Image – Neil Bennet

Your debut novel ‘If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things’ was a spectacular critical success, winning several prizes, longlisted for the Booker, and acclaimed by numerous big names in the world of literature. In what ways did its success change your life?

Actually, the only way it changed my life on a day-to-day level was financially - and that was a huge change. I gave up the day job within months of ‘If Nobody Speaks’ being published (I say 'day job'; I'd only ever had a series of part-time and/or casual jobs, and they were mostly evening shifts...) and although I wouldn't say I suddenly started living the champagne lifestyle I did stop checking my balance every time I went to the cash machine. And that was a massive change, and something I'd never anticipated.

But really the bigger change for me was in my expectations and my perception of my life. I think I'd always had a romantic/heroic image of the struggling misunderstood writer, eking out an existence in the margins of critical appreciation and maybe finally breaking through six or seven books down the line. And the thing is, I was ready for that, and I was under no illusions that being published was a route to riches and fame. And then the book came out and people liked it, and people seemed to get it, and people paid money for it in relatively large numbers. So I wasn't ready for that and it kind of took a while to make the mental adjustment. But the thing is, it was fun for a few months and then it all died down and no-one could remember my name again. So it was okay.

Another thing it changed though was that it made me more cynical about critics and buzz and all that - because actually I thought some of the things people were saying about the book were a bit silly; over the top, or just ignoring some of the flaws, and so that made me able to take it all with a pinch of salt.

Another thing that changed was my sense of critical self-awareness, and a sense of self-consciousness about being A Writer - suddenly this activity which had been private and secretive was out in the open, and people were talking about it, and asking me about it, and revealing expectations of me which I didn't think I could, or would want to live, up to.

But yeah, mostly it was the money.

In my opinion the first chapter of ‘If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things’ is one of the most startlingly vivid and original first chapters I've ever read. I have the feeling that the first chapter began as a poem or a shorter piece, and then grew into a novel. Is my hunch accurate, or completely misguided? How did the novel take shape and what inspired you to write in such a unique style?

No, you're mostly wrong I'm afraid. I actually wrote that first chapter once everything else was done, when I realised I needed a prologue. I already had a much shorter piece which followed the same flow of a city dawn, a circling around the landscape, a focusing down to the couple dancing and then bringing them back to the street; but once the rest of the book was done I realised the piece needed to be much longer, and have more of a thematic sense, and serve as a kind of opening statement for the novel (a kind of old-fashioned storyteller's 'come here and pay close attention' if you like).

The novel started with the last chapter actually. I'd wanted to write something around that street for a long time (I mean any street like that, the archetypal inner-city terraced street), and in fact lots of the book started life as fragments of short stories I was trying to write which were going to be grouped by being set on the street. But it was only once I came up with the central image of that last chapter that I knew I had a narrative hook on which to hang the rest of the fairly plotless story.

I never know how to answer questions about style. I'm always struggling to write at all, and I find I can only keep from throwing stuff away if it comes out in a way which feels fresh or new or alive or engaging or intriguing or heartstopping in some sense. Which is rare, of course, but I keep trying. But I don't know what style has to do with that.

One of the consistent themes in both your novels seems to be the many ways in which people deal with displacement, both geographical and emotional (as a Scot resident in the Netherlands and married to a Pole I'm particularly sympathetic). Having spent your early childhood in Bermuda before moving to the UK, do you personally identify with this sense of displacement? Did you grow up feeling English or did you always have a sense that you came from other places too?

I only lived in Bermuda for five months, so there was no genuine sense of displacement really. But still, growing up in an environment (Norfolk) where everyone else had been born there, and their parents mostly had, and their grandparents mostly lived round the corner, it did make me feel very very slightly 'other'.

But actually it was more when I got to university (in Bradford) and found people with very strong senses of regional identity - Yorkshire, Lancashire, Newcastle, Wales, etc etc, and then beyond that all the different national and cultural groups - that I started to find it very awkward to answer the question "where are you from?" And although it was only ever a very minor unease, it did get me very interested in this question of identity and origin and roots and settlement and displacement and etc etc.

I like the Scottish way of asking it actually; "Where do you stay?" instead of the English "Where do you live?". The word stay in this context seems to acknowledge a transience, which I think is nice. Although actually the word stay means the opposite of transient, so that's weird...

In your second novel, ‘So Many Ways to Begin’, protagonist David Carter curates an exhibition in Coventry's museum called 'Refugees, Migrants, New Arrivals.' While researching the exhibition he talks to Coventry residents originally from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Poland, the Ukraine, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India and rural and industrial England. There is an impression that almost everybody in Coventry originally comes from somewhere else, and that the bombings that destroyed the city in WW2 have necessitated the arrival of a new age, one where multiculturalism is central to British identity. Did you intentionally set out to explore what 'Britishness' means? What is your view on the immigration debate currently dominating the UK media, and how do you see the concept of Britishness developing in the coming years?

I kind of think a lot of the recent debate on "Britishness" is a bit fruitless to be honest. All this anguished talk about 'what is the British identity?' usually gets a bit abstract and daft - 'fairplay' often gets mentioned, as if those crazy continentals can't manage it, or 'a sense of humour', oddly - and sooner or later someone mentions warm beer and the crack of willow. It doesn't seem important. What seems more important is that different cultures be enabled to flourish here, as they always have, and that barriers to trust and co-operation get dismantled. As Rodney King once said, "um, can't we all just... get along?"

Having said that, one of my reasons for setting the book in Coventry was to try and explore immigration as part of this wider narrative of new beginnings - to show that immigration goes much further back than the post-war commonwealth immigration; the huge numbers of Irish emigrants, predominantly, but also Scots and Welsh and people from other parts of the country moving around to find work and to find a better life for themselves and their families: it's always been part of this country's story, and Coventry seemed like a microcosm of that. And you know, migration was one of the big things I wanted to write about with this book - I kind of translated it into the theme of new beginnings, but then the two things are interchangeable. In all the so-called debate about immigration people seem to forget what a core part of the human story migration is; that it's something which has always been with us and is in fact central to humanity's surviving and flourishing. This was kind of brought home to me a couple of years ago when I happened to meet a succession of Americans, and it dawned on me that most Americans have an immigration story in their family history, often a recent one, usually a deeply moving and heroic/harrowing one and that you only have to think about this for a minute to realise why Americans take their flag so seriously; because for all it's many many flaws the US represents, in these narratives, escape and freedom and peace and new life. Ellis Island and all that. Which is a big deal, and something we don't have or don't recognise in this country.

Your family history is clearly something that fascinates you and feeds into your work. In your piece for the Guardian ('The anchor that couldn't hold him', July 29, 2006) you touch on the ways in which the story of your grandfather 'shadows almost every page' of ‘So Many Ways To Begin’. Have you traced your family tree? Are there any other stories from your own family >history that you think you might write about one day?

I haven't traced the tree, no, although I think my cousin is. Funnily enough though, a woman in Coventry who helped me a lot with my research (a close friend's mother in fact) has been tracing her family tree, and has discovered that her grandfather worked in the same shipyard as my grandfather's family in Sunderland, came from the same part of Scotland, and ended up living in the same street. Which, you know, what are the chances and all that.

As for other family stories, actually I've used most of them up already - alzheimer's / senility, depression, Not Getting Divorced For Fifty Flipping Years, cutting yourself off from your family, and other stuff. I'll need to look further afield now.

Scotland provides an important backdrop in both of your novels, and you explore the 'otherness'of Scotland as viewed through the eyes of English characters. Your grandmother is Scottish, and as a McGregor you can lay claim to membership of the most infamously lawless clan in Scottish history. Can you give us some background on your Scottish links, and the ways in which they have influenced the setting and subject matter of your work?

Yeah, I just wish I was Scottish. Then at least I'd have a sense of identity. My links? Well, I could probably play for Scotland - my grandmother was from Dumfries. The McGregor name left Scotland I think four generations ago, to work in the Sunderland shipyards. I ended up writing about Aberdeen by mistake though. My grandmother died while I was writing my first book, and at her funeral I took a cord when we lowered the coffin: it was the first time I'd come across this tradition, which I thought was incredibly powerful, and so I wanted to write about it. Therefore the funeral in the first book needed to be in Scotland, and I picked Aberdeen out of the map for no reason other than it sounded far away. So when the new novel turned out to feature the same character from ’If Nobody Speaks’ I was forced to actually go and do some research. But I guess sub-consciously I was interested in writing something set in Scotland as well, maybe by way of exploring this other person I might have been. Which ties in to the whole identity thing again.

Your two novels overlap in that the main characters attend the funeral of an elderly woman in Aberdeen. It's not explicit, but it seems that the nameless first person narrator in ‘If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things’ could in fact be Kate, the daughter of the main protagonist in ‘So Many Ways to Begin’. Do you see the two novels as interlinked, or is this overlap just incidental? And where does your interest in Aberdeen stem from?

Oh, I've just answered that I think. The overlap is deliberate, in that I wanted to write about Eleanor and Kate - their relationship in ‘If Nobody Speaks’ felt like unfinished business somehow - and especially about Eleanor and where she was from. But I tried to ensure the two books weren't interlinked; I certainly didn't want the latter to be seen as a sequel at all, and in some ways tried to hide the connection. But most people have spotted it all the same. The Aberdeen thing was arbitrary, as I've explained above, although it actually fitted very nicely with Coventry - the industrial past (shipbuilding, carbuilding), the industrial decline, the disparaging terms in which they're both spoken of by other people, the strong sense of history... it felt like there were lots of connections.

As somebody who was longlisted for the Booker Prize at the tender age of 26, what advice would you give to aspiring young (and not so young) novelists?

Oh boy. Okay. Everyone is different, so advice is a bit tricky to give, but I have boiled it down to a few key things that worked for me.

- Get on with it. Don't be making excuses, waiting for inspiration, waiting until you can take a sabbatical from work, waiting until you've sorted out a proper desk in the spare room, waiting until you've bought a new laptop. It takes ages to write a novel, and even longer to make it readable, so get on with it and keep going.

- Don't have a job that gets in the way. Full-time jobs are a mistake, as are jobs which require any thinking or writing or decision making. I realise this advice is pretty useless to anyone other than the young and childless and fancy-free, but hey, it worked for me. If your job does get in the way then see the advice above and don't make excuses.

- Read more. Lots more. Don't get hung up on influence and finding your own voice; if you read widely and deeply enough then no one influence will dominate. Hopefully.

- When you think you're ready to send your work off then wait another six months. Don't get obsessed with the ins and outs of who and where and how to submit your work; find a few names you think might be interested (agents, editors) and send them short samples. People always go on about publishing being a closed shop, but it's not. If your work is good enough then it will eventually get through to the right person.

- Keep going.

You mention in another interview that your next novel is going to be 'uglier.' Can you give us an idea of what it's going to be about?

Not really. I prefer to keep things pretty quiet while I'm working. Did I say 'uglier'? Hmm. Darker, certainly. Rawer, hopefully. Maybe ugly. A departure of sorts, I guess. If I can make it work. I'm pretty excited about it - it's good to be back at the beginning of a project again.

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Neil Cocker was born in Falkirk in 1972, and grew up in a variety of Scottish towns and villages. He likes to think of himself as attractive and erudite, but the truth is he has ginger sideburns and talks mostly about the reintroduction of national service. He has worked as a teacher in Lithuania, a dishwasher in the US, a book reviewer in Australia, and now lives in the Netherlands, where he works for a whisky company. He has been published in ‘Original Sins’ (Canongate Prize anthology 2001), ’New Writing Scotland 21’, and will be featured again in the forthcoming ’New Writing Scotland 23’. He has almost finished writing a novel set in Lithuania entitled ‘The Vodka Angels,’ which is about an obsessive compulsive Scot teaching English (badly) in a Jewish ghost town. It also concerns, amongst other things, the vanished Lithuanian community in Scotland, the transcendental qualities of Scottish heavy metal, and the philosophical dilemmas that pop up when you wipe your arse on the works of Dostoevsky. To read a selection of his writing on the showcase section of this site, click here.

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© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.