Does the appropriation of a person's life, Beckett (and I suppose his wife, Suzanne, for that matter), in order to produce a fictionalised biographical account of that life feel different to your previous engagement of adding narrative to existing fictional characters for your novel, Longbourn? More pressure/expectation? And just for fun: can you imagine your own life being tinkered with by a writer in the future?

Jo Baker Yes, it's different - but in both cases there is an existing framework of events (fictional or real) on which I hang the story; that, in some way, is actually a help - it closes down options (all the things you could write) and what's left is what you can write. Also in both instances I feel an obligation to be thorough and be what i think of as 'imaginatively honest' - to approach everything in an uncynical and open and sincere way. But as you say, this was an actual real man, and here I am following him around, and that's just kinda weird. But if we set aside the fact that this is fiction, then it becomes a lot less weird. So many academics and other writers have written about him and some of them have attributed all kinds of uncomfortable things (one academic wrote that Beckett was a misogynist - which actually makes me cross - I really do not see this, in his work - I just see a writer who treated women as people, not ideals). Another thing - not a justification of the approach, so much as an influence - has been looking at the other writers who've written brilliantly about other writers - for example Colm Toibin's The Master. And Beckett wrote (an unsuccessful) play about Samuel Johnson - so maybe it all evens out in the end?
I think anyone who writes anything about me would have to make so much up it would be more in the Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter mode, than The Master. Unless my life takes some weird swerve in the near future, any novel about my life would be 'she put the fish-fingers under the grill, and opened a can of beans. 'Go wash your hands for dinner, kids,' she said. 'Ugh,' said the kids, 'Do we have to?'; 'Yes, you have to. Now go wash your hands.' The fish fingers had begun to burn. She cursed under her breath, and turned them over, and hoped the kids would not notice.' etc. etc. etc.

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