EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Laura Barnett author of the fantastic The Versions of Us
I had the very lucky opportunity of interviewing Laura Barnett, Author of the fantastic Richard & Judy Book Club read: The Versions of Us. As we're both very busy people, Laura definitely more so than myself, we conducted this interview via written questions. And Laura did not disappoint. If you've read The Versions of Us, are planning on reading it or just want some advice on how to get yourself published from an experienced writer, then give this exclusive online interview a read. Like a novel pitch, if you had to tell sum yourself up in one sentence, what would that one sentence be?
Laura: Ooh, what a challenge! I suppose that’s what we all try to do with our Twitter profiles, but I won’t repeat mine word for word here. So, right, here goes. “Novelist, journalist, and peddler of stories; native south Londoner, proud cat owner, and consumer of cocktails, especially those that contain gin.” How’s that? Maybe I was cheeky with the semi-colon.
2. I like it! Semi-colons are very underrated anyway. Tell us your latest news? Are you writing anything new? What's next for Laura Barnett?
Laura: I sure am. I am currently about 10,000 words away from the end of the first draft of my next novel, Greatest Hits, which is both an exciting and terrifying place to be. The novel is about a musician, a singer-songwriter, in her mid-sixties, returning to her music - and to the past that is contained within it - after a ten-year hiatus. It’s another book that spans a long period - a whole lifetime - and has a lot to say about what it means to be an artist, a mother, and a woman; well, a person, really. The plan, I believe, is for it to be published in March 2017.
Then, of course, I’m still talking, and thinking, a lot about The Versions of Us. I’m working with Trademark Films on the TV adaptation (I’m not writing the screenplay myself, but am very involved in the whole process of getting it off the ground), and preparing for the various foreign editions of the novel - there are 24, so far. I’m just back from an American trip ahead of the US publication by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on 3 May, and am flying out to Australia for the first time next week for the Perth Writers’ Festival. I suppose, summing it up like that, that I’m kind of busy…
3. You must be so thrilled about how well The Versions of Us has done! It's an incredible debut and I think you deserve all of the praise that you're receiving. What was it that inspired you to write the concept of parallel lives?
Laura: Yes, I am absolutely thrilled - it’s been my dream to be a novelist for as long as I can remember, but I’ve never dared to dream that my first book might do as well as this. Thank you so much for your very kind words about the novel - it really means a lot.
As for my inspiration - it’s always hard to single out one particular source, as this idea, like so many, seemed to come out of nowhere, in spring 2013. But looking back, I think I was pondering the fact that I’d recently got married, and how easily my husband and I might never have met. It’s unsettling to think that the person who is now so central to your life could quite easily have become central to someone else’s. That got me excited about the parallel-life idea, and then I started thinking about how we all have these major “what if” moments in which our lives start off down one path, rather than another.
4. Have you written anything with a similar theme before?
Laura: I have not. I wrote two whole novels during my twenties that weren’t, and will never be, published - I think of them now as practice runs. There was some kinship of theme and setting - the first was about mothers and daughters; the second was set in a newspaper office in sixties London - but neither was as audacious in terms of structure as The Versions of Us.
5. When and why did you begin writing?
Laura: As soon as I could read. It was just instinctive and necessary, and I suspect, to some degree, inevitable. My mum was a librarian, my dad a writer and composer, so I grew up in a little flat that was stacked to the ceilings with books - most of them remaindered library copies, still wearing their sticky plastic jackets. You wouldn’t believe the stuff my mum used to find in library books.
6. What books have most influenced your life?
Laura: Ah, there are so many - if I listed them all, we’d be here all day. I’ve written about ten of them in the back of the paperback edition of The Versions of Us. But if I had to just pick a couple, I’d say Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler, which tells the story of one couple’s marriage, both gloriously ordinary and extraordinary; and Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet series, which I read in quick succession through 2014, and just blew my mind.
7. What book are you reading right now?
Laura: Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver - an intriguing examination of the effects of climate change, told through the prism of one family in rural Tennessee. It’s the most beautiful paperback edition - the American one, which I bought on a recent trip to Denver, Colorado, in a fantastic independent bookshop called the Tattered Cover.
8. Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?
Laura: Many. I recently finished Fever At Dawn by the Hungarian film director and debut author Peter Gardos - a beautifully poignant love story about two Holocaust survivors, based on his parents’ own true story. Doubleday are publishing it in April, I believe. And I have a copy of The Life And Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North on my bedside table. Like my novel Greatest Hits, it’s about a female artist, so I’m intrigued to see how North has tackled her character.
9. What's the most challenging thing for you as a writer?
Laura: Keeping the faith in what I’m writing through the long months in which I’m the only person who’s read any of it. I don’t like to show my work to anyone until I’m really sure about it. But it means that there are long periods during which it’s a very lonely process.
10. Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?
Laura: Anne Tyler. I feel like I drone on and on about how great she is, but she really is a master of everything that I hold most important about fiction: realism; lightness of touch; a sense that all of life can be contained in the simplest and most quotidian of moments. But I have also become obsessed, recently, with the late American author Kent Haruf (I do read a lot of American fiction), for very similar reasons.
11. What was the hardest part of writing The Versions of Us?
Laura: Not allowing my fear that writing three versions of the story was impossible to overwhelm me. When I first came up with the idea, it was so clear to me that I became convinced I’d read it already. When I realised the book didn’t exist, I became terrified that this meant lots of people must have tried to write it, and failed. Every day of writing was an exercise in faith.
12. Who is your favourite character in the novel and why?
Laura: I really couldn’t single out one character - every single one is close to my heart! But I do have a particular affection for Eva’s mother, Miriam - perhaps because she is in part based on my own late step-grandmother, Anita Bild. And I have a definite soft spot for Ted, Eva’s partner in one of the versions (I won’t say which, so as not to give a spoiler!).
13. What advice would you give those who want to get their work published but don’t know where to begin?
Laura: Make sure your work is as good as you can possibly make it before taking it to an agent. Show it to friends you can trust to be honest with you - and listen to what they say. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. When you’re absolutely sure your book is as good as it can get, be confident, but not arrogant. Approach agents, be succinct and polite, and listen to the feedback they offer. This may not be the book with which you’ll launch your career - but that doesn’t mean you won’t write another in the future that will be the right one. It’s a very hard lesson to learn, but I certainly had to learn it.
14. Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?
Laura: Thank you for reading! There are so many wonderful books, and so many wonderful writers, that I am hugely grateful to anyone who chooses to invest their hard-earned time and money in my writing, and my characters. I leave them free to take away from The Versions of Us whatever message they wish to. But I would be very happy they took from it a certain compassion, a certain reassuring thought that we all make mistakes, we all take wrong turnings, but we can all find ways to be happy.
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Thank you so much Laura. And thank you for reading. You can buy The Version of Us from any online book retailer or bookshop now.
If you want to read my review of The Versions of Us, you can do so here.