MAL PEET

 
 Photo: Tim Cuff

Mal Peet's book Tamar - a dual narrative set in the Second World War and contemporary Britain - won the prestigious Carnegie Medal in 2005. He's also the author of the acclaimed Keeper and The Penalty, novels set in South America which feature fictional football journalist Paul Faustino. You can find out more about Mal's work by going to the Contemporary Writers website, or the Paul Faustino website.

This interview took place in August 2007, and includes questions from EnCompass readers mailed in to Reader in Residence Susan Tranter.

Susan Tranter: I'd like to start by asking what you're reading at the moment Mal, and whether you've come across anything lately that you'd recommend to EnCompass readers?

MP: Well, I'm working on a new book at the moment, and when I'm writing I don't read much. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe because I'll think that what I'm reading is better than what I'm writing... I certainly avoid reading other children's/young adult books when I'm trying to write one of my own. High on my list of things to read as soon as I have the time are Blood Red, Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick and The Medici Seal by Theresa Breslin.
 
Mathias: Did you always want to be a writer Mal? Is there anything else you considered doing?

MP: When I was a kid I wanted to be a professional footballer. I was going to be captain of England, in fact. Somehow that didn't work out. I also wanted to be a cartoonist, and in the past I have made a sketchy sort of a living drawing and illustrating. I didn't start writing full-time until I was forty. I'd had all sorts of jobs before that, most of them horrible. One of the reasons I write for a living is that I'm no good at being employed.
 
Sarah: I didn't think I would like Keeper and The Penalty, because I'm not very interested in football, but I ended up enjoying both of them. Did you deliberately try to make the stories about more than just sport?

MP: Oh yes. Books that are only about football are strictly for fanatics and geeks. And to be honest, I think that most football-based stories for younger readers are rubbish. With Keeper, I consciously set out to write something entirely different. I also tried to write a story that would appeal to non-fans, and especially to female readers. (I struggled not to have a picture of a player on the cover, for those reasons, but I lost that battle. The new cover is the one I wanted in the first place.) In both books, football is really the way of getting the story told, not the story itself.
 
DG3: How did you come up with the idea of using a character like Paul Faustino and do you see his role changing in each book he appears in?

MP: Smart Q, DG! Faustino arrived late on the scene. I'd pretty much finished Keeper before he came along. I'd written the book as a staightforward, first-person narrative addressed directly to the reader. Then I thought that because some of the things he says are so, um... weird, it would be better to have a character who challenges them, someone who doesn't really believe what he's hearing. And who better than a cynical, city-dwelling sports journalist? So I reorganised the novel into an interview.
Later, I got kind of fond of Paul Faustino. He's smart, but not quite as smart as he thinks he is, and although he's fairly cool, he gets involved in things that are a bit beyond him. His role does change, yes. He's far more part of the story in The Penalty; in fact, he's one of the two central characters. He's more three-dimensional, I hope. In the book I'm working on now, Exposure, he's a main character again, but always just a bit shoved away from the main action.
 
Jose: I have heard that you have travelled to Brazil and been influenced by the country. How has it been important to you in your writing?

MP: I went to South America for the first time just after I began work on The Penalty. It was a knockout experience. We have a friend, a botanist who's lived in Brazil for years and years, and he took us to places way off the beaten track. (Actually, most of Brazil is way off the beaten track.) It entirely changed the way I wrote The Penalty. It was going to be a fairly straightforward, tightly-plotted crime novel. But then I came into contact with African religion, and the history of slavery, and I simply had to add that whole dimension to the story, to make it a mix of crime fiction and historical fiction. In the end, the book is really about religion.
 
Bookend: What made you come up with the concept of Tamar and was it difficult interlocking past and present sections?

MP: The 'birth' of Tamar was a long and complicated business, and I won't bore you with the details. I wanted to write a story about the Second World War, because I've always been interested in it, and because (obviously) I'm a history freak. It was meeting a friend's father, a man who had been a secret agent during the war, that set me off on the subject of spies and secrecy. And led me to Holland. I didn't know anything much about the Nazi occupation of Holland, and  I like writing to be a process of discovery. Interlocking the sections was a bit tricky, yes. What I did was write the novel in about 24 sections, on different computer files. Then I wrote down the sequence I thought they should be in, and asked my editor, Averil, and my wife, Ellie, to do the same. We all came up with pretty much the same order, and that's how I stitched it together.
 
Martina: My cousin lent me Tamar and I really loved it. Who was your favourite character in the book and who did you feel most sorry for?

MP: Tough Q. I suspect that authors have rather strange relationships with their characters. We probably like the villains best, because it's more fun writing about bad guys than writing about good guys. So I like Koop, for example. Who do I feel most sorry for? I dunno. No-one gets off lightly, do they? I suppose it has to be Dart, though. Usually when I say that, someone says 'But he's horrible!' Which I guess he is; but he pays a very high price for his act of treachery, and spends the rest of his life trying to make amends for it. No, I've changed my mind. He's a swine.
 
Michael: Do you think you will write another book like Tamar about the war or a historical situation?

MP: Maybe... Like I said, I'm fascinated by history. I'm sort of brewing an idea for a story set over several generations of people who live in the same small town. And wars might well come into it, yes. But it's just a misty idea at the moment.
 
GeekGirl: Do you think kids read enough these days? We are always being told that we play computer games too much and are vegetating couch potatoes. Aside from Harry Potter perhaps, do you think it's true?

MP: Yeah, you're all awful. When I was young, all we did was read really good books while running up and down mountains.
 
Michael: What do you think is the best way to interest young people in literature? Is it a case of better marketing, better writing, younger writers, more relevant subjects, or what?

MP: Michael, if I knew the answer to that I'd be very much richer than I am now. (Which is not at all, in case you're wondering.) I do think that TV, radio, magazines could do a lot more to promote good books and encourage reading. I also happen to think that there are some exceptionally brilliant YA writers around right now, and it's a shame if people miss out on them. But, as a writer, all you can do is write your best and hope for the best. Given how many distractions there are, I'm actually rather surprised that there are as many keen young readers as there are. 
 
Funke: My question for Mal Peet which I'm certain will be in the minds of most readers would be what is going to be the theme of his new book? What will be background be like, and can we expect something new?

MP: Well, I shouldn't really tell you. But I will. We're off to South America again, but this time it's a big city story. It's about a superstar football player and his pop-star wife, it's about celebrity and money and kidnapping and homeless children and fashion and treachery and politics and racism and love and murder and one or two other things. Oh, and it's based on Shakespeare's Othello. I hope there'll be something for everyone in it....

Susan Tranter: It certainly sounds like it! Many thanks for taking part in this inerview Mal, and good luck with Exposure.

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