Kate Atkinson @Edbookfest

 

    The event which this morning opened the adults' programme at this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival was Kate Atkinson in conversation with Jenny Brown. To begin with a word on the chair, and in Jenny Brown - herself the first director of the Book Festival, and now a respected literary agent - we had the perfect 'intelligent reader' and gracious inquisitor.

    Kate Atkinson really needs no introduction on these pages, but she was appearing today to talk about her most recent novel, the stunning Life After Life, described by Jenny Brown as her most ambitious book and a "dizzying, dazzling one" at that. It's a novel which follows its central character from birth to death, but far from being a straightforward linear narrative it looks at a series of alternative fates and a range of permutations of choices, decisions, events and moments which dictate and define the course of  a life or lives. From her birth one snowy night in February 1910, Ursula Todd lives through the major events of the 20th. century but does so again and again on parallel paths, a range of 'what ifs' and accretions deepening her story, each one hardening and strengthening her in some way, each one showing the fine line between living and dying, each success predicated on an earlier failure of some sort.

    Kate read a passage from near the beginning of the book, one which introduces the reader to the Todd family home, Fox Corner, a place seen as idyllic and ideal. This is Edwardian England in its 'golden afternoon', the halcyon days before the Great War changed so much, though as the story moves on, it's the Second World War and in particular the Blitz which provides "the dark, beating heart" of the book. Asked about her fascination with this later period, Kate explained that during her childhood (she was born in 1951) the war was in the very recent past, and was a subject of fascination and excitement to her, if of rather different significance to those who had lived through it. Her immersive reading on the subject informs and soundly underpins much of the novel.

    A considerable part of the discussion was given over to Ursula's repeated lives, especially with reference to the book's structure and to Kate's own predilections in writing. She likes endings, she says - and she gives herself many to play with here - and in particular she likes a "symphonic crescendo of endings", a form which allows for the neatly finished as well as the open situation or unanswered question. She wrote the book sequentially, and having established her premise early on she felt secure in the structure and worked (with a storyboard) as the shape of the book dictated. Incidentally, she says she is "not a natural plotter", and finds plotting inhibits flow in writing.

    Asking about her readership, a gentleman pointed out that the majority of the audience were female, but Kate said that while more women than men are readers and more women than men typically attend literary events, she had no specific group in  mind when writing: "I write for myself," she said, "and when the book is done, it's everybody's".

    As to whether she missed her characters once she'd killed them off, Kate admitted that of course she became fonder of some than of others but she most upset herself - in the writing of this book - by the deaths of the dogs who are the Todd family pets. "It's very important to have dogs in novels."

    If you haven't yet read Life After Life I'd urge you to do so - it's marvellously original (even if, when asked about 'echoes' of the various alternative endings in The French Lieutenant's Woman Kate modestly said that there was nothing new in writing), and beautifully, pleasingly complex; it is, just as Jenny Brown said, "dizzying and dazzling", and it was a great pleasure to hear Kate talk about it.

Comments

[Adele Geras]

And thank you so much for this account....my best novel of this year so far! Dizzying and dazzling indeed!

[Cornflower]

It was wonderful to be there and to be able to report on the event for everyone who couldn't be present.
Life After Life is a fabulous book, and I can't wait to see what KA is doing next: she referred to it obliquely when she was talking about structure, saying she's currently writing something with "a peculiar shape"!

[LauraC]

Life After Life is my best book so far this year, too.

[Dark Puss]

Are more women than men readers? I wonder why and also what the ratio is. Any idea or further information on that?

[Cornflower]

I always find it very difficult to choose one best one, but this book is most definitely up there in my small group of best so far and I doubt anything will dislodge it.

[Cornflower]

Apparently so. I'm quoting Kate Atkinson there, but I've seen studies/surveys which bear out the contention (if I can lay hands on them again I'll supply a link). For what it's worth, as well as literary events tending to attract more women than men, book groups do, too.

[Cornflower]

Not conclusive in any way but another bit of possibly relevant 'evidence': you may remember this post ( http://www.cornflowerbooks.co.uk/2013/06/bookmarks-a-bookshelf-and-a-book-festival.html ) which mentioned Random House's new consumer panel Bookmarks. An email from RH last week said that they were very keen to have more male members and wanted existing members to try to recruit male friends and relatives, so while women have rushed to join Bookmarks and give their opinions on various book-related subjects, men are conspicuous by their relative absence!

[Dark Puss]

Thank you very much for these comments and the link. I wonder why this significant (presumably) gender difference is the case.

[Juniper Green]

I would have loved to have been there myself but was put off it because I hadn't read anything by Kate Atkinson aswell as having absolutely no concept of how the EIBF readings are done. (I had a very old-fashioned idea of it - the author and her book, reading various passages for an hour and a half - but now I know better, thanks to you.)

Cheers, June :)

[Cornflower]

You'll have to go another time, June.
EIBF queues are quite sociable, chatty places, and while waiting in them I've talked to a number of people who use the Festival as a way of finding out about authors they haven't read or even heard of before, so they'll pick events almost at random or see which tickets are available on the day and that way find something new. Even where the big names are concerned, no prior knowledge is assumed, so you should still enjoy the hour, even if you're not familiar with the book or books in question.
As to the readings, usually that's just a few minutes shortly after the event begins, and then the chairman leads the conversation and there's time for audience questions towards the end.