B O O K S
IN ASSOCIATION WITH T H E WRITE ST U F F
T hree years ago Claire Askew sat on her kitchen l oor and cried. The award- winning poet had just split from her literary agent, having disagreed about the ending of her debut novel, All the Hidden Truths: a contemporary crime story about the aftermath of a school shooting in Edinburgh. ‘She and I basically couldn’t carry on together,’ Askew explains. ‘She had very specii c ideas about how she thought the book should end. She wanted much more of a clean resolution . . . but to me, there is no tying up of loose ends in the aftermath of an event like that. Life goes on, but it goes on in tiny increments for many years. There is no closure.’
At that point, Askew says she was ready to forget the whole ‘debut novel’ thing. ‘It was an amicable break up,’ she says, ‘but breaking up with your agent is huge. At that point, I really thought I was going to put the book in the drawer, and either start another one, or just go back to poetry and never write a novel again. I was in a really miserable place. ‘It’s only thanks to good friends who were very patient with me and persuaded me to send it out again, that fortunately I found another agent, and dare I say, a better one. All’s well that ends well. But I think I very nearly lost my shit at that point.’
Now, Askew’s shit is very much together. Actually, her shit is shit hot. All the Hidden Truths was snapped up by Hodder after a i erce auction, and was launched last month to a packed crowd in Leith. It has been widely praised by readers and critics alike. The split narrative follows the mother of the gunman, the mother of a victim, and the detective inspector tasked with solving the mystery of Ryan Summers: the boy that walked into a college and started shooting.
‘It’s set in Edinburgh which surprises quite a lot of people,’ she says. ‘I think we feel quite safe from these events in the UK. But I wanted to remind people that this can happen anywhere, and it’s happened in Scotland before.’ She’s referencing Dunblane, of course: the 1996 school shooting tragedy that shook the nation. ‘I think that was quite a seismic event in Scotland’s collective psyche,’ she says. ‘I think I’ve always been interested in what happens to a community in the wake of such a massive tragedy that feels local and national at the same time.’ The psychology at work in the book is gendered and complex. Ryan Summers is not painted as a social outlier, for instance. ‘I was worried that people might think I was being sympathetic to him or trying to rehabilitate him and say its not his fault, which I’m not trying to do. What I’m trying to do is go, well, he was actually quite normal,’ she explains. The book asks the question: what led to the extreme tragedy, if not some socially demonstrable abnormality?
Her debut is making waves for its gripping content and its (sadly) topical themes. Outside of creating startling new i ction, Askew works as the University of Edinburgh’s writer in residence, where she inspires and guides the next generation of writers. Students at the university can see her during ofi ce hours, and she runs a fortnightly creative writing workshop group that budding authors and poets can apply to be a part of. She also runs events throughout the year, which are open to the public and feature a selection of writers (this autumn, she’s got Mary Paulson Ellis on the bill). And if you’re interested in writing as a career, let Askew’s
coni dence (and style) be a guide. ‘The main piece of advice I give everybody is you have to believe that you deserve it. You have to believe that your work is good enough to deserve a readership, otherwise, you’ll never get one.’ Yes, she says, you have to edit, take criticism, and redraft – but you also have to own it. After all, it’s continued belief that put All the Hidden Truths on the shelf, instead of in the kitchen drawer. And it’s belief that will no doubt take her to the top, where she rightly belongs. All the Hidden Truths is out now. See review, page 54.
All the Hidden Truths is a richly complex debut from the University of Edinburgh’s writer in residence, which explores the aftermath of a college shooting in Scotland. Rebecca Monks talks to Claire Askew to fi nd out more about the novel, her writing process, and why she almost quit the story forever
P H O T O : S A L L Y J U B B P H O T O G R A P H Y
1 Sep–31 Oct 2018 THE LIST 129