The Interview: Bookbag Talks To Angela Young

Sue thought that Speaking of Love was one of the most compelling pictures of mental illness which she'd read. There was quite a lot to talk about when author Angela Young popped into Bookbag Towers to chat to us.

• Bookbag: When you close your eyes and imagine your readers, who do you see?

The Interview: Bookbag Talks To Angela Young

Summary: Sue thought that Speaking of Love was one of the most compelling pictures of mental illness which she'd read. There was quite a lot to talk about when author Angela Young popped into Bookbag Towers to chat to us.

Date: 4 November 2013

Interviewer: Sue Magee

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Angela Young: I see women, mostly, of all ages, from teenage and twenty-something young women to grey-haired older women like myself. But I also see several men of varying ages, men who wear corduroy trousers, woolly sweaters and glasses (don't ask me why that's the image, it just is!). And perhaps the occasional curious young man.

• BB: What inspired you to write Speaking of Love?

AY: When I was a child my mother suffered two nervous breakdowns and although I can't remember her breaking down – I've buried the experiences so deep that I've never been able to remember exactly what happened – much later, when I was an adult, I witnessed a full-blown breakdown (not my mother's) and it terrified me. I couldn't stop thinking about it, couldn't stop reliving the events, couldn't get out of my mind the fact that the person I thought I knew had changed beyond recognition and yet looked more or less the same. And I realised much much later, that that experience had tapped into my 'forgotten' experience of my mother's breakdowns. Subsequently whenever I saw anyone behaving in the least oddly I became fearful and jumpy but, after living with my fear for some years, I realised that other people didn't react in the same frightened way I did, so I had to face the fact that my feelings and reactions came from inside me and were not directly caused by what was happening outside me. And so, because I have always loved fiction and always read and written, I began to write SPEAKING of LOVE to try to unravel my fear and to see what I might discover. And what I discovered, eventually, was what Vivie discovers in the book which is that I thought madness, for want of a better word, in any degree, was contagious, just the way 'flu is contagious. I thought that if I witnessed madness in any form I would catch it and I would be lost. But when at last I realised that, I also realised that although to an extent it's true: living as a child with an at-times unreliable mother was frightening and I did wonder what was real and what was not and what unpredictable thing would happen next and would I be able to hold onto myself, I also came to understand that that experience was not part of my adult life and, eventually, I understood that witnessing madness would not make me mad myself. Then the fear began to let go of me and I began to let go of it.

• BB: I have had experience of living with mental illness - and I know that you've conveyed it perfectly. How did you manage to do that?

AY: Thank you. I think I've probably answered this question in the question above … my own fear of going mad fuelled my imagination as I wrote SPEAKING of LOVE and I gave both Iris and Vivie parts of those fears and the situations that those fears inspired … and, for instance, the scene when the psychiatrist dances with Iris, was a scene I witnessed when I was present at an admission (not my mother's, nor my own) to a mental institution. Also, I spent some years in therapy and – I hope – that as I grew to understand myself I became better at understanding the human psyche in general and I realised that the things that frightened me would not be unlike the things that frighten many of us. I also did much research: I read – the bibliography at the back of the novel lists the books that taught me the most – and I talked to schizophrenics, one of whom told me that it was just as frightening suffering from the illness as it is to witness it. I also talked to people who care for those with mental illness – at Bethlem, particularly, and at MIND – and I spoke to people who were resident at Bethlem. And I read novels that treated madness or altered mental states and I watched movies, Girl, Interrupted (film) and A Beautiful Mind (film) in particular.

• BB: I loved the way that you introduced the storytelling tradition and the stories you used really added to the plot. Is this something which is close to your heart?

AY: Storytelling is very close to my heart for the same reason that I think oral stories touch so many of us. Our literature was oral before it was written, both in terms of the literature of the world and in our own personal lives: people listened to stories before they were written down and when we were children we – if we were lucky – had stories read to us. It is the most precious gift to hear a story: there is love in the telling, I feel. And, as Hugh Lupton, from whom I've quoted in SPEAKING of LOVE, says, [ http://www.angelfire.com/folk/hughlupton/interview.htm here]: It was a Burmese storyteller called Beulah Candappa who observed: 'The written word goes from the eye to the brain, the spoken word goes from the ear to the heart'. I don't know what the neurologists would say about that, but to me it comes close to the mark. And I wholeheartedly agree with him and Candappa. And, of course, the telling of our own stories – in some cases to a therapist – is the way we make sense of our own lives, the way we re-member ourselves and discover what we need to do next. Rachmaninov's therapist, Dr Dahl – also quoted from in SPEAKING of LOVE – persuaded Rachmaninov that he could write himself well. I think that's true. I also think we can read ourselves well, or, in the case of oral stories, listen ourselves well with the right stories at the right times in our lives.

• BB: The use of colour and scent added greatly to my enjoyment of the book. What prompted you to use these?

AY: That's so interesting … it wasn't conscious. But I wanted to convey the way laburnum flowers smelled and I think smell is a very difficult thing to convey in words. It can only really be done in simile. And both colour and smell are important to me in my own life … perhaps I used them – this has only just occurred to me – because they are vivid signs of life and hope, because when I'm drawn to and notice vivid colours and sense glorious scents I feel vibrant and alive. Also they're beautiful things and – again this has only just occurred to me – perhaps I made much of them to counterbalance the more difficult and dark aspects of the novel.

• BB: You began writing in - shall we say - upper middle age. What convinced you to do it?

AY: Actually I've always written but – except for short pieces – my work wasn't published until I was 56. Writing is less of a conviction and more of a vocation. I feel better when I'm writing. I'm a nicer person when I'm writing and I feel bereft, a terrible sadness fills me, if I'm not writing. So I must write. I agree with Jeanette Winterson who said once: Writing is what I'm for.

• BB: Where and how do you write?

AY: At home in my study at the top of the house. At a computer (writing by hand takes too long, much as I love it). And every day, although the amount of time varies depending on whether I'm imagining or editing.

• BB: How long did it take you to write Speaking of Love?

AY: Roughly seven years. It was my first novel so I was discovering how to do it as well as actually doing it. And – like most writers – I was working at a day job as well.

• BB: Is reading important to you? What are you reading at the moment and what would be your desert island book?

AY: Yes. Fiction – which is 99% of my reading – takes me into other people's worlds and shows me the way human beings are – sometimes better than life itself – because, I think, when I read fiction there's time to contemplate what I'm reading. So often in life contemplation and recognition only come long after I've behaved in a way I'd rather not have behaved. Fiction has been a haven, and a place where I've learned about people and recognised things about myself and understood them.

I'm reading Michelle Bailat-Jones's translation of BEAUTY on EARTH by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz which is extraordinary in the way that he draws the reader in by making her – almost – a character. I'm also reading A SUITABLE BOY by Vikram Seth with year-long book group dovegreyreader scribbles year-long book group and I'm catching up on Granta's 2013 Best of Young British Novelists 4: goodness me some of them are SO good.

My desert island book: it's horrible to have to choose just one but I think it must be PRIDE and PREJUDICE by Jane Austen. Her revolutionary use of free indirect style, her gentle wit and acute characterisation and observation; her understanding of our human hearts in all our foolishness and all our desire to understand and become better human beings is glorious.

• BB: You've got one wish. What's it to be?

AY: To live long enough and well enough to write fiction for many many many more years.

• BB: What's next for Angela Young?

AY: My second novel, THE DANCE of LOVE, about the difficulty of marrying for love in aristocratic Edwardian England, a society that made marriages from mergers of land and title rather than affairs of the heart, will be published next summer (July, 2014) by Robert Hale. And now I'm writing my third novel which is called FOR the LOVE of LIFE and is about an angel who accidentally falls in love with a human being.

• BB:

You can read more about Angela Young here and at her website.

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