|
The Characters of Love
I began The Characters of Love while studying for an MA at London
University in Anglo American Literary Relations. At the time I
was fascinated by the idea of obsessions, to put it mildly. A
lot of the people in my life seemed obsessive by nature and I
myself was rather obsessed with the poet John Berryman whose works
I read and analysed every day as I was writing a thesis on him
at University. (To see some of my thoughts about Berryman please
refer to I wish I'd Written in the journalism section of this
website.) It seemed to me at this point that obsessive thinking
about something often occurs when one is trying very hard not
to think about something else which is more painful. The trouble
is that the new obsession can often become even more agonising
than the original thing that it was designed to mask. This is
a key element in understanding addiction which is a topic I explored
more fully in The Last Hope of Girls and The Normal Man.
I also wanted The Characters of Love to have a flavour of the
claustrophobia and lack of privacy I had experienced in Oxford
. It seemed to me that it was impossible to have any sort of feeling
in Oxford without someone observing you, judging you and mocking
or pitying you. I found this intolerable.
It was always my plan that The Characters of Love would have
lots of different kinds of writing in it. As well as the heroine's
own poems and letters, there are book reviews, psychoanalytic
theories, academic work, pop songs, the hero's ex wife's autobiography-
all made up by me!
The Characters of Love was the book I have most enjoyed writing.
It all came very easily and the success of The Normal Man had
given me more confidence in my writing. I used to sit in the University
Library finish writing my essay on John Berryman or preparing
for a seminar on Henry James, pop out for an omelette and peas
at Sidoli's Buttery off Tottenham Court Road and then as a treat
in the early evenings I would work at my novel. I thought my life
was just about perfect.
When almost all of The Characters of Love was written in the
summer of 1995 I realised that I had skimmed over the scenes when
the heroine is falling in love and wasn't really in the mood to
white them properly. That Autumn I fell in love with my husband
and a month later the book was completed.
|
