Alan Warner: The Stars in the Bright Sky
Getting to the inner life of a character
MBP: Congratulations on being longlisted for The Stars in the Bright Sky. Did you know the longlist was out that day or were you surprised by a phone call?
AW: I was in Blockbuster, taking back DVDs when the texts started binging from far and wide. I always take an interest in the prize but had absolutely no idea about dates.
MBP: The Stars in the Bright Sky is set almost entirely at a London airport. Did you start with this idea that the novel would centre predominantly in this setting?
AW: Yes. When I first thought about the novel, I conceived that the girls would all go off on a holiday together, but I knew this would lead to unbridled mayhem amongst them. I thought if they were trapped in some way, their frustrations would draw them out of themselves even more.
MBP: The Stars in the Bright Sky follows the lives of the Catholic choirgirls created in your third novel The Sopranos. When you finished that novel had you always planned to write the sequel?
AW: I'd always hoped to be able to, because I liked their characters. Often when I finish writing a book, it's difficult to imagine writing anything else ever again, never mind a sequel. Maybe I can manage a cheque? I need to let the dust of my own mind settle, but when it does, I usually want new things to happen to the same characters because I'm very fond of them, and fascinated by them, despite their personal faults and failings - which we all suffer from.
MBP: When your first novel Morvern Callar came out, female reviewers and readers were gushing in how accurately you had created this narrative of a young girl. Is it almost easier now for you to write from a female perspective?
AW: Writing fiction or otherwise is never an easy thing for me. What was it Thomas Mann wrote? That writers are just people for whom writing is much more difficult than for others? When I attempt to create characters, male or female, I give it 100% to try and make them work on the page. As you graft away on those pages, the character's gender isnt the issue, it's more the attention to language, the dynamics and the inner life of the character, which you simultaeously conceal and reveal.
MBP: Most of your novels touch on the small-town mentality - and the idea of trying to get out. Can you tell us a bit about your own background?
AW: I had nothing to get out of and it was a very happy background. I was born in 1964 and grew up in and near the town of Oban on the west coast of Scotland. My father was from Sheffield and my mother from the Isle of Mull. My parents ran a hotel. It was closed during winters, yet I had the run of the whole place and this was like a palace for the imagination. I might have postured that the town was too small for the likes of me in my teenage years - I think that's common for restless adolescents - but when I attended college in London and University in Glasgow, I was desperately homesick for years! So there you go.
MBP: We hear that The Sopranos is being made into a film? Can you give us any news on that? Were you pleased with the adaptation of Morvern Callar?
AW: The Sopranos has gone the way of all flesh, and is in the reassuring limbo of film world. The film rights were bought by Michael Caton Jones, a good Hollywood director. I loved that film of Morvern Callar very much. That was a super experience and of course Lynne Ramsay is a very exciting film maker. As a sad contribution to knowledge, I did learn that when the novelist adores the adaptation of their novel into a film, there is little interest, but when he or she hates it, then everyone wishes to know in great detail what you have to say!!
Alan Warner
The Stars in the Bright Sky
