Smack Magazine

Sally had a natural born gift. Her mother told her so:

‘You’ve got a natural born gift, Sal,’ she said. ‘I’ve got it too, and your Gran and my Gran. All the women in our family have it.’

Sally trained as a beautician and she loved her work. The mainstay of her business was hair and make-up for those one-off, special occasions. This meant that, instead of having the same set of customers, she had a huge variety. There was also a certain amount of pressure, which she liked, because there was a lot resting on her customers looking their best.

Today’s client was a woman in her mid-to-late sixties.

‘Hello, I’m Sally. What’s your name?’ Sally asked her. She always started off polite, till she’d gauged the situation.

‘Ruth…’

Sally nodded.

‘Did you hear me?’ Ruth asked.

‘Yes, Ruth,’ Sally said. ‘Clear as day.’

‘Oh, that’s good. No other bugger seems to be able to.’

Sally smiled. This was going to be fun.

‘Well, it’s a big day today,’ Sally said. ‘I suppose everyone’s got a lot to organize.’

‘Stuff and nonsense! My lot couldn’t organise a fuck in a brothel!’

‘Ha, is that right?’ Sally said, a little shocked. ‘Well, we forget about them for the time being, you’re with me now, for a bit, Ruth. You can just relax and we’ll have a good old natter… I love your frock, by the way.’

‘Thanks, charity shop’s finest.’

‘You’d never know… Emerald green! Dramatic… but different.’

‘That’s me, love,’ Ruth tittered.

‘Now, I’ve got this photograph of you here. This is how you want to look today, is it? Because, if you ask me, I think you went a bit overboard on the foundation. I always say, “With a redhead – less foundation is definitely more.” And these pink-based tones are a real no-no. Don’t be offended Ruth, but it makes you look like a farmer’s wife.’

‘Couldn’t agree more, love. It’s how my uptight daughter likes it,’ Ruth told her, before confiding, in a stage whisper, ‘She’s a bit brash, you know?’

‘Well, let’s ignore her for once, shall we?’

‘Yes, duckie, let’s.’

‘I’m thinking we don’t hide your freckles. They’re lovely.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘I do.’

Sally removed a selection of foundation bottles and moisturiser jars from her make-up case, and perused them like a painter.

‘The purpose of foundation,’ she explained, ‘isn’t to change your skin tone – it’s just to even it out. For you… I think this one,’ she said selecting a bottle. ‘Sheer. I’m just going to blend, blend… There, you see…’ Sally said, applying the beige liquid with her fingertips, and spreading it out in gentle circular movements, ‘that looks lovely, lovely….’

‘Ooh, that does feel nice,’ Ruth cooed. ‘You know, I think I am starting to relax.’

Ruth smiled.

‘I see you haven’t got any sunspots, that’s quite unusual for a woman of…’

‘You can say it – my age. I know. I’ve never sat out in the sun. Never been one for them foreign holidays either. But my daughter’s a different breed; she’s always chasing the rays. I tell her she’s tanorexic. And she’s pale like me. She doesn’t go brown… she goes orange, like a Cheesy Wotsit.’

Sally laughed.

‘I never thought,’ Ruth continued, warming to her theme, ‘she’d bag a husband being that colour. But she has now, thank God. I told her: “I hope you stop all them sun-bed sessions once you’ve got that ring on your finger. Otherwise, mark my words, when you get to my age, you’ll be so leathery your Andy’ll be mistaking you for a chair.”’

Sally giggled her approval and then, ever the professional, returned to the task in hand.

‘Now, as far as eyes go… most people would recommend neutral tones, but I don’t see why we need to be conservative.’

‘Why start now, I say?’

Sally carefully returned her foundation bottles to the case and then laid out a selection of eye shadows: gold, honey, russet and, her own favourite, terra cotta.

‘Are you married Ruth?’ she asked.

‘For my sins… thirty-six years it’ll be, this October.’

‘That’s great. Well done you! Now, Ruth, I’m going to try out the terra cotta for your eyes,’ Sally advised her.

‘Do what you like, I’ve got the feeling I’m in safe hands here love.’

‘Thanks, that’s a nice thing to say, Ruth. That means a lot,’ Sally beamed. ‘Where’s your husband now?’

‘In the church, I imagine,’ Ruth tutted, ‘doing final checks. He gets very nervy… bless him. He’ll be here to collect me, early, you just watch.’

‘What’s he called?’

‘Well, his real name is Fred, but I think that’s dead boring, so I call him Carluccio, like them fancy restaurants.’

‘That’s hilarious,’ Sally told her.

‘It’s where the reception is later! I insisted.’

‘Good on you.’

‘Well you’ve got to have a laugh, haven’t you?’

‘True,’ Sally agreed. ‘There… eyelids of smoky-red, very sexy,’ she said, standing back to admire her handiwork. ‘Carluccio’ll like that!’

‘He’d better!’

‘I’m going to use an eyeliner pencil… a brown-black…’ Sally said, selecting her tool, like a surgeon, ‘to give a bit of definition and we do need to fatten up those skimpy lashes.’

‘Oh love,’ Ruth groaned. ‘I tell you, my lashes are the only skimpy part left.’

‘Shut up,’ Sally told her. ‘You’ve a lovely figure.’

‘For a Sumo.’

‘No, you’re full bodied, like a good wine.’

‘You charmer! Carry on, I like it.’

‘I’m using a blue-based red for your lips, Ruth.’

‘You mean my cat’s bum mouth. I should never have smoked. But sod it. I love a ciggie. I’d die for one now.’

As a reformed smoker Sally ignored this comment.

‘I don’t need to do anything with your hair, Ruth, except brush it and spray some firm-hold on. It’s lovely. The best thing about being a redhead is you don’t go grey, just sandy then white.’

‘Yes, love, that’s true, but I’m all white. This is dyed.’

‘I didn’t want to assume.’

‘No, don’t assume… it makes an ass of u and me.’

Sally chuckled.

‘Don’t laugh. It’s a crap joke,’ Ruth told her, brusquely, then she mellowed again as the teeth of the brush massaged her scalp. ‘Oh, that feels wonderful. I love having my hair brushed.’

‘We’re nearly finished,’ Sally said, stepping back again to inspect the transformation. ‘Now don’t freak out, Ruth, but I am going to apply just a little bronzer,’ she said preparing a brush, ‘but just to your T-zone. It’ll give you that post sex glow!’

‘I should have that already, love!’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yes, Sally. That’s how I died…’ Ruth told her with a guffaw, ‘while I was getting laid!’

Sally’s finger froze on the woman’s forehead.

‘So, Ruth’ she said softly, ‘you do know that you’re dead then?’

‘Of course I do, love. It’s pretty obvious isn’t it?’

‘Well I knew, but some of you don’t.’

‘Oh, I knew straight off. I was having an orgasm, only the second of my life… then my brain went very hot and that was me, out like a light.’

‘Lucky you!’ Sally was relieved. She hated explaining to a person that they had passed. Most of them refused to believe it, and either became hysterical or furious. ‘Your husband must have had a shock. You dying like that.’

‘He did, Sally, but not in that way…’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well I wasn’t having sex with him! Haven’t let old Carluccio near me for years. It was my daughter’s fiancée… fat Andy.’

‘Oh God! Ruth!’

‘I know!’

‘And was it worth it?’

‘Oh yes, love. Best lay of my life, I tell you.’

‘That’s good to hear.’

Sally sighed. Her job done, she began packing away her equipment.

‘Okay Ruth, you’re finished. Time for you to go to church. Are you ready?’

‘As I’ll ever be, duckie. How do I look?’

Sally grinned.

‘You’re laid out lovely!’

BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2010 by DOUG WALLACE

The Cuckoo Boy – Grant Gillespie (To Hell With Books)

This book is from one of my favourite publishers of the year, To Hell With Books. They are a small press that is based quite near SMH HQ in Euston and they picked up the amazing Grant Gillespie’s debut and did well with it. It is another ‘disturbed childhood’ book. The unique thing about this book is that Gillespie is able to step inside the head of the main character, his mother and his father and make you really feel like he was there. It is almost as if it was his childhood that went so badly wrong. It is a story of ‘kids being cruel’, parental love gone wrong and a few deaths.

If you had a ‘pretend friend’ too, then she’s looking for people to fill in a questionnaire…

“It used to be thought that children with imaginary friends were in the minority. It has sometimes been assumed that children had imaginary friends because they were lonely and lacked real friends.

Perhaps this is why some parents and others may show concern when a child has an imaginary friend, particularly once they have started school, and older children and adolescents tend to keep their imaginary friends a secret.

Imaginary companions or friends have certainly been a misunderstood phenomenon. There has been surprisingly little research about imaginary friends.

Consequently there has been little information about how many children have imaginary friends, what the imaginary friends are like and why children have them.

Recent research has been providing some surprising answers to some of these questions. Firstly, there is now clear evidence that imaginary friends are a common feature in childhood development.

It is now recognised that imaginary friends are often part of normal development.

A good example comes from the United States, where pre-school children and their parents took part in a 2004 study looking at different aspects of development, including imaginary companions.

The children were then followed up after starting school, when they were aged seven years. The researchers were very surprised to find that 65% of children up to age seven currently or previously had had imaginary friends.

Like other research, imaginary friends which were based on a special toy were included. In a study in the United Kingdom, 1,800 children completed a questionnaire about imaginary friends. Forty six per cent of them reported past or current imaginary friends, including nine per cent of 12-year-olds.

Positive feature

There is a need for more research about which children have imaginary friends and why they have them. We do know that children with imaginary friends are not a homogeneous group.

Certainly, it is now recognised that imaginary friends are often part of normal development. Young children with imaginary friends are often described as sociable, imaginative children who love stories and pretend play. They enjoy playing with friends and at times when friends are not available, they call on their imaginary friends for entertainment.

Children also call on their imaginary friends when they feel upset about something that has happened or about what some one has said to them.

One report indicated that nearly half of UK children have had imaginary friends

Some children will talk to their friend about the problem, others will play with their imaginary friend, which takes their mind off the problem and the unhappy feelings disappear. We also know that some children who have endured traumatic life events may also draw on their imaginary companions for support.

The imaginary friends of older children and adolescents are a much more private affair. Often unknown to parents and others, although a best friend might know about their existence. Older children are aware that parents, friends and others may show disapproval.

As part of my research I interviewed school aged children aged five to eleven years and the parents of the younger children. All the children said that their imaginary friends were important and why they were special to them. I have concluded that imaginary friends are often a very positive feature in a child’s life.

They provide fun, entertainment, adventures and games. They are often good, kind and helpful friends, good at listening and always available. Some imaginary friends are not always co-operative or friendly, this however seems to make them more real and interesting to the child and sometimes helps them to express their feelings when there has been a problem.

This was a small study and we do need more research.

If you are a parent of a child with imaginary friends, or if you are an adult who can remember your imaginary friends, and would like to participate, please email me for a questionnaire at k.majors@ioe.ac.uk .”

Book Now

Peckham Literary Festival on Saturday 20th November – 19:30PM at the Review Bookshop

Come and spend and evening with Tibor Fischer, author of cult novels Under The Frog and The Thought Gang, and the short story collection Don’t Read This Book if You’re Stupid. Tibor will read some of his favourite passages from his work.

Acting as Tibor’s sidekick, first-time novelist and very likely Tibor’s biggest fan, Grant Gillespie, will be making an appearance.

This is a welcome return to the Festival by Tibor who read from his new novel Good to Be God in our 2008 line-up. Under The Frog, his first novel, was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. Of Good to Be God, the Catholic Herald said it “is funny and true and (not merely because it’s set in Miami) Fischer’s sunniest novel to date” and The Times, “Fischer at his sharpest – a widely original feelbad philosophical hayride”.

by Ben Machell October 23 2010

Lucy Owens, Laurence Johns and Dean Ricketts are an outift with fingers in many literary pies

Ben Machell October 23 2010 12:01AM

Monthly event set up by an independent publisher encourages the submission of manuscripts and it runs a competition.

Once a month at Peter Parker’s Rock’n’Roll Club — a cosy bar underneath one of the many guitar shops on Denmark Street, in Central London — you will find To Hell with the Lighthouse, a popular literary night. To begin with, it’s not an obviously bookish do: a surplus of sticky, silly-looking happy-hour cocktails, a lot of soul music and a young, giddy crowd doesn’t scream “salon”. But over the next couple of hours a quartet of aspiring novelists take to the tiny stage, read from their books and receive warm applause before — they hope — selling a few copies, earning a few drinks or winning themselves a few more thumbs-aloft “likes” on Facebook.

So far, so groovy book night, the kind that has proliferated remarkably over the past 18 months or so. What sets it apart, though, is that the monthly event was set up by an independent publisher. To Hell with Publishing, founded in 2007, is one of the few UK publishers that encourages the submission of unsolicited manuscripts and it now runs a competition, To Hell with Prizes, conceived to uncover the best unpublished novel in the UK, plus a dedicated imprint for first novels, To Hell with First Novels (this year’s inaugural winner was Grant Gillespie’s The Cuckoo Boy).

Finally, as well as its literary night, its publishing label and competition, it also puts out a regular journal, under the (possibly now guessable) banner To Hell with Journals.

For one small outfit to have this many fingers in this many literary pies might seem unusual and, given the uncertain state of UK book publishing, rather reckless. But it is the very state of publishing that prompted Lucy Owen, Laurence Johns, a rare-books dealer, and Dean Ricketts, one of his customers and the owner of a marketing agency, to act in the first place.

“When we decided to start something, it was at that point when everything was being sold three-for-two, everyone was discounting heavily and celebrity culture had taken full hold of the book market,” Ricketts says. “You could feel that something was wrong … in the quality of the new releases, in the amount of new releases … It was clear that fewer risks were being taken in investing in new writers.

“We would talk about how interesting genres and subcultures were always led by small publishing houses and bookshops, but how these had been slowly eroded,” Johns says. “The distinctive voices — where were they going to come from in a generation’s time, when there is no room for independent publishing?”

“Independent” should not be confused with “marginal”, though. Big literary names haven’t been shy in associating themselves with the To Hell with … project: earlier this year David Vann gave a reading at one of its events, also attended by Florence and the Machine’s Florence Welch. Adam Thirlwell, DBC Pierre and Hanif Kureishi have appeared at the To Hell with the Lighthouse night. Their journals have included contributions from Simon Armitage, Richard Milward and Hisham Matar, the first issue put together by the Faber editor Lee Brackstone. Big publishers are paying attention, an unavoidable fact when you consider that the winner of their To Hell with Prizes competition — Bed, by David Whitehouse — was picked up for publishing by Canongate. “There’s been a massive amount of goodwill from the rest of the industry, which I was surprised by,” Johns says. “All the big publishing houses and agencies have said, what can we do to help?”.

Drawing some of their inspiration from existing independent, multifaceted publishers, such as Dave Eggers’ McSweeney’s or City Lights in San Francisco, To Hell with Publishing put out its first book, Shorty Loves Wing Wong, in 2006 — a collaboration between the writer Michael Smith and the artist Jim Medway featuring anthropomorphic cats in Hartlepool. “For us, it’s about understanding the writer and knowing what they are trying to do,” Ricketts says. At a lot of publishers you’ll find books being turned down because ‘the climate’s not right for that’, but no one asking whether it’s actually any good.”

“The publishers are going the way of major record labels and playing a numbers game,” Johns says. “What they do is think, right, we’ll get ten writers, give them each a five-grand advance that they can barely live off, and then hopefully one of them will sell enough to cover the cost of the rest of them.”

In contrast, independent publishers and bookshops should be nurturers of talent. “Places like City Lights and Shakespeare and Company in Paris weren’t just about selling books or even selecting good books. Authors went there when they were broke, or needed somewhere to stay, or to get feedback on their work,” says Johns, who runs his own independent bookshop, Amuti23. Has he ever put writers up in the shop?

“Erm, I’ve ended up with people in there overnight,” he grins. “Not always intentionally though.” Johns is leaving his premises at the end of the month and taking the shop online — not, he claims, because the business is struggling, but so that he can devote more time to To Hell with Publishing. “We would like to open a To Hell with bar at some stage, though,” he says.

What he and Ricketts and Owen all maintain is that, despite To Hell with Publishing’s reactionary-sounding name, it is not doing anything particularly groundbreaking. “In a bizarre way, we’re more of a return to traditional publishing. We do all the things a publisher is supposed to, and which were traditionally done: readings, galvanising the audience, searching for new talent,” Johns says. “To Hell with Publishing isn’t supposed to sound negative … we see it as more of a battle cry, or a toast.”

It is not the only publisher doing something new by being old-fashioned. In a small second-floor studio unit in Dalston, East London, Ditto Press Ltd not only publishes its own books, but prints them too. Using a simple stencil-printing process, Bess Freeman and Bruno Bayley, in their mid-twenties, have produced limited but successful runs of art books for the past two years. From January they are set to start publishing and printing novels too.

“The first one we will be doing is the seventh novel by a writer called Duncan Fallowell,” Bayley says. “He was The Spectator’s rock critic at 21, he was going to be the lead singer of Can, and his work appeals to anyone who has an interest in travel or music or sex or drugs. It could quite easily have been put out by a bigger publisher, but he wanted to deal with us.”

Freeman and Bayley explain that though major publishers are letting readers down through lack of choice and variety from above, the fact that “everyone who has ever written something can now make a made-to-order laser-printed book of their own work” means we are also swamped from below. “We are over-saturated with stuff we don’t want to read,” Freeman says, which is where the role of new indy publishers and bookshops as both filters and tastemakers come in. Just like the music industry, Freeman says: “When I was younger I was really into underground music … the rave scene, punk and hardcore. I’d go over to record shops with a crate of records and meet all these people and talk about what was new. I’m doing exactly the same thing now with our books.”

On the other side of London from Dalston, on the slightly more scrubbed-up Kensington Park Road, this approach still holds true. “Selling books has always been about matching readers to titles,” says Felicity Rubinstein, the co-owner of the independent bookshop Lutyens & Rubinstein, which has been open for business for a little more than a year. What sets Rubinstein and her business partner, Sarah Lutyens, apart is that they double as working literary agents and, like Ditto and To Hell With, are also operating in another part of the book-selling process as a reaction against the limitations of big publishers.

“There’s huge frustration about the way books are sold in this country,” she explains. “Our jobs as agents is to hand-sell individual projects with individual editors. But after we’ve placed them with a publisher, we have very little control over how it gets to the readers. To be able to come round the other side and actually put books in people’s hands is fantastically satisfying.”

Similarly demonstrating this kind of flexibility and fluidity is the London Word Festival — founded in 2007 as a young, fun, spiky alternative to traditional literary festivals — which has just commissioned a limited-edition book, Shad Thames, Broken Wharfby Chris McCabe. And there are signs that major publishers understand that there is value in keeping abreast of how people are responding to an uncertain books industry in which new, small thoughtful movers can operate on their own terms. Craig Taylor is the editor of the downloadable literary magazine Five Dials, which covers topics ranging from Sartre’s letters to the 1980s rap group NWA, and is supported by Hamish Hamilton and thus under the auspices of Penguin.

“I don’t think Penguin even knows what it has on its hands with Five Dials … but it serves them well, because people get excited about it,” Taylor says. “We have launch parties in great locations, with people like Jonathan Safran Foer and Grayson Perry involved. And if a young writer doesn’t necessarily have a novel or a full-length non-fiction book, we can still publish one of their essays or stories. We’re doing what magazines have always done — cultivating talent.”

And like To Hell With and Ditto , Taylor thinks that Five Dials may one day start to publish its own books. “We could definitely spin it out that way. If you take the opportunity that this time of upheaval affords, then when the dust settles you can be in a good position,” he says. “Publishing is in such a weird state. Right now we can be anything.”

Oct 14th, 2010 by Jackie at Farm Lane Books Blog

Monday, 06 September 2010 20:03 | Author: Simon Patterson | Grant Gillespie Interview

I caught up with Grant Gillespie recently, author of the well-received ‘The Cuckoo Boy‘, featured by Books To Furnish A Room. He kindly, answered a few questions for me and provides an insight into the inner workings of his writing, with the odd sentence reminiscent of this generation’s great authors – I’ll let you decide who:

HY. What started you on the writing path?

GG. I’ve loved writing stories since I was a child. I remember at school, it was called ‘composition’, which is somewhat dry but lyrical too I suppose. When I was about 17, I won a creative writing competition and was awarded a place on a writing retreat with Helen Dunmore, which was really exciting. I’ve written short stories and novels ever since.

HY. Where did the cuckoo boy idea come from?

GG. My ideas for The Cuckoo Boy accrued over quite a long period. I’ve always enjoyed writing about childhood, because children are so rawly human in their appetite for joy and cruelty. Then the Bulger killing – and the reactions of the press and politicians – had me examining the age old question of whether we are all born ‘innocent’ or whether some people are born ‘evil’. The question at the heart of the book is ‘Given the wrong set of circumstances, what child isn’t capable of murder?’

HY. What was you’re experience of getting published?

GG.I have always written because I love the act of writing and creating, but getting a novel published was really thrilling. The process itself was so rewarding too because To Hell With is such a uniquely noble enterprise. I don’t think that I could have landed in more sympathetic or visionary hands. I’m eternally grateful to them.

HY. Which writers influence you?

GG. It’s hard to say exactly which writers have influenced me because I’m always reading and a real mishmash of genres and eras, so probably all of them in one way or another. My favourite authors though are mainly English and American from the early to mid 20th Century – Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemmingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker. In fact I have lined my writing room with the pages of The Waves by Virginia Woolf. I think that would be my all time favourite.

HY. What are you reading?

GG. I have a few books on the go, which isn’t like me. There’s The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber, Lights out for Wonderland by DBC Pierre and Troubles by J.G Farrell.

HY. Have you signed a lot of your books?

GG. I have signed a fair few books, mainly for my pals.

HY. Which do you prefer, writing or acting?

GG. I love writing and acting in equal measures. The first involves maximum autonomy. I can write wherever I choose and don’t need anyone else’s involvement during the initial process – but then it’s a solitary pursuit, whereas acting requires a director/producer/fellow actors and it goes on and on and on. As I an actor I can’t really generate my own work, but on the plus side it’s very sociable and is all about working with a team of people. For me the two jobs make a very happy marriage. They’re very different animals but there is also a very useful overlap in terms of character development.

HY. What are you currently working on?

GG. I’m currently on the second draft of a novel called There is the Sea, about tsunamis, synaesthesia, suicide and talking doors…

HY. What’s next?

GG. Next is hopefully some more acting work, then perhaps a modern day ghost story?

Hydraxia: Monday, 02 August 2010 20:25 Author: Simon Patterson

The longlist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize will be announced this week. There is usually a modest boost to prices for longlisted novels, with a more substantial boost when the shortlisted books are announced. The increasing trend towards simultaneous hardcover and paperback releases (with small print runs of the former), along with a range of special/limited editions of leading novels makes collecting the Booker Prize increasingly difficult. Nonetheless, it remains a worthwhile challenge and the shortlisted books over the years provide a useful benchmark of trends in literary fiction. Spotting the winner at an early stage opens the opportunity to a significant profit in some years if you wish to sell. Wolf Hall, the winner from 2009, has sold for several hundred pounds in the first edition, although among the shortlisted novels The Glass House seems more uncommon. Of the books I have read this year, I think that The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Even the Dogs are strong candidates. However, as always there are other contenders!

My book of the week for this week is a first novel issued in paperback only – The Cuckoo Boy by Grant Gillespie. This is the first novel issued by To Hell with Publishing. The print run was 1000 copies, and it has now been reprinted. The book has been praised highly by a number of bloggers, and picked up reasonable reviews in the Guardian and Observer. Several reviewers have commented on the similarity of the theme to “We need to talk about Kevin” by Lionel Shriver, but the book has a different tone. It’s unlikely to be a strong candidate for the prize, but perhaps has an outside chance of making the longlist and it certainly seems worthwhile picking up a copy if you can find one to read carefully and set aside for the long term.

Cuckoo! Cuckoo! By OLIVIA JUDSON

This debut novel centres around a young boy called James. His adoptive parents don’t appear to be up to the task of rearing and nurturing such a complex personality (he tests them at every level of his upbringing) and the resultant ending is truly shocking.The reader is introduced to twenty-something married couple Sandra and Kenneth. And yes, they suit their names. They are an average couple with an average intellect leading average lives. They are also desperate to become a family unit. Sandra, right from the word go, appears to be a woman living on her nerves. A smooth-running domestic life is top of her agenda … no matter what. And in that regard, she is insular and narrow-minded. So it didn’t come as a surprise when I read between the lines. She wants a baby but not the mess that comes with it. James, a tiny baby is brought into this brittle home.

He does not settle well. This is an understatement. To help emphasise that point Sandra continued to use her baby book as her bible, and James seemed to defy every anticipated behavioural change. But Sandra also appears unwittingly, I think, to be making a rod for her own back. For instance, she keeps the in-laws at arm’s length when she could really do with an extra pair of hands. She is trying so hard to be a ‘good’ parent that she’s worn out with all the hard work.

Gillespie has some fine comic lines throughout. I’m not surprised to read on the back cover blurb that he’s also an actor. The first part of this novel, deep in suburbia, could easily be put on the stage. As a farce. And centre-stage would be … James. As he grows up and participates in normal childhood activities: going to school, making friends etc there are huge and to a certain extent disturbing elements of his development. Child psychologists differ in their professional prognosis and Sandra and Kenneth’s nerves are taut. They are not sure what to do next.

James is a clever little boy. He constantly blames his imaginary friend for any misdemeanours. He can also play on Sandra’s weak elements of parenting. All of this makes for engrossing reading. I definitely got the sense that something monumental was brewing and that it would involve James. He really is something. Sometimes he can conduct a lovely conversation with grown-ups, completely charming them in the process. At other times he’s very young for his years having to have basic things explained to him in words of one syllable. He is one mixed-up kid. But time and time again, due to Gillespie’s narrative we can see that James’ thought processes are skewed. Gillespie describes many, many awkward episodes, usually involving a fraught Sandra and a keyed-up James. Heart-wrenching and thought-provoking at the same time. During these episodes which are told in great detail, I felt equally for the mother and the son. Both pulling in opposite directions. These episodes are heaped upon the rather insubstantial shoulders of the parents and they are sagging under the weight of it all. Can they continue to cope?

Then the ‘big one’, the one from which no one will ever be the same again, occurs. Gillespie describes it in all its unbelievable detail. And as if that were not enough to digest, through James, we get to hear all about the cuckoo. And, by definition, we see James and try to understand him better. Towards the end of the novel James has numerous conversations with grown-ups and professionals. These detached conversations will stop you in your tracks.

It is a fine piece of writing. Who is right? Who is wrong? A deeply thought-provoking book. Recommended.

Author interview by Simon Quicke with Grant Gillespie author of

The Cuckoo Boy

Having finished The Cuckoo Boy, written by Grant Gillespie, it seemed like a good idea to interview Grant to find out what inspired him to write the book and what he has planned next.

Thanks Grant for taking the time to reply to my questions and a full review of the The Cuckoo Boy will be posted tomorrow.

Q. Where did the idea for this story come from? In some ways it reminded me of the James Bulger case in terms of the court scenes and the media reaction to James. Where did the inspiration come from?

Part of my inspiration for the novel was the Bulger case, and in particular in the responses of the public and the politicians. I was really shocked to read that John Major decreed that “Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less.” When we’re vindicated in turning those who have committed crimes into ‘the other’, (eg the bad seed, the little monster, the worthless, the freaks) then we are also given permission to avoid looking at ourselves and our society. I certainly don’t profess to have any answers, but in The Cuckoo Boy I wanted to pose the question: ‘Given the wrong set of circumstances, what child isn’t capable of violence?’

Q. In places the book makes quite uncomfortable reading were there times when it was difficult to write, particularly scenes like the torture of David in the woods?

It sounds like a cliché but I find that once I am underway with a novel the characters take on a life of their own and they dictate what happens next. I tend to have an arc in place but then the narrative often veers off into new areas, and I tend to let that happen, especially in the first draft. Some people who’ve read the book have said it reads like a painfully slow car crash, and I think that that may be because, like the reader, I too was reluctant to reach and deal with the parts which were tragic and distressing.

Q. I found it almost impossible to sympathise with James but as the book progressed my dislike of his mother grew in tandem with sympathy for Kenneth. Were you trying to accentuate the fact that Sandra was as damaged as the son?

To my mind, and of course everyone responds differently to the writing, all three members of the family are – to a greater or a lesser degree – victims of their own natures and the limiting domain that they inhabit. I believe (or I’d like to believe) that if Sandra had been better equipped, if Kenneth had been stronger or if James had been raised by more receptive people, then most of the incidents in the book could have been avoided.

Q. David the imaginary friend is quite disconcerting where did the idea from him come from and although its an inevitable question did you have one yourself when you were a child?

I did have an imaginary friend, also called David, in fact. And he was very, very real to me. Likewise, in the book, David is very real to James, but I also wanted to have David as an ambiguous figure. He could be James’ dead twin, he could be his negative side, or he could just be a child’s imaginative plaything. That’s all open to interpretation. I made decisions in my head, but I wanted to leave it vague in the story.

Q. How long did it take to write the book and how do you write – a computer or paper and pen person – and how does it feel to have got to the end and now seeing it in print?

The Cuckoo Boy took me about a year to write, but the editing and publishing process took much longer. More and more I tend to write on the computer (now I have a laptop) but in the past I would write the first draft on paper in pencil and then the second draft as I typed it up.

I can’t begin to tell you how exciting it is to have the book in print. To be honest I write because I love to write. On one level I never thought that my writing would see the light of day – rather than the dark of drawer – so it’s thrilling that it’s out there. I’m also an actor and as an actor you can’t generate your own work, you need other actors and directors and producers etc. Writing is a way for me to keep creative in an autonomous way.

Q. What next Grant? Is James a character that you might turn to again in your writing?

It’s funny you should ask, but I did research and start a sequel to The Cuckoo Boy, with James in incarceration, but then I thought that actually James will never be allowed to grow up. He is a child frozen in time.

My next novel, which is nearly completed in its first draft, is called There is the Sea and is about suicide, tsunamis and synesthesia…

The Cuckoo Boy

by Grant Gillespie (To Hell With First Novels, £8)

Catherine Taylor, The Guardian, Saturday 29 May 2010

Enterprising new publisher To Hell With . . . states its intent with Gillespie’s emotionally visceral debut. James, the Cuckoo Boy of the title, is adopted by a childless, uptight suburban couple, Sandra and Kenneth. From the start the baby does not respond, preferring instead to zone out in sleep. Gradually, as he develops and chooses in his own time to walk and talk, he blocks his parents out by referring constantly to an invisible friend, David. Treated at first with amused tolerance, David proves to be a mendacious doppelganger. The appearance of a real-life David, by contrast gentle and amiable, creates a diabolical conflict for James, as does the unexpected arrival of a sister. The spectre of Lionel Shriver’s Kevin is omnipresent, particularly in the black comedy and ambiguous aspects of the tale. Yet this is a confident, impressive work in its own right.

By Grant Gillespie

Tuesday 11th May, 2010

People are addicts.  Even those who turn down everything you offer because of their self-diagnosed ‘addictive personalities’.  ‘I’d love to have a drink/ coffee/ smoke, but I can’t,’ they insist, ‘if I had one I’d never stop!’ Don’t be fooled, their ‘dependence’ is on ruining perfectly promising dinner parties.  Most of us are more game however and grab whatever’s on offer only to turn round one day and discover – in true 39 Steps style – that we’re handcuffed to a habit.  Then we’re obliged to take another 12 Steps in an attempt to unshackle ourselves.

Our addiction options – in the 21st Century fashion – are of course endless: drugs of all degrees, drinks of all flavours, even homeopathy and healthy eating can become an unhealthy obsession.  I won’t pretend that I haven’t dabbled in them all – except exercise – and I only ever refused a drink once.  I’d misheard the question.  But I can safely say that I’m not addicted to anything obvious.  My personal fix, my crutch, my panacea – is sleep.  Where some people are heavy drinkers, I’m a heavy sleeper.  And I love it.  If narcolepsy were contagious I’d dry hump a dyssomniac.

When people ask me what I do for a living, invariably I shuffle my feet and admit ‘I do like to take a lot of sleep.’  I ‘take’ sleep like other people take vitamins, in big handfuls.  Twelve hours a night (or day) is good, but thirteen plus is better.  My unrivalled personal-best in terms of staying-power was on New Year’s Day this year, when I slept for thirty-three hours.  Admittedly I did wake up twice during that period for a pee and a yoghurt, but hey, I think even a sleep purist wouldn’t penalize me for that.

I’m not lazy though, not at all.  I’m actually a busy sleeper.  I laugh, and chat and do lots of activities in my sleep.  When I’ve dabbled in day jobs I’ve even been known to work on into my nights.  In my twenties I was a world-weary shop assistant in Calvin Klein, spending my days re-tidying clothes rails and rearranging jumpers and my long-term girlfriend would be regularly woken up by me folding her up ready to go back on a shelf.

Then, when I took a job in an office, she’d watch me diligently using our horizontal bedroom blinds as a filing cabinet.  It didn’t stop here.  When we moved in together – she was a glutton for a somnambulist’s punishment – I spent two days taking boxes of books up the stairs.  That night I awoke to the sound of the front door clicking closed behind me and I found myself naked in the communal hallway. Clearly I was off to collect another box, which I was still obliged to do – an empty one from the pavement, which I wore to cover my modesty.  I then banged on our door, praying that my new neighbours didn’t respond before my girlfriend.  And when eventually she did wake up, and let me in, with the true defensiveness of a sleepwalker I pretended that standing in a hall wearing a box was a perfectly normal activity for four o’clock on a Wednesday morning.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Look, do you mind if I come in?’

Of course my sleep addiction has also got me into trouble of a different kind. I have issues with the term ‘oversleeping’ as it has negative connotations.  But, as it’s accepted into common parlance, I’ve used the phrase ‘I’m sorry I overslept’ more times than I can remember.  I missed so many lectures at university that I resorted to placing a bucket of water by my bed.  The idea was that I use it to threaten myself with when my alarm went off.  ‘Either get up, or dunk your head!’  Inevitably I did neither and dropped back off to sleep.  Two girls in my halls of residence kindly volunteered to bang on my door every morning and wake me up, but my body betrayed me.  ‘I’m, up I’m dressed.  Set off I’ll catch you up!’ I’d hollar, whilst still fast asleep, until one day they got the cleaner to let them in and saw me shouting from under the covers.

I ran a bookshop for a while in Glasgow and often slept through opening up.  One time I foolishly answered the phone, whilst still under the influence.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in the shop!’

‘I’m calling you at home!’

That’s a wake up call.

To combat this perpetual sleeping through appointments I bought a clock that simulated sunrise.  I thought that it was a SAD lamp too and that maybe my oversleeping was a winter thing.  It turned out not to be a SAD lamp and was really just a hugely expensive digital watch with a bulb attached.  Predictably enough it failed to rouse me, so I still rely on several alarm clocks too far out of reach to hit the snooze button in my sleep.

The latest invention I’ve heard of that might help is an ‘app’ on the iPhone (Ed: read all about Sleep Cycle here.).  Apparently it monitors your sleeping pattern and then wakes you when you are in the dreaming cycle, which is the lightest mode of sleep.  I’m not convinced I even do light sleep, but it’s worth a try.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see it as a problem as such, I happen to like my beauty sleep and I could give up when ever I wanted, man, I just have to stay awake long for long enough to try.

http://www.thesleepclub.co.uk/The_Sleep_Club/Sleep_Articles/Entries/2010/5/11_Confessions_of_a_Sleep_Addict.html

A professional actor and writer who lives in Soho, London.

His first novel, The Cuckoo Boy, was published by To Hell with Publishing on May 6th, 2010.

The Cuckoo Boy charts the quiet destruction a suburban childhood might sometimes, unexpectedly, wreak.

Armed with the wrong set of circumstances, is there anything a child isn’t capable of?

James has landed in the wrong nest. Adopted by well-meaning parents who are anxious to conform, he enters a family where any wrong can be righted by a half-hearted trip to church, cake, vacuuming or, if all else fails, denial. Stifled by shepherd’s pie and scones, James’ imagination comes to the rescue in the form of David, an invisible friend, conspirator and agitator. Then James meets a real life David whose gentle spirit soothes the turbulent and unsettling effects of his make-believe world. But as James becomes more sociable he also becomes more vulnerable.

Once hurt, his revenge leads to an act which shocks his community and breaks the hearts of his parents.

Grant Gillespie’s beautifully observed and disturbing parable shows just how destructive normal can be.

You can buy Grant Gillespie’s fabulous new book at the Book Depository.

Mary Fitzgerald

Debut fiction

A moving tragedy involving children – in suburban England – makes a compelling first novel.

Small-minded, suburban England forms the backdrop for Grant Gillespie’s The Cuckoo Boy. The first book from the rebelliously named imprint To Hell with First Novels (£8), it tells the story of a boy called James, adopted by two well-meaning parents and given everything a normal boy could want. Except that “normal” is the problem. Aided by his imaginary friend David, James wreaks havoc on all his mother’s effort to cultivate a conventional family life.

Through James and David, Gillespie explores the chasm between how children and adults perceive the world, and the devastating consequences of falling through this gap. It’s a parable with echoes of the case of James Bulger – only the families are middle-class, so what goes awry cannot be blamed on violent films or poverty. Although the adult characters are somewhat two-dimensional – James’s mother is obsessed with rearranging cupboards and serving tea and cake – this is more than compensated for by the complexity of James’s inner world. And if the last act is predictable, it’s all the more moving and disturbing for it.

The novel is pregnant with unease. The Cuckoo Boy is a savage indictment of hypocrisy and forced social convention.

‘the invisible enemy‘ by William Rycroft @Just William’s Luck

http://justwilliamsluck.blogspot.com/

The Cuckoo Boy

by Grant Gillespie

To Hell With Publishing featured in a post last week, which is worth a look if you haven’t seen it already, an independent publisher with a genuinely interesting take on the industry. Their new list is To Hell With First Novels, an imprint designed to nurture new talent through the process of delivering their debut work. First of the firsts is this dark novel from actor Grant Gillespie. Now, I have a confession to make: I know Grant. In fact we’re represented by the same agency and have regularly made fools of ourselves at various commercial castings in the quest to put food on the table. This means that receiving, reading and reviewing this book could have been problematic. Luckily I had no idea about his writing until I saw his name in an email, so had no preconceptions or investment in it. I also strive hard to maintain my integrity whilst reviewing, there doesn’t seem any point to me in writing puffed-up reviews, which actually means that my only worry was what to do if I didn’t like it, having said I would write a review. Worry not, there shall be no vague statements or faint praise here. The Cuckoo Boy is an amazingly assured debut that tackles some big themes, peopled by ambiguous characters and, most importantly, a distinctive creativity from first page to last.

Kenneth and Sandra Gardner have seen several years of their married life elapse and find themselves in their late twenties, any attempt to have children so far fruitless. A trip to the doctor confirms the worst and they realise that adoption will be the only way to bring a child into their life. After a frustrating period of rejections and technicalities they finally receive the call they have been waiting for and the moment that Sandra in particular has envisaged for such a long time.

“Sandra had rehearsed this moment time and time again. She would smile at him, a smile burning with love, and he would smile back, a broad smile brimming with recognition. In that instant they would choose each other. For ever.

The reality was somewhat different. She looked at this…this thing, this…someone else’s child…and love was not a word that sprang to mind. Fear was closer to the sensation she was feeling, fear mixed with an unwanted wave of revulsion. Nor did he smile back at the brave upturning of her mouth. He looked through her, entirely unmoved.”

Parents worry about transferring any of their anxieties onto their infant children and Sandra immediately transfers hers onto us. Thrown by the disappointment of her first meeting she overcompensates, relegating Ken to the background whilst she attempts to bond with her child, his only real contribution the child’s name, James, rather inauspiciously taken from the bottle of whiskey he has been driven to. Immediately it seems that James is no ordinary child. Gillespie doesn’t achieve this with any theatrics but through a series of unsettling details that play on the anxiety of any new parent who asks themselves all the time during their child’s development, ‘is that normal?’ Their new baby seems to sleep for his entire first year, hardly ever crying, he doesn’t walk until two and a half, and takes tantrums and the terrible twos to a whole new level, one incident leading to an accident that leaves him with his head split open and a scar that ‘scored his side-parting like chalk’

“Sandra continually tried to smooth his hair over it, but it stubbornly refused to be covered up, And a sudden, sideways jerk of James’s head was all it took to reveal the skeleton finger scar, which pointed to his parents, reminding them of how they’d failed him.”

The opening section of the book will be an unsettling read for any parent, a brilliantly observed study of two inexperienced and ill-suited parents struggling to cope with the demands of a child who, despite the assurances of the adoption authorities, seems to be far from normal. This isn’t so much an examination of nurture versus nature (although there are elements of that), and nor is James overtly different, but slowly Gillespie builds up the events that build a larger and larger gap between parent and child.

“James’s parents had unwittingly succeeded in arming him both physically and verbally. He was fearless, despite his small frame, and cunning to boot. When they scolded him he took to laughing. Only now they were reluctant to raise a hand to him for fear of him raising his to another. They had no emotional or retributive hold whatsoever. whenever they came too close he simply spat out, ‘You can’t touch me, you’re not my parents,’ and they were crushed like invertebrates.”

One feature of childhood brilliantly perverted is the imaginary friend. James’s first word is an attempt to say David, the boy who seems to be his constant companion as he grows older, and the one feature that Ken and Sandra truly struggle to deal with. Used as a confidante, comfort, excuse and primarily a weapon, David takes on an almost supernatural tinge when we know that James was a twin, his brother having died before birth. But this is a fine psychological study rather than a spine-chilling horror and the relationship between James and David is vividly created, David as real a character as any other and indulged as such by the Gardner’s on the advice of a psychologist. It would be easy to expect an actor to be good at writing dialogue or creating a narrative voice (in fact most actors are terrible at improvising dialogue that sounds real – never underestimate the skills of the playwright!) but Gillespie deserves genuine credit for what he achieves with all his cast and particularly with James and David.

From the early stages there is a danger about James, a hint of what he might be capable of, so that when Sandra and Kenneth find themselves blessed by the gift they thought a doctor had taken away from them years before, the reader feels immediately terrified by what this might mean for the family. The impending arrival is also a chance to show the subtle psychological similarities between Sandra and James. Many women when pregnant give a name to their unborn child, sometimes totally unconnected to what they might be thinking of as a potential name for when they are born, a secret bond between the two of them before the baby comes into the world.

“Amy was her secret name. It was for their private mother-daughter chats. And now, suddenly, David – the unseen – did not seem so ridiculous. Sandra had her very own concealed child and she too felt the urge to talk to her, encourage her, collude with her and cut out the rest of the world.”

A lot happens in this book as we see James (and David) develop into a young boy but I don’t want to spoil any of that for you. Each event leads compellingly onto the next, the pace propulsive so that however much you may not want to know what happens next you can’t help but turn the page to find out. The writing is filled with neat descriptions of character and behaviour. Grandad Gordon sits ‘like a hippo in his exfoliating armchair, while his oxpecker wife hopped about him, preening him, cleaning him, taking what nourishment she could from him.’ Sandra under the strain of bringing up James on her own for the most part has to ‘ask him to play in his room for a while, so that she could gather up her scattered thoughts like a deck of cards and try to regroup them in their proper numerical order.’ We are all too familiar with the hysterical response shown by the media to children who exhibit behaviour that strays from the norm and towards violence in particular. By taking a detailed look at the slow, steady development of one particular child Gillespie has provided a cultural response that highlights both our own culpability and the difficulty of knowing how much damage may have been done to someone before there’s a chance to help them. Like the cuckoo that lays its eggs in other bird’s nests it’s possible that James just landed in the wrong one. Gillespie on the other hand seems to have landed in just the right one at To Hell With… A cracking début novel, which for all the seriousness I have mentioned here also has a wicked vein of humour running through it, given a quality production and I hope, after a few more positive reviews appear, a wide readership.

You can hear more about the book from the author himself in this interview.

Posted by William Rycroft at 07:00

1 COMMENTS:

dovegreyreader,  12 May 2010 11:46

Great review William, and really good to read another take on this amazing book. I’m still lingering in the nature/nurture territory and that first year of James’s life.

Such a crucial stage for a baby and why did he seem to sleep for most of it?

What was going on with his parents?

Is that when the most damage was done to James and most of it unspoken? Boys are particularly susceptible to the disinterestdness of their mothers at this age and it all had me wondering.

It’s a book that I will think about and debate with myself for months I feel sure.

May 10, 2010 by Lija

The Cuckoo Boy by Grant Gillespie is published by To Hell with Publishing, who I sorta work for (which I briefly talked about here). It’s a little tricky to really discuss the book when I feel like it’s… not my baby, but like I’m the au pair who appeared on the scene and just tried not to screw the kid up.

By the by, this book is all about just that. How a parent’s misconceptions and foibles can be hilarious in isolation, but can turn disastrous when they’re pressed upon the wrong kind of child. The whole thing is about mismatches and misunderstandings, and it filled me simultaneously with laughter and a deep knot of dread all the way through.

That’s all I’m going to say about the book itself – now over to Grant, on Ayn Rand, thinking like a child, and trying not to be too clever (it’s tough).

ABOUT READING

What was your favourite book growing up?

Alice in Wonderland.  You can see why in the guest post I wrote for Booktrust.

I think we’ve all identified with a fictional character – which one have you secretly (or not so secretly) thought you resembled?

I identified with – or rather I aspired to be identified as – Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead.  This is embarrassing on two levels, firstly because the book is seen to be a vindication of everything right-wing and secondly because Roark is a strapping, heroic figure (which will never be said about me).  As an actor I always knew that if I was asked to appear in the film version, I would be cast as the people-pleasing Peter Keating, rather than the fiercely uncompromising Roark.  But it was Roark I admired.  He is a man who would rather sink into obscurity, so long as he remained true to his integrity and vision.

Here’s the part where you get to shout about another book you’ve read recently that you love:

Well I have no doubts about who I’d like to praise, and that’s Evie Wyld.  I first heard her read from her novel After the Fire a Still Small Voice at the To Hell With Christmas party, and I was absolutely transported.  In fact I told her after her reading that when I grew up (in terms of talent, not age, I fancy she’s younger than me) I wanted to write just like her. Her novel is poetic (without a trace of pretension), poignant (without slipping once into sentimentality) and deeply compelling (whilst still being literary).  It’s a beautiful story about generations of miscommunication.  The main protagonists are all male too, and I take my hat off to her rendering of masculine inarticulacy.  I can’t recommend it enough.  She’s read my book now too and has been very complimentary so it’s a bit of a literary love-in.

ABOUT WRITING

You started off participating in writing groups for fun, yes? Do you treat the writing process much differently now that you’ve gone pro?

In truth I’ve obsessively written fiction since I was a very young thing and when I was 17 won a place on a writers retreat with the wonderful Helen Dunmore.  I started with short stories, which grew longer and longer until I wrote my first novel whilst at university, (it’s in a drawer with my post university novel).  Then, over a year ago now, a writer friend of mine Jon Digby, suggested meeting up with four other wordsmiths, (Soho Scribblers).  Since then we’ve met once every couple of weeks in my Soho pad, when two of us share our latest chapters and the others give feedback.  Though we all write in different styles and genres our responses are generally the same, and if five people tell you something is or isn’t working it’s easy to take their word for it.

As a professional actor, there are often dry periods and so for me writing is a perfect second string.  You can hole up and keep creative without the need for a director or a producer.  But since I have two vocations, I’m not one of those people who have a routine.  I wish I had the discipline to write every morning between 7 and 9, but I’m night owl by nature, so mornings are rarely seen and are never constructive.  So I tend to be a sporadic, piece-meal writer.  I might write pretty solidly for three days, then do nothing for another three, but I always come back to the page sooner or later.  It’s a compulsion.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever written?

Goodness, there’s so much. I often over-gild the lily when I write, plus I pepper my writing with lazy idioms (like gilding the lily).  The bits I like the most are often the most awful.  A dear friend of mine Lucy Briers read the first draft of The Cuckoo Boy and gave me tough love by saying things like:’You see this section here?  Well I can see you sitting at you’re desk thinking, ‘Oh that’s terribly clever’.  Well it’s not, it’s smug.  You’re lifting me out of the narrative to admire the author!  And this bit, I know you think it’s funny, but it’s not.  Make it funnier or just cut it.’  I owe her a lot, and can still hear her on my shoulder when I get carried away with myself.

ABOUT THE CUCKOO BOY

Much of The Cuckoo Boy is seen from a child’s point of view. How did you manage the task of thinking like a kid again?

Being an actor means that you never really let go of that imaginative capacity to think like a child.  In fact I played Moth in Loves Labours Lost and so studied the director’s son for that.  Plus I’m a massive people watcher and as children are the most uninhibited, they’re also the most entertaining.

The repressed mother, Sandra, is unintentionally hilarious, and one of the stand-outs of the whole book. Did you make a conscious decision to make humour a key element of the story?

Yes, I think that if you’re dealing with something dark, a reader needs some relief.  Otherwise you just feel like you’re being hammered into the earth. Perhaps some people will think that my treatment of the mother is too harsh, but when I laugh at a character it generally means that I like them.

Can you explain a bit more about the boy cherub image that eventually led to the book’s cover?

I have this Victorian photograph of a boy with angel wings bound to his torso and I’ve always been fascinated by the image.  It captured that Victorian obsession with childhood innocence, but then the wings – which were so clearly tied to him – implied that these Victorian ideas were simply imposed on children by adults.  I took the picture to Laurence and Lucy at To Hell and they loved it but they thought that to use the original image was not quite To Hell. When they showed me the mock-up I had to agree that they were right.  It looked like a classic.  It was the sort of book you’d see and think ‘Oh that’s probably from the turn of the century, I wonder why I haven’t heard of it.’  That would never do for a modern debut novel.  So they commissioned this amazing artist, Part2ism, to spray paint the image on cardboard instead, so now it refers to the original, but has a modern feeling too.

AND…

The unavoidable Writer’s Pet question: The Cuckoo Boy also features a cast of animals (including an evil white dog and two mysterious black cats). Pets?

I had a beautiful black cross collie dog, when I was little, but she was ‘too big for the house’ and was sent ‘to live on a farm’.  Naturally the realisation what that meant has given me nightmares in later life.  Then my parents bought a West Highland Terrior (as in the book).  It loved my mother and hated me, so after a few years of trying to win her over, I hated her right back.  I now puppy sit a beautiful whippet called Vita.  That’s much more my kind of hound.

Not an evil animal

Obligatory writing space photo please!

I am fortunate enough to have – in Ms Woolf’s words – a room of one’s own.  I’ve always dreamt I would and now I have.  My desk is one of those old wooden school desks with a lid and an ink well.  I have used blackboard paint on one wall so that I can write out my story arc and add notes and pictures plus I have papered the walls with pages from The Waves (also Virginia).  It’s my absolute haven.