An interview with Michelle Paver
Which book has made you cry?
As a child, I wept buckets over Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. I haven't re-read it as an adult, so I don't know how it would strike me now, but when I was little I got totally swept up in the story, and howled when Ginger died. These days, I don't cry as easily, but I did shed a few tears when I finished The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.
Which book are you reading at the moment?
I'm re-reading The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue: a haunting, unputdownable, amazingly original story about changelings, childhood and memory. I haven't enjoyed a new novel so much in years. (And for the record, I don't know the author, and I've no axe to grind in praising this book; my only reason for doing so is that I loved it.)
Which book would you give to a friend as a present?
The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue - see above.
Which other writers do you admire?
If you're talking about dead ones, there are loads: Jane Austen, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Henry James, Mikhail Bulgakov, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Choderlos de Laclos... As regards more modern writers: Haruki Murakami, Patrick White, Kate Grenville, Helen Dunmore, Margaret Forster, Margaret Atwood. But I've probably left off lots of names, and will kick myself afterwards.
Which classic have you always meant to read and never got round to?
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. I've had it on my "to read" shelf for years.
What are your top five books of all time, in order or otherwise?
I hate lists. I'm bound to leave things out by mistake, and what I include simply depends on the mood I'm in at the time. So if I'm in a nineteenth/early twentieth-century mood, my list might include, say, The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky), Pride & Prejudice (Jane Austen), The Wings of the Dove (Henry James), He Knew He Was Right (Anthony Trollope), and Middlemarch (George Eliot). But then I'd worry about leaving off the Brontës, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Mrs Gaskell... and what about Homer? And the Laxdaela Saga? If I'm in a more modern mood, I'd probably include Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami), Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf), The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov), To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee), and The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien); but again, I've just left out Cormac McCarthy, John Fowles, and Giuseppi di Lampedusa... This is why I hate lists.
What is the worst book you have ever read?
If I hate a book, I don't finish it; so I've never actually read a book I didn't like. Sorry to be pedantic, but there it is.
What was your favourite childhood book?
I loved Tove Jansson's Moomin books, and Roger Lancelyn Green's re-tellings of myths from around the world, which I found vivid, strange, frightening, and unbelievably powerful. Just what a nine-year-old wants.
Which book has made you laugh?
The Diary of a Nobody, by George and Weedon Grossmith. Mr Pooter's daily ups and downs are weirdly compelling: his doomed efforts at growing radishes, his disastrous attempts at DIY (painting the bath red "with unexpected results"). Touching, endearing and hilarious, it's actually not about a nobody, but an everybody. It was first published in 1892, but it could've been written yesterday.
Is there a particular book or author that inspired you to be a writer?
As a child, I used to come back from my local Library with an armful of books, and spend all weekend with them, curled up on the sofa. In a sense, all the books I read inspired me to write my own stories: adventures, myths, school stories, animal stories... Being in their world was often much more vivid and rewarding than being in the real world; especially when I wasn't having a great time at school.
What is your favourite time of day to write?
The morning, because I get lazier as the day goes on. I loathe writing in the evening, probably because it reminds me of when I was a lawyer in the City, and was always working late.
And favourite place?
Two places. First, my study, where I'm surrounded by Stone Age and hunter-gatherer artefacts picked up on research trips: antlers, arrowheads, reindeer hides, photos of the wolves I've got to know. Secondly, my bedroom, which overlooks my back garden. When I'm stuck, I can watch the everyday dramas of squirrels, magpies, and an extremely territorial robin; and I like the simplicity of just having a small table, chair, pen and paper. It's back-to-basics writing.
Longhand of word processor?
Longhand to begin with, but as my writing's so bad, I try to type it up on the same day on my elderly computer; otherwise I might not be able to read it. After that, I re-write on the computer. For months.
Which fictional character would you most like to have met?
This may sound a bit precious, but I wouldn't want to meet any of them. The author and journalist Nicolette Jones wrote recently about "word people", that is, characters who exist in the minds of the reader, as opposed to those in films or on television. I prefer to keep my word people as they are. Thus I've got lots of favourite characters - Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov; Odysseus in The Odyssey; Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings; the Muskrat in Finn Family Moomintroll - but meet them? No. I prefer them in the story, which, by definition, doesn't include me.
Who, in your opinion, is the greatest writer of all time?
I'm not going to pick one. There are too many candidates, and I'd hate to elevate one above all the others.
Which book have you found yourself unable to finish?
Stacks of them. Reading's so subjective, and if I don't like an author's voice, I give it a few chapters, then that's it. Take The Da Vinci Code. I made myself read thirty pages, but I found it unreadable and gave up. It just wasn't for me.
What is your favourite word?
Please, not another list! It depends on how I'm feeling and what I'm writing about.
Other than writing, what other jobs or professions have you undertaken or considered?
When I was at University, I didn't think I'd be able to earn my living as a writer, so I thought about being a research geneticist. But I was pretty bad at lab work, so I ditched that idea. Maybe an archaeologist? I ditched that too, reckoning (correctly, I think) that I wouldn't be too good at sticking to the evidence, and would be forever flying off into make-believe. In the end, I became a solicitor, practising litigation in the City for thirteen years. Sometimes I ask myself, why the hell did I do that, when in the end it was just making me miserable, and all I really wanted to do was write? But when you're working too hard, it can be very difficult to step back and get some perspective.
What was the first piece you ever had in print?
It was either a letter to the Puffin Club Magazine, or a letter to the Evening Standard, both written when I was about nine years old. I can't remember what the Puffin Club letter was about, but the Evening Standard letter was a rather pompous, doom-laden rant about conservation. It won £5 for the Star Letter of the Day, and I was over the moon; not least, because of the five pounds. That was a lot of money in the late 1960s. I would have had to wash my father's car ten times to earn it.
What are you working on at the moment?
I've just made the very last amendments to Oath Breaker, the fifth book in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness (out September 1), and I'm deep in the first draft of Ghost Hunter, the sixth and last book. It's weird to be writing the final book. I've got to know Torak, Renn and Wolf so well, but once I finish Ghost Hunter, they'll no longer be with me in the constant, day-to-day way in which they've been my companions for the past seven years. Stories are a bit like children, except that once you've sent them out into the world, they never come back. At least, that's how it is for me. I'm going to miss them. However recently, a couple of characters from a new story have begun to get interesting. So there's hope.
