Gareth Rubin’s Liberation Square

I recently bumped into a debut novelist Gareth Rubin, at a party hosted by the PenguinRandomHouse Group, during the Theakston’s Crime-Writing Festival last month. 

I had read espionage writer Adrian Magson’s review earlier, and it intrigued me. So last week, as Rubin’s Liberation Square came to paperback, from Penguin I grabbed a copy for the bank-holiday reading. After penning my review, I had a few questions which the author kindly answered and I’ll share with Shots Readers -

Ali Karim: So firstly, are you a reader of alternate history novels such as PKD’s The Man in the High Castle, Robert Harris’ Fatherland or Len Deighton’s SS-GB?

Gareth Rubin: It would be a bit weird if I weren’t, wouldn’t it? The thing is, the alt-history setting adds something, but it’s not the whole deal. You have to have a decent storyline in there too, or the reader loses interest. I’m not entirely convinced The Man In The High Castle passes that test. But Dick’s dead, so he can’t complain about me now. Screw you, Philip K Dick.

AK: So, tell us a little about your reading, the books that made you consider writing yourself?

GR: I like to kick back with a bit of modern gothic. Rebecca, The Name of the Rose (sure, it’s a medieval setting, but written fairly recently and the main character is ahead of his time), The Secret History. Maybe I’m weird, but I like the idea of people going mad just around the corner from where we sit eating pub lunches in the afternoon. I don’t like horror, but I like the quietly horrifying.

AK: And a little about your foray behind the camera screen, and your journalism?

GR: Ha. I was an actor for a few years, but my mum tells people I wasn’t great at it. She’s probably right. I started as a journalist at the tail end of the good times, in the late 1990s, before the bottom fell out of the market and people starting getting their information about the world from utterly untrue blogs (God, I don’t want to give them any publicity, but some of your friends probably share their content on social media). It’s frightening that there are people out there who believe some of the dross on the internet and base their voting decisions on it. I still work as a journalist from time to time, when I find something that interests me – social affairs – and a newspaper not run on a shoestring or ultimately owned by an odd couple of a dodgy Russian oligarch and a psychopathic Saudi prince (that’s the Independent, in case I wasn’t being clear).

AK: Prior to Liberation Square, had you written fiction prior and tell us a little about those words?

GR: Like most authors, I’ve got a couple of dreadful failed novels stored in the recesses of my laptop. They will never see the light of day so long as I live. On the other hand, before Liberation Square I wrote a mystery set during the French revolution that I might now rewrite and publish. I like it. A priest is crucified.

AK: And back to your day job; is journalism (especially freelance) as precarious as it appears? 

GR: I will write for food. No, seriously. I will.

AK: How fully-formed did the concept of Liberation Square’s alternate history come to you, did you have to plot much before writing or did you find the story during the process of writing it?

GR: I’m awful at planning. Some authors plot it out intricately and know exactly what will happen before they type a word. I wish I could do that. I usually have an opening image – not a scene, but an image – and perhaps a mid-point and ending. I just have to sit down and see where the writing takes me because I only get ideas as I’m writing. I’ve tried planning it out, but I immediately go off at tangents and throw away the planning notes. It means I take a lot longer for a book than I should.

AK: Tell us about character. How well did you get to ‘know’ Jane, Nick, Frank and Hazel, among others?

GR: Hmmm, interesting question. I remember at university – I read English literature - one of my tutors warning about being taken in by the romantic myth that the characters exist off the page, in their own world. They don’t. The author creates them in entirety and they only exist in the words you write. I’m a bit suspicious of authors who say: ‘My hero wants to do X, I can’t control him!’ Bollocks. You want him to do that. So write it or don’t write it, but don’t pretend he lives separately from your novel.

That said, I’ve spoken to a couple of reading groups and one group said: ‘We feel really sorry for Hazel, she’s lost her mum and all she does is get sent to her room to keep quiet.’ Sorry Hazel.

AK: I take it you have read Eric Arthur Blair [George Orwell] as I felt his shadow at times during the reading?

GR: Aye. Sad to say, I don’t think I’ll ever create anything as good as Animal Farm.  Orwell is the man to go to when it comes to the critical reality of far-left politics and its apologists. Don’t read Das Kapital, kids, read 1984.

Orwell was also an old Observer hack (I work at the Observer). In fact, so was Kim Philby, who also appears in Liberation Square. He was our Middle East correspondent when he was outed as a spy. We have a strong line in dead socialists.

AK: As a debut novelist, what advice would you give those doing the ‘clickety clack’?

GR: It still feels weird calling myself a novelist. It sounds like a fantasy 

profession. I suppose it is, in a way. What advice? Well, I say you do it by doing it. Sit down at your computer and write a word. Then write another one. And keep going. It’s much easier than it sounds.

AK: So, what’s next?

GR: My next novel is The Winter Agent, out in May next year. It’s about British agents in Paris just before D-Day. It’s inspired by a true – and, in some ways, tragic – story, critical to the success of the invasion in a way no one could possibly have guessed. Britain’s Special Operations Executive agents during the War were among the bravest men and women who ever lived.

I’ve dedicated the book to my grandfathers, who both landed in Normandy on D-Day. This year I went with my dad to the beach where his father came ashore 75 years ago; he was in the Pioneers. We saw the stretch of sand. It was incongruously quiet and peaceful. My grandfathers both survived the War, so many didn’t.

AK: Thank you for your time, and we look forward to seeing what’s coming from your imagination and your pen.

GR: Any time.

More information available from the links below

Shots Magazine Review Hard Cover HERE and Paperback HERE

Gareth Rubin’s website HERE

Gareth Rubin on Twitter HERE

Amanda Jennings on 5 books of my past

I love thinking back over the books that I have read in my past. It’s wonderful to remember those that struck a special chord and consider why they meant something special to me, why I identified so strongly with them at that particular time in my life. 

Books are the gateways to other worlds. They provide snapshots of a different way of life and allow the reader to experience all sorts of things – dangerous, sad, terrifying, romantic, erotic, fantastical – and all from the safety of a favourite reading spot. Escapism, stepping out of conscious reality and into the pages of a book, even if only occasionally, is a glorious thing.

Books are tools of empathy, they allow us to walk in another person’s shoes. It was the books I’ve had an emotional connection with that helped to cultivate my sense of injustice, opened my mind, made me think, and challenged me, and hence have had the greatest impact. The five I’ve selected from a very long list are:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Soon after we got together, my then-boyfriend, now-husband, was appalled when he found out I hadn’t read this book. He gave me his many-times read copy and insisted I read it. I feel in love with the book from the first page. Everything about this story of prejudice, hypocrisy and justice transfixed me. As I turned the pages, I was enveloped by the story of Scout and Atticus and the idea that we must all be brave and stand up for what is good and right. I gave my husband a signed copy of the book for our first wedding anniversary and our second daughter’s middle name is Scout.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

This allegorical gem from George Orwell was the first book to make me cry real tears. I must have been about thirteen when we read it out loud at school, each of us taking it in turns to read passages. When we reached the part where Boxer is loaded into the horse transporter and driven away – betrayed, lied to, used and dispatched, his innocence and faith present as he walks trustingly to his fate – my tears flowed freely. Even now that scene has the power to move me deeply.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

I read this book when I was about fifteen and was mesmerised by this nightmarish vision of society. It was like nothing I had ever read before – and I’d go so far as to say like nothing I’ve read since. I was both horrified and addicted to Alex, Our Humble Narrator, and his gang of Droogs as they marauded heir way through the pages in a flurry of rape and mindless violence, my stomach seizing up with disgust and fascination. I later learnt that Burgess wrote the book in a matter of weeks following an attack on his wife by a group of men that resulted in her miscarrying, which gives this depiction of a broken dystopian society yet more resonance. Removed from us, yes, but not so very far.

Carrie by Stephen King

This revenge parable, with bullying at its core, held me from the first page. I knew what Carrie was doing as she wreaks havoc on her tormentors was wrong, but at the same time I cheered her on. The depictions of the bullies, that group of girls intent on making the vulnerable outcast’s life a misery with taunting, teasing and humiliating her, cut to the bone. King was one of my favourite writers as a teen, and this tale stuck with me as an example of how cruelty and unkindness should have no place in any human interaction.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Such a beautifully written book. The prose is stunning and Ian MacEwan captures that period so perfectly you feel as if you are living with the Tallis family. I read it when it came out, I was twenty-eight and had just had my second child, and I understood childhood very differently once I had become a mother. The pain of watching Briony wrongly accuse Robbie in a fit of childish petulance and hurt, of observing the far-reaching effects of that lie, undoubtedly influenced on the type of stories I now write myself. Atonement is one of the books I wish I’d written.

In Her Wake, by Amanda Jennings is published by Orenda Books

£8.99

You can find out more information about her work on her website.  You can also follow Amanda Jennings on Twitter @MandaJJennings