Readers Place

Author Q&A

Susy McPhee answers questions about her book Husband and Lies:

What was the inspiration for Husband and Lies?

My friend Roz was on a dating site, showing me the photograph of someone who’d invited her on a date. We started window-shopping, giving the ads marks out of ten for presentation, wit, etc. and I said to her, ‘Wouldn’t it be awful if you saw someone you knew here? Your boss, say, or your husband, ha ha. After that the idea just wouldn’t go away.

As a writer one of your great talents is being able to seamlessly blend humour and pathos, but who makes you laugh? And cry?

My dog Mishka makes me laugh. She’s such a clown; she keeps me sane. There’s a dog in my next book inspired by Mishka. If we’re talking about people who make me laugh, it would be my kids – especially my youngest daughter Lauren. She doesn’t take life – or herself – too seriously, and can usually raise a smile from me even when I’m in a real strop. (She’s often responsible for the strop, too, so the ability to make me laugh has probably saved her from all manner of dire consequences.) I don’t often cry these days. I was a right cry-baby when I was growing up. There were four of us kids: my twin sisters, then me, then my brother Simon, all vying for our mum’s
attention. The twins were cute and always being photographed, and Simon was the youngest and a boy to boot, so I was lacking in novelty features. I got it into my head that if I snivelled enough, Mum would like me best. She didn’t.

Have you ever been on a dating website?

Apart from that time with Roz, only when I was researching for Husbands and Lies. I’ve never gone on one looking for dates. I met my husband about a hundred years ago at university when he was studying Maths and Computing and I was trying to break into the world of espionage, and we married straight after graduating. I would use a site, though, if I were single and wanted to meet someone special. I think they’re a great way for people to get together.

Which book are you reading at the moment?

I suppose I should say something intellectual so that I sound really intelligent and educated. Truth to tell, I am between books, having just finished a rather boring one – I won’t tell you the title, because it wouldn’t be fair on the poor person who spent all those hours writing it.

Who are your favourite authors?

I really like Marc Levy’s work. He’s hard to categorise, and I like that. Some of his books are quite off-the-wall – he wrote one story about a girl whose ‘ghost’ goes back to haunt the apartment she lived in before a car accident put her in a coma, and then last year he brought out Les enfants de la liberté, which was a pretty grim account of a group of young resistance fighters in France during the German occupation. Amélie Nothomb is brilliant as well – Sulphuric Acid is spine-chillingly good. And I recently read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, by Maggie O’Farrell, which was terrific.

Which classic have you always meant to read and never got round to it?

Silas Marner. I know the story upside-down and back-tofront, but I’ve never read the book.

What are your top five books of all time?

I can’t limit this to five! So I’m not even going to mention To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Lord of the Flies, Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Animal Farm, or anything by Shakespeare or John Irving (especially A Prayer for Owen Meaney) as they’re all too obvious (well, maybe not the Irving, but Owen Meaney made me laugh out loud). I love Anne of Green Gables. My friend Mandy and I used to act the book out on the school bus. We took it in turns to be Anne and Diana, and our friend Carol was coerced into being a reluctant Marilla. We used to drive her nuts. Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey is another favourite: full of twists and turns and unexpected alliances. Ira Levin’s Stepford Wives – horrible! A nugget of a read, much darker than the film versions would have us believe. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro – so, so sad. Jon McGregor’s if nobody speaks of remarkable things, though I found the structure hard to handle and the lack of capital letters in the title put my teeth on edge. Paolo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die. I know that’s six already, but can I have one more? Frankenstein.

Do you have a favourite time of day to write? A favourite place? What’s your writing process: are you a planner?

I like to get started as soon as I can prise my eyes open in the mornings, and will often sit in bed for an hour with my laptop and a cup of tea. The minute I come downstairs there’s usually a whole heap of chores waiting for me, so if I’ve already done some writing I feel more in control. Once I’ve run round after my messy family, cursing them roundly and vowing to make them do more to help around the house, I make some coffee and Mishka and I get stuck in for a good few hours, either in the study where it’s warm or in front of the fire in the living-room. When she thinks I’m in danger of atrophying she drags me out for a walk up the hill behind the house, which is a great opportunity for working on the plot of whatever I’m writing. I think I probably talk to myself during these walks – I get some funny looks from other walkers sometimes – so having Mishka with me is a great cover. As for my writing process – I start with a really broad idea and live with it for a few weeks. I like to let a character brew for a bit before putting anything more than a few notes in writing. It’s a little like having a house guest around the place. Then I jot down some ideas for the plot, although these are a moveable feast and tend to change and evolve as the characters and storyline develop. And then one day I just think, right, time to get going, and I sit down and write the opening line. I love opening lines: all that potential in a sentence or two. After that I’m fairly disciplined: I have a target word count I have to hit each week, otherwise I feel guilty. I never get writer’s block. I get writer’s laziness sometimes, or writer’s too-much-washing-and-ironing-to- do, or writer’s it’s-a-sunny-day-I’ll-do-the-garden-for-anhour- or-so, but not writer’s block. I think you have to write through any block, on those grunged-up days when you don’t feel you’ve got anything to say. Just sit down and write – anything. Even if you think it’s a pile of mince. You can always go back and revise it later, and nine times out of ten you discover that it isn’t mince at all, or at least not all of it – it was just your mood that particular day that made you think it was.

Which fictional character would you most like to have met?

Depends on my mood. Ma Larkin from The Darling Buds of May, on those days when I feel like a sympathetic ear, though my sisters are pretty good listeners. Boo Radley – I’d love to know what he got up to all day in that house. Ophelia – poor girl. We could have had a G&T together instead of her going off and drowning herself like that.

Who, in your opinion, is the greatest writer of all time?

I used to think Enid Blyton couldn’t be beaten. When my sister Dale sat the Eleven-Plus, one of the questions was, ‘What is the most famous book in the world?’ And she answered, ‘Enid Blyton’s.’ I think she was probably right – she passed the exam, anyway. The Famous Five! Brilliant. Every book was exactly the same, and I couldn’t get enough of them. These days – I hate to be predictable! – I would have to pick the bard.

Other than writing, what other jobs have you undertaken or considered?

When I was growing up, I wanted to join a circus. I still have a story somewhere that I wrote when I was six, illustrated with a picture of me underneath a circus horse in a tutu, clinging on to its belly. In my head it was much more glamorous than the picture. Then I wanted to be Samantha, the woman off Bewitched who could wiggle her nose and do magic. When I hit my teens I dreamed of becoming a vet. A stint with the RSPCA after my ‘O’ levels killed off that ambition – anyone who’s been as close to a cat’s blocked anal glands as I have will confirm it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I worked in Liverpool University Science Library for a year before I went to uni myself, and then after graduating and not getting taken on by any of the big spy houses, I got sucked into I.T. Don’t ask me how: I didn’t even know how to turn on a computer in those days. Scattered in between all of this I’ve worked for a butcher (great for titbits for the dog, though my sister Kerry once cooked them up for dinner by mistake), a grocer, and a tobacconist. I’ve also been, amongst other things, a barmaid, a lecturer, a supermarket assistant, a tiler, a wine merchant, and a karate instructor. I can milk a goat, though I never seriously considered this as a career option. I’ve trained rocket scientists in the former Soviet Union. And I once found myself advising the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel on how to improve standards in the construction industry. In Russian. Eat your heart out, MI5.

What are you working on at the moment?

My next book – The Runaway Wife. It’s about a woman – Marion Bishop – who is mugged on the the night she goes out to buy paracetamol to kill herself. So a nice cheery subject.

Read an extract of Husband and Wifes here

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Susy McPhee answers questions about her book The Runaway Wife:

What was the inspiration for The Runaway Wife?

This might sound a bit macabre of me, but I really enjoy putting my characters in a dark place and then sitting back and seeing how they cope! When I wrote Husbands and Lies, life for Fran was pretty sweet at the beginning, even though her best friend was terminally ill. She had a great job, a devoted husband, a gorgeous daughter – plenty to take comfort in. The real problems started for her when she began to suspect her husband of infidelity, and frankly she brought a lot of her problems on herself because she let her imagination run away with her and didn’t tackle the problem head on – a trait which, certainly from the feedback I’ve had, is something a lot of us can recognise! With The Runaway Wife, I put Marion in the darkest place she could be right at the start, and the novel became the story of her journey back into the light. Deciding what had brought her to that dark place was difficult: I had to spend some time just thinking about what would make her want to take her own life. The idea of losing a child must be every mother’s worst nightmare, so I began with that premise and took things from there.

The Runaway Wife starts with your heroine contemplating suicide after the loss of her daughter and the break-up of her marriage. Did you find it difficult to blend this tragedy with the lighter elements of the book?

Really difficult! I didn’t want to make light of Marion’s situation, but at the same time the subject matter is so depressing! Getting the balance right between respecting the place Marion’s in and not making the reader want to slash their own wrists was very tricky, particularly in the beginning. But then Marion herself is such a wonderful character, a real survivor: eventually she came to my rescue and just took over the story.

If you were only allowed to write one or the other, would it be comedy or tragedy?

I think you need both for the story to work, otherwise either one could become a bit relentless. Comedy itself often has a cruel side to it – someone’s usually the fall guy in the jokes we tell, and it’s that cringe-making I’m-glad-that’s-not-me, or even the oh-that-could-be-me, that makes us laugh. I think my writing’s more tragic than comic: the comedy is the light relief to help the characters get through it all.

Which book has made you laugh? Which book has made you cry?

My brother recently lent me Jeffery Archer’s A Prisoner of Birth, and when I got to the last word I actually laughed aloud. I could see it coming a few sentences beforehand, but that only added to my anticipation. I wandered around the house afterwards with a big grin on my face and the feeling that all was right with the world. As for crying, well, I hate to be a total sap, but I did bawl my eyes out at Marley and Me. I’d defy anybody who’s even remotely doggy not to feel the tears prickling at this one. Mind you, I also laughed a lot along the way as well. I cried at places in The Poisonwood Bible, too, and in A Thousand Splendid Suns. And I cry at some of the stuff I write myself, which is ridiculous really given that I made it all up! But maybe that’s a symptom of general mental deterioration: the girls reckon it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be able to hide my own Easter Eggs . . .

Which book would you never have on your bookshelf ?

Anything I’ve read that’s disappointed me. I just put a stack of books out for the charity shop this weekend because they were such a let-down. I wouldn’t mind, but a fair proportion of them had won or been shortlisted for awards. One of them – an international bestseller, apparently – had been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. That made me laugh. Longlisted? How long’s the list? I tell you, it must have stretched to Antarctica and back. The book was covered in quotes telling you it was spellbinding, vivid, brutal, exhilarating. I really, really wanted to like it. But I couldn’t. It was awful. And then I felt as though there was something wrong with me for not liking it when all these other people had raved about it. So it made me feel guilty as well. Disappointing and guilt-inducing. It had to go.

Is there a particular book or author that inspired you to be a writer?

I hate to tell you, but I never really felt inspired to be a writer! I never got to the end of a book and thought, hey, I could do this! Writing is just something that’s inside me and needs to get out, a bit like a dodgy appendix. That’s not to say I don’t find certain books or authors inspiring. I love John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The idea of holding fast to your dream, however small or mundane that dream might be in other people’s eyes, is really what I would call inspiring.

What is your favourite word?

I don’t have one favourite word that stands out above all others, but some have caught my attention over the years and usually raise a smile. ‘Moist’. That’s a great word. I particularly like it because my daughter Carolyn can’t stand it and will visibly recoil if you say it in her presence. I have
a friend who was speaking recently about her time at boarding-school, and she mentioned the time they came back from somewhere and made a ‘beezer’ chili. I loved that – straight from Enid Blyton! I also like ‘some’ and ‘chocolate’ and ‘have’, particularly when they’re ordered correctly. And I like ‘yes’. It’s just a much nicer word than ‘no’.

Why do you write?

Well, I tried brain surgery, but I wasn’t cut out for it. Also, dogs aren’t allowed in the theatre, apparently, which is a mistake if you ask me. Dogs are known for their therapeutic value.

Which book are you reading at the moment?

The Rothbard-Rockwell Report. It’s a collection of essays by the libertarian economist and historian Murray N. Rothbard, who died in 1995.They’re witty, insightful, opinionated, and scathingly uncompromising.

Dream casting time: who in the movie of The Runaway Wife would play Marian? What about Sam?

I’d have someone like Emily Mortimer for Marion, with Emma Watson playing Con. I think they’d work well together. And Sam? Maybe Jeremy Northam or Greg Wise. Someone who looks good in a chunky sweater. Sam is definitely a chunky sweater kind of guy.

Hector plays a very important part in the story. Is Hector based on anyone? What’s your dog-owning history?

Hector was named after a dog I met walking up the hill one day, but his personality is absolutely taken from my own dog, Mishka, although I think Hector is better-behaved: I can’t imagine him ever stealing an entire tub of party rings or munching his way through a whole layer of Marks & Spencer chocolates while his owner was in the bath. I’ve had dogs all my life: at one point there were eleven flatcoated retrievers living in my house, nine of them under a month in age. The kitchen was a sea of black furry bodies in the morning. They would come sweeping towards you on a tide of piddle and attach themselves to the hem of your dressing-gown by their tiny but nonetheless sharp milk teeth, and not let go until you gave them their breakfast. My husband’s as bad, to be honest, but I can usually beat him off with a spoon.

What are you working on at the moment?

Well, in between helping my daughter Helen and her husband Oliver renovate their very old and crumbling Victorian house, I’m on my next book, which is about an identical twin who steals her sister’s life. More dark stuff: I think I’m getting a bit of a taste for it.

Read an extract of The Runaway Wife here.