Guess what people. Today is an exciting day because I’ve got
the marvellous Fredrik Backman – author of the wonderful A Man Called
Ove and the shiny brand new My Grandmother Sends Her
Regards and Apologises - here to chat about all things bookish.
Hurrah!
I know, right, how very exciting.
Fredrik! Hello! Thank-you
so much for stopping by my little corner of the blogosphere; grab a coffee and
a piece of cake and make yourself at home – in fact it’s imaginary cake, take
two pieces. TAKE THE WHOLE CAKE.
Before we get started, let’s warm up with a quick fire
round.
Ready, steady, GO:
- Coffee, tea or…?
I'll have some "or".
Sounds delicious.
- Favourite film?
My wife says that I can't answer any
film questions from anyone anymore because "the only films Fredrik likes
are films where Kevin Costner plays baseball!".
- Favourite book?
Brother Lionheart, by Astrid
Lindgren.
- Summer or winter?
Which one is it that keeps coming in
Game of Thrones? I'll have the other one.
- Favourite Colour?
Cheese.
- Last thing you ate?
Cheese.
- Dream holiday destination?
Cheese. Or I mean...well...a
baseball stadium where Kevin Costner is would be splendid.
- If you could jump to any point in history, who would you have dinner with?
My kids. At a point in history where
they don't throw food at me. Any point will do fine.
- How do you like your steak?
In my mouth.
- What are your pet peeves?
My what?
I do love that bit! Anyway, on to
the proper bookish fun stuff!
Let’s get started.
Firstly, I’ve read A Man Called Ove (and I loved it) but for anyone who’s yet to
get acquainted with the book, can you tell us a little bit about it and about
Ove?
He's a 59 years old man who drives a
Saab and who is a bit a annoyed with the fact that people can't read signs
anymore.
And how about My Grandmother Sends Her Regards… which is on my To Read pile
(near the top, don’t worry!) The blurb for that made me do a happy dance
because a storytelling Granny sounds remarkably like my own childhood! Tell us
a little bit about it.
It's about a grandmother and her
granddaughter and a secret land they have built together called The
Land of almost awake, that you can only travel to by almost falling asleep. It
has a few made up animals in it and swords and stuff. My wife read it
and told my publisher that "this is what happens when you let Fredrik
sit in his office for 6 months without going there and ask him what he's doing.
I warned you!".
Where did the idea for Granny’s story come
from?
I didn't have a lot of friends
growing up. I don't have a lot of friends now. It gives me a lot of free time.
Plus, there's always alcohol.
Which of the books did you find easiest to
write, and why?
I've never considered writing
"easy" or "hard". I consider it "fun".
And is the answer to that question the same
as the answer to ‘which is your favourite’ and if not, which is your favourite? & I hope that doesn’t make you
feel like I’m asking you to choose a favourite child!
I would have no problems choosing
my favorite child. I like the little one who still thinks I'm cool.
If either of the books was a DVD what would
the special features be - are there any scenes that ended up ‘on the cutting
room floor’ that you can share?
In A man called Ove, in my first
draft, the cat didn't appear until chapter 14. It was my cat loving editor, god
bless him, who felt so strongly about the cat and worried that the other cat of
the book (Ernest, who belongs to Oves father in law) stole the thunder of the
REAL catstar of the story. So my editor and me ended up having a huge fight and
he almost threw flowers at me and in the end I wrote an alternate version where
the cat enters in chapter 2. And it was of course a lot better. Just don't tell
my editor. He still thinks he owes me one.
My
Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises is such an excellent title. Did the title come first, or last, or at
some point in the middle?
It came pretty early on. My
publisher hated it. We spent six months of emailing about different
versions they wanted to cut it down. It started with "can we call it 'Grandma'
or "Grandma's sorry' or something like that?' and ended up six months
later with "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CAN WE AT LEAST GET RID OF THE WORD 'MY'
SO THERE*S ROOM FOR A BLOODY ILLUSTRATION ON THE COVER!!!???". I said no.
I don't have a publisher at the moment. Apparently I'm "hard to work
with".
Tell us about how you write: do you prefer a
loud room or a quiet room; is your manuscript typed or handwritten, do you
write during set hours or as the word comes, and at home or some place else?
What works best?
Well, I have children. So...no. I
don't really have any of those preferences. I write when I'm allowed. Sometimes
I write on a computer in my office but more often I write on the backside of
restaurant menus when we're on family holidays or in texts to myself on my
phone while sitting on the bathroom floor waiting for someone to finish their
epic Spiderman vs Rainbow Dash death battle in the bathtub so that we can all
go to bed. Sometimes I write by hand, which is wonderful, but that's a pleasure
I treat myself like I would whisky or ice cream: When the rest of the family is
asleep.
What’s next for you? What are you working on
now?
My third novel, "Britt-Marie
was here", is out in Sweden,
Denmark and Norway and set for release in Britain next
summer. And I'm writing a couple of things that I don't really know that they
are yet, but I think one might be a play and one might be a pretty strange
series of short stories and one might just be a fairly good joke and might
actually be a novel. We'll see.
What’s the oddest thing on your desk? (I
have a Clanger on mine that makes a noise when you press its middle. I
liberated it from the desk of my boss….)
I have an american football, and
very often the fists of my terribly orderly friend Niklas that I share my
office with who is trying to take the ball from me and throw it out the window
because apparently I'm "fucking annoying!" when I throw it around the
office sometimes hitting his computer screen and sometimes hitting him. He's
not really a sports fan.
What’s the best writing tip you’ve been
given?
"The best type of comedy is
stupid but smart." Which, put in a simpler way, would mean that some
things has to look really easy although they might be very hard to achieve. A
laughter is a very spontaneous thing, so even if the joke took you weeks to
construct a sentence around it always has to sound as if you thought of it just
now and just wrote it down. That's comedy to me. I view storytelling much the
same way. First you figure out all the really difficult stuff with characters
and scenery and epic feelings and vital plot points, and then you have to find
the easiest possible way to tell it all to a stranger. Because that's the only
way it will sound believable. It's like when police investigators always say
that you can spot a lie from a suspect because it's too well constructed, the
details are too perfect and thought out. Truth doesn't really sound like
that. Well...now that I think of it that really wasn't a simpler way to put
this at all.
What do you wish you got asked in these
interviews but never do?
What's your favorite kind
of Ben & Jerry's? Well THANK YOU for asking. It's New York Super Fudge
Chunk, thank you very much.
& because I’m always on the look out for
new book recommendations, what are you reading right now?
"A band of misfits", by
Andrew Baggarly. It's a book about the San Francisco Giants baseball team and
their way to winning the world series.I'm also reading the instruction manual
for our car because there's a light that keeps blinking and my wife refuses to
tell me what it means because she claims I "need to learn to read a
MANUAL!". As it happens she also refuses to drive the car or let me drive
the kids in it while the light is blinking, so I'm guessing whatever she knows
is not very good.
[If you haven’t read either of Fredrik’s novels then, well,
you totally should. You can get hold of copies here. I’m tempted to provide my
Dad with a copy of A Man Called Ove. I
think he might like it]
Fredrik Backman is a
Swedish blogger, columnist and author. His debut novel A MAN CALLED OVE has
been a number 1 bestseller across Scandinavia.
It has now sold over 1 million copies. Fredrik's second novel, MY GRANDMOTHER
SENDS HER REGARDS AND APOLOGISES, also went straight to number 1 in Sweden on
publication in 2014.
