On War Crimes for the Home

War Crimes for the Home joins the ranks of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong and Louis de Bernieres’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin in setting personal stories against the backdrop of the World Wars. Do you think this genre of fiction reflects a need for contemporary novelists to capture the wartime experience before the death of those who survived the period?

All of us whose parents lived through the war are aware that we will probably never experience anything like it, in terms of drama, danger, excitement, grief, patriotism, heroism, and — on the Home Front — sheer stoicism and resourcefulness. We grew up on war stories and war movies, and there’s still a fascination with World War Two in our culture which does suggest that we need to keep telling that story, and re-fuelling the nostalgia of that generation.

But I didn’t actually plan to write a novel set in wartime. I began with the character of Gloria, and the Home Front backdrop developed from her memories. She is very ignorant about the politics of war. She’s a simple, ordinary, selfish character, who doesn’t have a so-called 'good war' like so many did. She has a small, domestic, messy, not very good war - like the bulk of British women. That’s what I wanted to explore, rather than the big themes of war — though they are there too, at the edges of Gloria’s consciousness.

Do you think of War Crimes for the Home as a love story?

Yes, I’d call it a dark love story. What makes it dark is that the love is mixed up with all sorts of other things like hate, and jealousy, and greed, and lust, and motherhood. It’s also a mystery which contains elements of the psychological thriller.

Gloria is such a lively, well-drawn character. Is she based on anyone or is she a pure figment of your imagination?

I think when writers create characters, they are like actors 'trying out' different personalities. I love Gloria, because she’s much more outspoken and earthy than me; I rather envy her that. But we have things in common. She loves the things I love — sex and jokes and food especially — but basically most of Gloria is invention. If I met her, I’d probably give her quite a wide berth, because she’d drive me mad. I quite sympathise with her son and daughter-in-law.

The use of jokes as a linking device throughout the novel is inspired. Did this arise as a result of your research in that you found that jokes were a mainstay of the period reflecting a need to laugh in the face of adversity, or did it arise in the creation of Gloria’s character?

It arose because I love jokes. I love to laugh, and the British sense of humour is one of the few things that makes me feel patriotic about my country. However, there was another reason for including jokes. It’s a very dark story. For the darkness to work, and feel painful and poignant, it needed to be contrasted with something silly and brash. In Gloria’s darkest hour, it’s a joke she reaches for. Some of the best jokes I have heard have been at funerals. No coincidence. It’s when we need them most.

You mention in your piece on the inspiration behind the novel that research played a greater part in the writing of this book than with your earlier novels where you revel in the use of your imagination. Do you think this will affect the way you approach writing future novels?

All my novels seem to emerge in a very different way from one another, so there’s no telling. However, I can see how it might be very easy to get seduced by your research, at the expense of other things. I would never like it to get to the stage where I felt I had an obligation to tell factual truth. That’s not what fiction’s about, for me. Fiction is about telling emotional truth. So if I were forced to make a choice between writing novels that needed research and writing novels that didn’t, I’d always opt for starting with the totally blank page.

On writing

Who are your favourite authors and how have they influenced your work?

Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, and Jonathan Swift are obvious heroes for me. I love Herman Melville and Mervyn Peake. I am a big fan of Angela Carter, Rose Tremain, Gunther Grass, the early Jeanette Winterson, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and, a more recent discovery, Anne Tyler. How much I’m influenced by these writers I’m not sure, because I think that writing is all about personality, and whatever one writes, it's one’s own personality - which is by definition original and unique - that’s coming through, more than anything else. But I do know that the writers I admire — and in the case of Kurt Vonnegut, fetishise — set a kind of gold standard for me to aspire to.

What was the main influence in your deciding to become a writer?

I think the biggest influence on any novelist is reading. It was in devouring stories, as a child, that I became aware of wanting to create them too. It wasn’t even a decision that I consciously made: it was just part of what I was. My younger son loves cooking; I asked him once if he wanted to be a chef. 'But I’m already a chef!' he said. I think if someone had asked me a similar question, as a kid, about writing, I’d have responded like that.

Have you any advice for aspiring writers?

Read.

What are you reading now?

I’ve just finished a brilliant book by a young American author, Elizabeth McCracken: Niagara Falls All Over Again. It’s a beautifully written, funny, beguiling story about the straight guy in a comedy double-act, in the heyday of vaudeville. I loved it so much that I’m evangelising about it to everyone. The same goes for Sarah Waters’ magnificent Fingersmith, a perfect, gripping Victorian love story. I’m also reading Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club (every page of it makes me smile), and a wonderfully dark book of stories, Journal d’un Tueur Sentimental by the Chilean writer, Luis Sepulveda.

The media like to create genres of fiction, like 'chick lit'. What do you think characterizes your fiction?

As a writer I’m categorised as ‘difficult to categorise’, if you can call that a category — which I guess it now is. I see myself as a satirist with a heart, but heart and satire aren’t always seen as working together. But they can, and in my work, I hope they do. I am definitely not a very typically ‘girly’ writer — although I am a sucker for a love story like anyone else. To me, the fictional worlds I create really aren’t much different from the real world I know. They’re very much rooted in daily life, and the here and now. All I do is distort them very slightly.

If there was one thing you set out to achieve in your writing, how would you describe it?

Entertainment. I want to entertain my readers in all sorts of ways — by moving them, provoking them, stimulating them, amusing them, enabling them to escape, maybe making them see something in a new way. If they achieve everlasting enlightenment in the process then that’s a useful by-product of course. But it would be very grandiose to think that a state of intellectual Nirvana might be reachable, via one of Liz Jensen’s novels. Frankly. And it’s not what I’m aiming for. I am aiming for fun.

Do you enjoy writing? What stage of the process of creating a book is the most exciting and/or terrifying?

Well this is going to sound a bit banal, but the fact is, I adore it when it’s going well, and I totally loathe it when it’s going badly. I like writing the beginning most. It’s the part that requires the most work and the most re-writing too, because the early pages must draw the readers right in — otherwise you’ve lost them. I find that working out the plot is the least enjoyable part. In fact it’s a pain in the arse — pure nuts-and-bolts craftsmanship. But it has to be done. And it’s fantastic when you have a sudden breakthrough, and the thing really starts to fly.

Is there any particular ritual involved in your writing process - favourite pen, lucky charm, south facing window?

I drink a lot of coffee, and I have an elaborate coffee ritual, which enables me to leave my desk almost as soon as I have sat down at it. I find my own need for distractions while working oddly easy to forgive, and to laugh at. Like any normal human being who’s planted at a desk, I stare out of the window a lot. There’s always something in flower in my garden, and because I have a pond, there’s masses of urban wildlife — pigeons and frogs and foxes . When I’m on a roll, I write a thousand words a day. When I’m not, I still aim for that much, just to prove to myself that I am capable of self-discipline.

You have lived all over the world and worked in a number of fields ranging from radio producer to sculptor. How much of your own experience do you draw upon in your writing?

Hardly any. Although my first novel, Egg Dancing, contained some autobiographical elements, none of the others have. I think that’s for two reasons. Firstly, writing is a form of escapism, for me. In my fiction, I want to get as far away as possible from my own life. People often advise you to 'write about what you know', but I this doesn’t work for me at all; I prefer to write about what I don’t know.

Secondly, why recycle real life, when I can get something far more vivid and exciting out of my own head? The more I use my imagination, the happier I am.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever written?

My new novel, War Crimes for the Home. (And I am not just saying it because it’s the latest and I want everyone to buy it. Though of course I do want everyone to buy it.) Funnily enough, it was also the book that came easiest to me. I’m still trying to work out that connection.

Are you writing another novel? Can you give us a clue as to what it’s about?

I’m a bit superstitious about discussing work in progress. So all I’ll say is that the working title is Coma Republic, and it’s set in France and the subconscious.