Betrayed, my second June short fiction publication, is my shortest yet and, while I'm pleased to have packed a lot of story into so few words, there's something about it that leaves me slightly uneasy.  It can be difficult with an issue-based story not to make it schmaltzy or preachy, but I don't think I've fallen into that trap here.  

If anything, I've gone to the other extreme and exploited a very nasty situation for entertainment.  Or maybe that's the overspill of my Catholic guilt? 

Don't be fooled by the innocence of the photo I've chosen to illustrate my words: I got the idea for the story when I was reading Philida, Andre Brink's novel about a slave master.  It's not that I balk at tackling uncomfortable subjects, and there's a lot fiction can do to bring things we'd rather not know about into the public domain as with Gavin Weston's novel, Harmattan. But I'm not sure if flash can always do justice to the complexity.
I've got more to say on ethics in a forthcoming post in relation to another story but, in the meantime, I'd be interested in your point of view on this –  either in relation to the particular story or in general.

Life's far too complex for a stark division of our experiences into the extremes of success and failure.  But this weekend's Guardian Review had seven writers reflecting movingly on their own experiences of falling short of their expectations in a way I know I'll want to come back to.  I find it inspiration from knowing that even these denizens of the literary world can be hurt and move on.

I'd like to quote them all: Diana Athill on success in later life after a loss of self-confidence at what should have been her prime; Margaret Atwood on learning from the setbacks; Julian Barnes on misjudging others' lives as failures; Anne Enright on success and failure as both illusionary and real; Will Self in a similar vein on the unreliability of both; and Lionel Shriver on the long apprenticeship of failure and the notion of "giving up well".  But you may find other things to highlight, or you may agree with many of the commenters on the webpage, that these successful authors had no right to moan.  Having restricted myself to one quote, it's Howard Jacobson's piece that speaks the most to me (must go back and have another attempt at one of his novels):

My fourth author interview brings twelve-year-old Haoua to join the grown-up protagonists of the other debut novels.  I don't think Futh will know what to make of her, and Grace – despite the shared experience of prison – could blow hot or cold depending on whether she sees any advantage to herself, but I'm hoping Satish will take her under his wing and indulge her dream of training to be a doctor like him.  It would be hopeless of course – her childhood's about to end abruptly – but if she's going to be frozen in time on my website, I'd like to think of her at the start of the novel when, despite the poverty of her Nigerien village, she was happy.

If these four characters ever did want to find some common ground, as well as a common language to discuss it (given that Haoua doesn't speak English), I imagine it would be the painful end of childhood.  Haoua's is no doubt the most harrowing and her premature propulsion into the adult role is the primary focus of the novel, but the theme is present in the other novels in my website selection, as well as on my bookshelves.  You might argue – and please do – that's because that's what I look for (both Shelley Harris and Charlotte Rogan emphasised in their interviews the contribution of the reader in creating the novel); I'd argue it's because the end of childhood is rife with complications and therefore perfect fodder for fiction.

1. Marriage
Traditionally, marriage was the signifier of adulthood for both men and women.  In Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, we see how excruciatingly difficult this can be for two educated and intelligent young lovers who have not had the time to learn to live independently of their parents before coming together as a couple.  How much harder for Haoua, still a child and grieving for her mother and brother, taken out of school and married against her will to a man too old, too mean, too ugly?  It's hard to think of a more abrupt end to childhood.  For Grace, in The Lifeboat, marriage also represents the end of childhood but, with more control over her destiny (and no father to make the arrangements), it offers security and escape from dependence on unreliable others.

2. Abandonment
Futh, the main character of Alison Moore's The  Lighthouse, struggles with life.  He's stuck in the past, still trying to recreate the memory (and smells) of his mother who left home after a family picnic.  Grace's father committed suicide rather than face up to his business losses, abandoning Grace and her sister and mother to potential penury.  Poor Haoua loses her mother to AIDS and her supportive older brother to the fighting that follows the presidential assassination.  To top it all, the father who ought to be protecting her sells her off in marriage.  The abrupt loss of crucial attachment figures brings childhood to an end, but it doesn't usher in adulthood.

3. Betrayal
Children don't understand morality the way adults do, or think they do: our moral capacity has to develop over time.  Childhood can come to a sudden end with the realisation that one's self-interested actions can harm others, as in Ian McEwan's (again) Atonement, or when one is on the receiving end of unbearable hurt and left totally alone.  As a recent immigrant to Britain, Satish, the main character of Shelley Harris's novel, was subject to playground teasing and some embarrassment at his family's difference but, until the Jubilee party, it was bearable, part of the rough and tumble of school and street life.  But what happened to him there was out of proportion to anything he could have anticipated and, what's more, none of the adults he tried to speak to about it wanted to know.  Unable to assimilate the experience, he buried it.  Although he became a competent adult in terms of his career and family, the Jubilee party reunion made him behave once again like a child.  Part of the difficulty is the shock: the loss of innocence.  Even Haoua finds it hard to believe that the world would let her down so badly.  And when in the end she may or may not have extracted her revenge on her husband, I like to think that's when, rather like Grace, she's choosing to say goodbye to her miserable childhood even if, as we can see, adulthood isn't going to be much better.

4. Little by little
No mention of adolescence in any of the above, and that's because the stark end of childhood doesn't cater for it.  Childish one minute, grown-up the next, indulgent parents and teachers on hand to pick up the pieces if things go wrong: it doesn't make for interesting fiction, but it's a good foundation for a healthy life.  Perhaps I've read novels featuring this slow-burn adolescence and repressed them – maybe you can jog my memory? – or maybe this stuff is best reserved for jokey TV sitcoms and a particular segment of real-life.

What do you think?
What are your favourite novels about the end of childhood?  Are there any other patterns I've missed?  
What did you think of Gavin Weston's novel Harmattan and is there anything you'd like to add about that or any of my other author interviews?

As the warm-up to my forthcoming post on interrupted childhoods, take a look at kids being their horrible selves in this fabulous flash from Elissa Cahn.  I know where my sympathies lie, how about you?

When I began my training nearly 30 years ago, nobody had heard of a clinical psychologist.  Now you can't get away from them; they even pop up in novels.  And why not?  A psychologist, or a therapist, as a character can be the ideal vehicle for accessing interesting situations or states of mind.  Yet there are lots of potential pitfalls for the writer uninitiated into the intricacies of the various psychological professions.  Just as I'd be sure to misrepresent details of the life of a postal worker, based on my reminiscences of my student days on the Christmas post, there are aspects of any job that only an insider can know. 

It's a tall order to complete a novel without a single factual error and, in my opinion, it's the internal validity that matters overall.  Yet if I set my novel in your front garden and lovingly described a pond with goldfish and water lilies where you had a magnolia tree, it would probably put you off, however good the story was.  That's how I'm feeling about some psychological therapists in novels.

Maybe it's because I'm reading especially critically at the moment as part of my effort to improve my own writing but, when the wind blows in a certain direction, I can be rather picky.  So I'm doing this little series to get things off my chest – and to promote discussion if anyone's interested.  But before we start, let me clarify that I'm offering this from the perspective of a psychologically-informed writer rather than a professional psychologist – that's a bit of me that I gave up a little while ago.

Look out for the first in this occasional series: two for the price of one (a clinical psychologist and a Lacanian psychotherapist in Jonathan Coe's The House of Sleep).
But before that, I'm hoping to bring you more short stories as well as a piece on the end of childhood to complement my interview with Gavin Weston that – through the power of Facebook and Twitter – brought loads of extra visitors to the site at the end of last week.
Meanwhile, your suggestions for psychological therapists in novels would be welcome.

A recent post from Emma Darwin leaves me nostalgic for my academic writing.  On the whole, I prefer making things up but, so far, I'm disappointed not to have come across anything in the world of fiction to match the buzz of the academic conference.  I really enjoyed the York Festival of Writing last year, and some of the discussions on the blogs can be quite lively, but they don't have the same mix of writers at different levels presenting their work that you'd find at an academic conference.  Only in my wildest dreams does the place exist where Lionel Shriver would sit down and listen to me reading one of my short stories.  Fiction writers might feed off each other's ideas but we don't need the level of collaboration that academic writers do.

It must be a couple of years since my  short story publications overtook my
academic credits  and, as of the end of last month, my blog publication count has finally surpassed my  tally of published short stories.  With a tentative  commitment to do a blog post for each publication, it's a watershed moment: the stories are never going to catch up. As for academia, I'll be grateful to have my name tagged on the end of a couple of forthcoming papers, but that time's in the past.

So I'm especially pleased to announce my newest short story publication, A Dress for the Address, about an academic not quite getting it together to set off for a conference.  Many thanks to the folks at Halfway Down The Stairs for selecting it for their issue on Beauty.