Susie Steiner writes: Jonathan Coe is to change direction in his writing, turning to performance and narrative which is written to be read out loud — something he says the British hate, almost as much as they hate Morris Dancing.
"The Close Circle [his latest novel and sequel to The Rotter's Club] is called The Close Circle because I feel I've got as far as I can get with the kind of novel I've been writing for the last ten years."
Despite this feeling, he received eulogies all round, including from Paul Blezard, who chaired his session at the Hay festival and had just come from lunch with the critic and academic John Carey. "He described you as a humane satirist, more like Dickens than Swift," Blezard told Coe. To which Coe responded with typical self-deprecation: "He'd had a few bottles of wine by then."
Nick Laird, who shared the stage with Coe and Israeli novelist Meir Shaley, talked about his novel Utterly Monkey, which is set in Northern Ireland, where he was born and grew up.
Blezard asked him whether it was easier to write about Northern Ireland now that he didn't live there. Laird agreed: "You can't draw a picture of a house if you are inside it," he said. "You have to go outside the house."
Meir, meanwhile, was keen to stress that politics and novels should be kept separate, leaving fiction to explore the realm of universal human experience. He told the story of a children's book, one of five he has written, called My Father Always Embarrasses Me (the title drew a laugh of recognition from the audience). The book was published in Japan, where one reviewer wrote: "I can't believe a Western writer got so deep into the Japanese psyche."
Susie Steiner
