Stuart Neville on his dramatic debut
Acclaimed for “finally giving Northern Ireland the novel its singular history deserves”, Armagh author Stuart Neville speaks to Meadhbh Monahan about his debut which won the Los Angeles Times book prize for best mystery/thriller.
Despite his initial aim to avoid writing about Northern Ireland and the Troubles, “it just so happened the story that came along was set in that [time].”
Neville, who kept the fact that he was writing ‘The Twelve’ a secret until it was finished, began writing only four years ago. Prior to that, he had an eclectic mix of jobs including guitar teacher and partner in a local multimedia design business.
“I never told anyone I was writing until I had gotten myself an agent because it seemed like a really daft thing to be doing,” he reflects.
Growing up in Armagh, Neville was not directly affected by the events of the Troubles but he knows many people who lost loved ones during the conflict.
“The Troubles were [a delicate subject to deal with] but they are less so now,” he contends. “The best fiction about any conflict doesn’t come along until it’s over. We didn’t see the best films about Vietnam until the 1980s. Likewise, I don’t think we will see any good fiction about Iraq or Afghanistan until another five or 10 years.”
The Irish News pointed out that “although a fictional novel, ‘The Twelve’ does not shy away from Northern Ireland’s very real past, in fact it embraces its history. And many reading the novel will feel that its fiction is only a hair’s breath away from reality.”
Neville predicts: “There will be more [novels and films] when people are free from having to be partisan or having to be sensitive and can just go ahead and tell the story.”
Coming from a working class background, Neville explains, affected his creativity in a negative way because “you were boxed and pigeon-holed as one of the kids from the rough estate who wasn’t going to go too far and you were treated accordingly in school.”
He remembers that as a child he was “an avid reader [who] always wanted to write”. In his grammar school he was aware that he was unlike the other students who came from middle-class, affluent backgrounds. “In that environment you are not encouraged toward expression or anything in the arts at all. So I kept the writing to myself until I had something to show for it,” he remarks.
Technique
‘The Twelve’ was described by the Irish Independent as dealing with “old fashioned concepts of guilt, redemption and soul salvation.”
Growing up in the 1980s, Neville was influenced by Stephen King books such as ‘The Shining’ and ‘Salem’s Lot’. He explains: “It wasn’t until I was older that I started reading more James Ellroy and crime fiction. There’s a kind of grey area between thrillers and horror that writers like John Connolly work in. I found myself naturally gravitating towards that kind of area.”
In terms of ‘soul salvation’ he recognises that his novel has a paranormal element to it but adds: “When you are writing something you don’t necessarily aim at themes. The themes will tend to be present in what you write whether you intend it or not, but if you go looking for them you will wind up letting that dominate the story. You have to let the story be what it is.”
Getting into the dynamics of writing, Neville says: “Theme is an important part of any story or film. To take a crass commercial example, with a film like ‘The Dark Knight’, you can say that’s about a man who dresses up as a bat and beats up criminals. But what it is actually about is how society deals with crime. All good stories have a theme underlying in them.”
A keen musician, Neville often entwines his knowledge of instruments into his stories. A short story called ‘Me and the Devil Blues’, written before ‘The Twelve’ was the perfect avenue for his musical persona.
“He swept the bottleneck up the fingerboard, striking the strings just as it passed the seventh fret. He halted at the twelfth, letting his left hand waver, a glassy vibrato swelling to fill the room,” Neville wrote.
“It was nice to be able to bring that out in the story and that comes out in ‘The Twelve’ also,” he reveals.
Highlights
Neville’s “hero”, the famous crime fiction author James Ellroy said ‘The Twelve’ is: “The best novel I have read in years. It crackles. It grabs you by the throat.”
“That was very good of him to say,” he concedes. Meeting Ellroy in Belfast last November was one of the highlights of Neville’s relatively new career as an author.
“Belfast is becoming quite important on the author circuit, mostly due to David Torrins in [the] No Alibis bookstore,” he explains.
“He [Torrins] has been organising some great events and together we packed 700 people into the Waterfront to see James Ellroy. He is one of my biggest influences so it was a huge deal for me to meet him and disprove the theory that you shouldn’t meet your heroes.”
Another highlight was the LA Times book prize which he won in April this year. “That was a huge thing,” he admits. And so heightened were Neville’s emotions on the night of the award he “fell on one knee” and proposed to his girlfriend, adding to the positive momentum his life has been taking recently.
Other special moments for the author are walking into Eason’s in Craigavon and seeing his book for the first time, and “even getting an agent was huge.”
“The reviews have been fantastic. For a debut it seems to have done pretty well in a quite crowded market,” Neville smiles.
Forthcoming plans for the author include a sequel called ‘Collusion’ and two other books that he has been contracted to complete. Following his appearance on The Late Late Show in America, the host Craig Ferguson has optioned the movie rights for the novel. This means that they made a contractual agreement whereby Ferguson obtained the right to buy a screenplay from Neville.
“There’s a long road between here and there, to actually getting a film made. There’s so many practical things [which mean that] only one in 100 books ever get made into a film, but he is very very passionate about it. We will wait and see.”
