Gaynor Arnold: ‘we’ll look out for you when you’re on the Booker’
Gaynor Arnold on being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Congratulations on being long listed. How does it feel to be nominated for a major literary award before the public has read your book?
Amazed and delighted. To be there with only 12 other authors (and two of them previous Booker winners) was something that had simply not entered my head. As my book had not yet been published, I didn't even think it was eligible for this year's list. When the phone call came from my publishers, everyone in my office (I was at work) could see how shocked I was, manifested by a little jumping around and a modicum of quiet screaming. Even now, when I think about it, I have to say slowly to myself ‘You, Gaynor Arnold, have been long-listed for the Man Booker Prize.' In the past, when I told people I was a writer they would say things like, ‘we'll look out for you when you're on the Booker' and I'd just roll my eyes at their naivety; the process of just being published was difficult enough. However much you believe in your own work, you are never sure if anyone else in the world (besides your editor and publisher, of course) is going to like it. To think that five Man Booker judges had sufficient consensus to include it on their list is immensely encouraging and a validation of my hard work over many years as a writer.
Although Girl in a Blue Dress is your first full length published novel have you written or had any work published previously?
I've written a number of things - mainly short stories, but also another (unpublished) novel. I've had stories in various small magazines and in three anthologies, two published by Tindal Street Press (Her Majesty and Going the Distance).
Girl in a Blue Dress is a fictional account of the marriage of a Victorian novelist resembling Charles Dickens, narrated by his wife. What drew you to the story?
I've always loved Dickens's writing and been fascinated by his life. But as I'd read his biographies, I'd been struck by how much we know about him and how little we know about his wife's thoughts and feelings. I had initially intended to use the story only as a jumping-off point - how hard it was to live in the shadow of a man of genius - but the actual biographical story was so powerful, and stayed so strongly within me that I found myself following it more closely than I had originally envisaged. I had been somewhat doubtful about whether the world really needed another version of the Dickens's story, as there is so much excellent biographical material everywhere, but I wanted to write my own ‘take' on it, without being tied down to precise factual events - hence the changes of name and creation of new characters and situations. I was also interested in the plight of women at that time - how ‘immobile' they were in their social and domestic role (and physically too) - and I felt that would be a fruitful area to explore. So I started writing, hoping to weave into the narrative some of the characters and situations that occur in the novels. And when I took the early chapters to my local writers' group, they said they (a) they liked it and (b) they didn't know anything about Dickens's marriage, so it was all new to them and ‘could they have some more, please?'
How much research did you do and were there any facts that you learned along the way that particularly stand out?
I did almost no research immediately prior to writing the novel. Effectively I had been building up my knowledge of Dickens's life since I first read Edgar Johnson's biography of him when I was in my teens. Since then I have borrowed, bought, or been given a number of books on Dickens, from George Dolby's recollections of life on the road with his Chief to the more recent works by Peter Ackroyd and Michael Slater. But I didn't re-read any of them until after I had finished the book, because I didn't want to be restricted by hard fact; I wanted to stay with my impressions. But I was surprised how accurate my impressions had been, so that, sometimes, things I thought I was making up turned out to be memories lodged deeply in my brain. Why did I call my writer ‘Alfred' for example? I thought I chose the name for its solid Victorian sound, but it is also the name of one of Dickens's brothers and also one of his sons. From time to time I did a bit of fact-checking - things like clothing details and forms of transport and most difficult of all - money and how much things cost. I also re-read most of Dickens's novels and dipped into Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor - but this was all retrospective, mostly to confirm what I had already written.
I think the piece of information that stands out most for me was how, right up to 1882 with the Married Women's Property Act, married women were completely dependent on their husbands for everything, and could own nothing in their own right - not even the clothes and jewellery they had on. Also that ‘property' included children, who normally remained in the custody of their father in the case of separation. This pre-1882 legislation effectively covers the whole of the Dickens/Gibson marriage and shows how powerless women were in law. Standing by your man was not weak and self-effacing behaviour; it was a matter of survival.
The Observer has described the book as 'fabulously indulgent Victoriana' - would you agree?
It's a thick, Victorian-style volume about a Great Victorian man, so I can't argue with the label ‘Victoriana' - but I don't myself think of the novel as a piece of ‘genre' writing. For me it is the story of a marriage which happens to be set in the not too distant past.
If ‘indulgent' implies the enjoyment of something rich and satisfying, I can say that I certainly enjoyed writing it, and hope others will enjoy reading it just as much.
It took five years to write the book and after such a time-consuming and ambitious project have you found it hard to adjust now it is finished?
I like a balanced life - gardening, cooking, reading, going to the theatre, putting my feet up in front of the TV (yes, I watch TV). So I had other things to think about besides the characters in the book. But no sooner had the proofs gone off to the printer, allowing me to feel a little bereft of all my Victorian company, I find myself back with them again, as I answer questions like these on what seems to be a daily basis. And the day job goes on just as before.
You work as a social worker in Birmingham. How do you find time to write and when are you at your most creative?
I only work a 30 hour week, so in theory that leaves plenty of waking time for other things. The trouble is that ‘other things' can come before writing, especially if the weather is fine and the garden beckons, or I am exhausted after writing reports all day. But while working on this novel, I was always anxious to get started. I generally write at weekends and in the evenings. I am an owl by nature, so starting at 8pm and going on until 1 or 2am is not a problem. Getting to work on time the next day invariably is. My unpunctuality is legendary. Thank heavens for flexi-time.
Is there anything else in the pipeline?
Yes, but not very far down it.
Can you recommend a book you have read recently?
Lionel Shriver's We need to talk about Kevin Cormack Mc Carthy's The Road(Two parents, two children - two very different stories.)
And Catherine O'Flynn's What was Lost. The fact that she is published by Tindal Street Press is coincidental. It's a wonderfully absorbing and amusing novel. And among the best I've read this year.
Read a Perspective article from Tindal Street Press about Girl in a Blue Dress making the 2008 longlist.
For more Author interviews see the Perspective section.
