PenguinReaders' Group
 

Featured Author

Click here to read more about Karen Maitland

This months Featured Author, Karen Maitland, answers questions from newbooks magazine readers. The full interview and reviews can be see on their website, www.newbooksmag.com, Issue 43. The website also has subscription details.

Q: Have you ever told a necessary lie and did this influence your choice of theme for this group of travellers?

A: I was working in a hospital in Belfast at the height of ‘the troubles’. A man was admitted to a side ward for treatment. Later, a young couple approached me saying they were trying to find a friend of theirs and naming this man. But I had an uneasy feeling they weren’t intending to give him a get well card, so I lied about who was in the room. I later discovered they were armed and planning to shoot him. Incidents like that did influence the theme of the novel.

Q: The tales the individual travellers told have echoes of fairy tales, legends and myths swirling around them. As you grew up did this type of story influence you and perhaps lead to your ideas for the novel?

A: When I was a child a teacher read us the ancient story of The Six Swans. When the story ended, I asked what happened to the boy who was left with one wing. The teacher told me angrily that wasn’t the point of the story, but I worried about him and spent weeks trying to do things with one hand to see how he’d manage. I always read the myths and folk tales of any town or country I visit, because they tell you so much about the character of the place and people. Traditional myths and fairy tales contain great truths, more so than ‘real-life’ stories, so I wanted to use that style of storytelling in the novel, because a deep truth can be concealed in a fantasy story, even though the story itself is a lie.

Q: Which do you feel is more important in the novel? History or myth?

A: Both. One of the things that fascinate me about the medieval period is that people then didn’t divide things into ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ in the way we do. They made no distinction between religion and science. Angels and demons, basilisks and witches were all part of everyday life. The Church believed in werewolves as much as it did in God. The great men of science and engineering also practiced alchemy and divination. Warriors would plan battles based equally on sound military tactics and on good omens. What we now call myth is as much part of the history of the Middle Ages as bad sanitation or great cathedrals.

Q: With such a large cast of characters, all with their own story to tell, how difficult was it keeping to the first person narration and yet giving everyone a voice?

A: A first person narrator is regarded as the unreliable narrator, so since the novel is about lies, it seemed natural to use a first person narrative style. But before I began the novel I wrote detailed plots and back-stories separately for each character, trying to imagine I was telling only that character’s story, then wove them together. Whilst writing the novel, I would often hot-seat a character and get them to tell me about themselves in their own words to ensure I was listening to their voice. But of course, everything then must be filtered through Camelot’s perception, so the other characters might have told the story of the journey itself very differently.

Q: As an author you have the ability to create people and situations, does this make you an expert liar?

A: As a child you get punished for making up stories, as an adult you get rewarded for it. Storytellers are probably the better liars since they have to convincingly speak the lies in front of an audience. I think poets and romance writers must be the most expert liars of the literary world. But any story or poem is only half written by the author; the other half is created by the individual reader from their own unique imagination and experiences. A novel is a joint collaboration between writer and reader. So if authors are good liars, then I think readers must be too.

Q: Are you superstitious? If so, are there any rituals you perform before putting pen to paper?

A: I read my horoscope in the papers, but if I don’t like my own that day, I pick one of the others, which I think may be cheating. I don’t know if it’s a superstition, but I never talk about a story, except to mention the basic subject, until the first draft is fully written. I don’t worry the idea will be stolen; rather it’s that I fear if I speak it, I won’t be able to write it. Before beginning a new story, I always spend time trying, and failing, to tidy my office, but that may not be so much a superstition as a pathetic excuse to put off starting work.