Stephen Ramay

Do people ever bring back in a book and say, I'm sorry, I need my money back?

I personally think a lot of readers will put down serotonin on page 42, and I'm not going to, on public radio, go into what happens on page 42, except to say it involves the protagonist's girlfriend, a bull terrier and a boxer.

And I don't mean a pugilist.

I mean a canine boxer.

That's all I'll say.

I think a lot of readers will put it down at that point and not pick it up again.

And, of course, that fascinates me because...

We were talking a moment ago about writers who dare their readers.

I think, and I don't know because I've never interviewed him, I've never met him, I think Welbeck takes that a step further.

He tries to annoy his readers.

He tries to alienate them because the entire novel, Serotonin, is full of that sort of descriptive language, a lot of it about sex, not all of it involving dogs.

And I just think a lot of people will just not want to keep turning the pages.

And then I think of him sitting in his office going, good.

Yes.

And I may be wrong about that.

As I say, I don't know him or anything.

So it's just a guess on my part.

But it kind of gives me a little thrill that he might be sitting there doing that.

I thought Keyshot was a wonderful novel.

I can see how I suppose in some ways he's keeping up with the times because it involves climate change and authoritarian leaderships in what used to be Western liberal democracies.