Blog tour: The Unheard
Welcome to the blog tour for The Unheard by Anne Worthington! Please join me as I chat to the author about her novel and more…
A: Thank you, Silvia. It’s a pleasure to have this conversation with you.
The Unheard is a novel about memory and the experiences that we are unable to leave behind.
I trace the trajectory of a man’s life, starting near the end and work backwards so we see the consequences of the events that shaped him rather than the events themselves. They start as distant memories but come into focus by the end. We are put directly into the characters’ heads and get to see and hear the things they cannot share. The novel is full of unheard things…
In the first section, Tom Pullan knows the visitors that come to the house are trying to tell him something but he cannot remember what it is. He lives with dementia in the house where he and his wife have always lived, and talks about events from the past without much of the context. We then go back fifteen years to 1984 where Tom is working in an office amidst the sweeping changes and waves of redundancies in Thatcher’s Britain. The times bring back awful reminders of when his family lost everything during the Depression in the late 1920s. He fears something equally catastrophic will happen to them now that would affect his daughter in the way he had been so badly affected. Finally, we see him as a boy shortly after his parents lose their home and business. He is left to make sense of a world that is violent and unpredictable. This is the time that marks him the most.
What inspired you to write this novel?
A: Two disparate things inspired me. By the time I finished writing, I realised they weren’t separate at all. The germ of the novel was an image of an old man standing over a bed, crying. It was like seeing one frame of a filmstrip, there was so much that was unexplained. I wrote to find out what happened before, during and after the image took place. The second thing that came to me almost unbidden was the voice that I started writing with. It reminded me of my father’s voice towards the end of his life. This voice and the image anchored the novel, and writing became rather like an archaeological dig where I uncovered layers of the characters’ lives.
Did you have the plot entirely figured out when you started writing the book or did it take an unexpected turn as the characters grew on the page?
A: The plot came right at the end of the process after I’d written hundreds of short paragraphs or a few pages of raw material. The voices, emotional currents and themes came first. I wanted to structure the book in three sections, working backwards in time. But that was distinct from the plot. I still had to find a way of turning the fragments of writing into what I envisaged.
I ended up laying out hundreds of these fragments on the floor, studying them until I knew them well. I started to see that the second section was made up of nine separate days, each one was a workday for Tom. For the character called Maggie, I had to work in a different way to bring the sections together. This character had a different story that didn’t always work off the main thread. I worked with this new voice for months without knowing who it was. It was a very uncertain process, something that I’ve come to expect now. The simplest text to put together was Tom’s voice in the first section. Each section, each voice, needed something different to hold it together. I knew there were ways through - I just had to find them and keep going, keep working at it.
If this novel was going to be turned into a film, who would you cast in the role of Tom?
A: I hope you might allow me to bend the rules here because I’d choose Harry Dean Stanton for his gentleness and remoteness. He would be right for the role of Tom. He’s no longer alive, but he would be my casting choice.
Without giving too much away, can you tell us about a scene in the book that you love or that was particularly difficult to write?
A: A few scenes were hard to write for different reasons, whether it was getting the voice right or finding a way of channelling emotions. What was happening to the character called Maggie was difficult to keep going back to, but it was right for the book so I kept going.
Is there anything that didn’t make it into the final version of the book?
A: Oh, plenty of things, I think, large and small! I started writing a section that went further forward in time and there were scenes I liked that ended up not finding a place in the book because they didn’t further the story. As you already know by now, the story came through at the end of the process when I had the raw material in front of me and I was working out how everything fitted together. I wanted the reader to be drawn along in the fast currents of the writing. I have quite a brutal editing process.
If you are already working on your next writing project, would you mind giving us a little anticipation of what we are to expect?
A: I’m writing a new novel at the moment. It’s another book that’s voice-led, and the voice can be elusive sometimes because of the layers I want to weave in. I see writing very much like a rope I’m making that begins as a single strand and I’ll keep adding to it until the voice is as full and complex as it needs to be. In the new book, I will invite you to like the main character. Whether you should is another matter. But I would like you to hear what he has to say with an open mind, and see the world from his point of view. This might involve quite a twist of perception but I believe writing can bring new and unfamiliar worlds towards us, and unlocks different ways of seeing things. For me, writing and reading is a physical thing. The books I respond to are the ones that leave something behind, the language goes into my skin, more like the way music works.
What are you reading at the moment?
A: A few things at once, as usual. I’m re-reading Mao II by Don de Lillo, Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin, Notes Made While Falling by Jenn Ashworth, and two recent books. Mammals, I Think We Are Called by Giselle Leeb and God’s Country by Kerry Hadley-Pryce.
Due to the popularity of social networking websites, interacting with readers – be it via Twitter, Facebook Instagram etc. – is becoming increasingly important. How do you cope with these new demands on authors and do you think that they somehow disrupt your writing schedule?
A: I have to say I have meaningful conversations about writing and photography on social media, and when I was a photographer in the 90’s and 2000’s I didn’t know another documentary photographer, so the virtual communities and interactions are mainly good, as far as I can see. I set aside time for writing and for things like engaging with people on social media. I’m pretty outgoing unless a project such as writing picks up steam then I have to spend as much time as it needs to bring it to completion.
What one piece of advice would you give to aspiring writers?
A: You might find that you don’t write in a standard way, or you might find you respond best to images or themes. All this is good. Keep going with your richest source, and don’t let anyone tell you it’s not the right source or the right way. There are as many ways to write as there are writers.
Thank you for your time!
The Unheard by Anne Worthington is published by Confingo Publishing on 11 July as a Paperback Original at £7.50. It is available now from the Confingo Publishing website.
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