Interview for 4Talent Magazine – Isssue 10
4Talent Magazine – Issue 10
Article entitled “A Novel Approach”
Channel 4 described 4Talent as their gateway to the world of multi-platform media, showcasing and celebrating talent, publishing a national magazine alongside producing online content.
The grande dame of crime fiction, P.D. James, once said that “a first-class mystery should also be a first-class novel”. These days, crime novelists in Northern Ireland are making a name for themselves by applying those first-class writing skills to movies and stage plays, all with one thing in common – a uniquely dark humour spliced deep into their tales of murder and corruption.
It’s a sense of humour which arises from the country’s past, but which also rises above it – often as a surreal take on all-too-real events in a world where optimism is the only lasting answer. In Colin Bateman’s 2005 novel, Belfast Confidential, the character of Dan Starkey spends a serious moment reflecting that Northern Ireland “had emerged as a better, stronger place for what it had been through, but it was important to always be aware that it could slip back into the abyss,” then sums up the most effective solution as “to face the future with determination and bravery and also to crack a few jokes.”
Ballymena-born John McAllister, who produces a range of contemporary fiction as well as the ‘Sergeant Barlow’ series exploring 1950′s Northern Ireland, believes that the act of writing itself is a way for people to come to terms with the changes seen in the country. Having spent nearly a decade leading creative writing courses and editing local anthologies, he considers the situation.
“There are an awful lot of people out there who can only express themselves in writing. The good thing is, they are trying to do it. I think it’s to do with the closeness of Northern Irish society where one does not show emotion. My father died when I was nine, and I remember my mother starting to cry and somebody saying ‘not in front of the children’. That has stuck in my mind as one of the only two times I saw my mother cry, and very much indicative of our culture.
“Things were tough in Northern Ireland for many generations – don’t get me started on how the bosses divided the workers by religion to keep the money in their own pockets – and while nobody likes a complainer, at the same time, feelings have to come out. And that I think is where our self-deprecating humour came from. The best digs come where the knife goes in and turns, and the victim has to be seen to laugh at himself.”
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John McAllister has also received national acclaim for his 2006 work, Line of Flight, which depicts the underbelly of a newly settled society, where freedom fighters now turn their hands to money laundering and protection rackets. Describing the experiences of an honest man who finds himself caught between two factions, the work has been described as ‘a warning’ with worldwide relevance, about what can happen to ordinary people when a government decides the war on terror is over, and washes its hands of the aftermath.
Moreover, with his Barlow stories, John manages a second feat – reminding people that Northern Ireland hasn’t always been a byword for trouble, relating that this wry police procedural series following events in the 1950′s takes the form of fiction but not fabrication.
“Barlow was a real character in Ballymena in the fifties. The town used to talk about what that ‘stupid man’ Barlow had said or done. In addition, many of the characters in the stories were real people living in Ballymena at that time, and the main incidents in the first story ‘Curles Bridge’ really did happen.”
So find some time for Northern Irish crime fiction – while the end is still uncertain in this latest chapter of history, you won’t be disappointed by the story so far.
Also in this issue were interviews with Danny Boyle, Graham Linehan and Charlie Brooker.
