‘I like you, DC Waterhouse.’

He flinches in response to my smile.  Anyone would think I’d hurled a snake across the room at him. 

‘Your alibi checks out, so I know you didn’t kill Damon,’ he says.  ’I don’t see why you can’t tell me the truth.  It won’t go any further.’

‘Thank you.’  Kind of him to promise me that when he doesn’t need to.  ‘Aren’t you interested to know why I like you?’ I say.  ’It’s because you passed my New Person Test.  I have a test question, whenever I meet someone, to help me work out where they are on the good-to-bad egg spectrum: “If this person were in sole charge of the world, would anyone, under any circumstances, ever be rounded up and shot?”  I think, in your case, the answer is “definitely not”.  Am I right?’

Silence from Waterhouse.  Which I find not in the least intimidating, since filling silences is one of my talents.  ‘Have you noticed that whenever something terrible happens – an atrocity of some kind, on the news – commentators immediately start to bicker and scrap about where the blame lies?  They all think it’s a who, not a what, that’s responsible – this government, that policy, those fanatics – but they’re all wrong.  It’s always an idea that’s to blame, and it’s always the same idea.  It goes like this: “It’s okay for me to kill or hurt X because he, or people somehow associated with him in my mind, did terrible thing Y to me, or to people associated with me in my mind, at some point in the past.”  Once we replace that fatally flawed idea with a better one, we’ll all be fine, won’t we?  Like: “It’s never okay for me to hurt or kill X, no matter what he’s done.  To do so would only magnify the total pain caused.  I must treat X as well as I’d treat someone I didn’t perceive as having wronged me.”’

‘You’re right about me,’ says DC Waterhouse.  He had to say something, to shut me up.  One nil to me.  I could and would have gone on for half an hour at least; my theory has many more components than the ones he’s heard.  ‘I wouldn’t shoot anyone,’ he says.  ’Not even people who mess me around when I’m trying to solve a murder.  I think people who do that deserve to face charges for perverting the course of justice – not a firing squad.’

I’m more delighted than I should be with his answer.  He thinks he’s sounding strict and putting me in my place, but he’s playing my game.  He could have refused to answer the question by saying, ‘I’m not here to debate moral issues.”’  Without meaning to, he has given me more power. 

Though I prefer to think that I’ve taken it.

I like power in all its forms.  I’ve never made a secret of that.  I’d have loved to be Great Britain’s first female Labour Prime Minister.

Waterhouse pulls his chair closer to me.  It’s a bit of a threatening gesture, physically.  I wonder if he means it to be.  I should probably tell him that he’s wasting his time: I never feel threatened by the things most women would find threatening.  ‘I don’t like being lied to,’ he says. 

‘You would if I had truths to tell you that might ruin your life.  Don’t worry – that’s not the case.’

Wow, look at those eyes.  He really hates me.  More so every time I open my mouth.  I shouldn’t give a damn what he thinks of me.  My need to be liked by absolutely everybody is a sign of my emotional immaturity.

At one time I wouldn’t have allowed myself to entertain positive feelings for anyone who hadn’t proved beyond doubt that they adored me.  Thank goodness I’ve grown up in this one respect at least. 

Still.  I will impress DC Waterhouse before I leave this room, one way or another. 

‘You know the saying “All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing?”’ I ask him.  ‘If you take it at face value, it’s true, but ninety-nine per cent of people who wheel out that line aren’t advocating good men doing good deeds to halt the march of evil.  They mean something altogether more sinister: that good men need to do evil things to evil men, or else the evil men will win.  Only one problem with that theory: if evil deeds are being done all over the place, and by double the number of people, what does it matter who’s doing them?  Evil has won, either way.’

************

Personally, I’m not convinced that absolutely all novels are political, but I do believe that most contain a dash of moral philosophy.

The chilling story of a woman haunted by music that only she can hear…           Sung by a choir of children that only she can see…

Here’s the cover picture (copied and pasted from Amazon, hence the ‘Click to look inside’ button!)

‘Quietly brilliant ****  Deft and compelling, The Orphan Choir delivers a chilling gut-punch….Hannah takes us on a tense mental journey…A slow-burn psychological study, The Orphan Choir is no less accomplished for it.’ – SFX Magazine

‘If ghost stories are your thing, you will absolutely love.  The Orphan Choir.  Warning: this book is scary…Initially, though, it’s full of wit and fun.’ Red

‘A satisfyingly traditional chiller that does a sterling job of spooking the reader.  The Orphan Choir is an enjoyably creepy read with the psychological depth that Sophie Hannah is known for.  Reading it late at night, I had to put the book aside during one of the most frightening sequences for fear of being too spooked to sleep – and that’s exactly what I want from a ghost story.’ Richtapestry Reads Blog

‘For me, it’s Sophie Hannah’s The Orphan Choir, with its darker undertones and slow-building finale, that really steals the spotlight. Her subtle clues build up to bring the book to a powerful climax. It’s actually the more realistic elements of Louise’s story, and Hannah’s portrayal of a mother’s unconditional love that make this book a truly chilling read…The Orphan Choir cranked up the suspense levels and kept me frantically turning pages.’ Stylist magazine

 ‘A tense and thrilling read’ We Love This Book

‘Deeply unsettling’ Woman and Home

‘Spine-tingling stuff’ Essentials

‘An old-fashioned horror story, given a modern spin by the likeable narrator. It has a creepy cinematic feel and races along to its frightening ending.’ Sunday Mirror

‘Chilling.  A must read.’  Daily Express

I have always loved ghost stories, for the same reason that I’ve always loved crime fiction: the suspense.  In both genres, the reader or viewer knows that something untoward is afoot, but doesn’t know exactly what or why, and the main thing driving her on through the narrative is the desire to find out and solve the mystery.

Though I haven’t read nearly as many ghostly novels as I’ve read detective stories, my strong impression from the few that I have read is that the overwhelming majority of ghost stories are mysteries. There might be some supernatural fiction in which the ghost is upfront, announcing himself and declaring his agenda right from the start, but if there is then I certainly haven’t stumbled across it.  All the ghosts I encounter in films and in literature are as sneaky and elusive as murderers who wish to avoid exposure. Even those with grudges that border on obsession seem oddly reluctant to rant explicitly about their various beefs with the living; they all seem to feel it’s more effective to make a door slam shut or a floorboard creak, hoping to get their message across in a long-drawn-out and incredibly indirect way instead.  This makes no sense, when you think about it.  If I were dead and angry, and had magic non-earthly powers, I would defy ghostly convention: I would stand next to those who’d wronged me, screaming, ‘You poisonous git! I’ll never forgive you! Just you wait and see how many of your relatives I’m going to kill and maim before the weekend’s out!’  All right, it’s not subtle, but since I’d probably be shimmery and transparent at the time of yelling, I like to think I could achieve some pretty devastating effects by combining verbal straightforwardness with physical ethereality.

Perhaps this is why I so admired the recent film adaptation of Susan Hill’s brilliant novel The Woman in Black. The ghost in that movie is a comparatively direct communicator. At one point, she writes on a wall in capital letters, ‘YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM’, and, in doing so, helpfully reveals what, precisely, she’s cross about. (Admittedly, she is less forthcoming on the subject of why she chooses to vent her anger on the innocent; I’d be interested to see what she might write on a wall on the subject of legitimate targets and collateral damage, but that’s another story.)

Like all my favourite ghost and horror films – Dead of Night, The Others, The Innocents, The Haunting, The Shining, The Sixth Sense – The Woman in Black was completely terrifying from start to finish; I watched most of it from behind my woolly scarf.  I was sitting next to an elderly couple in the cinema, and throughout the film they regularly asked me if I was okay. I wasn’t, and nor did I want to be. There is no point in a fictional ghost if he or she doesn’t frighten the life out of you.

Which is why, when I was invited to write a novella for the new Hammer imprint (The Orphan Choir, published today!), my first thought was, ‘Ooh, yes, but it must be terrifying.’  And mysterious too – because all my favourite stories are driven by mysteries and the need to find out the truth and outwit the cunning author who is annoyingly trying to withhold it for as long as possible. So I resisted the temptation to create a loud-mouthed ghost who yells at people obsessively and informatively, and tried as hard as I could to frighten myself instead.  Just as, in my crime writing, I have always resisted the (sometimes very strong) temptation to write a psychological thriller that begins with the heroine receiving a phone call from someone from her shady past to whom she hasn’t spoken to for twenty years, and immediately announcing to her happy middle-class family in a cheery voice, ‘Hey, it’s So-and-So – remember, the one I committed that murder with twenty years ago? Remember, I did tell you …’

I looked down at this tiny creature and wondered, ‘Is it? Is it really? Am I going to have to take your word for it, when I’ve never even seen you before?’  Luckily, the babies at this particular hospital are always carefully labeled with ankle tags (hospital policy!) so after some quick label checking, I was reassured that the infant I was being offered was in fact my Phoebe, but this weird experience started me thinking about how odd it is that you can be someone’s closest relative and yet not be entirely familiar with their face, that it’s possible to be uncertain about whether a baby is or isn’t yours.  If the midwife had handed me the wrong baby, the one I’d initially tried to take, I’d have been none the wiser!  After five days in labour, in agony almost constantly (epidurals and Pethidine didn’t work for me, I’m afraid, and neither did a warm bath, which was just wet agony rather than dry agony), I really didn’t know if I was coming or going—the hospital could have given me twins to take home and I’d probably have accepted it without question!

My husband Dan was due to come to the hospital the following morning to visit us both and I imagined myself saying to him, “This isn’t our baby! Our baby’s been swapped for another one!” Would he believe me? Would he assume that I, as the mother, knew better because of my maternal instincts, or would he trust his own impression that the baby in my room was our daughter? If he did, would he be angry with me? Would he think I was lying, or that I’d gone mad? I knew instantly that this would make a compelling fictional scenario—a husband and wife who disagree about whether the baby in their house is theirs or not.

That gave me the opening scenario for Little Face, but at that point I had no idea how the mystery would be resolved. I couldn’t think of a reason for someone to swap one baby for another – and it was crucial that this swap should happen after the family have returned from the hospital, in their own home, because we’ve all hears stories of hospitals mixing up babies.  I wanted it to be clear that, if one baby had been swapped for another, it must have been a deliberate swap rather than an accidental one – nothing to do with the hospital, and very much something to do with the family and/or close friends of the heroine. But why? Why swap one baby for another?  If I couldn’t think of a reason, then I couldn’t write the book, and I really wanted to.

Then, a few weeks after Phoebe and I got home home from the hospital, some relatives were due to come and visit, to meet the new baby for the first time. One was somebody my husband and I had a very difficult relationship with—a relationship that had almost totally broken down, in fact. As the visit approached, I found that I couldn’t bear the idea of this person coming into contact with my precious new daughter. Thinking of my baby-swap idea, I rang a friend from my ante-natal class, Suzie, whose daughter was almost exactly the same age as mine. “Can I borrow Hannah for the afternoon?” I asked her, “and can I give Phoebe to you to look after? Just for a few hours – then we can swap back.”  If we did this, I explained, the problematic visiting relative would believe she was meeting Phoebe, so family etiquette requirements would be satisfied, but I would know that Phoebe would be safely tucked away at Suzie’s house.  And Suzie, I thought, shouldn’t object too much because she didn’t know and dislike this relative of mine, so it should surely be no skin off her nose if said relative met Hannah!

Of course, Suzie said no, alarmed by the madness of my plan!  But I started to feel more pieces of my plot jigsaw falling into place, as I realized I’d come up with one possible reason why someone might swap one baby for another, and after that there was no stopping me! I thought of dozens of reasons why a person might substitute one baby for another—so many, in fact, that it was a wonder, I thought, that it wasn’t happening daily!  And eventually, I thought of one that I decided would be the perfect explanation for the mystery in Little Face; how it absolutely had to be resolved.  This ending/solution has proved controversial – some love it and some hate it – but I remain convinced that, in order to be true to the characters within the novel, I couldn’t have ended the story any other way.

Incidentally, the relationship with the problematic relative is now much better, and I have felt no further need to attempt a child-swap! So – a happy ending!

 The Carrier – Reading Group Questions

1) Which of the characters in the book is most responsible for the death of Francine Breary?  Do you think the person who physically killed her is the person most guilty of murder?

2) Do you agree with Kerry Jose that ‘a tyrant is someone whose death would liberate somebody, even if it’s only one person?’ Does it make sense to talk of tyrants in the domestic sphere, or is ‘tyrant’ a label that sounds more political? Is there a different between a bully and a tyrant?  Is Francine a psychological tyrant, and if so, how does her particular kind of tyranny work? What hold does she have over the other characters in the novel?

3) Gaby and Sean’s relationship is a not a happy one.  How has it ended up in such a bad state?  Do you think either Gaby or Sean is more to blame for this, or were they simply incompatible from the start?

4) Who matters more to Tim Breary, Francine or Gaby?

5) Is there any sense in which Francine’s murder could be seen as a mercy killing, or does/should that concept only apply to cases of terminal illness and/or extreme physical pain?

6) When Gaby and Lauren first meet at the airport, it’s fair to say that they don’t get on very well.  How does their relationship change over the course of the book?

7) Charlie and Simon become entangled in the problems of the Proust family in this book, which leads Charlie to worry that her relationship with Simon might be as dysfunctional as Proust and his wife Lizzie’s marriage – is there any truth in this?  How does one measure whether a relationship is healthy or unhealthy?

8) At the end of the novel, were you surprised by Gaby’s decision with regard to Tim?  What do you think will happen between Gaby and Tim after the end of the book?  What do you think should happen?  Did you find this aspect of the end of the book too unresolved/ambiguous?  Would you have liked a more definite resolution?

9) How did you feel about the role played by poetry in the book?

10) Olivia, Charlie’s sister, has a strange philosophy with regard to romantic infidelity.  She believes that lying in order to keep everyone happy for as long as possible, so that you can sustain your double life and maximise the personal fulfilment of everyone involved, is the best way forward – better than either ending one’s affair or leaving one’s spouse for one’s lover.  Do you agree with her?  Why, or why not?

11) Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie is referred to several times in the book?  Why do you think this is (apart from that the author is an Agatha Christie fan?!)  Is there any link or thematic connection between the solution to this murder mystery and the solution in Murder on the Orient Express?

12) Money is a character, a theme and a motive in The Carrier, though in a very unconventional way.  Discuss.

13) This is a novel about what happens when human beings unreasonably impose upon one another, both in major and minor ways.  Do you agree?  Is it inevitable that people will impose on those close to them in ways that will sometimes be unpleasant, or is it simply that the characters in this particular book don’t know how to behave properly?

14) For how long is it reasonable to hold a person responsible for past bad behaviour?  Is it fair to think of Francine, after her stroke, as the same woman she was before her stroke?  Should Tim, Kerry and Dan have forgiven Francine as soon as she became the helpless victim of her own ill health?

15) When Simon expresses his shock and disgust, at the end of the novel, about what was done to Francine Breary, did you, as a reader, experience any kind of ‘parallax view’ feeling?  Did you feel suddenly feel differently about Francine or the other characters, or see anything differently from how you’d seen it up to that point?

I know how I’d feel: ambushed, slightly violated (not in a devastating George-Galloway-ssh-go-back-to-sleep kind of way, but violated nonetheless), physically uncomfortable.  I know I’d feel this way because it’s how I often feel when someone responds by text, email or phone to something I’ve tweeted on Twitter.  Why?  Well, I’ve said something in the very public setting of Twitter, for public consumption and for anyone and everyone to respond to, therefore I am expecting any responses to come via Twitter.  Let’s say I’ve tweeted ‘Just read X’s new book – a masterpiece!’ and you disagree – that’s what the Twitter DM system is for.  You can DM me to say, ‘Really?!  I thought it was the biggest load of codswallop ever!’  That’s fine – neither an ambush nor a violation, because a) a DM is a Twitter response, and so stays firmly within my expected response arena, and b) there is a clear good reason for sending this response privately: X might or might not have written a rubbish book, but doesn’t deserve to have her feelings hurt even if she has.

On the other hand, if my phone rang or an email appeared in my Hotmail account and it was one of my Twitter followers saying, ‘Did you really think that book was a masterpiece?’, I would not be comfortable with that.  I would feel…well, ambushed is really the best and only word for it.  I’d feel as if I were being ‘taken aside’, somehow – dragged away from the safety of the crowd into a private space, where my Twitter contacts can’t hear what’s being said to me, can’t see what’s being done – how I might be being manipulated, or emotionally blackmailed. Literally, anything could be happening to me!  The word ‘private’ is used as a cover for many bad things.  Now, if what the ambusher then says is, ‘I hated that book!’, then I would give him the benefit of the doubt.  His impulse is clearly benign: not wanting to slag someone off publicly.  (I’d still wonder why he didn’t DM.)  But what about if his email were to say, ‘It’s very good, I agree, but what’s your definition of a masterpiece?’  In that scenario, no one’s feelings would be hurt if the ambusher were to respond publicly on Twitter.  So, I wonder, what do ambushers who are not obviously seeking to spare anyone’s feelings gain by responding via email, or text, or phone, rather than on Twitter?

Here’s one theory: it’s a sinister (albeit unconscious) attempt to control and seize power.  The symbolism of taking the discussion off Twitter is that of ‘No, you don’t get to talk about this where you want to – I reserve the right to pop up in a different setting and make you talk about it there, just to show you that I’m defining the terms of what comes next and not you.’  I’d feel the same way about one of my children’s school teachers sticking his head through my lounge window and asking, ‘Has Phoebe done her homework yet?’  Why choose to pop up in an unexpected place with your comment/question, in a different place from the one in which I invited feedback?  If you asked me a question at King’s Cross station, that’s where I’d answer you.  I wouldn’t ignore you, then lie in wait for you on Platform 8 at Paddington later and answer you there, when you were busy eating a smoked salmon sandwich and thinking about something else.  It’s part of the same manipulative, psycho-game family as, ‘I’ve got something I need to tell you. It’s important. But I can’t tell you now, or near that toaster, or while you’re wearing green trousers.  I’ll tell you next Friday – meet me in the hothouse at the botanical gardens and don’t bring anyone.’

Being paranoid and neurotic, I can hear you all thinking my theory is paranoid and neurotic.  Okay, then, let me ask you this: why – if you had no nefarious control-freak agenda and given that Twitter offers the private DM option – would you respond in any other way than by DM if you wanted to say something private?

Puzzling over this very question, I tweeted the following this morning:

For what reason/s might you respond to a tweet off Twitter – i.e. by email, or phone? When is/isn’t it okay to do so?

Here are some of the responses I received:

I’d only do this if I knew them well (usually in real life) and had a complicated or confidential thing to tell them.

When swapping personal details; when its an “off twitter” subject; when you have further useful info; when you know someone

Might email if response way too long for Twitter. Can’t imagine phoning! And only OK if you know the person well, I’d say.

It’s ok when you have a personal connection – even if a bit vague – with that person but not otherwise. IMHO of course.

When it’s family or very close friends I’ve known for years both online and off. Can’t think of any other reason. DM first.

I do it with friends if they are asking for info that I can help with and would take a lot longer than 140.

As you can see, a lot of people said they’d go off Twitter if they needed to impart a lot of information.  That’s a very valid, non-boundary-violating reason.  But, as one person mentioned, I would always DM first and believe this is correct non-boundary-violating procedure: ‘Too much to say in 140 – will email’.  The email that follows that DM will then simply be an email, not an ambush.

Interesting that so many say ‘It’s okay if you know them well’.  If anything, this is probably when I think it’s least okay.  ‘I know you, so I’m not going to muck in with the hoi polloi and answer you on Twitter.  I’m going to take you to one side, asserting my ownership/rights/status as someone closer to you than most of your Twitter contacts, and have my say privately; I’m going to assert the primacy of the rules governing our non-Twitter relationship over the rules of Twitter in which sphere I am merely one of a multitude of voices.  I’m going to prove that I’m more powerful and more important than you by forcing you to be private when you’re trying to be public.’  It’s a bit like turning up at your brother’s wedding, frog-marching him into a corner and making him neglect all the other guests and chat only to you for most of the afternoon.

Someone, in the responses above, mentions confidentiality.  That would explain sending a DM, but not taking it off Twitter.  To go off at a slight tangent, let’s now look at the confidentiality justification of DM-ing a response to a public tweet.  Here’s a perfectly okay example:

Tweet: ‘I so adore Jennifer Anniston’s new handbag!’

DM response: ‘I hate it.  I was once kidnapped and tortured by someone with exact same handbag. Please keep this info to yourself.

Here’s a not-okay example:

Tweet: Had the best lunch ever: hair gel sandwiches! Yum!

DM response: Did you read the article in Medical Weekly about the toxins in hair gel? So bad for you! You really should avoid!

In this instance, the responder, under the guise of ‘I’m just giving you some advice for your own good’, drags the tweeter from the public sphere into the private.  Why?  Why couldn’t that response have been tweeted publicly? Do people imagine that tweeters would rather receive advice in private?  Do they think it’s somehow more polite?

I, personally, would far rather be criticized/advised/hectored/nagged in as public an arena as possible – that way, lots of people will be able to see what is happening to me.  If I brilliantly explain to the responder why she’s wrong and hair gel is in fact perfectly okay to eat – packed with vitamins! – I’ll have an audience that might potentially take my side and offer moral support.  If my responder then won’t let it drop and publicly tweets, ‘You’re an idiot; I know best’, then our 1400 mutual followers will all have the chance to decide who is right and who wrong.  Always be suspicious when someone tries to push you from public to private – especially when you can’t see an obvious reason for it.

I am very probably being over-sensitive.  This is because I am rubbish at defending my psychological boundaries. If you email me with reference to one of my tweets, I will be too polite and too scared of causing trouble to say to you directly and individually, ‘Please could you respond to my tweets only on Twitter?’  But let me say it now to anyone who is reading this: if I tweet something, I would love you to respond, even with criticism if you have it, but I would prefer you to respond ONLY ON TWITTER. Or, of course, on my blog, if it’s something I’ve posted there, as this is.  And if I’ve tweeted something publicly, you really can respond publicly – unless you want to impart confidential information or slag off a book you hate!  Or have some other persuasive reason.

I have as much sympathy for the plight of anyone who would voluntarily eschew such excellent treats as, for example, Before I Go To Sleep, I Don’t Know How She Does It, My Sister’s Keeper and One Day on spurious ideological grounds as I would for someone who feared God would punish her if she ate this food rather than that food, or who was afraid to leave the house in case a gang of ants wrestled her to the ground and stole her favourite handbag.  It’s always a shame when a delusion limits a person’s capacity to get the most out of life.

However – sympathy notwithstanding, I disagree with part of what More Than a Mum says about 50 Shades of Grey:

‘What made me angry was the way that this book glorified not a sexy, kinky relationship, but an abusive one….domestic violence is not just about physical abuse, it is about control and intimidation.  Ana’s fear of Christian’s reactions to normal things like having a drink with friends or visiting her mother definitely show she is intimidated.  They have a relationship built on fear and control, and even if she did want to have the kinky sex which is not clear, the control and fear are not OK.  This is not harmless erotica, it’s abuse…. I would not recommend this book because it does nothing for the cause of women or our view of ourselves, our relationships and our self-worth.  How are we to help charities such as Refuge support women, and men, in abusive relationships if this is entertainment?  How can we support people trapped in abusive relationships to see that they don’t deserve that treatment, it is not their fault and it is not acceptable when this book is considered ‘Mummy Porn’?

Okay, first of all: is Ana and Christian’s relationship abusive?  I don’t think so.  I think she ‘fears’ his reactions to her behaviour because she’s in love with him and doesn’t want to lose him, just as he ‘fears’ hers for the same reason; just as, if I fell madly in love with Morrissey, I might ‘fear’ telling him that I love a rib-eye steak on a Saturday night, or if I were embarking upon a romance with the political commentator Owen Jones that really mattered to me, I might be mildly nervous at the prospect of admitting that I don’t believe Oxbridge should be abolished because it’s too good.  That kind of fear – ‘Will he/she still like me if I do/admit X or Y?’ – is very different from the fear instilled in a person by an abusive relationship.  Here’s the difference a) if I do X, it might turn out that we’re not suited and our relationship won’t be able to continue because we can’t live with each other’s true selves (this happens all the time), and b) if I do Y, he will hit me/starve me of affection while still not allowing me to leave the relationship/rape me/assault my mind with his warped ideas and brainwash me into thinking I’m worthless.

Christian Grey is not an abuser.  Ana is in control of what she agrees to at all times.  She wrestles with the dilemma of what to concede and what to insist upon, and wants not to upset him, but he never tries to exercise mind control.  On the contrary, he regularly clarifies that his need to be so controlling and have such an abnormal relationship is a result of his being ‘fifty shades of fucked up’.  An abuser would say, ‘You can’t be trusted.  You’re useless – without me telling you what to do, you’d mess everything up.’

How can we support people trapped in abusive relationships if 50 Shades of Grey is entertainment? Quite easily.  We can say, ‘Everybody – leave your abusive relationship forthwith.  There’s a book at the top of the bestseller lists about an affair between a dominant kinky man and a vanilla woman, and how they learn to compromise to please one another – this has nothing to do with your life and is not at all a reason why you should stick around and let your husband persecute and beat you.’  There, that wasn’t hard.

More Than a Mum’s post about 50 Shades also made me think about how uneasy I feel when people try to blame a book for something that’s not its fault.  How can we tell people paedophilia’s wrong once we’ve all enjoyed reading about Humbert Humbert in Lolita? (Easily.)  How can we say violence against women is wrong if cinemas are showing The Killer Inside Me? (Easily.)  How can we can we wholeheartedly support the leisure industry while simultaneously claiming Hitchcock’s Psycho is a masterpiece?  Isn’t it, rather, a film that’s going to groom us all into thinking hotels are places of danger, full of unappealing plastic shower curtains? (No, not at all.)  If Eastenders has a storyline in which a bereaved mother does something terrible like steal another baby, isn’t it saying, ‘Look, this is the kind of thing bereaved mothers do – they’re all mental’? (No, it isn’t.)

Let’s forget 50 Shades for a second.  Let’s say I write a novel tomorrow about an abusive relationship – a properly, horrendously abusive relationship. The victim is so misguided that she believes not only that a bestseller is necessarily a bad book but also that hubby’s bashing her over the head with a brick is his way of showing his love for her.  Let’s say I want to write that story about the worst relationship ever from the deluded victim’s lovestruck and warped point of view – am I not allowed to do that because it might encourage women to stay in violent marriages?  What about the film Tyrannosaur? Does it encourage women to murder violent husbands?  What about Thelma & Louise – does that encourage women to kill the men that rape them?  What about The Sopranos?  Etc etc.  I could go on for ever.

A story, every story, has to be allowed to be itself and tell itself, free from judgement and blame about the effect it might have on society.  I happen to believe that one or two women might eventually end up hurt or worse as a result of 50 Shades.  They might think, ‘Ooh, how exciting’ and seek out a sexual sadist, and this might not end well – I can imagine an all-pain-no-free-laptop scenario quite easily.  This will in no way be the books’ fault, or EL James’.  I also think that 50 Shades will boost the sexual adventurousness of some people – but then their marriages might end because their repressed frigid partners can’t take the heat.  Again – not the books’ fault.

To accuse 50 Shades of contributing to the domestic violence problem is as nonsensical as accusing your real-life best friend’s story of her husband abusing her and her staying with him because she’s too scared to leave of making a similar contribution.  These are the stories of people’s lives and they contain everything – the whole range, the good and the bad.  That one might be true and the other fictional doesn’t and shouldn’t make a difference, because without stories that reflect life in any form it might take, life becomes impoverished, and we all understand each other a little bit less.

1) Fifty Shades is incredibly gripping.  I read pages 1-164 in about 2 hours last night and only stopped reading because I needed to sleep.

2) It has a sophisticated title, which always makes me award a book extra points.  It’s not called Shag Time.  If one were to go to ‘Genre Title Converter’ on one’s laptop (the literary equivalent of Currency Converter) Fifty Shades of Grey’s crime fiction title equivalent might be A Demon in my View, or even Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?  This is a good sign.  If the novel had been called Shag Time, I wouldn’t have wanted to read it, just as I rarely want to read books called Deady Dead Bloodsoakedness.

3) People have been saying E L James is a bad writer.  I’m not sure I’d agree with that, not entirely.  Her writing certainly has flaws – overuse of annoying phrases like ‘Holy hell!’ and ‘Holy crap!’ – but in some ways the writing is excellent in one crucial respect: it does the job it sets out to do; it grips the reader.  Writing an unputdownable book can’t be easy, judging by how many putdownable books are written and published, and James’ unadorned, naively breathless, straight-to-the-narrative-point style works brilliantly with her subject matter.  Also, some of the characters are drawn to perfection for a novel where story and fantasy is everything: they aren’t too real or individuated, so they can remain semi-archetypal in the reader’s imagination.  They are blurred enough for the reader to be able to ‘be’ the protagonist, and clear enough that we can totally imagine them; they certainly aren’t formless vacuums on the page as the characters in books by really bad writers are.  We care about Ana and Christian enough but not too much.  We have no trouble picturing them, and Christian is sufficiently mysterious and intriguing, a well-judged mixture of harsh and sensitive… All of which suggests James can write.  Someone just needs to tell her to avoid cliche and repetition (‘Holy crap! The Katharine Kavanagh Inquisition!’)  Also (obvious but worth pointing out): if millions of people the world over want to read your book, you must be doing something right as a writer, if only the story-telling.

4) I don’t understand why 50 Shades is described as mommy porn. The heroine is a young childless university student.  I happen to have two kids, but I’d have enjoyed this book just as much if I were a childless 20-year-old.

5) People have said the novel isn’t erotic.  I don’t agree.  Which brings me back to the writing.  The BDSM stuff must be well-written because, in the book, it comes across as risky and intriguing and quite sexy, whereas in real life, without exception, men who produce accessories and start explaining their particular bizarre fetish ALWAYS do it in a way that renders them instantly risible and makes one think, ‘Oh, God, he’s getting out his bag of stuff.  How ridiculous!’ (When I say ‘without exception’, I could be wrong – you may know of exceptions in real life.  I don’t.)  But Christian Grey and his grey tie actually works. I thought I’d hate this book because of my ‘bag of stuff’ prejudice, but I have totally bought into it.  E L James’ sheer enthusiasm and commitment to the story makes it plausible, and I am confident that she will contain Christian’s proclivities within non-risible boundaries for the remainder of the book – and that’s extremely hard to do when describing a sexual whatnot that lots of people would run a mile from.

So, I’m enjoying it a lot, basically, though it will never make me change my mind about accessory-bag men.  But Fifty Shades is highly entertaining and, also, relies on sexual suspense almost more than narrative suspense: the ‘oh, my God, what’s he going to make her do next?’ syndrome.

Oh, I nearly forgot: I know some people object to this book from a feminist perspective.  The heroine is very submissive, true, but what’s she doing there in that book? She’s there for the benefit of women, not men. She is fuelling the fantasies of lots of not-at-all submissive women who wouldn’t dream of allowing men to control them in their non-sexual lives (or even to suggest they might like to do something a little differently!) The idea that women might want to be sexually dominated while still retaining full control and authority in the rest of their lives is wholly compatible with feminism, I think.

After I first saw Case Sensitive, I tried several times to find out details about the art works in it, but none of my attempts yielded any information.  So eventually, watching a repeat of the drama on ITV3 the other night and seeing the paintings again, I decided to try Google, and…success!  I found Samantha’s website: www.samanthabarnes.co.uk, and I am now hoping to buy two of her paintings that were in Case Sensitive – partly for sentimental reasons, obviously, but also because I think they’re lovely.  Other art lovers might like to look at her website too.

Anyway, the relevant page will shortly be updated, but in the meantime, here is a preview of my new work-in-progress, of which I have so far written 33,000 words:

The Carrier (February 2013)

When her plane is delayed overnight and the stop-gap accommodation provided by the airline proves to be seriously lacking, Gaby Struthers finds herself forced to share a hotel room with a stranger: a terrified young woman named Lauren Cookson – but why is she scared of Gaby in particular?  Lauren won’t explain.  Instead, she blurts out something about an innocent man going to prison for a murder he didn’t commit, then clams up and refuses to say any more. Unwilling to let it drop, Gaby uses her phone to do an internet search for Lauren’s name, and finds that her strange room-mate is indeed linked to a murder case.

That’s when Gaby realises that Lauren’s presence on her flight can’t be a coincidence.  Because the murder victim is Francine Barry, the wife of a man Gaby could have married years ago, but stupidly rejected – the only man she’s ever truly loved.  Tim Barry has confessed to killing his wife and even provided the police with evidence.  There’s only one problem: he claims to have no idea why he did it…

*****

Right. Better get on with writing it now, I suppose!