Q: Where did the idea for La Rochelle come from and what is the launch point for such a book?

A: The idea came from a dream my brother Paul told me, in the autumn of 2003. His girlfriend had been kidnapped by a criminal called ‘Whitby’. I agreed to do a swap for her, so we took a taxi down from London to the countryside, where Whitby’d taken her. In the taxi, the driver turned to us and said, ‘Can’t you see, the whole of London’s going down!’ Behind us, there were fires in the sky, falling cranes, etc. This was the starting point, the disappearance of a woman, and the name Whitby, which really stuck in the mind.

Q. It is quite an unconventional read. What is it you were trying to achieve with the book?

I was trying to write a novel that wasn’t too much like a ‘novel’. It had to have the qualities of life instead, such as thickness, abundance, presence, a degree of untidiness. I was after something baroque and dishevelled, with a coat of varnish. I also wished to write something that will last, so that readers may feel inclined to read it again (and even again).  Furthermore, I felt it was necessary to bring privacy back into fiction. Can anyone tell what the narrator’s problem really is in La Rochelle? This isn’t an issues book, and it isn’t journalism in disguise.

I was also trying to make people laugh, and worry.

Q. Could you elaborate on ‘This isn’t an issues book, and it isn’t journalism in disguise’?

A. I mean it isn’t a book in which the narrator’s problems have been formulated in advance, and in a manner that robs them of their particularity to him. They are problems that are being experienced through a sort of fog, rather than seen clearly, as something that ‘everyone’ knows all about these days. The narrator can’t see around his own corner, whereas journalism typically supposes it can.

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M Y Alam – Smokes and Dust
I’d completed a draft while my father was in hospital for nearly three months. He recovered for a couple of months before relapsing. It’s not that I felt obliged to write anything about or even for him, but the love of the word was something he cultivated in me from an early age, sometimes without even knowing it. Unlike me, the writing was a much deeper part of who he was. Writing kept him alive, I used to think, but like everything else, even that left him. Barely able to hold a pen, he wrote his final poem, one of the most beautiful pieces of verse I’ve ever heard, a few days before he died. The writing of this one was relatively easy, for a change.

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Sarah Butler - Leaving
Somewhat ironically, I wrote ‘Leaving’ just after buying a house with my (now ex-) boyfriend. I was struck by the amount of stuff we owned, and the physical effort that was required to move it. I am very interested in relationships, what makes some of them work and some of them not work, or some of them work for a while and then turn stale. I’m also interested in objects, and how – particularly when relationships are breaking down – we invest them with emotion. My own relationship ended messily, and I had to leave the house we had bought together, which was both traumatic and freeing. It’s funny looking back at the story now, because it is strangely prophetic. It’s filled with objects I ‘borrowed’ from my own life, which makes it even harder not to see the parallels!

Like the gales that blow around the equinox, the disappearance of his friend’s woman stirs up the life of a doctor, placing him in the power of a subtle enchanter and threatening professional ruin. Will it make or break him?

Set during the hostage crisis of 2004, against a background of superheated thinking and sexual oblivion, this study in modern heroism tests adoration to the limit.

‘Stylish, very funny, discreetly surprising, this remarkable novel reads at times like a fable of England under New Labour, where nothing is quite what it seems and not much is worth what it costs.’ –
Michael Wood

‘Jules et Jim with a postmodern twist.  Nath has a confidence and attitude that rocks you on every page.’ – Daisy Goodwin

Presenting twelve bedtime stories for adult reading that capture those moments of deep emotional significance which return to us in our dreams. This nocturnal collection reveals intimate insights into individual fantasy, the pursuit of our deepest desires, the urge to escape, the pull of love, the debris of days.

Book at Bedtime is a title in the Route series of contemporary stories.

‘Exhilaratingly conceived books.’ – Metro

‘Books that are making critics, and readers, sit up and take notice.’ – Yorkshire Post

‘A wry glance at life through a refreshingly honest lens.’ – The Big Issue

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Journal One – 23 August 2009

Ann plays witness to the continued Israeli settlement and the subsequent evictions of Palestinian families, plus she describes the conditions at the Qalandya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem where 2500 Palestinians make their way through turnstiles and holding-pens each morning trying to get to work on time.

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Journal Two – 22 September 2009

Ann just misses Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson’s visit to a street camp, witnesses more evictions and demolitions and monitors the chaos at a separation barrier as Palestinians try and make it to Al Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers during Ramadan.

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Journal Three – October 2009

Ann reports on visit to Sderot, the town in southern Israel that bore the brunt of the Hamas’ Qassam rocket attacks in the six months leading up to the recent Israeli assault on Gaza. She chats with Israeli solidier, makes a trip to Haifa, visits Nazareth and samples beer at the Taybeh brewery.S a conversation she has with a soldier at the vehicle only Wadi Nar checkpoint, as an almost-encounter with the secret visit of British Chief of Staff Sir David Richard, visits Israeli settlements, canvassing Israeli views, and takes a road tour, including a visit to Nazareth and Sderot, the town in southern Israel that bore the brunt of the Hamas’ Qassam rocket attacks in the six months leading up tothe recent Israeli assault on Gaza..

Journal Four – October 2009

Ann travels to Yanoun for olive picking, a small farming community that was violently emptied of its inhabitants in October 2002. Back in Jerusalem she witnessess the bulldozing of a house and reports on the difficulties Palestinians face aquiring visas for foreign travel, illustrated by the refusal of her friend Abdul Karim Sa’adi’s visa for a series of talks in the UK. She also reports of being stripped searched at a checkpoint at Zaytoun as punishment for helping a group of Palestinians recover their confiscated documents.

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Ann Wright is an active human rights worker and lectures on the theory and practice of civilian protection. She has translated fourteen books from Spanish and French including Motorcycle Diaries, The Train of Ice and Fire and I, Rigoberta Menchu. Ann was previously in Palestine in 2005, to see her journals from that time visit – www.palestinejournals.co.uk

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Bringing It All Back Home

Q: What was the most difficult aspect of the script?

A: Imagining the main characters and central premise is always key to any story. Although there is a jocular tone between little Eric and Cantona, I was deadly serious about trying to envisage both Eric Bishop’s detailed history and mental state when we join him.  Incidentally, in the script when we open Eric is actually stuck on a roundabout going round the wrong way again and again.  Unfortunately, on the opening day of filming the stunt driver made a mistake and collided with Eric’s car on the first loop. We were very lucky no one was seriously hurt. Ken had bruised ribs for a couple of weeks and Barry got a knock too.  (Director of Photography)  Maybe this shows it is much easier to write a script than make the film.

Although Eric Bishop pretty much came to mind in a flash we were really keen that his psychological condition was absolutely coherent. The comedy only works if we are entirely serious about his pain. I read many books which were helpful, especially one by Andrew Solomon called The Noonday Demon. It is quite brilliant. He analyses himself with impressive honesty and insight and does an entire overview of the condition, even going back to the ancient Greeks. It is clear Eric is not in a deep depression otherwise he would not have been able to get out of bed, but he is certainly going through a significant crisis in his life.

]]> http://www.route-online.com/read/paul-laverty-looking-for-eric.html/feed 0 http://www.route-online.com/all-books/looking-for-eric.html http://www.route-online.com/all-books/looking-for-eric.html#comments Tue, 12 May 2009 07:22:04 +0000 idaley http://www.route-online.com/?p=1134 Cover Price: £8.99 Web £6.99

Eric the postman is slipping through his own fingers… His chaotic family, his wild stepsons, and the cement mixer in the front garden don’t help, but it is Eric’s own secret that drives him to the brink. Can he face Lily, the woman he once loved thirty years ago? Despite outrageous efforts and misplaced goodwill from his football fan mates, Eric continues to sink.

In desperate times it takes a spliff and a special friend from foreign parts to challenge a lost postman to make that journey into the most perilous territory of all – the past. As the Chinese, and one Frenchman, say, ‘He who is afraid to throw the dice, will never throw a six.’

Features the full screenplay, including extra scenes, sixteen pages of colour photographs, plus introductions from Paul Laverty, Ken Loach, Eric Cantona and production notes from the cast and crew.

‘A surprising, beguiling comedy from Ken Loach, who, would you believe it, has made what’s certain to be his most crowd-pleasing and popular film since Kes, 40 years ago.’ – Jason Solomons, Observer

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In front of a live audience, Ramón relates stories of how he came to become tattooed, inadvertently getting high at a New Year’s Eve party, and what occurred when The Train of Ice and Fire arrived in Aracataca.

This video was recorded at events organised by Instituto Cervantes, Manchester Literature Festival and the University of Leeds in October 2008.

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The Train of Ice and Fire