So, the veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby has gone and got himself a tattoo, apparently something he’s always wanted. Well, I can think of nobler ambitions, but each to his own. It’s not for me to judge another’s personal choices.

Yet, with my psychology background – dammit, as me – I can’t help feeling alarmed at the normalisation of cosmetic surgery, of which inking one’s epidermidis is surely the mildest manifestation: hippie dope to today’s crack cocaine. I’m naturally suspicious of transformations on the outside deemed to make people happier on the inside, but I have to admit, it works for some.

My scepticism is mirrored in Susie Nott-Bower’s debut novel, The Making of Her. Like all good fiction, it tackles the issue of modern metamorphosis from multiple perspectives, never coming down on one dogmatic position but leaving the reader to make up her own mind. Definitely my kind of book, so I was delighted to get the chance to ask Susie more about this via an annethology author interview.

Another novel featuring troublesome bodies is Lionel Shriver’s So Much for That. There’s illness, disability and, SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT HERE, the gruesome impact of botched cosmetic surgery, but the real transformation comes from a character’s determination to follow his somewhat unrealistic dream.

I’ve had a long-standing interest in exploring our relationship with our bodies in my own fiction, from the girl who’s always longed to look like everybody else to the woman who wakes up on the morning of her wedding to find her neck has grown as long as her arm to the sister whose determination to decide the shape of her own body causes consternation to those around her. The idea behind How’s Your Sister? came from wondering whether there should be any limits to an individual’s custody over her own body. Should we be able to commission cosmetic surgery to order in the way we can employ a carpenter to construct a custom-made cupboard to fit into an awkward corner of our home?

When I was a child, tattoos were for merchant seamen, but these are more liberal times. Botox, a nose job or new boobs – the province of narcissistic celebrities as little as ten years ago are heading towards the requirement for a groomed woman as much as a decent haircut and the correctly coloured lips. Nobody forced me, she says. I’m doing it for me.

But what if she wants something more extreme: dainty feet only possible through foot binding á la 19th-century China; amputated genitals á la too many places around the world. Think she’d only want what’s good for her – how about those who starve themselves in the midst of plenty?

We mobilise the psychiatric system to rescue the anorexic from herself (albeit not always very successfully, or even sympathetically, but that’s another story). We question the motives underlying her desire for a super-thin body. Society has drawn a line here about what she can and cannot choose.

The consensus of what’s deemed healthy and acceptable evolves over time. I’ll be watching the shifting boundaries of cosmetic surgery with interest. But I’ll live it only through my fiction, thank you very much. I wouldn’t even subject myself to the tiniest tattoo. How about you?

In real life, our goals are often fuzzy, especially regarding the things that matter most, and, even if we think we know what we want, we’re often quite haphazard in the way we try to achieve it. Who can show me how to take my characters along an obstacle course that will satisfy the reader without compromising on the complexity of human motivation? It turns out there are some excellent models in the novels I’ve been reading for my interviews with debut authors.
 
Let’s start with Alys, Always, the foundation for my latest Q&A with author Harriet Lane. What Frances wants is uncertain at the beginning and is gradually shaped by circumstance.  Later, when she develops her plan, the details are withheld from the reader. The tension arises, not from following her along a clear path, but from wondering exactly where she’s heading and how far she’s prepared to go. Here’s what the author told me about this apparent subversion of the motivation ideal:

Nutrition isn’t only a biological necessity; in life, as in novels, food symbolises care, and so fiddling around with it serves to make life harder for the protagonists. Writers sacrifice the desires of their characters in favour of the reader’s love of narrative tension.  On one level, the thwarting of even imaginary people seems harsh, yet one of the things that struck me across the five Q&A’s I’ve completed so far was the authors’ empathy for their creations.  Claire King told me she

and, over on The Literary Sofa, she highlighted one consequence of writing from a child’s point of view as the need for plenty of tissues.  Shelley Harris was so wrapped up in her character’s psyche that she chose
his career unconsciously, as he would have done himself.  The impetus for Gavin Weston’s novel was his concern about the fate of a  girl his family had sponsored; its completion has driven him to take a more
active role in relation to the practice of child marriage by becoming an ambassador for FORWARD.

While we might expect writers to empathise with their child characters and/or those who have been treated unjustly, their empathy for their more prickly protagonists was also apparent:

While published novelists will often blog about their new book covers, I get to announce the earthshattering news that I’ve changed the masthead on my website.  What do you mean, you didn’t notice?  I’ll assume that’s
because you’ve been too dazzled by my words. To be fair, all I’ve done is swap one row of novels for another. Side-by-side you might mistake it for a children’s spot-the-difference puzzle:

On the left, the random sample of my favourite novels culled from my bookshelves that made up the old header; on the right, the bones of the new one: a selection of books that have had at least a walk-on part on the blog, or will do soon.  Apart from a couple of novels I hadn’t even read when I made my first choice back in April (Harmattan; The House of Sleep; The Orphan Master’s Son – and I certainly wasn’t consciously planning to position them together slap in the middle), I’m surprised there’s so little overlap (only Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto springs up in both, although Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin also meets the criteria).  Clearly, my mind works differently when I’m picking works to illustrate a point or a theme.  But I wouldn't want to make too much of that: in all honesty what constitutes my all time favourite novels varies from one day to the next.

In fact, less than a fortnight after I launched it, the new masthead is already out of date, with significant omissions such as Claire King's The Night Rainbow, the latest addition to my interviews with debut novelists.  But if I tried to update it every time I read a new book I'd
never get any writing done.

That said, I thought it would be fun to have some dialogue around my selections, and got carried away with the idea of quiz before I noticed it’s enough of a challenge to identify some of the novels from the photos, never mind answer questions about them.  So if anyone’s still reading, here are the titles:

Now, here at last, three questions, one each on the themes of author, character and setting:

1.  How many debut novels are represented in each picture?  (Clue: not all of them have featured in my author interviews.)

2.  How many novels feature a psychological therapist as a main character?

3.  How many novels have predominantly British settings and how many don’t?

I’ll come back with my answers in a couple of weeks – and then we can argue who’s got it right.  In the meantime, do share your opinions on my selections.

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?

With Grace Winter, heroine of The Lifeboat, now on board the author interview section of annethology, I'm wondering how to introduce her to the two characters already there: Satish and Futh.  She's certainly got food issues in common with both of them but, having survived for a couple of weeks on raw fish and hardtack, I imagine that's not something she'd be keen to discuss.  The power of memory, and questions of its validity, is an issue explored in all three novels, but, fascinating as it is, I've blogged about memory already, so I've decided to celebrate my third author interview with a quick look at some of the ways these writers have made things harder for their heroes and heroines.  This is especially useful for me, as it's something I find quite difficult: I've no problem with bleak, I just don't like making it bleaker.    So let's have a look at how Alison Moore, Shelley Harris and Charlotte Rogan have gone about it.

1.   Send them on a journey.
This can be a journey through geographical space, such as Grace's trip across the Atlantic, or a metaphorical journey back to the past, as Satish faces with the Jubilee party reunion.  Or it can be both, as for Futh, with a walking tour that recreates an earlier holiday with his father.  Not only is your character stepping out into unfamiliar territory without their familiar props, but there's so much potential for things to go wrong.  While most luxury ocean liners don't have to be abandoned, lots of us have had the experience of getting lost and arriving at our destination much later than we'd hoped, or being mentally dragged back to a place in our lives we'd rather leave behind.

2.  Foist other people on them.
We all know that every protagonist needs an antagonist, someone to thwart their story goals.  But they don't need to be much of a villain to make life difficult, they can just be other people being themselves.  When Satish's childhood friend pushes him to attend the Jubilee reunion, she can't possibly understand the trauma she's rekindling.  Okay, the proprietor of the guesthouse where Futh begins and ends his circular walk isn't a bundle of laughs, but he isn't to know that Futh doesn't understand how other people's minds work and has no idea of the suspicion his behaviour, in all innocence, is arousing.  Grace, on the other hand, perhaps stemming from a lifetime of economic dependence in the days before women had the vote, never in my opinion completely loses control, despite relying for her very survival first on her new husband, then on the shifting power dynamics within the lifeboat, and finally on the opinion of the jury about the part she played in the murder of Mr Hardie.  The much quoted truism that we can't live with other people and can't live without them either applies as much to novels as to real life.

3.  Get down to basics.
You know about Maslow's hierarchy, and our basic human need to address our fundamental physiological concerns before we can move on to higher-order issues.  I've already mentioned how getting enough, or the right, food had me worried across all three novels, especially The Lifeboat where Grace was at genuine risk of starvation.  This was also one of those rare novels where the characters get to go to the toilet – or not, as it happens, given that lifeboats aren't provided with such luxuries, so the poor women had to fiddle about with a bailer under their ankle-length skirts. 
Not exactly life-threatening, but I do know from experience it's extremely painful, so I did sympathise with Futh and his blisters, while cursing him for buying new walking boots before setting out on a long-distance walk, and I'm not sure that I could have done that to him.

Still, the Beatles got it wrong about Jude: it's not the author's job to make it better, we've got to take a sad situation and make it worse.  Or at least until the very end of the story.

Please share your views on this or any other aspects of the author interviews.  The next one, with Gavin Weston, author of Harmattan, should be launched fairly soon, with a post about the end of childhood following on not long after.

As for my own writing, June is shaping up to be my personal short story month, with several publications promised: one I've been waiting for for about a year (the contract's signed but I'm not holding my breath) while another two were only accepted this week.  I'll keep you informed.

I can't make up my mind about novels about writers and writing.

On the one hand, it seems a bit of a copout for a writer to make her (or more often his) main character another writer, a way of sidestepping the fact that a year of waiting tables, colourful or arduous as it might be, has little bearing on the working lives most of her readers, constantly updating their CV's. Who cares about the writing life anyway, except for other writers (although I confess that there seem to be enough of us about to make this a big enough market to target)? Despite, through this blog, I'm buying into the current requirement for self-promotion, and I'm sure Shelley Harris was being modest when she protested she was ordinary, generally I believe we writers are less interesting than what we write.

Now that I’ve uploaded a second interview, it seems time for a proper launch of the author interviews section of annethology. Thanks to Alison and Shelley for your thoughtful responses to my amateur questions and I hope that others find the interviews an interesting and enlightening read.

While it might be premature to look for patterns across such a small sample, it would be a pity to throw up the opportunity to give it a try. Blame it on Shelley for introducing the idea of the unconscious, but was there a reason for kicking off with these two particular authors and their books? Two first novels by female writers, albeit very different in tone and style, yet both featuring middle-aged men haunted by the past. Books I’d enjoyed reading, and that had also intrigued me, made me think. Books that had done well in the marketplace, so other readers and novice writers might be curious too. I wasn’t thinking much deeper than that when I contacted the authors, unsure how willing they’d be to take part.