Catherine O’Flynn: It might start to seem real…
Catherine O’Flynn on making the Man Booker Dozen
Where were you when you found out you were on the longlist last week? What was your reaction?
I was at my kitchen table, reading the newspaper when the call came through. My reaction was to leave the paper unread and walk around the house repeating the news back to myself thinking at some point it might start to seem real. It hasn’t yet.
What Was Lost has already been longlisted for the Orange Prize and now the Man Booker - did you ever imagine it would be received so well?
I never really allowed myself to imagine anything about the book. Since the day I finished it I’ve given myself a pretty hard time, refusing to allow the slightest hope that it would ever be read, published, liked etc. I think I believed that this would somehow shield me from disappointment, but what it has actually done is just turn my inner voice into this really annoying pessimistic presence constantly following me and finding the negative in everything. It’s incredibly nice to be able to prove it wrong every now and again.
You’ve been a teacher, a web editor, a mystery customer and a postwoman and are quoted as saying that you have ‘a perverse fondness for quite bad jobs’. Is being a novelist one of them?
Well I wonder that too. I guess it depends on the kind of novelist you are. The kind that knock off work at midday and follow this with leisurely alcoholic lunch make it seem really quite an agreeable job (and in fact strangely similar to that of postie), the kind that lose their minds and die in poverty present a less attractive model. I’m not sure how I feel about being my own boss. As a worker I’ve always tended towards cynicism and insubordination, as a boss ineffectuality and incompetence – I think the potential for industrial action could be high.
What Was Lost reveals a consumer-driven society – do you believe that consumerism is failing to make our society happy?
I think it probably is, but then maybe it’s unfair to single out consumerism – there are so many other things that seem to promise happiness but are merely papering over the cracks. I would hate to appear smug, or pretend that I don’t ever buy some pointless piece of landfill thinking it will improve the quality of my life. I think many of us are blundering our way through life with really very little idea of what we should be doing with ourselves. I suppose consumerism is just a particularly ridiculous manifestation of that.
What would your advice to budding novelists be? Move to Spain?
What a prospect for Spain – first their southern coastline is invaded by hordes of Pringle clad golfers, now come the budding novelists. I think the only advice I would offer to budding novelists is to distrust first time novelists who suddenly think they are authorities on the writing life.
Who is your Booker of Bookers?
The Remains of the Day would be my first choice. I’m completely inarticulate in my admiration for Ishiguro’s writing . Pat Barker’s Ghost Road would be my runner up…
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To listen to an interview with Catherine O’Flynn please visit Telegraph.co.uk’s Man Booker page.
