Lost Children - Interview With Clare Morrall

In 2004, Clare Morrall brought Birmingham and home-grown publishing house Tindal Street Press into the limelight with her Booker-Man shortlisted novel, Astonishing Splashes of Colour. The novel was reviewed by Katie Hawes in issue 2 of this magazine, and here we catch up with the woman herself to talk about Birmingham, books and the sense of loss.

BW: My first question relates to the setting of the book. Myself living in Birmingham, although not a native to the city, your descriptions rang true: these are the bus routes on which I travel, the landscapes through which I move from day to day. But at the same time, there is something jarring in the Birmingham of the novel, a profound sense of dislocation. Is this your own sense of Birmingham or does it reflect the emotional dislocation of Kitty, your main character?

CM: No, I don’t see Birmingham as dislocated. I have lived here now for 34 years, so I know it well, and I’ve witnessed all its changes. I know the bus routes, although I no longer use them now that I drive. I like Birmingham. I think it’s modern and attractive, with plenty of easily accessible theatres and concert halls, and I hope some of that affection for the city comes out in the novel. So you are probably picking up Kitty’s emotional dislocation, reflected in her surroundings.

BW: One of the overwhelming themes of your book seems to be that of loss: lost children, lost time, lost history, lost parents, lost childhoods. The other aspect, suggested by the title, is that of Kitty’s synaesthesia. Do these two aspects of the novel in some sense balance each other out, or do they intensify each other? What I think I am asking is this: does Kitty’s synaesthesia act to compensate for her isolation, or does it, on the other hand, simply take it deeper?

CM: Yes, I was writing about loss. Anyone who is a parent will have experienced the profound fear that you have for a newborn child – the knowledge that you are totally responsible for its future life and well-being, and the precariousness of its existence. This is not necessarily connected to the synaesthesia, which reflects Kitty’s emotions and helps her to express them. She has lived with the colours all her life, so they are comforting to her and she is most uncertain and bewildered when they are absent.

BW: One of Kitty’s brothers, Adrian, is a novelist. Through Kitty’s responses to Adrian and in her reflections on family history, you seem to express a degree of scepticism about storytelling, and the necessary distortion of truth that comes about through the telling and retelling of stories, both to ourselves and to others.

CM: I am not sceptical about story-telling. I consider it to be an essential part of our lives. From a personal point of view, I would say I have gained most of my experience and general knowledge from reading fiction. I learn best if facts creep up on me when I’m not looking. In the novel, I was interested in the fallibility of memory – how people embroider their memories, shaping and crafting them into stories. There is comfort and a unity to be found in collective family memories. Does it matter if each individual’s truth is different?

BW: I understand that Astonishing Splashes of Colour was not your first novel and that you wrote four earlier books before you were published by Tindal Street. I have two questions here. The first is whether we are likely to ever see these earlier books on which you were honing the craft that led to your shortlisting for the Booker Prize. The second question is what were the books that really sustained you during this long and arduous process of writing novel after novel?

CM: I originally thought I might return to my old novels, but, on consideration, I’ve decided that it is not helpful to go backwards. As a writer you should be constantly moving forwards, improving, maturing. If I do decide at some point to return to them, they would need a great deal of reworking and polishing before I would allow anyone to see them again.

Books that have inspired me:

*The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck. I read this first as a teenager, and have come back to it many times. I love the way that Steinbeck alternates passages of great lyrical beauty with close-up portraits of ordinary people. His characters are poor, disadvantaged, often uneducated, but their dignity and integrity shine through powerfully. It is that dignity that I would most like to find in my own characters. *The English Patient – Ondaatje. This made a great impression on me, long before the film, which can only ever be a pale imitation of the book. I love the shifting of time and place, the stories, the descriptions. Cats asleep in the gun barrels facing south, or on the headless statues in the garden of the villa. Everything bizarre and unnatural in the aftermath of war, everyone damaged, yet all delicately balanced.

BW: It must have been a great boost – both for yourself and also for Tindal Street – to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and this must have changed your own relationship with your writing. What are your plans now for the future? What fresh novels are brewing?

CM: Obviously, getting on to the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize was the most extraordinary thing that has happened to me. I now feel I can spend more time on my writing without feeling guilty. I still teach music in a school and at home, but I have cut down the hours and have a much more manageable schedule that allows time for the writing. I am busier than I used to be, giving talks, judging competitions, and doing interviews, but these are usually enjoyable occasions. My next novel was almost completed at the time of the Booker, so I have been completing and polishing rather than producing something new under pressure. It will be published by Sceptre, part of Hodder Headline, and is entitled Natural Flights of the Human Mind. It’s about guilt, a man who lives in a lighthouse, and features a small biplane. I was not able to stay with Tindal Street – it was largely a matter of resources, but we remain good friends, and Sceptre have offered to publish in association with them. Emma Hargrave of Tindal Street says that their purpose is to be a springboard for aspiring writers, and they continue to enjoy much success in this role.

BW: Lighthouses and small biplanes? We will look forward to reading it.