My Book of the Month for May 2012 is Gilli Allan's latest Kindle publication, Life Class. I had a chance to interview Gilli about this new book, and this is what she told me.
What is your new novel Life Class about?
The
life class meets once a week to draw the human figure. For four of its members,
life hasn’t lived up to expectations. All have failed to achieve what they
thought they wanted. They gradually come to realise that it’s not just the
naked model they need to study and understand. Their stories are very
different, but they all have secrets they hide from the world and from
themselves. By uncovering and coming to terms with the past, maybe they can
move on to a different and unimagined future.
Dory says she works in the sex
trade, the clean-up end. As a part-time lab technician in a local STI clinic she’s
confronted everyday by the damage sex can cause. Her job has given her a
jaundiced view of men, an attitude confirmed by the disintegration of her own
relationship. Dory has returned to her home town. She questions why she’s
allowed her sister, Fran, to push her into joining the life class. The time
seems right to make up her mind about what she does really want in life. Love doesn’t figure in her view of the
future – she’s always been a clear eyed
realist – and yet she finds herself chasing a dream.
Stefan is a single-minded loner.
His only and overriding ambition is to make a living from his sculpture. To
supplement his income he’s taken a job as a part-time art teacher. He finds
himself facing a class of adults who want their old teacher back. Although love
is an emotion he long ago closed off - it only leads to regret and shame
- it creeps up on him from more than one direction. Is it time to admit
that letting others into his life is not defeat?
Fran - Dory’s
older sister - is a wife and a stay-at-home mother without enough to keep her
occupied. She studied art as a girl but the life class is her only creative
outlet now. On a collision course with her mid-life crisis, Fran craves the
romance and excitement of her youth. An on-line flirtation with an old
boyfriend becomes scarily obsessive, putting everything she really loves at
risk.
Dominic
is a damaged child. He has lived his life knowing all about sex but nothing
about love. If he can only find his mother perhaps he can make sense of his
past. But perhaps it is a doomed quest and it’s time to look to the future? By
accepting the help and love that’s on offer here and now, he has a chance to
transform his life.
As a novelist, what subjects and themes excite and inspire you?
When I was young I
read every variety of fiction voraciously. Fantasy, sci fi, romance and
historical novels were hoovered-up alongside the rest, but I rarely read those
genres these days. What interests me now, to read and to write, is contemporary fiction which is rooted in a reality
I recognise. I want to explore characters I can identify with. I want them to
have the regrets, the problems and the obstacles to their ambitions any of us
might have. After all, real life is not a fairy tale; it can rarely be wrapped up
neatly.
Looking back over my books to date, I can
see that creative people often figure in my plots. Maybe this is because I am
an artist as well as a writer and I instinctively have sympathy and
understanding for creative types. Maybe it’s because I’m lazy, and know a bit
more about the arts than I do about other subjects. The idea of having to
research an aeronautics engineer is daunting!
You're not a "lipsticked
mouths, hearts and flowers, and bare, muscled chests" type novelist. How
would you describe your kind of writing, and what do you set out to do?
I’ll answer the
last part of the question first. I very much enjoy subverting the ‘romance’
stereo-types. Though I wouldn’t claim I ‘set out’ to do this, it is a recurring
element in my writing. As I said in the previous answer, I try to create
believable scenarios, peopled by real individuals. Reality, in my view extends
to their appearance. I don’t go so far as to make my characters plug-ugly, but
I am determined not to have drop-dead
gorgeous heroines. Maybe I’m peculiar, but the heroine who is described as
having a figure that any man would lust over, emerald eyes and ‘creamy blonde
curls falling like whipped cream to her shoulders’ (I read that once and it
stuck in my mind!) immediately loses my sympathy! Why on earth is this woman
having trouble finding a man?
I am
equally determined not to create archetypal tall, dark, handsome, rich and
successful heroes. The only hero of mine who conformed to the above description
was in my first novel, Just Before Dawn, which I was aiming at HM&B, but
HM&B didn’t want it. I might have created an appropriate hero but I was
unable to keep the rest of the plot on the straight and narrow!
To
answer the first part of the question is a little harder to explain. I freely
admit I am speaking from a position of almost complete ignorance of modern
romance fiction, so feel free to shoot me down! But I am very put-off by the
kind of jacket design the quote describes. The models are always impossibly
beautiful and honed individuals, whose trials and tribulations I’m not
interested in for all the aforementioned reasons. And the implication behind the
inevitable clinch on the cover is that love and sex is going to be the total
focus of the story. Of course love is important. It’s the engine of the plot in
the books I write, but it is never the
be all and end all of the story.
I have no problem with sex in the books I read (or write). Sex is fine.
But if there’s too much and it’s too raunchy, I don’t want to continue reading -
I want to do it - so in my view, it distracts from the story. But most of all,
I dislike reading books in which sex is always awesome and never has any
consequences, apart from ‘falling in love’! Sex can be awkward and
embarrassing, even if you think you’re in love. And, apart from the potential of disease and
pregnancy, sex outside of a committed partnership very often has deep and
troubling emotional and psychological fallout.
Who are your own favourite
novelists?
I have
to confess I don’t read much within the romantic fiction genre. I can never
switch off my inner editor, relax into a story and just enjoy it. So my usual
reading is crime fiction. For many years Ruth Rendell (also writing as Barbara
Vine) was my favourite author, and more specifically, her psychological ‘chillers’.
They keep your heart in your mouth - you know something awful is going to
happen, but you don’t know what. Nor are you sure who is going to be the
perpetrator or who the victim.
These
days Ruth has rivals. Other contemporary crime writers I enjoy are Mark
Billingham and Sophie Hannah - the latter is a peerless plotter. And, having
said I don’t read historical fiction, the exception proves the rule. I
absolutely adore C J Sansom who writes crime fiction set in the reign of Henry
VIII.
An author who uses the crime genre to
explore the human condition, and who does so with wit and style, is Kate Atkinson
- her ‘Jackson Brodie’ novels are to be treasured. All these are authors whose
next book I impatiently wait for.
Do you
have any hints and tips for other would be novelists?
To be a writer you have to have grit and determination, a degree of
selfishness and, dare I say it, a large helping of bloody-mindedness. And if
you truly believe you’ve got what it takes, don’t just talk about it, do it. There
are always reasons to put it off. But don’t wait until you have the time, until
the children are off your hands, until you’ve gone part-time or you’ve retired.
If you procrastinate now, you may never begin, let alone finish. If you really have a book (or books) in you,
you will find a way.
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