WEBVTT - Read This: The Imaginary Village of Niall Williams 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:03.040 Hey there, it's Ruby Jones and as always I'm back 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:06.560 to share another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:10.119 books podcast. It's hosted by editor of The Monthly Michael 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:13.080 Williams and features conversations with some of the most talented 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:17.680 writers from Australia and around the world. This episode features 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:21.440 a live conversation between Michael and Irish writer Nile Williams, 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.040 which was recorded back in March at the State Library 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.160 of Victoria. As usual, I'm joined by Michael to tell 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:28.800 me a little bit more about the episode. 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:30.840 Hi, Michael, Ruby Jones. 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:33.239 So, Michael, on this week's episode of Read This, you're 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:36.879 in conversation with yet another Irish author, Noah Williams, and 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:39.880 looking back at the show's archive, I think it is 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.879 fair to say that there is a very healthy representation 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.199 of Irish writers in general. Would you agree? 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:48.440 Yes. Look, I don't want to say that it's because 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:50.800 I have Irish an's history or anything, but at this 0:00:50.840 --> 0:00:53.239 point it does feel a little bit like Read This 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:57.760 is the country's pre eminent podcast for Irish authors being interviewed. 0:00:58.040 --> 0:00:59.960 If you look at our archives, some of the great 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:04.640 contemporary Irish writers are there. Kilan Hughes, Colintoy Bin, the 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:08.120 Two Pauls, Paul Maray and Paul Lynch, and Enright. I mean, 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.200 it's pretty bonkers, and frankly, any dream list I have 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.440 for future guests has another half dozen writers in the mix, 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:18.560 Claire Keegan, Sally Rooney, Kevin, Barry Bliss. There is something 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.119 to be said for the breadth and depth and general 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:25.160 robustness of contemporary Irish literature. Part of it, I think, 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:28.160 is smart government policies that support the arts well and 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.000 writers in particular. But also it's to do with the 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.680 strength of the literary tradition that's well read and well understood. 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:37.840 And I don't want to suggest these things are racially predetermined, 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:40.240 but culturally there is something about the way the Irish 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:43.759 tells stories, a joy and a sense of place and play, 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:46.960 and a willingness to meander and digress. All of it 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:50.600 comes together to make for wonderful literature, and Nile Williams 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:52.480 is definitely part of that conversation. 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:56.640 So Nil has written more than twenty books at this point, 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:00.160 both novels on his own and works of nonfiction with 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:02.880 his wife, Christine Breen, but in this episode you are 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:06.840 focusing on his latest book Time of the Child, tell 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:07.760 Me a little Bit about It. 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:10.520 Yeah. Time of the Child is the latest in what 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:13.560 is shaping up to be a series from Nile Williams. 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:16.520 He was longlisted for the twenty fourteen Booker for his 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:19.200 book History of the Rain, which was an account of 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:22.359 a woman kind of lying in bed contemplating her life. 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:25.880 But outside the windows of her room was the town 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:28.840 of Faha, a fictional town that he had created that 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:33.000 is in that book only sketchily drawn, but intriguingly so. 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:35.840 So perhaps it was unsurprising when his follow up book, 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.000 This Is Happiness, put far half front and sent her. 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:41.120 In that book he tells the story of the nineteen 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:44.840 fifty eight introduction of electricity to the town, and the 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:48.880 book attracted rapturous reviews. The word enchanting gets thrown around 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.560 a lot. Upon finishing it, Niall Williams realized he wasn't 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:55.600 done with the people of Faha, or maybe, to put 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:58.400 it more accurately, they weren't done with him. And so 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.480 his latest book is another far hard book. It's called 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:03.960 Time of the Child. It's said in the early sixties, 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:07.080 and the focus has shifted to the town Doctor Jack 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:10.720 Troy and his oldest daughter, Ronnie, and it follows what 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:14.360 happens when an abandoned baby girl is brought into their home. 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:16.639 It's really lovely. 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:20.840 Coming up in just a moment the imaginary village of 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:21.760 Niall Williams. 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:43.680 Thank you now. I did apologize when we're doing the 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:47.240 sound check because it feels somehow disrespectful that Melbourne, of 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:50.000 all cities, couldn't turn on the rain for the poet 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.560 laureate of rain. This man can write a description of 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:57.440 rain that rivals no other. Is that your natural weather mode? 0:03:57.480 --> 0:03:59.520 Are you most comfortable writing above that? 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.160 Hello everybody. Chris and I have lived in County Claire 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:07.280 for forty years. In that time, we've had to come 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:11.640 to an accommodation with the rain, and because it rains 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:14.000 a lot, I have to come to a place where 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.599 I could see the rain not as the enemy, not 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:21.160 as something against me in some way. I finally came 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:23.840 to grips with it when I wrote History of the Rain, 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:28.760 where I began to understand the idea that the rain 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:31.839 comes from the sky, goes into the river, which goes 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:34.840 to the sea, which goes back into the sky, and 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:39.719 that circular motion that happens that traffic of rain and 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.280 transitoriness seemed to me to become sort of some kind 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.040 of metaphor for our own existence. And because that novel 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:49.240 deals with Ruth Swain trying to find out where her 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.159 dead father has gone, and so the rain became part 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.600 of that circularity as she searched for him. 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:58.040 I'm very glad you brought up History of the Rain 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:01.640 because it seems it's an appropriate book maybe for us 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:04.600 to start out a conversation tonight. It's our first glimpse 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.320 of Faha in your work. Even if it's through a 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:11.640 window barely scene, it's out there. But it is also 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:14.839 a book very much concerned with the business of books, 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:17.560 and given the building way in at the moment. Yes, 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:21.400 I wonder if you could expand on Ruth's quest to 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:23.000 find her father through books. 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:27.200 Yes. So I never know where a book comes from 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:29.760 until after I've written it. I have no plan. When 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:33.080 I'm writing a book. I'm literally following one sentence and 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:36.640 seeing what that sentence implies with the next sentence. It's 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:38.600 only after I've written a book that I look back 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:40.440 and see what was happening in my life at the 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:42.920 time that I can trace back some things in my 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.760 or our lives that have influenced the shaping and making 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.560 of the book. When I look back at history of 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:53.640 the Reign, I remember that my father had died, and, 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:57.440 as is the common way I think among Irish fathers 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:01.960 and sons, if there was emotional material happening in your life, 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:04.440 you didn't really speak to your father about it. So 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:06.520 my father knew that I had written a novel called 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:09.200 Four Letters of Love, so we definitely weren't going to 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:15.039 talk about that. And so when I wrote the novels, 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:17.159 I would bring them and give them to my father 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:19.200 and he'd say sign that to me, and I would 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.200 sign it to him, and he would take it and 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.440 put on the shelf. And that was throughout the course 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:26.640 of his life. Each book would go on a shelf 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:29.760 and we would never ever speak about it. But when 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:33.760 my father died, he left a handwritten will, and in 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:36.240 that will, the only mention that I get in that 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:43.040 will is for nihle my books, just that, and it 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:47.280 was like a acknowledgment back to my life choice. And 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:49.960 in turn, it was also an acknowledgment of the fact 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:54.440 that my writing life began with my reading life, and 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:58.640 that was that every two weeks my father brought us 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.479 to the library, so he would come home from work 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:03.480 and in the evening, and on Wednesday evenings the library 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:06.760 stayed open until nine, and so by six thirty half 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:08.799 past six, we would get in the car and drive 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:12.680 to Ballsbridge in Dublin to the Pembroke Library. And when 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:14.560 he let you in the doors of that library at night, 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:17.600 he went to his section and you could go anywhere 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:20.160 and you didn't have to gather back again until half 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:22.280 past eight and sign out your books with him, and 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:24.400 he would just look at your books, and I'd carry 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:26.640 out my stack of books, he'd carry out his, and 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:28.400 that was it. And then two weeks later we'd be 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:31.160 back again in that situation. And it was my first 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:34.280 experience of the idea that you can choose your own books, 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:39.000 and what a freeing idea that was, because in school 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:43.240 they said this is the textbook, everyone read this. But 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:47.960 when you walt in the doors library, go anywhere and 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:50.680 the books that you were picking become part of your 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.760 own definition as to who you are. And for me, 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:56.840 at age twelve, that was a sort of extraordinary free thing. 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:00.200 You could pick anything. So when he died and I 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:03.680 drove to Dublin from County Claire, so across the country 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:06.400 to the nursing home where he had died to collect 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:10.160 his books, and I brought them home, something extraordinarly powerful 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:13.920 happened to me, and that was the sense that even 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:15.520 though these were not the books that I would have 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:19.520 chosen myself, they were the books that my father had read. 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:23.120 So his hands had held them, his hands had turned 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.400 the pages, his eyes had been on each page, and 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:29.800 so in some way that became the life spring of 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:32.720 the book that became History of the Reign. Where Root's father, 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:35.920 the poet, has died, and he has route is ill 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:39.319 and doesn't leave the house, and she is in the 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:41.959 room in the attic where all her father's books have 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.360 been left, and she begins to read those books to 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:46.160 find her father Nile. 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:49.559 With that in mind, I can't let you rush past 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:52.000 Pembroke Library. As a twelve year old, in the books 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:55.800 that you were choosing, what was defining you in what 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:56.360 did you read? 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:02.160 Almost nothing that was Irish based, because you were using 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:04.920 books as a sort of doorway to the world, and 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:06.719 you were very aware as a twelve year old that 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:08.679 Ireland was a small place out on the edge of 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:11.120 the Atlantic and that the rest of the world will 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:17.520 where all the adventures took place, even in England. That so, 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:19.560 there was no Irish reading at that time. It wasn't 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:24.720 until I was maybe thirteen and fourteen fifteen started reading 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:28.720 short Irish short story writers Frank O'Connor and Daniel Corkory 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.000 and people like that transformative moment for me. In the 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.280 moment I think that is the book that made me 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:38.600 want to be a writer was Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:41.960 which we had to read at age fourteen. Everyone in 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:45.080 the country had to read it for your intersert exam, 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:49.400 which is extraordinary to think of nowadays, having every fourteen 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.600 year old in the country reading Great Expectations, not abridged 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:56.840 Great Explanations, to full Great Expectations. So the significant thing 0:09:56.880 --> 0:10:00.000 I've told you before was that mister Mason, our English teacher, 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:03.200 he sat at the desk at the top and you 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:08.520 opened Great Expectations, and the four long windows were steamed 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:13.080 up with condensation, so you're inside a closed space, and 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:15.520 he would say your name. He'd call out a name 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:18.320 and that person would begin reading on the page, and 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:21.120 everybody else in the classroom thirty two boys had to 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:25.040 pay really close attention to what line, what the person 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:29.720 reading aloud was on, because at any moment, even halfway 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.720 through a sentence, mister Mason could call out your name, 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.640 and then you would have to carry on from exactly 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.600 where the person had stopped. And if you failed to 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:40.360 carry on, you got to write out the page of 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:44.000 Great Expectations that night, which seemed a lot of writing out. 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:46.600 It was a better idea than giving lines, but it 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:50.040 was intense. So as a result of that, we read 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:56.480 Great Expectations attached by the Finger, and so I was 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.840 inside the book through that finger portal and through what 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:02.840 it so carefully. So when Pip fell in love with Estella, 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:05.600 I fell in love with Di Stella. When she rejected him, 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:09.000 she rejected me, and so that was the reason that 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:13.400 I entered. I entered the book first fully, I think, Dan. 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:16.520 It's a moment you give to know from memory, and 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.920 this is happiness where he's trying to conjure up a 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:23.080 havishm figure in his mind, and that connection with that 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:25.559 novel is a really important one to him there and 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:27.800 we'll come to it in a moment. But in Time 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:32.040 of the Child, you have a character who is clearly 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.280 doomed to be a writer. You make it clear that 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:39.000 that's her fate and her future. Is that a curs 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.319 through a blessing you're giving Ronnie in that book. 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:45.520 Well, for me, it's a blessing. I make most sense 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:47.400 to the world by being a writer. I'm a better 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.160 person when I'm writing. I understand the world better when 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:54.240 I'm writing, and I can live better as a person writing. 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:56.920 So I think for Ronnie in Time of the Child, 0:11:57.120 --> 0:11:59.600 it will be a kind of salvation as a writer. 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:03.000 In writing, same as in reading, I think, is a 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:08.319 way to conquer loneliness, and it's also that extraordinary thing. 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:12.720 I think James Wood, the critic, spoke about it in 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:15.560 his book The Nearest Thing to Life, and he talks 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:19.120 about this idea that when you're reading a novel, there's 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.680 a kind of communion that happens. Your own loneliness is banished, 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.400 and you move towards the other, the person that is 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:30.280 inside the pages, and that in turn comes back to 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.600 deepen your own humanity. It's kind of circular gift. It's 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:36.319 given out and comes back to you through the experience 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:39.640 of reading. So I think for Ronnie, especially as a 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:44.199 woman writer, in nineteen sixties Ireland. Difficult, difficult, difficult. That 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:48.680 will be her salvation and how she comes to accept 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:49.960 who she is and how she is. 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:54.959 That strength and that community given by the experience of rating, 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:57.680 I think is a really important thing and evident in 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:00.840 your work. But you know, as you say you have 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:04.599 the line about Ronnie, that added to this reserve was 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.040 not only the screened lives of all the women in 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:10.120 the parish at the time, but the marginal nature of 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:14.439 all writers, that idea that a writer is inevitably outside 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:17.960 the community that they're writing about. Do you feel that. 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:21.200 I do, absolutely. I think probably I was a marginal 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:23.880 person before I was a writer, but then found that 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:25.480 that was a good place for a writer to be. 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:28.760 So the writer should be in the margins and not 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:32.520 in the center. And so I believe that profoundly that 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:34.960 I'm trying to put another person on the page. It's 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:38.840 not about me, it's other people, and other people are 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:43.160 sort of endlessly fascinating because of this bizarre thing that 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:51.400 everybody thinks they're normal. And how bizarre that is when 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:54.920 you think about it, that actually there's not two people 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:58.040 on the planet who are the same, but each one 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.520 thinks that they are normal, and that's just fantastic for 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.840 a fiction writer, because people keep revealing their oddity and 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.200 their quirks in which they think is this is a 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:09.000 normal thing to do. 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:13.319 I think that's true in a sense, in an individual 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:16.680 and human sense. It's also true of a place. You're 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:20.200 right early in this is happiness. Farha was no more 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.360 nor less than any other like place. If you could 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:25.800 find it, you'd be on your way somewhere else. The 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:29.080 country is filled with places of more blatant beauty. Good 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:32.200 luck to them. Farha doesn't care. It has long since 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:36.680 accepted the by dint of personality and geography, its destiny 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.480 was to be a place passed over and gently wholly forgotten. 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.360 Tell me about that place called Farha out the window 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:49.520 of Ruth Swain's house where she doesn't go so far. 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:51.800 How would be embarrassed that we're actually talking about it? 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:57.720 And say, talk about somewhere else, and the more beautiful places. 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:00.600 There are more noticable places, and you shouldn't if you're 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.640 stopping in fail you're asking the way somewhere else. Part 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.480 of the attraction for me in the place, for how 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:10.320 I think in the making of it was ordinariness, because 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.840 the longer I've lived, the more I've come to appreciate 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:18.840 the extraordinary thing about ordinariness, and the same thing that 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:21.160 I just said about people feeling that they are normal 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:25.800 and they are actually quite extraordinary. So sometime during the 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:29.200 writing of This Is Happiness, something happened to me that 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:33.040 hadn't happened before when I was writing a novel, And 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:35.760 that is maybe two thirds of the way through, I 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:39.360 realized I didn't want the book to end, that I 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:41.720 want to stay in this world and with these people, 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.200 and I was actually had fallen in love. I'd fallen 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:47.640 in love with Christy and Noel and those people and 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:51.080 the whole world of it. And I found that the 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:53.960 more I wrote, more characters were appearing and that was 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:56.680 an interesting character. And at this person pause a minute 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.520 on the street, going here, and this is an interesting 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:02.360 So I was becoming larger the more I was in it. 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:06.280 And so before I finished This Is Happiness, I knew 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:08.400 that I was going to write another fan novel. I 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:11.280 wanted to stay there, and the hard thing would be 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:13.080 that it wasn't going to be a first person novel. 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:15.680 I wanted to make each novel stand alone and not 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:19.960 be not be a sequel as such, but still to 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:22.440 create a series of novels that would be a continuum. 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:26.960 And I think before even before I started Time of 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:30.640 the Child, I realized that my aim would be to 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:32.680 try to write a series of novels in the time 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:36.120 between the coming of electricity and the coming of the Internet. 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:40.040 I'll plot the second half of the twentieth century in 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:43.840 one community, and what happens to church and community, and 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:47.560 what happens to people, families, and all the change that 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.760 occurs as the television comes and so on and so forth, 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:54.240 as things change in a community over that period of time. 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:00.880 When they were ten, Nihall and I discuss why a 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.960 doctor makes sense for the main character of Time of 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:06.920 the Child, and he also shares why there's only one 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:10.720 reader of his work that really matters. We'll be right back. 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:24.880 So now you've undertaken or you've been taken over by 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:28.480 this project of her, there must have been a certain 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:34.920 satisfaction in seeing the paths that you'd opened up to yourselves. 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:37.800 And in particular, I'm thinking about doctor Troy as the 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:41.240 central character of Time of the Child, because, as you 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:43.840 make very clear, a doctor and a place like Faha 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:46.520 is privy to everything. 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:49.399 Yes, when I was writing this is Happiness for the 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:51.240 doctor first appears, I didn't think he would be the 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:55.200 next major character of Time of the Child. But I 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.280 think there were a few things that informed that decision 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:00.440 as to how they came about, again only in kindsight. 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.280 So first of all, there was an extraordinary moment, and 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:06.399 this was a moment that we all lived through when 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:11.400 COVID first began, And there came a moment when everybody 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:15.399 was asked at a certain time to go outside and 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:19.479 applaud healthcare workers bang pots and pans if you were 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:23.080 in cities, and applaud them a specific moment in time, 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:28.679 like six o'clock, and everybody did it. And so that 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.320 sense of what it was to be in healthcare and 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:35.160 going out and dealing with ill people all the time 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:40.040 made me think in my MicroC fictional world of the 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:44.439 doctor in a village where every single person is his patient. 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:48.720 So I thought it was an extraordinary thing that first 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:52.480 of all about doctors, and then this idea in a 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:54.840 community where he knows all the secrets of everybody, the 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:57.960 corporal secrets of everybody, and what would it be like 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.320 if he had a secret he can't tell any of 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:04.879 those people, and that has created that dynamic of that character. 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:07.640 One of the crucial things you reveal about him, though, 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:14.119 is that he has been thwarted in He has lost, 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:17.720 as he says it, the opportunity for love a second 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:20.160 time in his life, and for the second far hard 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:22.879 book in a row. You have a man who's in 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:23.720 love with any Money. 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:26.399 Yes, we're all. We're all in love with any Mooney. 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:29.720 So I'm curious about this. Is any Mooney going to 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:34.040 be the kind of stob that goes across decades in 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:34.480 this town. 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.240 Yeah, maybe go back to us stelling graspectations. I don't 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:40.040 know to any Mooney. Yes, is the Doctor was in 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.080 love with any Mooney, but it was an undeclared love 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:44.560 and just as he was about to declare it, we 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:47.520 find out in this novel, was when Christian this his 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:50.480 happiness had arrived back who was her first love. So 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:54.000 the thing about the doctor is, to start the novel 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:57.760 his love didn't happen, and he has fallen out of 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:01.679 love with the human race, and he has a profound 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:03.840 melancholy and he doesn't believe anything in this life is 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:06.080 going to shift it. So we have to over the 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:09.640 course of the novel move the doctor back into humanity, 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:13.200 and it comes in a most shocking way to him, 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:17.359 which is that he witnesses his daughter fall in love 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:21.120 with a baby, and that was not something he could 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:24.440 have expected, but that in turn becomes the bridge to 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:26.680 get him back into humanity. 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:30.120 Could you have written Time of the Child without having 0:20:30.200 --> 0:20:31.600 become a grandfather yourself? 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:37.240 No, certainly not so. Our daughter Deirdre gave birth to 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:39.920 Esme Willow during the time when I was writing this, 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:43.920 and it was an extraordinary thing. When I first held 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:48.040 Esme in my arms. Nothing had quite prepared me for that. 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:51.520 It was a shock to feel how much feeling I 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:55.520 felt rushed through me in that moment, and for my daughter, 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:58.520 and seeing my daughter in a completely different light as 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:02.359 a mother. Suddenly, in an instant she was a mother, 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:07.560 and that was just so profoundly moving, and I was 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:10.960 sort of, I think, surprised by joy. As Wordsworth, I 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:14.720 was surprised by love pulsed through me. And it seemed 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.120 to me that when writing the novel, you know, maybe 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:20.040 because in our life, in christ and ized life, we 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:22.639 have the chosen family. As such, we chose to adopt 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.639 the children and that, and there's a burden of responsibility 0:21:26.119 --> 0:21:30.040 that comes with that, but also the thing of loving 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:34.200 a stranger, you know, that is one of the central 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:37.320 tenements of Christianity, I think, but actually of humanity to 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:39.359 love the other person who is not connected to you 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:41.720 in any way, who's put into your arms. And the 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:43.760 measure of what it would be to have a child 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:45.680 to put in your arms that was not connected to you, 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:48.359 That the child in this novel is not connected to 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:51.040 Ronnie or doctor Troy, but is put into their arms, 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:54.120 and how you respond to that at that moment. 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:57.520 I understand you write one sentence at a time, which 0:21:57.560 --> 0:21:59.640 seems like a stupid phrase now I say it out loud, 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:03.480 but you let it pull you along like read. 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:07.920 Yes, I write one sentence out of time. So no 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:10.920 so because I don't plan out anything and I just 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:12.760 get a first sentence. I can only start a book 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:14.560 when I have a first sentence. I get a first sentence, 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:17.960 and I then try to figure out what is the 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:20.320