Ask the Author: Ian McGuire
Answered Questions (14)
Ian McGuire
Hi Tony:
My next novel 'The Abstainer' is out in September. It should have been published last month but postponed due to the current unhappy circumstances.
Best wishes
Ian
My next novel 'The Abstainer' is out in September. It should have been published last month but postponed due to the current unhappy circumstances.
Best wishes
Ian
Ian McGuire
Thanks. New novel might be out late next year or early 2020. (Haven't quite finished it yet)
Ian McGuire
Hi Sam:
Sorry to be so very slow responding. You may have forgotten the book by now, but in case you are still interested -- yes Moby Dick was very much on my mind when I was writing The North Water. I stole several little bits from Melville, and even the opening line is meant to vaguely echo the famous opening of MD.
Sorry to be so very slow responding. You may have forgotten the book by now, but in case you are still interested -- yes Moby Dick was very much on my mind when I was writing The North Water. I stole several little bits from Melville, and even the opening line is meant to vaguely echo the famous opening of MD.
Ian McGuire
I found the present tense pretty easy once I got going with it. I'm just finishing another novel which is also in the present tense, but the next one will be past tense (I think) partly just for the change.
Ian McGuire
I agree, a prequel about Drax might be the most interesting spin-off, but I don't have any plans to write it at the moment. If you want more of Drax though the BBC are turning The North Water into a 5 part TV series -- not sure when it will be out, maybe a year or so.
Ian McGuire
A lot of people have asked me that question, but I don't have any plans to revisit the characters at the moment. Maybe I will change my mind eventually.
Ian McGuire
Hi Tony: Glad you are liking it. My research mainly involved reading (a lot) and looking at contemporary photographs (when available). I didn't go to Lerwick, no. I didn't go to Greenland either -- partly because with climate change the ice conditions would have been very different, and partly becuase the places mentioned in the book are very remote and hard to get to.
Ian McGuire
Yes, that's right. Well-spotted. I was also thinking a little bit of the opening of Moby Dick, 'Call me Ishmael', but the McCarthy allusion is the main one. Thanks for the question.
Ian McGuire
I'm working on it now. I'm going as fast as I can (which is unfortunately not very fast because I'm a slow writer!). It'll be 2018 if everything goes smoothly.
Ian McGuire
Hi Brigitte:
Very glad you liked the book. It was subject matter and character more than setting which got me going I think. I grew up near Hull, so I did like the idea of writing a book that began there, but it was really the idea of a murderer on a whaling ship which sparked the story. I knew very little about Arctic whaling before I began The North Water, but the more I read the more fascinated I became.
Very glad you liked the book. It was subject matter and character more than setting which got me going I think. I grew up near Hull, so I did like the idea of writing a book that began there, but it was really the idea of a murderer on a whaling ship which sparked the story. I knew very little about Arctic whaling before I began The North Water, but the more I read the more fascinated I became.
Ian McGuire
Hi John:
Well spotted. McCarthy was a major stylistic influence, and his descriptions of the American landscape in the Border Trilogy and elsewhere (which I love) certainly influenced the way I wrote about the Arctic in The North Water.
Thanks for the question
Ian
Well spotted. McCarthy was a major stylistic influence, and his descriptions of the American landscape in the Border Trilogy and elsewhere (which I love) certainly influenced the way I wrote about the Arctic in The North Water.
Thanks for the question
Ian
Ian McGuire
Hi Jeremy:
I started with the idea of him being like an animal -- in other words being driven by instinct and desire, living in the moment and having little or no interest in the past or future. He doesn't think or worry at all about the causes or consequences of his actions, unlike Sumner who can't shake off the past and is haunted by it. So that was how I began, and then built him up from there. Hope that makes some sense.
Ian
I started with the idea of him being like an animal -- in other words being driven by instinct and desire, living in the moment and having little or no interest in the past or future. He doesn't think or worry at all about the causes or consequences of his actions, unlike Sumner who can't shake off the past and is haunted by it. So that was how I began, and then built him up from there. Hope that makes some sense.
Ian
Ian McGuire
I hadn't seen that. Thanks very much for letting me know.
Ian McGuire
Like many people, I really like her last two novels "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies". "A Place of Greater Safety" is a long, very detailed and fascinating novel about the French Revolution--if you like historical fiction that is worth checking out. I also particularly like "An Experiment in Love" which is very different from the other three I've mentioned. It's more modest in scale and much more rooted in her own experiences of growing up in the north of England.
Thanks for the question. Very glad to hear you enjoyed "The North Water".
Thanks for the question. Very glad to hear you enjoyed "The North Water".
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