstition as a means of marshalling our fears about storytelling as a means of social control. With tales of sinister rites like finger bones cut off and sliced up into buttons as a means of keeping children safe are within bounds. But it read it's a novel about the spells that people put on themselves that keep them bound up unable to move. And for Ruby the challenge she faces is how to work out what spells she's put on herself so that she can begin to lift it and live freely. I'm going to start by reading the prologue to be speaking.

Cradle cross was locked in tight by land as far from sea as you could be. It squatted red brick dull slate cramped up to being cramped up between fact chimney stacks and blind factory walls in the pits of Ludlow Valley west of the steep slopes of the lean hills south of the proudest sprawling town of Michael II. Even in midwinter there was always somewhere close to warm your fingers by the greedy ovens at the backs where Naylor women hammered by the horn of an impetus raced in shed big enough to burn a cow. If you could stand the stink. Brazier fires in the folds behind between the houses lit to purify the air. Midwives pass their fresh born babies over open hearts to burn off evil spirits and to make their peace with fire. And if they didn't take the baby to the flames the flames would take the baby. It happened every winter. A hungry furnace scratching till Inala mother parched like kindling paper leaves the fire unguarded for a second. She tells a toddling child to sit right they are don't

move and go so wet her lips on a jug of beer at the door. Then when her back is turned the furnace Springs and snatches up this overreaching bit of boy while his mother screams and throws her better at the flames. The thirsty mother weeps and tells the magistrate how she only left him for a second. He shakes his head and holds that neglect and Holloway in her face while she stoops in court. Her husband's in the foundry naked to the waist. He strikes on skin bleached and pocked with little slug trails so verree and raised where beads of molten iron have saved the skin. Each may with brazing Blands that brands they plotted from the first failed purchase of the spring the nail is in the chain maker's walked the streets sang thanks and dumped the songs for their life labor. Their furnace is that spattered nails spewed monstrous rapes of chain the Hammers were so delicately named. Some chains with door lead some were Tommy and the nails had brisk and merry titles. Spike and scupper Harben tenter rose and Mark and finally clinker dog an ugly was the only name that fitted with the nail. The

snarling fury of the fire. But even here in cradle cross where the streets breathes fire they never thought they'd gather in horn lane at the dead end of that long scorched summer 933 to watch a witch burning. Word got out and someone struck the button factory men spilled out of the leopard slushing ale from the chapel a scattering herd of women hobbled down towards the factory lit by flames and men called out their fucking owls not troubling to keep their cursing quiet. They all smelled the fire before they saw it. The scorching stench of the chlorine stench of scorching fat and bone Some came to Cyrus the flames others to stoke the fire. Either way they were all shocked by what they saw and stood in a shifting curve around the fire held back by the heat and bleating at each other nudging shuffling leaning on each other's backs and jumping for a peep. The witch's name was ice a fly and the children had a vying for her. If you my eyes are crossed eyes are well split and supply and supply show there was no steak no brain no sack of

seasoned elder. The whole street was on fire. The horn shards in the factory in the little row of houses in between the fried fish shop button shop and up stairs but the windows stock still and watching the crowd stood the witch with her talking frantic at Hursley the young girl who wasn't meant to be burned up. You might have thought the sight of RE be able to tailor trap beside the which her knotted fists both flailing would be enough to shift the crowd from warming up their fingers on the Witch fire. Some started staggered off towards the breach some battered at the high gates of the factory crying out for firemen fetching water ladders axes but other stayed put for the sight of Ruby proved to them they had been right about the witch. Right all along so evil that she'd let an innocent die with her. And this ignited a new passion in the crowd spitting Hawking swiping calling livid curses down and I saw a fly screaming at each other that the witch would get a burning when they turned back to the window. There was no one there. Just wild flame red and gold. This is the tale of be able to tailor you could not cross the water but dreamed of an easy

plenty by the sea. This is the tale of three women one which one Mermaid and one missing and how he was caught up in between. So I'll tell you a little about cradle cross. It isn't just a background in the story but has I hope its own shape and identity and its distinctive topography. The steep hills of clay the canals and circle it informs internal landscape and set physical limits that she longs to transcend. It's a fictional town in the Black Country west of Birmingham in the heart of England and most people in England have no sense of where the Black Country is. And you won't find it on a map. It's known as the Black Country both because of a cold that sat at the surface blackening the soil and because of the heavily polluted air from Fountains of forges and furnaces it has little or no presence in the national cultural consciousness. But the people who live there have a fierce defensive pride in their traditions their dialect and in their industry ancestry and Ruby's

hometown cradle Cross is an ancient settlement where families who work iron into nail and chain have lived for generations. This is the England of the 1930s that J B Priestley a British author and commentator called the 19th century England. Our sense of the 1930s is so often mediated by the Metropolitan cultures of Modernism of Art Deco and T.S. Eliot even Agatha Christie. But this is what priestly calls the industrial England the fact about houses slums fried fish shops public houses with red blinds a cynically devastated countryside city dismal little towns. Cradle Cross is an industrial community with substantial factories and foundries missiles rivets Tully's boats reduced to even pipe but it's dominated by a failing family business blitz find home button manufacturer really works be signed in horn lane and Captain lands fried fish shop and she's saving up her earnings for a bait. But despite its proximity she's never been inside the factory gates. Ruby knew you didn't go in his button factory all that in children in the cradles knew you

shouldn't go be on the books as gate if you went there. They put you on a huge spade in the furnace and they burn the fat off you until you've melted down to nothing but your bones. Then they would take the wetted saw and slice your brains in rounds and cut them into planks really had a box of my mother's buttons that she'd added to over the years or two ones and all tiny she could never bring herself to use one on a shirt cuff her to finish off a night dress. Now she's so trim and polish slip of some child's little finger to the cloth. And those who are no good for buttons will be grinded up not for making bread but shoveled into neat plump facts of certain sacks of fertilizer that sat patient on the barges waiting to be shook out from the fields. He's a loner an outsider she's shunned by other children and the subject of their taunts. The something heartbreaking in the way that she serves individuals in commune and groups within the community taking her dad's dinner to his boat yard in a bowl cutting up captain's bread and warming up his dinner and teaching treat a complet how to make a decent cup of tea. But she's never fully included in the rites and rituals are a way even through the fabric of the town is a community still

nursing losses in Jordan the great wall still defining itself by its grief and a group of bereaved chapel women everything they anything as they club is at its core. The wreath and the Emmy Thursday club was not founded to burn witches. It was founded back in 1918 in the Dold wake of the war so that women could in silence share their grief and fold it for the others. Hold it up. Compare the warp and weft the size the stitching. My daughter drowned before I had a birthday. My grief is here this handkerchief. I want her letters here. Find stitches in the corner. But look at all the rest of it. This is the empty space as what might've been. Yes you are blessed with grief so small that you can keep it in your pocket. My son was fully grown when I lost him to the war. My grief is larger than a sale but I also lost the shelter of my husband. I had the time to know him and to love him and he kept me warm and dry so I had draped my grief about me for a place to keep the window away. On and on these women sitting in a circle

tending to their grief and mending where the years it would have been this was their tradition. Those you had no grave to trim and tend no matter to kneel and weep and feel the warm damp into their knees. What Japan conceived as tokens of remembrance to fold away incented drools will keep under their pillow is a new handkerchief each year the birthday of the last one picked in silks. Sometimes the day they died devices more elaborate each year. A simple oxide daisy chain first around the ham that twine the next year with green ivy in the next with Rosemary amongst themselves they called it last linen. This community is austere its frugal but there is an agreed code of mutually beneficial interdependence that helps people survive the lean times there was in cradle cross a hierarchy of debt. The back and forth that didn't count is that a spoon of jam a fist of coal the little twist of paper filled with tea then a gross of Foley struck book and outs of men so a jug of milk a premise with a step

sharper on the strap said loud no disgrace in it. Go on then put on the strap. GROSS of Hollywood flick through his struck book with a wetted them until he found your page scraps of writing all directions and writing what you thought their interest charged. No terms a little bit pay down each week. Not only didn't have a page to really shame never bought on tick. Preferred to go without. Each week well really flushed head bent to count the pennies in her palm grocer Politi Easter tell you Nan as well no one said I've saved a page for. Then there was his hock shop. No nanny had never crossed the step. If you were short maybe your dad to drink his wages from the leopard then Georgie Bates would give you cash at 2 percent until the next pay packet. But it wasn't for say in his window shoes a hammer a set of yellow teeth and we find private generosity at play we find in the fried fish shop where really works for her surrogate grandfather Captain of salt. Woman came in and tried to stand up tall against the counter captain she

really knew the bento woman wouldn't ask for anything not while she was there. The woman never did. With Khair eyes fixed on Captain she would place whatever coin she had to spare flat on the counter and Captain M would smile and then be gruff and say he was sure he'd fetch a something like a bag of cards had to stretch out with mash into a fish cake but he would pack it with extras like some chips in with her bits. Been doing this for years. It was Captain Lenz fried fish shop kept the cradles fed since the hungry winters of the war and women driven to cobbling wall of spit or pigs or potato in the wheat to keep their children from being starved into coffins small enough to carry on their laps. So when Captain started wrapping up jelly to throw in a whole scoop of butter bits really went when she was told no hesitation through to the back. This really loved him Captain. How he was so careful with the dignities of strangers and their dignity as a friend asked how we cradle them so lightly yet weighted down his pockets with responsibilities that were not his to bear. This is a community that tries to take care of the vulnerable within their midst. Take em

find me bacon known as trembly am an elderly woman who had fallen from a tree when she was young and was thought of as soft headed. The wreaths and the IT THEY OWN he's often called on her bill even though they did her a substantial kindness each thinking that she demonstrated quite how generous she was to spend her time in such a soft head each leaving feeling nourished by the sweet milk of her charity spilled into poor cup. Each gifted her with secrets believing that soft headed benign and bruised would feel so grateful for the private packages they owned wrapped in her presence and gave little in return. But no one expected much of a can smile a fist of love that cabbage leaves a good luck trinket maybe when the child was born she knits for baby and cause its home with pressed musty affections and Ruby has a few affectionate people around her. Her mother died of the flu when Ruby was two and her father is a recluse living and working on his little island boat yard on a quiet branch of the

canals. So she's left to the masses of her brittle unpredictable grandmother. No nanny the dredger who cleans the canal says to re be. You want someone to pluck your hair and bring you should get TB and God knows you deserve a bit of sweetness and affection after having that dry lemon and a little of bring you up. He's got little to stay for in cradle cross but she's not yet 14 and so constructs for herself a fantasy of new life by the sea in opposition to her own landlocked existence circumscribed by canals the filthy slits of water called the cut beneath the water line would rotted down to slime and wire and rusted iron. Not like the sea where you don't know what the tide might bring. A whale of course a raft a barrel full of something rare and bright the cutthroat barges loaded up with steel cheeps salt and coal and rivets. She's inherited from her mother and I when I call the coastal companion within The Times of time it's a chart of all the stars the lunar calendar some pages were

obscured or pasted lists of places I will go when I have got a boat or maps from cradle cross a log like port by water drawn on scraps of sugar packet scraps or sugar packet flattened out. And Captain Lenz relatives from the coast sent him things which he then gives to repay kelp soap free screenings limpets Pearson hanging from a string of twisted limb of driftwood sitting on the mantel shelf. She knows by heart the tales of 7c the making of Mary made a tale of a man who finds an infant sitting on a rock a mile from shore sucking on her salty middle fingers in the light of a full moon. The mermaid Julie scooped her up and held the infant to her in a crooked muscle fin. She fed her with salty milk until she shone cheat and repeat. She has endlessly the ancient advice to see fairies and an ACK the warning to why sailors not to look for too long on the full moon for there are stone jars on its surface filled with the broken promises of man and should he stay too long the seafarer is absorbed in a futile longing to turn his stone jar over and started life again.

Blind he neglects his course and too late discovers that he is set for rocks and certain death. And while there is a given structure by the task she performs for others her mind is occupied by her lists. She would sink below the surface of the day into her lifts whole days could pass like this really. She submerged herself within her lists and they were like a lie. A place where fishes rest somewhere safe and cool somewhere to hide to linger. She waited steady there in the lee of her cool rock and let the current of the day wash over around her. She worked on the inventor of what she would take with her when she went to see a list that really had paid out so often that it spilled from her like cotton on a single. What I should take to see a bit cut off the block of fairy soap to wash herself her clothes to spare vests a small packet of tea and she walked she twisted and untwisted the spoon handle on its cord and with every fourth step she listed one more item that she'd need

of course the woman speckle jazzier and lit up last winter. I love the writing case she supposed she'd have to write a letter nanny and her father know that she was safe. But of course as we discover Ruby is not allowed to go near water her grandfather and aunt were drowned in the sink it was in the sinking of the packet boat that Licky about 30 years before. Her grandmother has forbidden it. Now nanny has her reasons. Ruby knew even if she didn't fully understand them she had heard someone say that in the Bird Key and she saw these reasons hung up solid gently swinging like the haunches in the meat shop. The punishment for transgressing is as really nice to her cost inexorable and extreme. An accident it was mine and he honestly it was a day mean to go in water. But when they met is full enough to get him out again else elsewhat and only creaked as if her anger had all dried out. Bibi knew it hadn't and she held her breath in tight. She'd only made it worse. It pays if you I been told time and time again by made by Captain Joe played

down the cut it was a cut it was the cutter really edged around the table till it stood in between them. He wore the coat it was the gutter only parroted in petitioning for strength look to the ceiling. Think that's better don't you know. She straight across the room and planted one hand fan upon the table. Do you remember last year with the dredger. She leaned across and grabbed his chin. There was spittle on her lip. A mustard markings on her teeth curls springing from their pens. Is that what you want is it for the dredge boat to fetch you out of that little lad. We knew the story old enough to crawl but not to swim a boat boy must have slipped in off a barge and got caught below the fender because they were poking poles out for him to catch on every side. But still I couldn't find him. The state of him. They already know he was a baby is what they said when they found him two weeks later in that tunnel. She came around the table and the words were the words spilled thick glowing with her anger. One hand closed around the damp shoe on the table. The finger on the other hand pressed him to reveal like and he was trying to pierce her. Is that what you mean wanting for me to find you medicate

and puffed up like a bladder. I don't know did I want nothing bad has happened to me Mommy. She never seen as she has said it she should have sewn her mouth shut. Something has happened to you baby and I only said. And with each word she slapped the soul of Reid the shoe against her skull. And I won't have it. Not for the first time it was Captain he said Raby rapping loudly at the door and walking in before and he was too sunk down in her anger. He dropped his fishing paper on a chair and he let the shoe fall to the ground and turned away to get the pins out of her hair and dropped them in her apron. Bibi ran a captain and he wrapped her in her and kissed her on the crown and let his let his head rest she breathing cottonseed and kelp and pipes make toffee sweet and leaned into his chest to hear his heart go run a finger up the bristles on his cheek against the grain. You it is she thought as I will miss most when I am gone with ice. So really be landlocked longing to escape. And I'm going to tell you about the

night when everything changes for her. She's sitting on the back step outside captain's fish shop. She puts her book safely away and crumpled up the paper for the fire. The kettle singing now and Captain wanting tea when she heard dislocated voices on the cut resounding hard and clear and then she saw the swinging light approaching around the kink as it curved behind Lex's. She stood up quickly and stepped back inside the doorway leaning out and appearing at the lurching lamp but holding to the frame boats really loved. It was the water that they traveled on that troubled her. Each time a boat passed by should fix us up to something firm on land because she would be suddenly afraid if she moved from where she stood she might step out towards the water. So as the light swayed side to side along the cut really set her back against the frame and pressed her feet hard against the stone it looked to be like a common barge for the payload where the little one man cabin at the back. But this boat didn't pass it didn't take more in behind fair it captains

boat and on the platform next to the skipper stood a slight a figure with an arm out on the bar holding steady. The bow light glinted on a woman's face and fierce white hair that gleamed half coiled inside the lowered hood of a deep crimson plague. Ruby drew back further as the woman disembarked and stumbled on the towpath. She found her footing glanced up as she did so something started deep in Ruby and for a moment really felt she was about to spew up all the life she knew. Her eyes grew wide She darted back inside and closed the door and shrank down below below its window to wait for the woman to pass by. It's mighty ever coming. Really flinched kept his voice behind her. What you want to really go boil to drive that cattle house. He took up the thick crust by the grate and lifted off the cattle shaking it to see if there was water still inside. Just enough he said but seeing really was still crouching by the door he set the kettle plank down on the hot plate and crouched beside her pressing the warm flat of his hand to his hand to her forehead. You're right Terry be someone out there.

She tried to talk him keep him down for the captain. Is it them kids again. Better not be messing with my favorite I'd better not. Before Ruby could pull him back he'd raised himself up yanked open the door and thrown his chest and his hands wide like a bear ready to grow and roared felons could not stop him. That's how I saw a fly got him. In the days and weeks that followed really try to work out when she found the breach in her own history the breach stitching every story. Run your fingers over it and you will find a clumsy note where someone tried to dart across the slit. I really could not stop him. Captain tamed and gallant and seeming younger than his 50 years I asked the woman in and looking back really knew that this was when it started to snow. The slow unraveling of all that she had told a sure entry. The stranger said she had to find a cheap room just for a night or two watching her cautious and unsteady on the edge of kept his one arm safe for the sprouted horsehair around the studs and buttons. Ruby could see what had made her afraid of this woman. She was guarded really thought as if within she

held it by a secret jumpy yappy like an untrained hound that could leap free and not the air from really not her to the ground. The scarlet plague the salt white hair the subtle heavy on her shoulder like a pelt the hair of an old woman on the head of a young soul for the woman was still young and her skin lambent underlined and more than this the strange unbalanced eyes one dark as coal the other Corsi white everyone avoids a whites white. I you can see further with the whites I see the scabs and pits and scars that mark our hearts. This blind eye it was catch me out thought really. But while Captain brought fresh ship fresh chips out for the stranger she decided to be civil. Our supply pays attention she listens to her. She doesn't dismiss her and repeats fear of ice slid out the back door and down on to the top. A buoyant recklessness raising her like hiccups. She showed miss fly her mother's writing in the

almanac. The lists of what she take with her to see the pasted time tables of packet boats from looked like she asked of ice I had seen for herself the rib cage of a whale it lead to tall enough for a grown man to walk through. She asked about the tunnel through the rocks at Filbert home and if it was true that convicts had been made to carve a time out and did she believe that story about mermaids off the coast of Saudi point and if you hear them singing you will drown. I said reached out for the almanac settling on her lap and tracing up along the coast her finger stopping on a straight stretch now they celebrate the solstice here at Markham. It's not marked and here she topped the page they marked the Markham solstice. Really shook her head and looked at me. Miss fly's hand covering the map she listened while I suspect flags up Brazier's lit. Hot potatoes cooking in a pan. Herrings fried in pepper flour. All their fisherman their boys the boats all holes up on the beach. Someone who got a fiddle got the mood dancing to keep warm. And Ruby was caught up in the salt wind and spray.

And this is where the story really starts with Ruby and chanted We want to find out what happens to her. I hope you read it and hope will love it. Thank you. I have to tell you about the way that I was writing. So before I started this everything I ever tried to write and Chris will tell you I tried very very hard I never got very far. It was all in this kind of folkloric kind of places it was kind of walled gardens and rows of cabbages it was you know the kind of places which were not in any particular place a particular time. And as I kind of progress in my writing I needed to locate it somewhere specific. And all the reading that I was doing was advising me to go back to my hometown. And I didn't like my hometown. I didn't want to go there. And I resented the idea that that was where I'd find ideas because for me it was kind of it was it was it was this kind of like Grim industrial place. But I kind of thought reluctantly I'll go back there and I'll see. So I kind of got out of maps from the early part of the 20th century. I looked at local histories and I started talking to my grandfather and he was a chain maker

in also in this place I've grown up in. And he started telling me everything he could remember about sharing chips with his mates and working on in the chain making shop and so many of the details in the book are things that he told me about. Basically So what it is it's not you can't map it onto my hometown but it's it grew from my hometown and many elements of it there are kind of I can't I don't know I'm kind of hoping what I created is a sort of sibling of it something that kind of related to it. But you can't map it directly onto it. But so much of this it is about the English Black Country elements elements of it are definitely there. I don't I don't think it's kind of but it's yeah it's that's where it came from. It's just what I always wrote when I was little. So the first story I remember being really engaged by was I was actually in a life and story it wasn't exactly high quality but it was to do with kind of like brownies and various and stuff and then I remember very distinctly as a child just working my way along all the books of folk tales like you know I don't know if any of you read the books like the red fairy tale book and

all the different ones and lots of British folklore lots of Nordic folk that kind of stuff and I just. A really satisfying I'm not quite sure why. So you know it was just kind of natural it's not something that I've ever really thought about. It's just I think part of my the kind of it's just part of the architecture now I think you know the sort of furniture that I kind of move around. Well basically it started off as a writing exercise and I kind of thought I'd always thought before that the idea for a book would kind of come out and just jump me and I would know that it was that and then I kind of thought that's probably not going to happen. And I just need to do a lot of work. But what actually happened was that it had this sort of the big story. I was writing scraps tiny tiny scraps in a few minutes when Benedict my son was sleeping. And it was making me really happy to be writing. So my family all kind of got together and arranged for me to go on a short writing course took care of the kids did everything it was absolutely

amazing and one of the things we had to do on this course was to come up with generate an idea for a novel and I was totally intimidated with this idea how ridiculous that's not going to happen but I can do a writing exercise and I can give it a go. So they said take a few words at random and see what you can generate. So I sat around with them with my family and the words they came up with for me were button factory which spoon and I played with them and I messed around with them and I doodled with them and basically I just didn't let them go. And they kind of didn't let me go. And by the end of that first week the chip shop was their captain was their lead. Yeah everything under fire was there. So basically that stuff kind of just appeared that week and I don't. Five and a half years to finish an exercise. So yeah I mean at certain point I just thought you know this is such a you know I've no idea where this is going but I just got stubborn and I didn't want to go back to my old job in prison so I kind of kept on. Yeah. Yeah I did I did a fair amount. I did

lots of. I come to some kind of broad general reading to make sure I kind of had a sense of the period. But I was very very clear that the people here would have very little consciousness of what was going on kind of on the broader political spectrum. This was about social history really. So I did a fair amount of reading but most of what I did was talking to my grandad and he. Sorry guys you know that he died recently and he you know he was amazing absolutely amazing but what was wonderful about him was that he he loved telling stories so he had. And he had this very and this is the thing about the 1930s is as I say it said in the in the talk that the 1930s we can have a sense of it which is very much product and very modern you know we know they had Wallace's cars all that kind of stuff. People in this community didn't have any of that stuff. Maybe some of the really rich people but most of the people that I was engaging with they didn't have anything like that. And it was very much a kind of 19th century version of England. But then what I had to do it was kind of I had this wonderful book called inquire within this 1933 encyclopedia domestic encyclopedia. So basically I could use that to look up stuff like

you know how they would make things and you know nannies I mentioned her hair dye and I got that detail from that book is just wonderful. But it was actually quite distracting. I could actually tell you you know it had all sorts of things that like you know how to write letters to your landlord. I mean just unbelievable and it's a wonderful resource. So yeah I kind of had to limit the research afterward because it got too distracting. I think there's probably masses of my stuff in there and loads more than I can ever understand I think. I think you can find some I mean I think that you know my family might read it and find elements that are familiar to them. I would like to think that I'm like really but I don't think I'm quite as brave a she. Yes there's there's it's not I mean it's not explicitly or autobiographical a tool. I think I probably I maybe in 10 years time I can answer that question for the moment. No it doesn't feel that way you know I just don't think I could offer any kind of insight into it as far as the autobiography or autobiographical elements are concerned but maybe you think differently

Chris you know I think. I think that's yeah it's an interesting question but I'm sure it is autobiographical but I don't have it. Well I've started writing it and it's definitely kind of it's influenced by the folkloric stuff definitely. At the moment I'm not entirely sure about what shape that's going to take. I tend to get drawn to quite grim fairy tales and it's quite grim I have in mind at the moment. That's kind of anchoring the whole thing. But yeah what's really fun about the second one is we actually get to go to the sea which is what we've been longing to do but it's it's actually about a generation earlier. I don't think I could write a novel that wasn't influenced by fable and I think the huge challenge for me would be to try writing in a contemporary setting I'm not quite sure if I could ever actually do that. So I'm going back to the end of the 19th century. And yeah we'll see what happens. Children they totally structure it for me when they're not there that's when I write. I can't write another you

know. So yeah I'm not saying that I'm dramatically disciplined but basically that's you know I don't write in the evenings because either they're awake or you know doing stuff to do that. But yeah that's kind of that's that's been quite helpful. I mean it was quite challenging when I was younger I used to go to cafes in Oxford where they sold buckets of coffee that was so big they had two handles to keep me awake. So actually. Yeah. Where I work is very much dictated by how much sleep I've had and because it's more embarrassing to fall asleep in a cafe than it is you know in your own home and stuff. So yeah I do have some you know when I go into the later stages of writing the book I wanted to be somewhere where there's no noise in my little shed in my garden with all my books and papers around me with no distraction. But I think the writing thing is so solitary It's really really helpful sometimes to be around people. So I like working Kraemer that's quite good but it's not remotely linear and this. This is like I think the sixth or seventh iteration and the first one was so comprehensible

that my my very lovely agent said to me she said it's something really special about this but it's very difficult in the most basic level to work out what's going on who is speaking. And I thank you. Maybe only still a little bit more work on this. So yeah you know but what's interesting about it is that the you know the I think my process this time around will be very very different. I think the thing I learnt far too late on after far too many drafts with this one was I got to be fixed on certain ideas too early on and I think you have to kind of keep your mind open and fluid and get to know your characters. And I actually I was trying to move my characters around in this very kind of ventriloquist kind of way. And what I'm doing this time around is getting to know my characters first and then they can dictate the action. So yeah I think there are two really important things about prison working prison. One was that I was so unhappy doing it that it provided a really really good spur to be writing because I kind of basically made a deal with myself that if I could if I could do a sufficient amount of writing and prove to myself that I was committed to it that I

didn't have to go back to my old job. So that was one thing but the other is that I mean it was an extraordinary period it was absolutely amazing so I worked at Holloway as a guard and I was on a fast track training program so then I skipped to a management grade managing a wing of life for life a man at's scripts and it was an extraordinary couple of years. Absolutely extraordinary. I mean it was. It was it was heartbreaking in many many ways because so many of the people who were there you just thought it was carrying so much damage and you know they just haven't had the things that they have needed. You know and my God if I had had that I would be here to the other side of that door I would not be the one with the keys and I'm not. It was extraordinary I mean I was I was really bad at the sort of you know managing fires and hostage situations and riots and that wasn't my strength what I love to this I have friends who can do that but it wasn't my thing. So I what I really enjoyed doing was sitting down with with sitting down with a person and then just hearing about the

story. That's what I really like but that wasn't being played today. So I'm really hoping that I can move back into doing that in the future in some way maybe on a writer or writers program kind of thing a creative writing program. But I think I mean the thing about the novel that I someone else pointed this out to me they said you know you have got this really close community that has this kind of physical perimeter around it. You know you've got this hierarchical group you've got kind of like you know that all these and written rules and you've got someone longing to escape. You know it's a thematic Lee. It's I think it draws dramatically on that experience of actually coming back to what you were saying earlier it I suppose is kind of autobiographical in that respect. Thank you. It was I may have told you about this but it was published in the UK a few weeks ago and another author said to me don't expect too much when it actually gets published because you know you may not be a big thing you may not feel anything. So I was kind of anticipating not feeling anything at all so I wasn't looking for anything. But on that day I had this most extraordinary sense of the book kind of moving away from me. And it's no longer mine and it's out there doing its thing and I've done what I needed to

do. People can respond to it if they want to. And it's it was quite a freeing sensation actually. I have nothing more there's nothing more I can do it. I will look at it and think oh my god that's so bad. But there are bits of you you know there are bits of I'm really really proud of. And there are bits of it I know I would change but that's it's I can't do anything that's wonderful and so great to know that I cannot do any more editing or anything. And it's such a huge joy and I'm really excited to see. The two of. That agent basically I had a very good friend who married this very literary agent and she is very open to new stuff and basically what you have that I was writing. She said I want to see it. So she she looked at it and basically over that whole period that sort of you know a five year period she she was like a mentor to me. So she would read every draft which given what we had just like was a real act of friendship.

And she and she she just asked really good questions really critical questions about where's the conflict in your narrative you know lots of you know what's his current motivation and she never told me what to do and she never told me what's what to you how to change things but she just made me think which is just amazing. And she had great faith in the story and she basically managed to to orchestrate options on both sides of the Atlantic so I was in the unbelievable position of the artist who's a publisher which just I still can't believe now I get this real thrill when I say oh it's roundabout. So so so basically I was incredibly lucky. You know it was really fantastic and she has been a real real source of of of wisdom and kind of really shaping kind of person in my personal life under my professional life. You know I think I think it's I've become articulate this properly be someone who lives is really circumscribed life in a in a very literal way and metaphorically. And as the story goes on she begins to understand the nature of that imprisonment and what she can do about it.

And I think that's for me. What was it was very valuable for me during the writing process and I would hope that what readers might take from it is a sense of possibility and of the possibility of liberation from ideas that have kept you in fixed and helpful places. That's for her. Thank you.