This Tuesday is an excellent
Tuesday because I’ve got the lovely Carys Bray – author of the shiny new The Museum of You here to chat about all
things bookish. Hurrah!
Carys! Thank-you so much for stopping by my little
corner of the blogosphere; grab a coffee and a jar of Biscoff spread and a
spoon and make yourself comfortable.
Before we get started, let’s
warm up with a quick fire round.
Ready, steady, GO:
- Coffee, tea or…?
Coffee
- Favourite film?
Oh,
erm – I do like the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. I know it’s not strictly
a film, but I’ve watched it loads of times!
- Favourite book?
It
changes, but at the moment I love A Spool
of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler.
- Summer or winter?
Summer
- Favourite Colour?
Red
- Last thing you ate?
A
Magnum ice cream.
- Dream holiday destination?
Moab, Utah.
- If you could jump to any point in history, who would you have dinner with?
I’d
love to have dinner with Carol Shields. I think her novels and short stories
are brilliant and it would be great to speak to her about her writing.
- How do you like your steak?
I’m
a vegetarian, so alive and mooing, living in a field somewhere would be good!
- What are your pet peeves?
I
hate it when taxis park overnight on both corners of the end of my street, just
outside my drive. According to my family, my annoyance is totally
disproportionate (but it definitely isn’t – ha!).
I do love that bit! Anyway, on
to the proper bookish fun stuff!
Let’s get started.
Firstly, I’ve read The
Museum of You (and I thought it was ridiculously wonderful) but for anyone
who’s yet to get acquainted with the book, can you tell us a little bit about
it?
The Museum of You is the story of Darren and his daughter Clover. Clover is twelve, old
enough to spend the summer at home while Darren works, driving a bus between
Southport and Liverpool. After a school trip to the Maritime Museum, Clover
decides to curate a collection of objects that have been sitting in the second
bedroom for years.
I love the whole premise of the book, the way Clover
goes about setting up The Museum of You and
the way you weave the story she’s discovering for herself with Darren’s. Where
did the idea come from?
I was thinking about museums.
In my town we lost both our nearest library and nearest museum (the loss of the
library was particularly galling – the building that housed it was knocked down
and whenever I drive down that road the empty space is there, like a missing
tooth). I was thinking about objects and the stories they tell. I’d been to the
Titanic Exhibition at Merseyside Maritime Museum and I was fascinated by a
display case containing some of the personal effects that had been found at the
bottom of the sea. I started to think about curation and what, if anything, we
can learn about people from their possessions.
It’s always so excellent when a book is set somewhere
you’re familiar with so I loved that Museum
of You was set in my neck of the woods – Rivington Pike (about a ten minute
drive from my old house), Southport, Formby (which might be my favourite beach
ever). Was it a conscious decision to set the book here or did you find Clover
and Darren living on your doorstep quite by accident?
It was definitely a
deliberate decision. After Issy Bradley, I wanted to set another book in the
North West – there wasn’t a reason not to, and we have so many amazing museums
here that it was easy to set the book locally.
I can remember a pal of mine telling me about The Lawnmower Museum and thinking she was joking. Have
you ever been? What is the best museum you’ve ever visited? Or the weirdest?
I have been! I’m not that
into lawnmowers, but the stories really make the museum. I learned that James
May of Top Gear once reassembled a particular lawnmower without any
instructions. Another lawnmower was pulled by a horse that wore leather shoes
so as not to spoil the lawn. And some people like to participate in lawnmower
races (12 hour lawnmower races!). My favourite displays involved the
‘lawnmowers of the rich and famous.’ I saw Paul O’Grady’s lawnmower and Eric
Morcombe’s Dad’s lawnmower (an object
which provoked some serious giggling).
I used to love the Botanic
Gardens museum which was close to our house. It was closed in the recent
government cuts. The best bit was the taxidermy room which was full of
interesting birds and mammals.
Dagmar. Oh my heart. Talk to me about Dagmar please
because I love her, I love her just as much as I love Clover. I actually did
contemplate just sending a one question interview that just said ‘Dagmar?’ I want to know about her background and about
her friendship with Clover and about what her life was like when she wasn’t
with Clover but most of all I just want to know she’s okay.
Dagmar moved to England from
the Czech Republic when she was 10. She had a hard time in year 6 at the primary
school she attended and she has been having a hard time during her first year
of high school too: children call her Dracula and make fun of her accent. Her
dad was in the Czech army and experienced some awful things and her mum works
long hours in a hotel. Dagmar has had a horrible couple of years, but now that
she and Clover are friends, things are looking up for her.
And also Mrs. Mackerel. Is she somebody you know, or
did you completely make her up? I’m not even sure which I would prefer. She’s
fab by the way. Laugh out loud funny.
I made Mrs Mackerel
up, but she was inspired by a funny notebook I inherited from my maternal
grandmother. The notebook was full of linguistic mistakes that my grandmother
had overheard and jotted down. I decided that Edna Mackerel would make similar
mistakes and I started keeping a notebook of my own, writing down funny things
I overheard in order to use them in the novel.
Some of the funny things in
my grandmother’s notebook came from one of her colleagues at work (she was a
teacher).
They included:
“I’m saying this with my
tongue in my mouth.”
“There’s a pair of knickers
here. I’ve had them on my hands for a fortnight.”
“These three have hit the
headlights.”
My own notebook included
things my children said:
“I’m just twisting your leg,
Mum.”
“He was an “escape goat.”
“It was a racist Shloer.”
The book kind
of made me want an allotment; it felt like a kind of catharsis for Darren and
for Clover, the allotment – a place they could just go to and be and I love the idea of that. Do you
have one?
I do have one and I love it.
In 2015 we didn’t need to buy any potatoes or onions for the whole year, which
felt very satisfying. I’d love to get better at growing more exciting things
like sweetcorn and spinach; that’s my goal this year.
The Museum of You is a
different story entirely to your first novel A Song for Issy Bradley although they both deal with loss and grief
and the strength of love &your book Sweet
Home is a short story collection so a different thing entirely. Which of
the books did you find easiest to write, and why?
I loved writing A Song for Issy Bradley because there
wasn’t any pressure. I didn’t know if the novel would ever be published and I
didn’t think about how it would be received. I just wrote it, and really
enjoyed myself in the process. Writing The
Museum of You was a very different experience from writing Sweet Home and A Song for Issy Bradley. I knew quite early on in the process that The Museum of You was going to be
published which meant that I was working to a deadline and hoping that people
who enjoyed my other books would like it. As a result, the process felt quite
different.
And is the answer to that question the same as the
answer to ‘which is your favourite’ and if not because I’m just a little bit
mean, which is your favourite? &
I hope that doesn’t make you feel like I’m asking you to choose a favourite
child!
Oh, I don’t know! Perhaps
Issy Bradley because it was the first book to find a wide range of readers and
the one that made me feel like it was okay to begin to describe myself as a
writer.
If The Museum of
You 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? *cough*A Dagmar
and Clover scene*cough*
The special features would
include a few deleted scenes. There was a parent’s evening scene during which
Clover attempted to set Darren up with her English teacher. It was pretty
excruciating! And there was a scene during which Darren almost thumped someone
in a staff training exercise.
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?
I type everything. I like
being able to go back and delete things or move them around by copying and
pasting text. I work in both loud and quiet places, although I do prefer things
to be quiet, if possible. I try to work while my children are at school, but I
also work in the evenings and, occasionally, during the night.
What’s next for you? What are you working on now?
I’m working on a new novel
about a marriage that goes wrong when one partner starts to believe that the
world is ending.
What’s the best writing tip you’ve been given?
Read lots. I think it’s
really important to read while thinking about what works and what doesn’t. It’s
also very enjoyable!
& because I’m always on the look out for new book
recommendations, what are you reading right now?
At the moment I’m reading Modern Lovers by Emma Straub. It’s very
entertaining.
& what’s the best book you’ve read this year?
I recently read Jenn
Ashworth’s fourth novel, Fell. It’s
creepy and disturbing, a haunting evocation of regret, redress and the kindness
of strangers, and it’s not quite like anything I’ve read before. It will be
published in July 2016.
If you want to read The Museum of You (and you should because it's glorious) then you can grab a copy here.
