Chapter 1: What themes connect Sarah Moss and Ian McGuire's writing?
All right, this is going to be good, isn't it? I loved this book. Put that effing book down.
Yeah, okay. I see you, girl. I'll go on this ride.
I'm reading it and reading it and I'm going, oh no. So I thought I really have to hook the reader. It's taken up half my heart, you know. The book actually put a hex on me.
would you like some more literary fiction okay i know you would hi i'm kate evans and you're listening to a podcast extra edition of abc radio nationals the bookshelf lately we've been giving you one long interview at a time but today i'm going with two because they're connected in a way
Both write in what might be called a northern tradition of English writing, but their style is rather different. Sarah Moss's books include Ghost Wall and Summer Water, both extraordinarily good, complex, poetic and a bit menacing. Both have something to say about nature and landscape and our place in it.
The other writer is Ian McGuire, whose Northwater is some of the most brutal and scarifyingly beautiful writing I've ever read. His latest novel is The Abstainer, which begins in Manchester in 1867. Really interesting writers with a wealth of unexpected books and references for you to think about, to read.
And as always, we do list all of those books on the website at abc.net.au slash rn and just find the bookshelf page. Let's begin in the 1860s with Ian McGuire. Ian McGuire, thank you so much for joining us on The Bookshelf.
Thanks for inviting me, Kate. Very happy to be here.
Now, with The Abstainer, we've got politics, violence, men, alcohol, but you begin with a hanging in Manchester, or rather a series of hangings in 1867. Why? What's so special about them?
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Chapter 2: How does Ian McGuire use historical events in his novels?
I mean, I think the first novel that springs to mind in answer to that question would be probably Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which is not often thought of as a historical novel, but it is. I mean, it's a novel set in the west of the United States in the mid 1860s. And that's been a very, very important novel to me over the last several years in terms of
beginning to think how to write a kind of historical novel in the way that I, I find interesting. Um, so McCarthy's novel is about the kind of renegade band of Indian hunters, and it quickly becomes clear that they are just as savage as the people that they are, um, chasing.
So it's a very, it's a very violent novel, a very kind of powerful novel, but it's also a very lyrical novel in terms of the language used, And all of those things have been very useful to me in thinking about how to sort of render a different place and a different time in a way which is kind of compelling and rich.
Who else does that for you, that combination of brutality and poetry?
I suppose I think behind someone like McCarthy probably is William Faulkner. I'm very attached to the tradition of the American novel, and I think the American novelists I most admire usually have... have Faulkner in their DNA somewhere. So I think Faulkner is behind McCarthy.
And Faulkner's exploration of the South and the post-Civil War South and the violence and the kind of racial violence of that is, you know, it's unmatched, really. And it feeds into so much of 20th century American writing.
What about books that deal with cities? Because The Abstainer is so much about Manchester as a place and as a city, where you're going into the alleyways and the pubs and occasionally the temperance cafes as well.
Yeah, people, when I've shown early copies of The Abstainer to other people, they often think, they talk about it as a kind of It's a kind of noir novel, you know, similar to the Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett. So I think those I mean, actually, when I was writing about it, I never thought of it as a noir novel, but I suppose it is in some ways.
And of course, that the city of Los Angeles, which is a dramatically different city. from Manchester in the 19th century, but it fulfills a certain similar function. There's a sense of that background as a kind of presence which sets the atmosphere and which is a kind of an important character in the novel. So I've certainly read Chandler and Hammett and admired them.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of martyrdom in McGuire's work?
And the rich people won't give him any food and turn him away. But the poorest household shares what they have. And then the waters rise in the night and flood the rich dwellings. So that gave me the title.
Can we go back to that imagined bookshelf that sits next to Summerwater? What else would you put on that?
I'd love to have Shirley Jackson. I really like her. And she has a fabulous memoir called Life Among the Savages, which people don't read as much as the fiction, but it's absolutely hilarious. I mean, there's very little of the darkness of her other novels. But it's extremely funny, again, about writing and family life and marriage.
And of course, she's a writer who does the disquieting and that sort of sense of dread that builds up on you. And you're not even quite sure it's there. And then suddenly it's really there.
Yes, yes, and I love that. It's always very subtle until it isn't.
And you've got some very curious children in this book.
Yes, I like writing children.
And what about reading about them? Are there other books that have disquieting children or fascinating children?
Well, I suppose we'll go back to Henry James and what made him new, but there's a long tradition of the strange child. Jane Eyre is one of my lodestone books. I read it the first time when I was far too young, and I just read it as a school story with a really boring romance text on the end. And then as I've gone back to it through adult life, I've encountered a different book each time.
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