You often hear it said that all novels are autobiographical to some extent. However, that’s not something you want to hear when you’ve just published a novel about someone who drinks himself into a stupor and bludgeons his victim to death with a broken bottle.
Yes that’s right. My new novel The Insect Farm tells the story of two brothers, each of whom has his own obsession. One is obsessed with his beautiful and talented wife Harriet, and the other is obsessed with an elaborate world he has created which is populated by a wide variety of very useful insects. There’s a brutal murder in the middle, and the rest of the book is all about how the killer seeks to evade justice.
So needless to say, when I’m asked how I came up with the original idea, I struggle to find the roots in my autobiography.
It’s true that, in common with my narrator, I do have an older brother. However, unlike the character in my novel, my brother is far smarter than I am, and has never had the slightest interest in insects.
It’s true that, in common with my narrator, I attended the Cream’s farewell concert at the Albert Hall in November 1969. However, I didn’t meet my future wife there, and I didn’t go on to be obsessed by my girlfriend.
And of course it’s true that, in common with my narrator, I once killed someone by bashing them over the head with a wine bottle and spent the next few decades trying to get away with it.
Wait. Wait. Obviously I wrote that last bit as a cheap trick to see if I still had your attention – but here’s the funny thing. What really is true is that I do have a recurring dream in which that’s exactly what I did.
That’s right. Horrible.
I don’t dream very often. Or at least I don’t very often have dreams that I can remember. However, I do occasionally have a dream in which sometime long in the past I have indeed killed someone. Sometimes it was an accident and sometimes it was deliberate, and in my dreams I am desperate to evade being arrested by the police. What’s worse is that even after I’ve woken up, I sometimes find myself lying there for a little while, as I continue to believe that this is so. I am in a cold sweat as I anticipate the prospect of imminent arrest and lifelong imprisonment. Eventually my head clears, I remember that I’m a decent and law-abiding – even rather boring – citizen, and the world all seems alright again. Phew.
So when I was thinking about the plot of a novel I wanted to write, I forced myself to consider what it would be like to have been involved in a murder many years before, and then what it would be like to live with that dreadful knowledge over decades.
At the same time that I was turning over these (frankly weird) thoughts in my head, I was also writing a factual book about the Falklands War. It’s called Secrets of the Conqueror, and the story involved a series of real incidents which took place shortly after the war, in some of which I had been tangentially involved. Carrying out the research, I found myself delving into my own memories of events and meetings I had attended as long ago as 1984, and I had to look up and interview some of the other people who had been present at the time. What I found alarming was that, in quite a number of cases, my memory of what had happened was completely at odds with what the other people remembered. Not only did we have a different recall of the main events, but we also had different versions of the order in which things had taken place and of who else was present. Most often I found that people had revised what happened in order to put themselves at the centre of the action; no doubt doing so had turned the story into a better anecdote over the years.
However, my own recall was so bad that on one occasion I asked my main witness about something which had taken place at his wedding, when he replied: “you should know, you were there”. I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that I hadn’t attended his wedding, until he sent me a photograph which showed me sitting alongside him at the head table, complete with an unspeakable mullet haircut. Needless to say, I was shocked.
I mean, it’s probably not surprising that you can’t remember an individual meeting or a phone call or even going to dinner with someone 30 years ago. But if you go to a wedding, it’s usually going to take up most of the day and evening, you have to put on your best suit, you have to buy a present. It’s a big thing to have forgotten all about.
So anyway, armed with all that, I started to put together a plot about a murder which had taken place three decades earlier, recounted by a narrator whose memory of who did what, when and how, is blurred and distorted by the passage of time. What would happen if you discovered late in life that something you thought you had known and understood for your whole adult life, turned out to be quite different from what you had believed?
However, I’m not going to say any more, because one of the most gratifying things about the early reaction to The Insect Farm is that few if anybody has managed to guess the end. And obviously I want you to buy it and not to spoil it for you. Meanwhile, try this experiment for fun. Track down someone you knew 30 years ago (if you’re old enough) and talk about an event you both think you remember. I bet you’ll be amazed.
The Insect Farm by Stuart Prebble is published by Alma Books, priced £12.99
http://www.storyvault.tv/about-us/stuart-prebble/
