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KS: I do wonder sometimes if it's the chicken or the egg with sex workers. You don't tend to find girls who come from stable, loving homes getting into that sort of life. Not that it hasn't happened (and been the subject of many made-for-TV movies), but more often than not if you look on the streets you find women who've been victims of abuse or who place little value on their bodies or selves. Runaways. Addicts. Self-abusers. Taking this to the obvious conclusion, you would assume that they had been victimized by fathers or other men in their lives, so when they get into the trade, they're already well equipped to hate men. I think one thing prostitutes see that other women do not is that more base side of men. Whether it's something internal on the woman's part or some sense of women as property on the man's part, I don't know, but I do know that the very nature of the transaction shifts all the power, and no one likes to lose their sense of control, especially over their own bodies.
As for women writing about violence, every interview I've ever done has had some variation on that question -- usually with an accusation behind it. Not that interviewers have been aggressive, but the way the question is phrased generally implies that what I'm doing is taboo and that perhaps I'd be better off in the more lady-like territory of knitting mysteries or stories where cats narrate half the book. I actually had a man come up to me after a signing and ask, "What's a pretty little thing like you doing writing about such nasty subjects?"
I've talked about this issue with some of my male friends who are crime fiction writers, and they very seldom get the same questions about violence in their novels put to them. It's much more acceptable for a man to write about nasty things than it is for a woman to do the same. For years, this was boys-only territory, and especially in the late eighties and nineties you had this myth of the broken woman emerge, where a female character who had been raped or abused had two choices: either be a catatonic or be a martyr, and always, always some brave, sensitive man would rescue her from herself in the end. I understand that this response had a lot to do with what was going on in society at large (writers could no longer rape and pillage in a vacuum) but I found it irksome -- if not slightly insulting -- that these women could not save themselves. Obviously, a lot of men did as well because you have great stories like In A Dry Season from Peter Robinson, where he narrates from a woman's point of view in an incredibly believable way, and Mark Billingham is making an enviable career out of having equal-opportunity murderers.
My own feeling is that it's about damn time women started talking and writing about violence against women. We are generally the victims of these crimes. We are the ones who have to live through it -- if we're lucky. I think women authors look at sex crimes in a different way, and with Lena, the character in my series who was brutally raped, you see a different side of recovery than what is normally in fiction. Statistically, her reaction is more common than the martyr/catatonic one. Like many women, she subverts her anger and turns it on herself. She looks for situations and relationships where the abuse is repeated. She self-medicates. These are all self-destructive things that women can do in response to violence, and I want to talk about that because it's not something I've seen in many books. This is why I love Denis Mina's Maureen O'Donnell trilogy. My God, what a character. She's so raw and out there, and as a reader I keyed into her in a very emotional way that I'd never experienced before.
It's the same way with your stuff. The Treatment, for example, is a story that has a definite female perspective, just not the sort of female perspective we're used to hearing. It cuts straight through to the heart of violence -- visceral, gut-wrenching. The people who said that Aileen Wuornos was the first female serial killer, and who sort of dismissed her as not "really" a woman because she was a lesbian, aren't comfortable with the thought of women committing violence, let alone understanding writing about it. Yet, if you look at really horrible crimes against children, you see that women are much more sadistic than men. I also wonder if you get a different reaction to your work because you're British and not held to the standards dictated by America's Puritanical roots. When you wrote about child abuse, for instance, were you trying to make a statement, or were you just telling a story?
Mo: I'm always, primarily, writing a story. I agree with everything you say (a special groan of recognition for the cat-narrated novel) however it has taken me years to be confident enough to say out loud: I'm just telling a story… It's the sort of comment that guarantees you'll end up mired in Tolstoyist debates about what defines art, about responsibilities and the writerly remit to educate, elucidate, illuminate. Of course if I feel moved by a subject (as I did by child abuse for The Treatment and the Nanking massacre for Tokyo) obviously I'm going to write more passionately about it, but I never, ever set off to write a book with an agenda. I'd be stymied if I asked myself what I was trying to say before I put pen to paper, even if I might look back on a novel in retrospect and recognise my themes and passions.
As an extension of this, I think that writers are too often encouraged to become pundits for every issue under the sun. For example would you ask, in a professional capacity, a dentist/check out clerk/decorator for his/her opinion on the war in Iraq, and take the answers more seriously than your own opinions? Yet, it's the sort of question I've been asked countless times, and I'm fairly sure people took what I felt more seriously because I'm a writer. Just because I've got some knowledge of how to arrange words in a relatively pleasing order doesn't make my moral compass any more finely tuned than anyone else's. In fact, probably less so, since most of my job is about lying convincingly.
Or maybe I'm just subverting my anger...
I think that any writer who sets out with an agenda is going to have a very forced narrative, and the reader will know it. Like you, it's only after I've written something that I see what issues I've raised, and generally it's about a problem that I've seen happening in the world that has troubled me. If that's subverting your anger, then I'm guilty of it as well. If I get to the point where I'm being didactic or preaching to the choir, I hope someone shoots me. At the end of the day, I'm writing for entertainment, not education. I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of in being a good storyteller. I also don't think being in print makes my beliefs more valid than the next person's.
What I like when I'm writing is that sometimes my characters have different opinions than I do about certain topics. Lena would no doubt have a very different take on the whole Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal than I did. I think it's much more challenging to write from a different perspective than the one you're comfortable with. It brings out all kinds of things about yourself that maybe you didn't know.
Mo: What you said about The Treatment having a female perspective is interesting, because I was very definitely shying away from writing from a woman's perspective.
What steps did you take to shy away from writing as a woman? I'm curious because I don't think any woman can ever get away from giving the female perspective, because it colors every part of our lives. Maybe you don't agree with me on that, but I think from the time we're born, girls are taught to see the world differently. Even so-called tomboys, which I most certainly am, were taught limits. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a woman who isn't on high alert when she walks through a dark parking lot, and doesn't think the same thing all of us do when she hears a strange noise in the middle of the night: rape.
Mo: I agree we see the world entirely differently, but I feel (rather unfashionably) that our behaviour and perspective are just as much a result of our biology as of our conditioning. But you're right -- no female writer can get away from giving the feminine perspective, although in The Treatment and Birdman I did my damnedest: I wrote in the 3rd person and made the lead characters male. It was a huge effort to shift into female 1st person with Tokyo, I was terrified -- because it was so revealing. You've always written both male and female characters with equal believability -- for example Jeffery and Sara really come alive in equal measure. Do you find it difficult to get into Jeffrey's head?
Genetics certainly plays a part in women being more cautious than men. It's both nature and nurture that makes us so different from our male counterparts. When I write from Jeffrey's point of view, I have to turn off that alarm -- the one that says to always be on the lookout, to know my surroundings and who is occupying my space. The last thing a man is thinking about when he walks into a strange situation is that he could possibly be assaulted. To remove that threat is incredibly freeing, and that's the place where I can really get into Jeffrey's head. I know it's extremely reductive to talk about such a complex issue in terms of gender, but for me when I see things through Jeffrey's eyes, I feel all the freedoms he has from being a man. He went to college right out of high school while his pregnant ex-girlfriend stayed at home to raise their child. He was a prolific womanizer prior to Sara and was celebrated rather than denigrated for this fact. His mother thinks he's perfect and no woman is good enough for him. You don't often find women enjoying these same freedoms.
For instance, I sometimes get letters from folks taking me to task for Lena's cursing, but no one ever says anything about Jeffrey's potty mouth. No one cares when he's violent or insensitive, or when Sara puts aside her own emotional needs to take care of him. These sacrifices are completely acceptable because that's the way it's always been. To bring it all back to sex, I think it really makes some people uncomfortable that Jeffrey and Sara have such a good sex life. Sara is not the kind of woman who sees sex as a chore. She enjoys it and she loves Jeffrey and they are moving toward a somewhat stable relationship. The reader knows that they love each other, and with their history you should also know that they're not going to end their relationship because of a fight over who was supposed to take out the trash. Like you, I often have my head in a book, and I can't think of many novels I've read lately where you see two adults in a stable, healthy relationship. Not to say I'm breaking new ground here. Lindsey Davis's Falco series does the same thing-only in ancient Rome.
But sex is still a tricky thing to write about in detail. I think you really pulled this off well in Birdman. Jack actually gets laid and you read about it. It seems like we crime writers are more than happy to talk about bludgeoning, child abuse and sexual assault, but when it comes to sex between two "good" characters, it freaks us out.
Mo: This is EXACTLY the point I've been making for years -- except not so eloquently, so nobody understood what the hell I was talking about. There's no doubt about it -- writing about sex from the perspective of two characters who 'want it' is extremely difficult for a woman -- probably for some of the issues you identify earlier -- it can be so easily confused and feel like a surrender, a loss of power -- so how do you keep a strong female character 'on top' while still letting her have sex. (Or have I answered the question: keep her on top?)
I think sex is often about control, and that's not a bad thing. Ideally the balance of power switches back and forth. Even more ideally, this goes on for several hours if not days.
Mo: Hey, I like that. Spike what I said about Atlanta. If that's how you lot behave, I'm moving there tomorrow.
There's a reason we call them long, hot summers…
Mo: Fnarrr, fnarrrr
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