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T H E W E N D Y P E R R I A M I N T E R V I E W |
| 01 | Second Skin is your thirteenth novel. Are each of your novels products of your own interests at the time, or do you have ongoing themes or topics that you explore through writing? | "Many writers have overriding obsessions to which
they return. In my case, these include the pull between wildness and restraint; my
love/hate affair with the Catholic Church; the whole issue of truth and lies (what is
fake, what is so-called real), and the arbitrariness of one’s position in society -
whether we’re born in a slum, or with a silver spoon in our mouth - which is very
much the luck of the draw, yet has a huge influence on our subsequent development.
"These favourite themes can lure the writer like a magnet. But we have to be careful not to air them too often, for fear of repeating ourselves! "Of course, fiction can also spring from things that happen to people we know, or which occur in our own life. Last month, for example, I was taken ill at a conference and spent the day with a young St John's Ambulance officer. The whole thing was really bizarre. There I was, being humiliatingly sick in the Strand, while American tourists, impressed by the woman’s uniform, kept coming up and saying ‘Ma’am, can you tell me the way to Buckingham Palace?’ or Madame Tussaud’s, or whatever. I turned it into a story, although not one about me. I made the patient a much older woman, and explored the themes of mothers and daughters, and of dependency, and loss. "So you see, even the smallest incident can be used as a basis for a story or novel - perhaps an encounter on a park bench, or a person one sees on a train." |
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