After five novels and one work of non-fiction, Louise Doughty has it all down to routine. Chocolate, coffee and long walks are the most reliable of muses, but the U.K based author is exacting: “I’m a terrific snob about my chocolate, mind,” she declares, “it’s got to be 50% cocoa solids minimum - the darker the better in fact - and wrapped round something minty is good.” She is generous with her experience, revealing this and other trade secrets in ‘A Novel In One Year’, a collection of columns written for The Telegraph newspaper.
Louise, who is also a literary critic, playwright, scriptwriter for radio, has Romany blood in her. Her book, ‘Fires in the Dark’, told the story of what happened to the Roma people during WW II.
The sequel, ‘Stone Cradle’ is based closely on her own family ancestry - “it’s a much more personal story and was very much about what we inherit from our ancestors and what we pass on to our children.”
In two months, Louise will be in Sri Lanka for the 2010 Galle Literary Festival, but in the meantime she has her hands full as a judge for a prominent literary prize. Her new novel, ‘Whatever You Love’, will be published next year.
What are you reading now?
I’m currently chair of the judges for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize here in the UK. It’s a prize for writers under 35 and includes fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry. We’ve drawn up a shortlist which is pleasingly international, writers from Canada, Australia, Nigeria and India are included. I’m fond of this particular prize.
It doesn’t get anything like the publicity of the Man Booker or the Orange but it’s one of our oldest prizes and has a fantastic track record.
My fondness is probably increased by the fact that I was shortlisted for it myself for my first novel ‘Crazy Paving’, back in 1995 and it gave me a tremendous boost, so I’m really pleased to be involved with it all these years later.
On the 2009 shortlist: Between the Assassinations’ by Aravind Adiga, The Striped World by Emma Jones, Six Months in Sudan by James Maskalyk, The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Waste by Tristram Stuart, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld.
Are you enjoying reading them?
I’m definitely enjoying the process right now as I’m currently re-reading the six shortlisted books prior to a judges’ meeting to choose the winner. It’s great to be able to read the best of the bunch more slowly and carefully than you are able to do prior to the shortlisting.
Judging a prize with different genres is slightly strange. It’s a bit like looking at a lion, a giraffe and a penguin and having to say which is the best animal. So far there are two books that are emerging as front runners for me, but of course I am not allowed to say which...
Where do you like to read?
I love reading in bed but also never leave the house without a book in my handbag. I have a terror of finding myself stuck on a train or at an airport without anything to read. Before I had children, I would read in the bath, but the days of long luxurious soaks with lots of bubbles and a good book are long gone...
You were on the panel of judges that awarded Aravind Adiga the 2008 Man Booker Prize - what was it that drew you to The White Tiger?
It was two things for me - firstly, the comic, satirical touch - the device of having the whole book as a series of letters to the Chinese premier was very funny and subtly subversive. But ultimately, what The White Tiger does is get really inside the head of a man who is suffering daily humiliation as a servant and really makes you feel what it would be like to be that person. The scene where he has to wash his master’s feet made me feel acutely what it must be like to have to perform that sort of task day in day out, for such little reward. The violent act towards the end is completely immoral, but you can’t help but feel what has driven him to it.
Is there a book you’ve found yourself wishing you had authored?
There isn’t really one individual book but there are certain writers whose oeuvre I really envy. Margaret Atwood is one, Hilary Mantel (this year’s Man Booker winner) is another. ‘Wolf Hall’ is a masterpiece. If I could die knowing I had written something that good, I would be happy. If I don’t get to write a sprawling masterpiece that, I would like to achieve something small and perfect like Jean Rhys’s ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’.
When was the last time a book had you laughing out loud? When was the last time one made you cry?
I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud at a book! That’s a bit sad, isn’t it? I clearly don’t read enough comedy. I don’t cry much either, though. The scene from the whole of literature that has really made me sob is the bit in ‘Wuthering Heights’ when Heathcliff begs Cathy’s ghost to haunt him in whatever fiendish shape she cares to take, anything rather than leave him. I cried buckets over that.
Sometimes one can place a book simply upon hearing its opening sentence - in your opinion which book boasts the most memorable of first lines?
I guess it has to be Moby Dick: ‘Call me Ishmael.’ Those three words say so much. I obsess over my own first lines. They are so important. I still worry about the first lines of books I published years ago. You would think I would have got over it by now.
Is there an author you can always rely on to both surprise and delight you?
I suppose it’s the two I mentioned before, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel. Each book from them has something fresh and intelligent and quirky in it and both of them see no conflict between story and wonderful prose, as well as writing fantastic non-fiction. There are still books of theirs I haven’t read yet and I’m almost putting them off because I’m so enjoying the thought of the treats they will have in store for me. |
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