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Ep. 34. Carys Davies, Clear
64 Plays1 day ago
In today's episode I talk to Carys Davies about her novel Clear.
Carys Davies is the author of three novels and two collections of short stories. Her debut novel West was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, runner-up for the Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction. Her second novel The Mission House was The Sunday Times 2020 Novel Of The Year. Her latest novel Clear won the 2025 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the 2025 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, and the 2025 Wales Book of the Year, and has been nominated for many others, including the Walter Scott Prize, Scotland’s National Book Award, the Prix Femina, the Prix Médicis, and the Europese Literatuurprijs.
Her short story collection The Redemption of Galen Pike won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She is also the recipient of the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Short Story Award and a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a 2025/26 Fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris. Born in Wales, she grew up there and in the Midlands, lived and worked for twelve years in New York and Chicago, and now lives in Edinburgh.
Episode notes:
- Elizabeth McCracken, A Long Game
Book recs:
- Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr Fortune's Maggot
- Jessica Francis Kane, Fonseca
Follow the show on Instagramand subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close, I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for readers, writers and anyone interested in how texts get made. In today's episode I talk to Karis Davis about her 2024 novel Clear.
00:00:15
Speaker
We talk about a passage of the way through, it' on page 51. Listeners, if you want to go get your copy and then you can read along, that's in the paperback.
Karis Davis and Her Acclaimed Novel
00:00:23
Speaker
Caris is the author of three novels and two collections of short stories. Her latest novel, Clear, won the 2025 Royal Society of Literature on Darche Prize, the 2025 Wales Book of the Year, and the 2025 Prix du meilleur livre étranger in France. If that's bad pronunciation, don't question me. She is currently a fellow at Columbia University's Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris.
00:00:48
Speaker
Caris, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. Of course. And listeners, I, when I started this project, I had a list of those authors that I wanted to talk to. You were on that list, Karis, because I think of your books more than many, you seem to really care about sentences, right? not though Not that most authors don't, but your books to me are so distilled, right? They're very short books and each sentence is very carefully weighed. So I was really excited to hear from you and talk to you about this because I think you care about language in a very particular way.
00:01:22
Speaker
Yes, I do. I do. And when when I read, I'm always thinking, you know, something's having an effect on me, I'm always thinking, how's that happening? yeah You know, what what what's this? This isn't happening by accident. Exactly. And this is the kind of show where I'm like...
00:01:38
Speaker
How is that happening? What's going on here? Did we intend it? Is it a you know a bit of the magic of the writing process? So um I'm really interested in all of those things.
Insights on Close Reading and Writing Approach
00:01:48
Speaker
Before we go to the passage, how do you feel about close reading as an activity, a practice?
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose in a sort of hyper academic way, I think sometimes it can go a little far into almost a sort of slightly absurd realms. Although, you know, against that, I would say,
00:02:07
Speaker
if that's what a reader is taking out of it, then that's their privilege. And I have no control over that pattern whatsoever. But I think what whats what's interesting for me and what was very interesting for me looking at this passage that you chose is that, um you know, what strikes me is that, you know, that there are things that, I was conscious of doing very deliberately but there were also other things that I was less conscious of doing deliberately but um you know perhaps more instinctively but you know there i'm i'm I'm so interested in word choices and you know I do perhaps it's because I wrote short stories for you know a long long time more than 20 years before I wrote my first novel and if a word is there then it has to be working hard and you know probably doing more than just one thing and in any sentence in any paragraph you're always kind of perpetually spinning the plates of
00:03:13
Speaker
time and place and character and story and you know each each word and phrase and paragraph is um is is moving that along somehow so so no I i think it's fascinating to to have a really close look at how how the words are working.
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting to think about the move from the short story to then like the short novel. Do you call them novellas? These that clear rest? What do you call them? Honestly, I don't care what people call them. People do call them novellas, but um I've looked for definitions of novellas and they seem to range from anything from 40 pages to, you know, 120 pages. and um you know, a long Alice Munro story. Is that a novella? Or I think she always called them short stories. But um so I think of them as as short novels because don't know, to me, a novella is...
00:04:08
Speaker
is probably something that's um a little bit more focused in in one time and place. And my novels, although they're short, they tend to be a little bit more expansive than that and and have a few more characters, though not very many.
Exploration of Themes and Character Development
00:04:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't want to jump too far ahead, but do they always arrive in your mind as short? Or is that how they come out? Like, are you ever thinking, wow, this could be... I mean, they don't, well, they they don't arrive in my mind as as anything very much.
00:04:39
Speaker
They arrive as something very small and some kind of... complicated situation and then I just see where that takes me and I think so no I i don't sort of say to myself oh this is this is going to short but most of I mean I'm writing my fourth novel now and it will probably be about the same length as Clear at West. The Mission House was slightly longer but I think this is my sort of around 30,000 words that I can hold that in my head and I can feel the the sort of the drama and the emotion and the movement. And I think if it was longer, I would feel it was getting away from me. So for me, that it just feels like the perfect way to tell the stories that I want to tell. But, yeah you know, um every story is as short or as long as it needs to be. So
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah, no, i'm I'm just always interested, like the people that can do, the the fact you can do so much in 147 pages, I'm always like, how did you do that? Like, how, would like, anyway, we can, we can get into those things. We're going to talk about a passage from chapter 19.
00:05:53
Speaker
Why don't we hear it first? And then we can, we can start tackling it. Ivor could never say for sure exactly when he began to transfer his affections from Mary to John Ferguson.
00:06:05
Speaker
He could never say if it happened little by little in the course of those first few days while his unexpected visitor drifted in and out of sleep, or when he found himself one evening reaching for the stranger's battered black coat, wanting to repair it.
00:06:22
Speaker
He could never say if it happened on the morning of the fourth day, while he watched John Ferguson shuffling unhappily through his dried out papers, but the feeling he had was that it happened quite suddenly, just before that, when John Ferguson woke up and lifted his head and looked at him for the first time squarely in the face.
00:06:45
Speaker
What's undoubtedly true is how powerfully he was affected in that moment, that nothing perhaps could have quite prepared him for it. It was so long since any anyone but Strachan had looked at him properly.
00:06:58
Speaker
And if he'd been asked to describe his feelings, he might have reached for that word in his language that described what happens when a rock is covered and uncovered by the sea.
00:07:08
Speaker
when briefly the water rises up and submerges it completely before it falls away again and reveals it. It was how Ivar felt when the wave of emotion crashed over him.
00:07:21
Speaker
He was engulfed by it. His breathing stopped and there was a long stalled moment before he broke free and breathed again. When John Ferguson gestured to him to pass him his papers, he gave them to him.
00:07:37
Speaker
And then he sat in his great chair watching him. Thank you so much. When I first read this book, I think I gulped it down in like two sittings. Like annoyingly, I had to like go and do something else. But there is a real propulsion to this book.
00:07:52
Speaker
There's two to three kind of main characters here. Here in this passage, we're thinking about two of them. Ivor and John Ferguson. John Ferguson is a minister for people who haven't read it And he's going to this remote Scottish island to ask this man, Ivor, to leave, basically. But things go wrong from the very beginning.
00:08:12
Speaker
And these two men are kind of put into close proximity, in Iva's little hut house thing. And this is this is such a book about like intimacy in so many different ways. And I think I picked this section because it's one of those really quiet moments. There's lots of quiet moments in this book. And I just thought it was just like a really beautiful moment of seeing into someone's mind But, and this is what I want to kind of talk about with you is when we're in one of the characters' voices and when we're in narrator's voice, right? Because this is all third person, but we slip in and out in really interesting ways. But yeah, wondered before even that, like, what did you think about this passage when i suggested this one to you? So the first thing that that really, I mean, I always remember the start of this particular passage because I can still remember writing that first line. i could never say for sure exactly when he began to transfer his affections from Mary to John Ferguson, because that came as a complete...
00:09:14
Speaker
bolt from the blue. I was not expecting that to happen because just for for anyone who hasn't read the book just prior to this Ivor initially doesn't know that John's arrived on the island. He hasn't met him yet and but he finds his bag and and in it a picture of um a woman who he assumes to be uh John's wife and he's never it's actually a very early photograph and he's completely overwhelmed by uh his photograph and he he kind of falls in love with Mary um and then I wrote this line because I guess by this time so John has had an accident he's he's um he's injured and Ivor is caring for him as you say in in the hut um
00:10:00
Speaker
And it it is a very intimate situation. It's kind of like a kind of almost like patient and nurse or mother and child, or it's, you know, it could be so many different things, but it is very, yeah, it's kind of intimate and and physical. and And this line just just came and i and I just thought, okay, so that, you know,
00:10:23
Speaker
the situation was already complicated. Now it's a lot more complicated. And I love that. I love it when things get difficult and complicated. And I i know that my characters are going to have to figure things out.
00:10:38
Speaker
yeah So that that was the first thing that struck me. And um as you said, I did really notice reading through, i did notice how you're kind of writing with a camera, which is it's sometimes, you know, close for third person, it's right here on the shoulder and then it's kind of moving back and it's moving. And I i think there's just, you know, you always want kind of light and shade and and a kind of variation in pace. And and i and i I like that with with point of view. And i I like, you know, I also, I like telling. There are moments where there's nothing better than just a very,
00:11:19
Speaker
simple, ordinary, sentence ordinary seeming sentence like that first one, yeah which actually contains multitudes of complexity. But it's just it's just kind of almost like throwing down a gauntlet, you know, just this very ah simple, quite authorial sentence. and And I also, I liked, i almost think of these scenes where they're together in the hut They're almost like paintings in this kind of lamplight. And it just seemed right that there was this sort of slightly more distant third person watching these these two men in this in this little space.
00:12:07
Speaker
I'm glad you said that about like the lamplight and the image because they are like these little tableau right and each chapter is quite short too they're these little glimpses of of moments right of like things hinging on a a look or a you know they're not talking to each other for much of this book because they're not speaking the same language mostly yeah which was which was a real challenge much I realized what what I'd sort of got myself into but then you know, so often happens with, you know, with a story or um it's the real, it's what seems really difficult and really problematic that, that kind of releases something really sort of amazing. amazing
00:12:46
Speaker
Yeah. yeah And I think it's that opening line either could never say for sure exactly when it's like really a really interesting pace and like, rhythm to that opening right but like Ivor could never say for sure that kind of sounds like his thinking right like his language but kind of not and really interesting like he could never say for sure given that they don't speak very much in this book like it's it's quite interesting that it's like he could never say for sure as though someone had asked him this question right it's like really it's such a funny line of kind of right well someone was saying when did you first experience this thing Yeah, it's also, um I mean, I think, you know, going back to that thing about them being these series of little scenes. So they're very, you know, I like my stories to be kind of in the moment, but, you know, you but very aware of the past and the future. And what I liked about that first sentence is that
00:13:42
Speaker
it gives you the feeling that there is some point in the future where I was going to be looking back at this. And you know we' don and when I wrote it, I didn't know what that future moment would look like. or But it's this kind of sense of, as you say, sort of forward propulsion.
00:14:02
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's that tiny little bit of a gap between, wait, are we going to find something out? is who is he speaking Who would he be speaking to? and and still at page 51, you're kind of like, wait, where is this going? Because even the word affections in that line, that's not quite desire.
00:14:19
Speaker
No. Similarly, when he like wants to repair the coat, although desire and wanting and affections... they're very close to to each other, but they're not quite the same. And clearly he feels something for Mary that is more bordering on like, wow, this woman is beautiful, right? Like, who is she? She's entrancing. I'm to her picture on my wall. Equally, he's then entranced by this man in a way that is not,
00:14:44
Speaker
what I love about this book, it's not reducible to sexuality or identity or gender, any of the kind of contemporary identitarian concepts we have, right? It's kind of something beyond his own language, as he said, like he could never say when it happened, but also i don't even know if he could describe the thing. He has to use a word about the sea, right? as you say later on. Yeah. Yeah. And i I think, and that's, you know, the coat and his, i mean, later, you know, he, he knits,
00:15:13
Speaker
John a hat and some socks and yeah and he you know he helps him to pee and and you know he feeds him and it's um and there is a a sentence later on where you know it sort of describes him feeling like he was you know kind of partly a mother partly a father partly a sister brother you know it's it's it's just this yeah the kind of ah affection I suppose.
00:15:40
Speaker
yeah The other thing that's notable in that first line which happens throughout the book and i still haven't settled on where it is coming from but that he's always named John Ferguson like in full. Yes. Right yes. Like he's always Ivor and it's always John Ferguson even in John's own chapters when people are referring to him it's kind of like John Ferguson like And I've been thinking about that since like I started reading it, that there's I don't know that like he needs his full like honorific or something, or there's something about his identity that is like, I am John Ferguson, right? It's almost like a no I don't know, like a trace of patriarchy or a trace of like who he is in the world, his standing.
00:16:17
Speaker
um I mean, to be honest, that choice felt much more instinctive than rational. It just every time, don't know, just felt like the right thing to say john John Ferguson. And maybe it just, you know, the weight of their relationship, John Ferguson, and then it's just either that there's something in that. But I think that was ah one of those instinctive rather than rational decisions.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, it just it's just so interesting that kind of like he is always fully named as though, yeah, there is something about like the naming as something like proper. And I think the book really shows him as like he doesn't get his properness, right? his His papers dissolve in the water very quickly. I don't know who he is, what his role is. He's like really kind of stripped of all of the trappings of the mainland, if you like, of like yes regular life. So I think it's really interesting that the narrative voice is like, no, no, but he's John Ferguson.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yes. But yes. And e know even his coat, is his black Presbyterian coat, it you know, it has these these pink knitted sleeves. um So, ah yeah, no, that that's that's true about his name. Yeah. Yeah. It's just it was I really liked it when I read it.
00:17:30
Speaker
And I'm just like, what is going on there, Karis? But anyway, the passage then carries on. You've got quite short paragraphs. I think it's also worth saying that there's a, you don't write big, dense paragraphs often
Articulation of Emotions Through Language
00:17:41
Speaker
in this book. Like they're often kind of broken up in a way that has a kind of pacing effect, I think, about like taking breath.
00:17:48
Speaker
The next two paragraphs, you kind of begin with the same line. He could never say if it happened. He could never say if it happened. So i think there's a lovely like repetition there from that kind of early sentence, as you say, which is quite direct to then moving into something a bit more poetic, like...
00:18:04
Speaker
drifted and out of sleep, or when he found himself, comma, one evening, comma, reaching for the strangers, battered black coat, wanting to repair it. You've got like alliteration. You've got like these really soft sounds running throughout. You've got the commas.
00:18:18
Speaker
So there's a real, he could never say if it happened. He could never say if it happened. Like he's struggling to find the moment. And even the the sound of the sentences become wistful, if you like, to me.
00:18:29
Speaker
There's something about the softness of his thought, if you like. Yeah, yeah. No, the... the and I mean, i yeah, I feel there's a lot of emotion there. There's sort of the shuffling unhappily. there's There's anxiety and cowardice, maybe, and sort of bit of sorrow um on John's part.
00:18:51
Speaker
But there's... And there's also, um with with such short chapters, one of the challenges was at the same time to... convey the passage of time. so this was also a way of just saying, you know,
00:19:08
Speaker
these things happened and and this this happened and giving a sense of this kind of ah domestic kind of routine, I suppose, that they um that they develop before you know before this kind of sudden there's sort of moment where where he looks at Ivor full in the face, there's a sort of lull and then it you know then it it it happens. Yeah, the feeling he had was that it had happened quite suddenly just before.
00:19:38
Speaker
There's a real, while we're again in the narrator's voice, it's like the narrator is almost like embodying his thinking, re-looking back at the moment, you know, like the feeling he had was that it had happened, not like, oh no, it was that, I know it was that moment. it There's a real struggle towards trying to figure it out. And I think the sentences are almost embodying some of that, thinking it out.
00:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, he's getting he's it's getting more inside him, but there's still there is still this kind of distance. Because you know because um but when Ivor starts to, later on, John starts to write down some of the words in Ivor's language as Ivor is teaching them to to to him. And Ivor's never thought of language as being these words things that he can see, these written things. So, you know, where it says, you know, that if he if he'd been asked to describe his feelings, he might have reached for that word. But there's a, yeah, there's a kind of distance because
00:20:43
Speaker
because Ivor doesn't really think about language in the way that the the we might think about language, but but at the same time, he might have had this, a kind of visceral feeling of being like a rock that's, you know, submerged by by water, yeah emerging, spluttering from it again. So it's it's um both very close and and interior but also there's a bit of distance too yeah like this is a book about articulatability in a way like how do you how do you say the thing like do you have language for the thing and even if you did have language for the thing could you put it to the thing itself right yes um can one say the moment that you notice something in someone else that you're drawn to? Like, can you describe it precisely? Like, I think most people would say no or like it was feeling, right? It was a sensation or it was a, it was a night maybe like, you know, I went out with someone, we had drink drinks all night It was like the whole night, right? But he's here trying to be like, when is the moment? yeah Could I capture it? And even if I had the language, could I capture it? Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I loved about, about Iva's language is that ah there were a few words which,
00:21:57
Speaker
meant, you know, which specifically referred to, like there was one thats one that means, you know, the last moment of night before day begins and the last moment before the tide turns. And as if his language is is particularly interested in that specific moment when something happens, which I think in a kind of unconscious way maybe is is sort of there in the story.
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. And among amongst all of this, it's the moment when John looks him squarely in the face. It's like, it's the moment when they're actually confronted with one another one another's reality, with their like physicality is the moment that things change, right? Like we can grasp the language all we want, but it's,
00:22:40
Speaker
looking eye to eye right yes um I could get very theoretical and talk about Levinas right now and like the face as the moment of like understanding the other but there is a real sense of like face to face what happens when we see the other the other that we have no real knowledge of we have no real sense of their interiority No, exactly. we let none i mean, that's the mystery of being human. yeah We can never have that. And also, I suppose here, we're only really getting either side of the story. You know, John is doing the looking, but there's no mention of any wave crashing over him. or Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's one of the really fun things about this book is that the chapters kind of alternate in perspective, even while you're still in the third person, right? You're kind of drifting back and forth between them. You see this kind of like dance back and forth and we're given lots of, i don't know, dramatic irony, I guess. Like we know things...
00:23:35
Speaker
yeah more than the the characters do most of the time but nonetheless you're still hesitatingly moving forward with them in a way as a reader and I think that's really nice like we're not just giving like here's the whole sweep like we know Mary's gonna try and come at some point but like we don't know if she's gonna make it we don't know what's gonna happen so there's lots of it's like you give us a little bit and then you're like ah I'm not gonna give you the rest and yeah I love that But I but i mean, nor does she. I mean, I don't, you know, don't like those kind of tricks where things are sort of deliberately withheld from the reader for the sake of tension, you know. And I think most of that irony and tension comes from, you know, we know that we know that John's not telling Ivor why he's there. And and also, you know, Ivor doesn't want to ask him because he...
00:24:24
Speaker
You know, I think in his heart, he probably knows it's a but it's not a good thing good reason why he's here. Yeah, yeah. And that then kind of moves us into the that next paragraph going from like he could never say if it happened to what's undoubtedly true.
00:24:42
Speaker
I just love that change and that's a very different kind of language right what's undoubtedly true and I'm like is that Ivor's voice right I'm always interested in third person like whose language is that is that just the narrator's language or is that Ivor's language is how powerfully he was affected in that moment I think I think it's both them I think uh I think Ivor you know, however old he is, I think he'll he'll recognize that. But I think it's something i think it's something that the
00:25:13
Speaker
the third person, the rater, can kind of lay down as ah as a fact. Yeah, yeah. and And I love that kind of, that doubleness, right, when we're when we're reading a third, I think third person can do so many things that are really just under the radar, right, you don't notice it happening, but you're kind of pulled in, that nothing perhaps could have quite prepared him for it.
00:25:34
Speaker
Like that also feels like him, right, but then the the comma, perhaps comma, then feels like the narrator, like it feels quite um proper as a bit of grammar almost, or I don't know, it kind of slips back and forth. I can't make my mind. Yeah, well, I suppose it's the, you know, there it's the narrator, you know, that perhaps...
00:25:53
Speaker
you know, it's kind of referring back to the past. And, you know, we don't know this at this point, but, you know, either he does have a family that, you know, that yeah he loves. And so it's almost there, the narrator's kind of standing back and saying, well, I can't know this for sure. But and it seems to me that this particular emotion, he, he's, you know, he hasn't been prepared for.
00:26:21
Speaker
Yeah, it was so long since anyone but Strachan had looked at him properly. And he's like, wow, that's quite a statement, really, right? Like, not just anyone in kind contemporary language, you know like wanting to be seen, right? It's not just being seen physically, but like, like looked at as a person, right? Not just as a kind of figure or ah an idea, right? He's on this remote island living on his own.
00:26:44
Speaker
yeah to many people he's just you know some kind of historical relic kind of right or just a kind of just a figure but here there's like a real longing for being like looked at directly or or like he doesn't know that he wants to be looked at he's now realizing that it is a thing it is a thing it's kind of a thing that we're you know we're not obviously we look at ourselves in mirrors but it's only other people who can look at us, yeah you know, so if there are no other people, then you're never being, never being looked at. i mean, it sounds like a very obvious thing to say, I guess, but it's, you know, that sense of, yeah, who, who we are, that's, yeah that's part of it.
00:27:25
Speaker
And the fact that, you know, the last, probably the last person that looked at him was, you know, his, the the worst person in the world for him who, you know, wishes him the most ill.
00:27:37
Speaker
Yeah. And, but, that but I don't think that is quite understated. That's like quite a big, like, who are we in the world? Right? Like if, own if we only see ourselves through our own eyes, I wouldn't get a sense of like anything else. Like this is about relationality, not just a. Exactly. You're, if you don't ever see the effect you're having. um and I can't remember who, was it George Eliot? Who said, you know, the last thing we realize is our effect um on other people, but, but it is, you know, you don't see somebody else's facial reaction to something you said you it's just a blank yeah so being looked at is like it's like a confirmation of oneself right it's like oh no I am alive i am a real yes yes yes and it's suddenly it's sort of I mean I think it's maybe just after this passage where either he kind of goes out into the shed and he
00:28:30
Speaker
he kind of looks at his own hand um almost he's so almost kind of shocked into uh an awareness of of his existence almost yeah yeah it feels like a a real transition for him like not just seeing this other person and seeing the other in their kind of brute reality, but also then seeing himself in a way that, and I just love this sentence because you've gone from quite direct sentences to more kind of like soft poetic ones too.
00:29:02
Speaker
And if he'd been asked to describe his feelings, he might have reached for that word in his language that described what happened. It suddenly like unfurls, right? This sentence. in the way that as like what what happens when a rock is covered and uncovered by the sea, dash when, comma, briefly, comma, the water rises up and submerges it.
00:29:20
Speaker
Like the sea washes across this sentence, right? You really let it unfurl in a way that I find really pleasurable. But then it was how Iva felt when the wave of emotion crashed over him. He was engulfed by it. Like the sentences then, like they compact again immediately afterwards. it's like you're and again this is probably unconscious as you're writing it but the the the form and the content are really mirroring.
00:29:43
Speaker
I think I I was conscious that I wanted to kind of raise the music you know from this like quite flat kind of narrative to just something very emotional and visceral that kind of mirrored the the wave and then the where it crashes over him and then he he breathes breaths again. Yeah.
00:30:07
Speaker
yeah I like that idea of raising the music. That's a really great phrase. Yeah, I think it it is it is a good phrase. I feel that's often, um I often think of that to myself, you know, i think this what I need to raise the music here. And are you like calibrating that in the moment or like in the edits?
00:30:28
Speaker
it's That's usually when i mean when I'm going back over something and I'll think... i mean for I'll give you another example from from Clear. I had sort of finished the book and there's ah there's a very...
00:30:43
Speaker
important dance scene, which you'll, youll and and it it worked, but it I needed to well, I mean, there is kind of music in that in that scene, but it I needed to raise the music, you know, because I did go back over that scene and just wasn't very much that I added, but I did, I wanted it to be more intense.
00:31:06
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's always interesting to me, like how much is like felt in the moment versus like you take a look back and you're like, oh this needs something. Because even like even in this, like raising the music, it's funny because he says like, and if he'd been asked, like whether anyone's ever going to ask him, he might have reached for that word. Like not even it's not even he would have used, but he might have and then reached for the word. Like we don't even know if he'd get to the word. this ah Yeah, it's very re it's very reticent. very Yeah.
00:31:36
Speaker
bit sort of British. yeah Yeah, but it's so but it's so emotional at the same time, right? There's something really... I think Iva, I love this man. i'd like He's not real, but like the the more you read just words like that, like if he'd been asked, as though no one ever asks him these questions, no one asks about his emotional life or his feelings or his inner world, then he might have reached for words. like, I'm always trying to reach for words and they don't...
00:32:03
Speaker
yeah kind You know, there's something just so like tender about the idea, I think. Yeah, it really it really got me. I was like, yeah I want you. I like the word tender. it's there's a there's a And i I did want a tenderness to to be in these um in these scenes. Yeah.
00:32:22
Speaker
And listener, if you've not got, like the ending is ecstatic of this book. I, my breath, I was holding my breath. I'll just tell you that, Karis. It was, it is the perfect ending to this book. I didn't know that's where we were going, but I'm so glad we went there. When did you realise?
00:32:41
Speaker
quite late on um i mean without giving yeah too much time for a long time i i thought iva would die because i just i couldn't really imagine any other fate for him but you know i just i suppose i've just always you know people have always found a way yeah and yeah uh i think i mean a couple of people have sort of said that they found it very
Writing Process and Creative Routine
00:33:10
Speaker
modern. And I i find that slightly strange because, well, as I, people have always found a way, you know, this there's really nothing new under the sun.
00:33:21
Speaker
Right, right. And, but I think maybe it's new, you know, ah you know, I'm not calling, I wouldn't call this historical fiction per se, but, you know, one could, right. set and the before Yeah. but Maybe it's just the sense of like people imagining what people did in the 1840s, I think is probably out of skew, right? I think we're just used to imagining the past in a particular way.
00:33:39
Speaker
i i think so. And, you know, people have, you know, they had courage and imagination and and they took risks. and Yeah. And desire and like want. and Yeah.
00:33:50
Speaker
Yeah. All of the things. I mean, not to mention the ending of West, which also destroyed me. So, you know, you do endings very well. Yeah. but he was engulfed by it. His breathing stopped and there was a long stalled moment before he broke three and breathed again. Again, lots of those Bs there throughout that, um but very like direct. And then when John Ferguson gestured to him to pass his papers, he gave them to him. And then he sat in his great chair watching him. Like you've gone way back to that almost monosyllabic, almost sentence structure after this like real, you know, you raised the music and then you really brought the music back down.
00:34:28
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose what strikes me there is um I hadn't, ah reading it now, John Ferguson comes across as even more kind of stiff and almost, that in although he's in a slightly, you know, he's in, he's the patient here. He's he's in a somewhat vulnerable situation, but he's still kind of behaving like the,
00:34:53
Speaker
you know, the more assertive one. And he, you know, he expects Ivor to pass him his papers, which Ivor does. So that, so that, yeah, that sort of struck, it seemed that gesture feels very, i didn't realise how peremptory that that might seem. Although it could, you know, it could seem quite a gentle gesture. I don't know. It's just me reading it now. It seems a little peremptory.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah, but that's the only word in the sentence that I guess you could read. This is what I mean when it's kind of, it becomes more plain, right It's the only word that like we need, we can read into. The rest of it is just plain and descriptive. Yeah. were Like sat in his great chair watching him.
00:35:32
Speaker
I think I was aware that that could... you know, can could could convey his his great, his his affection and his interest, but also a little bit of a threat as well. Because, you know, we we know that Ivor, he's a big guy. yeah And John is, you know, now that he's got here, he is afraid. And so there is that feeling of, well, we don't know what's going to happen here, but, you know, the how's the balance of power going to work out? So there is something a little...
00:36:04
Speaker
maybe a little threatening a a sense of everything being up for grabs Yeah, i think that's ah that's a really good way of describing the book though, right? There's so much up for grabs in every chapter and we're kind of we're kind of unfolding with them in a way that I, yeah, I'm just obsessed with this book um in so many ways.
00:36:22
Speaker
Just such a beautiful car moment. And I want to transition now to talk a bit more about your writing. and We've hinted this already, but I want to know more about how you literally do this thing. how How do you make these books happen? Yeah.
00:36:34
Speaker
Do you have like a strict writing practice? Are you handwriting, typing? I mean, I'm, so I'm strict in the sense that I, I work every, well, not every day, but I, you know, I work every weekday and sometimes just depending on what's, you know, what, what's going on, I'll, I'll work at the weekends too. But, but I,
00:36:57
Speaker
I mean, I i don't have, i mean, at various times I have had sort of, okay, I'm not going to let myself get up from here until I've written 10 pages. um But i I did that for a short while when I was writing The Mission House. um But normally I don't have a...
00:37:15
Speaker
you know a word limit word sort of target or anything like that I just know that I need to be thinking about it and at my desk and if I do that things will things will happen so that's that's the only sort of hard and fast rule I have I do write mostly by hand for a very long time until I'm really sort of deep into it and then I'll sort of flip but you know flip between the two i'll sort put type everything up and then even if i you know if i've got a chapter that's on the computer and then i want to rewrite it or add something then i'll go back into my notebook and handwrite the scene
00:37:58
Speaker
because I think, I don't know, it it's fresher. it's i think If I'm on the computer, I start to delete things. And that's always a big mistake, because I don't think you can ever judge in the moment if something is good or not. yeah And often, you know, I'll come back to something the next day and everything I thought was good isn't. And stuff I thought was really clunky actually works.
00:38:25
Speaker
So yeah, never throw anything away. Okay. So as every day, if you can, and yes that's like interesting and revising like how many drafts, because I've read like a lot of people that write short books are kind of writing these really distilled things. I think, I think it was Claire Keegan. I don't know. I heard her on something once that she said she'll like write a draft and then she'll just write it again, but not from the original script. So just rewrite the book.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah. What? what Yeah, no, I know I remember reading Sarah Moss. she She writes it, then she deletes it, and then she deletes it from her trash. And then she ah then she starts again. No, i i did I don't do that. I keep i keep everything. And i I don't really think in terms of...
00:39:21
Speaker
draft one, draft two, draft two. It's for me, it's a lot messier. It's a lot more chaotic than that. It's much more, well, I've got this, I've got this, which I really like and is really working. um so I'm going to keep that. And I don't know, I'm just always, it's almost like sort of flicking paint on ah on a canvas. And I'm always,
00:39:42
Speaker
sort of flicking flicking new paint and taking, so you know, scraping stuff off and until it's till let's finally there. Until it feels right.
00:39:53
Speaker
I used to paint a lot when I was younger and I'd always be like, ah, there was one too many flicks and now I can't get rid of it. And now I can't get rid of it and don't know what to Yeah. yeah no i' i'll I'll look at, you know, i'll sort of look at something. I'll think, oh, no, you know, that that chapter, the way I wrote that chapter before, that was that was much better. so So I do have I have endless drafts of paragraphs and pages and chapters. Yeah. But I don't sort of have these things called first draft, second draft. Yeah. draft
00:40:23
Speaker
Okay, I like that. That makes me feel better about my writing practice. um Do you have a memory of like, first writing? Or when you first thought like, I want to be a writer, or whatever that means?
00:40:35
Speaker
Well, my my first real memory of bought what i used to do, where i'm like my kids always say to me when I talk about my childhood, they say, oh, stop, stop. Your childhood sounds so miserable and boring. I used to make these little books and copy copy things out. So I have these little copy tiny copies of the tempest for instance that i caught i don't think it was the whole thing but it would be so you know act one and scene one and i'd make the little books and copy them out and i didn't really remember the copying but i do think copying is um
00:41:14
Speaker
as a way of learning is is a great thing. I think to to write, to copy out a whole short story, for instance, is a really great thing to do because you there's something that you kind of,
00:41:29
Speaker
learn about the pacing and the the the way it's unfolding through the act of writing out the whole the whole story, you know, word for word. So so I think there's, yeah, I think there's a a lot to be, that's my main memory of of making these little books. I love that. That doesn't sound sad to me. I like this memory. is I didn't think it was sad either. Yeah. um Do you teach creative writing in any context? I don't know. I i have. i have. i mean, i I don't do it. um I don't do it that often. And I suppose i'm I'm not, you know, I'm not that interested in sort of theories of of writing. i You know, I think my...
00:42:15
Speaker
what I would say to what I'm always want to say to students is just, you know, just go and find stuff that you love and just read that and, and read it and read it and read it.
00:42:26
Speaker
Uh, so yeah, no, I have, and I've had, you know, I've had, it's been very, um, I've done at Arvon and done other teaching, but yeah, I do. Do you set like activities or tasks or lessons or are you kind of more kind of workshopping and,
00:42:45
Speaker
I do one of my favorite things
Teaching Methods and Literary Recommendations
00:42:48
Speaker
to do. i mean, things, physical things are very important in my writing. So I like to throw a few, you know, physical objects at my students and, and you know, and they they will come up with the most wonderful, wonderful stories, you know, just tell them to just really focus on this physical, whether it, you know, it might be a brooch or a,
00:43:11
Speaker
you know, glass bottle or know anything. And to just to really, really, really think about this. And they've they've written wonderful stories based on those. i think I think physical things are great jumping off points.
00:43:26
Speaker
It's like a kind of grounding object in a way. Yes. And in investing them with, you know, difficulty and emotion. Yeah. I write more poetry than anything else. And I think often when we're talking about poetry writing.
00:43:40
Speaker
a lesson, I can't remember whoever told me this. So sorry, listeners, if you are hearing this, but they were kind of like, if you've got an object, like right around the object. Like a poem can write around the object as though you're like not don't describe the thing directly, but describe almost the kind of like negative space around the thing without saying like plant pot. Like, how are you writing around? the poem How are you making sense of it? And I always thought that sounds so difficult, but so fascinating.
00:44:08
Speaker
Yes. or Or maybe you do all those things first and then you just, you just cut, you cut that all out. Yes. That's your way, that's your way in. Yeah. But I think that, I mean, I think there are some, right. I love, um I mean, I haven't read it yet, but Elizabeth McCracken, who's one of my favourite writers, has a new book out about writing. um And i I would read anything that she, you know, she just writes with such sort of, sound common sense and she's funny and uh so I you know I would read i would read anything she wrote about writing right that's a really good recommendation do you and you have other essays or books on writing that you go back to or recommend
00:44:50
Speaker
As I say, I don't sort of, I'm not really into theory, I suppose, is what people would say. but and if i So if i recommended anything, it would be, yeah, Elizabeth McCracken. It's called it A Long Game. Okay, yeah great. And read the writers that you are drawn to, you said. Exactly, exactly. And yeah you know read them again and again. And and if they're, you know, copy copy them out, you know, and and kind of...
00:45:19
Speaker
feel what that feels like by kind of osmosis yeah I'm gonna go and try that tonight that sounds like a really good um activity okay the last question I ask everyone yes do you have books that you want to recommend they could be old things that you return to they could be new things stuff that's not out yet Yeah, well, i when we were in touch before, you had you'd said to me, did I feel that there were any books that mine was yeah in dialogue with? And my initial response was sort of, well, no, not not really, probably just eat each other. you know my my but um But there's a book that I came to very late, a friend recommended to me by Sylvia Townsend Warner called Mr. Fortune's Maggot. I don't know if you know it. in around
00:46:08
Speaker
And I absolutely loved it. It's this so story about um a bank clerk who becomes a missionary and goes off to a remote island and he makes one convert. It's this young boy and it's the story of him and this young convert. And Mr. Fortune, you know, i i most of my books for...
00:46:31
Speaker
whatever reason, I seem very drawn to these um men of a certain age who are, you know, rather flawed, and quite complicated and ill-equipped to deal with the situations that they're they're put into. And um I felt sort of I did feel a real connection with with Mr. Fortune. So i and I love that book. I would recommend that. um group I'm reading, at the moment, I'm reading a novel called Fonseca by um Jessica Kane. I think it came out last year and um my French editor actually recommended it to me because she's publishing it in in French next year. And it's she knew that i one of my literary heroines is Penelope Fitzgerald and Fonseca is
00:47:21
Speaker
a novel about something that happened in Penelope Fitzgerald's life. Um, she was always short of money and it's this crazy story about a legacy that a letter arrives and there's a possibility that her son might be going to inherit some money from a couple of rich old ladies in South America. So she and her son go to South America and, uh, It's just, it's a really delightful novel and it it has a kind of really has the spirit of Penelope Fitzgerald's writing. It's kind of funny and has a very light touch. It's really lovely. I would reckon it's out in in English. I'd recommend that.
00:48:06
Speaker
Both great recommendations.
Episode Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:48:09
Speaker
um I love hearing the things that people recommend. Karis, thank you so much for your time. I so appreciate you and talking about this book, which I'm obsessed with. So thank you for doing this.
00:48:19
Speaker
That was a real pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Thank you for listening to this episode. Go back to episode one with Olivia Sujic if you want another taught book that's almost a kind of two-hander like Claire is. Or go to episode 27 with Tori Peters for long short story or short novella which is about a very different kind of male intimacy.
00:48:43
Speaker
Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on YouTube, share with people in all the places, tag me in any posts of episodes you'd like and fill out the feedback form if you can. You can also get more information by subscribing to the Substack. The show was made possible by an Impact or Accelerator Award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Hertfordshire.