Hope Road by John
Barlow
95p | $1.50 | £2.22
| $2.99
John Barlow was born in
Leeds, West Yorkshire, but now lives in Spain. He won the Paris
Review Discovery/Plimpton Prize for his first published work, and
since then has published fiction with HarperCollins and non-fiction
with FSG. His books have been translated into six languages. His
website is at: http://www.johnbarlow.net/
Can
you sum up Hope Road in no more than 25 words?
HOPE
ROAD is a psychological mystery. It’s about the son of a career
criminal who’s been ‘straight’ all his life, but who gets
involved in a murder investigation.
What's unique about
it?
It’s
an amateur sleuth story with a police procedural
running in parallel. But I’ve also tried to explore the way that
crime affects human relationships, in particular the relationship
between the sleuth (the son of a career criminal) and his girlfriend
(a young police detective). That’s the ‘psychological’ element,
a term I adopted after an early review pointed out the
character-driven nature of the book.
What are your
expectations for the book?
My
aim is to take the crime family at the centre of the novel and write
a whole series of novels. It’s set in
Leeds, and I’ve had some very gratifying comments about how I’ve
evoked that city. My dearest hope is that someone will say, ‘It’s
a bit like Kate Atkinson’s STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG, but
grittier, and it delves a bit deeper into the soul.’
What
did you learn while writing it?
On
the practical crime side I learned two main
things. First, I discovered that my uncle John had been an arms
dealer, and was found dead on a flight from Amsterdam with his throat
cut. The UK police were after him for the theft of munitions from the
British army, and he was suspected of various other arms-related
crimes. That, of course, partly explains why I am so interested in
the issue of crime and families... Then, I was lucky to get a contact
which eventually led me to a real money counterfeiter (HOPE ROAD
involves a subplot about fake money). That was really great research.
Do
you bear the reader in mind when you're writing? If so, how does that
affect the way you write?
I
try and write in such a way that the reader never notices that
there’s an author there. I want to story
to be told as naturally as possible. I do loads of rewrites, each one
trying to make the prose simpler and smoother. I try and become a
reader every time I return to the text, coming at it from different
angles, re-reading in different ways.
Can
you provide a youtube link to a song you'd like to be the title track
to the movie adaptation of your book?
And So It Goes, by
Billy Joel
...so I will choose to
be with you
As if the choice were
mine to make
For you can make
decisions too
And you can have this
heart to break.
And so it goes and so
it goes
And you're the only one
who knows...
HOPE ROAD is really
about why we lie to those who love us most. It’s about the pain but
also the normalcy of deception. A love story, I guess. ‘And So It
Goes’ perfectly captures the underlying melancholy of the main
character.
Who
would you like to direct the film adaptation?
Michael Winterbottom
To
what extent do you view writing as a business?
It’s
my job. I write my own books, and I also
work as a ghost-writer (financial thriller at the moment!). In
addition, I do some journalism and also work as an academic editor
and occasional translator. So, one way and another writing is my only
business. Writing my own fiction is special, though; I could stop all
the other stuff tomorrow, but not my own writing.
How
much do you read?
I
read and/or write all day, every day. The
only respite is that I do the occasional feature for a food magazine,
and these involve travelling to report on some food producer or
other. Reading for pleasure? Less that I used to, but a fair bit.
More crime than anything at the moment.
What
are your ambitions for the next year?
I
aim to finish the follow-up novel to HOPE ROAD, which will explore
the background to my uncle’s arms dealing activities more deeply. I
also have a YA novel. I’m probably going to sign with an ambitious
new e-publisher for the YA book, which will be a new and exciting
departure for me.
What are your
long-term ambitions?
My
primary aim is to see how the ebook market develops and to try and
position myself somewhere within it. One
way or another, I’ll be staring at a screen all day, that’s for
sure!
Hope
Road by John Barlow
95p | $1.50 | £2.22
| $2.99
