Tell us a little about the world of the Europe in
Autumn and how it differs from our own
Europe In Autumn is set - in Europe, oddly enough - somewhere between fifty and seventy
years from now. It’s a world where the European Union, for various reasons – a
flu pandemic, serial economic crises – has splintered and new nations have
begun to pop up everywhere. Apart from that, and some new bits of technology,
it’s really not all that different to the world we live in now.
How would you describe its genre? It's been
compared to both Le Carre and Kafka, are you happy with the comparison?
It’s enormously
flattering to be described like that. I usually have a hard time describing my
stuff to people, but as far as I’m concerned Europe In Autumn is science fiction. Although I have started
describing it as a near-future espionage thriller, because that sounds pretty
cool.
How much were the original Coureurs Des Bois an
influence?
In a way, they were
pivotal. I first heard the term in the television adaptation of James
Michener’s Centennial back in the
70s, I think, and the image of these French trappers running through the woods
stuck with me for a very long time. I originally called the Coureurs in the
book ‘Postmen,’ but that always seemed clunky and inadequate. So I renamed them
‘Coureurs,’ and there was kind of a sense of rightness, of things snapping
together. I think that was the first time I realised there might be some
mileage in the book. So yes, they were a big influence.
In my review I say that some of the ideas are Borgesian. Who would
you say are the greatest influences on your writing?
I’m certainly a fan of Borges,
although it’s been years since I read him. One of the biggest influences on my
writing has been Keith Roberts. He could be a variable writer, but at his best
– in stuff like Pavane and some of
his short stories – he captured, I thought, a uniquely English voice and sense
of landscape that I hadn’t encountered before in my reading. It was the first
time I’d realised that science fiction could be about English people – and
English people who ran cinemas and garages, at that – rather than Americans
with starships. If you asked me which science fiction writer I’d most like to
be ‘like,’ I’d have to say Roberts. I admire the hell out of his stuff and he
seems not to be talked about so much any more, which I think is a shame.
Other influences are definitely
Len Deighton and Raymond Chandler, and more pertinently for Europe In Autumn, Alan Furst, who writes
these marvellous espionage novels set around the beginning of the Second World
War. Structurally at least, and perhaps even in tone, his stuff influenced Europe In Autumm a lot.
You have a very broad canvas in the book and I especially liked how
Estonia and Poland play a large part, have you travelled extensively in that
part of Europe?
I’ve never visited Estonia but I
have been to Poland a lot. It’s sort of become my default setting for stories,
along with London and Scotland. A big chunk of my previous novel, The Villages, is set there, as well as
at least two short stories that I can think of. I love Kraków; I think it’s a
fantastic city. Gdansk – the Old Town, anyway - is pretty wonderful, too. The
food is brilliant, the people are terrific and they don’t half know how to
party.
How much research did you have to do?
Less than I did for The Villages, where I researched the
Blitz to the point of obsession. I knew some of the settings from having been
there, but I had to research the Estonian section just in order to describe it
right. Oddly enough, I was helped by the fact that it took me such a long time
to write the book; when I started, Google hadn’t been around all that long – it
certainly wasn’t the all-consuming juggernaut it is now. There was no Flickr or
Pinterest or Streetview or Wikipedia or Tumblr. If I’d tried to write the
Estonian bit back then, it might have been quite different, but as it was by
the time I got round to it the technology had caught up and the internet was
full of photos of the manor house at Palmse and stuff about the national park
and restaurant menus. I remember someone telling me that Thomas Pynchon had never
visited England before he wrote Gravity’s
Rainbow; he got all his information from guidebooks. And so did I. Best
invention for a writer ever, the internet. Although maybe Twitter wasn’t such a
great idea if you need to get things done...
If you could be a character from the book who would
it be and why?
Hahaha! Good
question. Well, it wouldn’t be Rudi; he has a terrible time, poor sod. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I
think I’d quite like to be one of the rangers in the national park in Estonia.
It sounds like a smashing place. I hope I get to visit it one day.
What are you working on right now? (apart from this
interview of course!) - <Please say the sequel will come soon....>
Right now I’m working
on...not a sequel as such, more a companion to Europe In Autumn, which gives another angle on some of the events
of the first book. That’s a lot more intentionally le Carré in tone. Over the past
couple of weeks, though, I’ve started to see how there could be a direct
sequel, although that’s still a kind of misty idea in the back of my head. I’m
also working on a detective thriller about gnomes and the nature of Reality.
What are you most proud of about the book?
I’m insanely proud of
the whole thing; I think it’s the best thing I’ve done. As I said, I wrote it,
off and on, over a very long period, and I’m delighted that it hangs together
the way it does. I did a lot of other stuff during that time, and my writing
style changed and developed, so the fact that the joins aren’t hugely visible
in the book pleases me a lot. The single part
of the book I’m most proud of, oddly enough, is the Prague chapter. I read an
article about the Czechoslovak television series The Thirty Cases Of Major Zeman about eight years ago, and sort of
mentally tagged the title for a chapter heading without having the first idea
what I was going to do with it. When it came to sit down and actually write
something, I typed the title and ‘The war started on a Thursday,’ and the whole
thing just wrote itself. I’m very pleased with the way that turned out.
I should say that no
book really happens in isolation. A friend of mine proof-read and copy-edited
the book while I was finishing it, and there are some things in it which
wouldn’t have been there without her. Myself, I don’t think I would have got it
finished at all without her help, and I will always be grateful.
Do you have a set writing process, if so what is
it? What did you learn about writing whilst writing the book?
I don’t really have
any set routine; I just sit down and write. I don’t need total silence or
isolation to do it – I used to listen to a lot of late-night talk radio while I
was writing because it made me angry and helped me concentrate – but I do need
to sort of get into a groove, tune in to what I’m doing. If I can’t do that, I
just wind up staring at the screen of my laptop sighing and shaking my head.
I’ve found that I write dreadful
stuff, unsalvageable stuff, if I try to force it. There isn’t a magic formula;
some days it clicks, some days it’s best just to mess around on Twitter and try
again tomorrow.
I find the act of
writing very hard. The bit of writing that I do enjoy is the imagining of stuff,
and that can happen anywhere, any time. Stories start in different ways – with
a title or an image or a character or a bit of dialogue – and then they cook
for a while, gradually picking up other bits and pieces, until they kind of
reach a critical mass where stuff needs to be written down. Sometimes a story
will get written sequentially, from beginning to end, but it’s more usual for
me to think up scenes and bits of dialogue out of sequence and bolt them
together. After that, there’s a variable amount of rewriting. I think I spent
two years rewriting The Villages
before it finally found a publisher and I had to stop, but I have published
short stories – and no, I’m not going to tell you which ones – which were
basically copy-edited first drafts.
I think the main
thing I learned is that I’m still learning, still getting better. Europe In Autumn is quite different
from, say, the stories in my collection As
The Crow Flies. It’s really quite startling. I’m very pleased with all
those stories, but they’re different, from another part of my life. Ten years
from now, I might be writing something as different again from Europe In Autumn. I don’t know; all I
can say for sure is that I will still be writing.
In one sentence what is your best piece of advice for
new writers?
Don’t be afraid or
embarrassed; write, and write, and write, and then write some more.
My Review
At first the genre element is very lightly done but later in the book we get to explore some very cool, almost Borgesian ideas, it has also been described as Le Carre meets Kafka which I think it deserves. I loved the fact that the really cool ideas are fully integrated with the plot and when we get to the revelation it feels natural. The Coureur organisation is quite a neat idea too, and I liked the introduction of the various special code words etc. Rudi’s induction into the organisation was very well done and the succession of rug pulling felt exciting and interesting and certainly kept me reading. My only, very minor, gripes here are to do with pacing, although I’m not a thriller reader so perhaps it’s just me but some of the set up feels a little slow, later when there are several POV changes it feels a bit like a series of resets. However the overall quality of the writing, the characterisation and the central premise are easily good enough for me to forgive this. My only real complaint is that I didn’t know if this was the first in a series and I felt a little disappointed when it ended, hoping for a sequel. Not sure that even counts as a complaint, wanting to spend more time in the world Hutchinson creates!
Overall - If you like spy thrillers, if you like alternative history, if you like SF&F I thoroughly recommend you check this out
No comments:
Post a Comment