At around the same time, I happened to be looking through some old photos that had belonged to my mother. One was of a little boy, three years old or so, sitting in a new pedal car. He’d been smartened up for the camera and looks pretty cheesed off about it. It took me a minute or so to realise that he was me. Or, rather, that I had once been him.
In 1962, when he and I were the same teenager, the world suddenly seemed to be on the brink of all-out nuclear war. I was extremely annoyed about it at the time. It didn’t seem at all fair that I’d be turned into radioactive ash before my life had really got going. There were things I wanted to do before I died. Several of these things involved girls.
Then it occurred to me that explosions – real or feared – had played a significant part in my life.
I’d never before wanted to write anything autobiographical. I’d always thought that if I did I’d feel pressured to tell the truth, and not know how to. Besides, my memory isn’t what it was.
So I invented Clem Ackroyd and told his story instead.
The novel has a long time-line. The whole of the 20th century and a bit more, in fact. But the core of the story is the summer and autumn of 1962. Seventeen year-old Clem is conducting a feverish love affair with sixteen year-old Francoise Mortimer. There are all sorts of reasons why he shouldn’t be. He’s a working-class boy from a council estate; she’s the only daughter of an enormously wealthy landowner who also happens to be Clem’s father’s employer. His parents, Ruth and George, and his Bible-thumping grandmother, Win, share a morbid fear of anything to do with sex. Her parents are ferocious snobs. Clem’s family are Protestant, hers Roman Catholic. So Frankie and Clem are constantly searching for secret places to be together and in constant fear of being discovered. They do eventually find a safe and private place; but soon afterwards, US President John F. Kennedy goes on TV and announces that he’s discovered the Soviet Union has installed nuclear missiles on Cuba, and he won’t stand for it. Over the following two weeks, Russia and America edge towards the ultimate war. Clem and Frankie feel an urgent need to Go All the Way before the world does and are hurried towards their fate. Clem Ackroyd isn’t me; his family, his school, his life aren’t mine. But as I worked on the novel I couldn’t help noticing some striking resemblances. Mostly, though, I managed to avoid the truth. I was worried that the shades of my mother, father, and grandmother – not to mention Frankie – might be reading over my shoulder.
Life: An Exploded Diagram is out now! Watch the trailer below...
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Michelle Fluttering Butterflies
This book sounds really interesting and after that first sentence of this post I had a huge smile on my face :)Post a Comment