2022 Goldsmiths shortlist - Seven Steeples

[WndyJW]

Would they be eligible for social security in middle age if they weren’t disabled? For some reason I put them in their 30s when they moved into isolation.

[Paul]

The book is allegorical so not sure one needs to treat it as realistic. I have a feeling I have heard her comment on the financial side but more that she is surprised people make assumptions (eg that they are artists).

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

From the Irish Times

The lives of Bell and Sigh are very small, and get smaller as the years drift by. “I didn’t want to have anything in the novel about what they do for a living. There are none of the big dramas of a life in it. There is no money, no sex, no arguments in the book. It is all very much boiled down to the essential things; they cook and eat and sleep. They walk the dogs. They get food occasionally, and they tidy up occasionally. I wanted the book to just be about those small details. The rituals we all perform. Like the touching of the dogs’ heads, as if it were a blessing, and the toasting of forks before they have dinner at night. Ridiculous things, but I think everyone does them.”

On the age thing from a different interview

“Well, it’s funny. Everyone who knows me just knows it’s my life. I shouldn’t say that actually. (laughs) My partner and I are both artists. In 2011, we were working in the arts and living in bedsits in Dublin, which is the big city here, probably a small city by American city standards. Then we moved down to a different part of the countryside, but [the book] was sort of based on that premise. I think it’s something that a lot of creatives do, probably also in the States, so it sort of stemmed from that. But everything I write is sort of based on a version of my life. It tells the story of a chapter in my life, and I don’t mind about that. I’m not a writer who insists that I have a wonderful imagination and it’s all made up. (laughs)

I feel I’m a writer who writes very close to nonfiction—and I’ve written nonfiction in the past—but also I’m always writing in extremity of my life. Mark, my partner, and I moved to the countryside, but we didn’t erase our family’s names from our phonebook. We didn’t isolate ourselves so completely as the two characters do in the book. While a lot of the details are true, the facts aren’t, like the facts of their background. Bell and Sigh are sort of ageless to me, as well. I don’t necessarily think of them as young, although everyone perceives them to be in their mid-twenties, which is what we were when we moved from the city. But I also think it’s a bit of a portrait of middle-aged, settled people, which is what we are now.

[David]

On the subject of their age, for some reason their choices wouldn't bother me as much if they were middle aged or older. It was hard for me to sympathize with them when I thought of them as in their 20s or 30s.

I know that says more about me than it does about the book or Baume.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

I felt the same about Diego Garcia - what do they do exactly except avoid paying their debts?

[WndyJW]

That makes sense. I noticed the lack of sex, money, and discord.