AL Kennedy / Features / Untitled Books

“Tricks and deceptions generally aren’t that heart-warming, unless you’ve actually invited a magician along.”

AL Kennedy

AL Kennedy's first novel since 2007's Costa-winning Day casts a trio of lovers in an unworkable ménage on board a cruise ship heading from Southampton to New York. Against this potentially stifling backdrop, a complex story emerges of redemptive love, unspoken regret, internal and external communication, and the arcane skills of magic-makers, mediums and other manipulators who offer comfort to the traumatised and dispossessed. Mark Reynolds thinks of a number and climbs aboard...

There is, one may suppose, some residual romance about a cruise trip across the Atlantic, which captures a slower time when to meaningfully travel meant an arduous trip on the high seas. But a short passage a third of the way in to AL Kennedy's The Blue Book crystallises the downside of such a prolonged journey - usually taken by the aerophobic or geriatric - that may cause the sensitive traveller to deeply question the world around them as well as their own darker insecurities:

"There is... at the decks, the areas for leisure activities and the shops, an air of relinquished hope. Hunched passengers sit here and there in frozen contemplation of their own unreliable interiors."

The cruise ship lurching bored passengers through stormy waters is a fine metaphor for the many claustrophobic institutions of modern living. I ask the author where we might search for calmer seas.

"Lord, I don't know," she replies. "If I did I'd be there. Obviously, we can all talk about looking for more permanent and valuable things in our lives and not defining everything in terms of earning potential, but there are social pressures and everyday distractions that make that easier said than done. Hopefully, we can find solace in those we love and who love us."

The mention of "unreliable interiors" suggests that our inner lives are far more complicated than the versions of ourselves we project to others - whether they be intimates or strangers. Perhaps it's for the best that we share only our edited highlights with others.

"I think we all share what we feel safe with," Kennedy affirms, "and it's certainly not a great idea to just dump intimacies on the unwary. Equally, I think people who are close need to be made aware of tender points and likes and dislikes and histories - but not all at once. As we tend to be slightly different people when we're in different situations, levels of confiding will also differ."

For the main protagonist, Beth, the uncertainties of how much and just how to confide are sometimes crippling. Her thought processes unravel as she's about to engage in uncomfortable conversation or action, suggesting there are almost unlimited ways in which any given situation might unfold. Did the writing of the novel - and it's untangling for the reader - take many unexpected turns?

"Oddly, no - although the untangling isn't chronological, it is governed by emotion and bearability. I tend to prepare for a long time before I start writing, so the unexpected turns happen during the research period - less stress that way. And I would hope that options seem unlimited in situations, but actually they're really not."

The novel as a whole jumps back and forth in time - like consciousness - and reveals key relationships and events out of kilter. Could the story have been as effective and absorbing if told chronologically?

"I'm not sure... it would have covered a very long time period for one thing, which could have made it seem quite diffuse and choppy."

Beth's great love Arthur is both charming and deceitful: a con artist and self-proclaimed medium who makes a generous living from playing mind games with the rich and gullible. Questions come to mind about whether Kennedy herself, as novelist, playwright and comedian, is impelled by sleight of hand, reframing the familiar and revealing hidden truths through tricks and deceptions.

"Not really - revelation and reframing, yes. But tricks and deceptions generally aren't that heart-warming, unless you've actually invited a magician along. I think routinely deceiving others isn't the best idea."

Arthur's surface charm (his public face) hides some atrocious deceptions which fill him with self-loathing; and even when he's his performing "good" acts of "indiscriminate love", to the recently harmed or bereaved, he is often bored and mechanical. At various moments he comes across as a man overtaken by a devotion to his apparent gifts, incapable of anything but manipulation.

"I think he's consumed by his work, which means he has less to give to others than he might. He gives more to strangers than those closest to him. Then again, those closest to him - basically Beth - have hurt him very badly. He's self-aware enough to know that he can choose to always manipulate or try to do better and he is painfully honest with Beth always. But I wouldn't want to generalise about all people from one fictional character..."

Tricks and codes permeate the book. Even the page numbers shift subliminally - until the characters' conversation alerts the reader to take note. There's a sense that every close relationship has its own secret codes and rules, impenetrable to outsiders, and that we are programmed to allow for only a few close relationships.

"Oh, probably, yes. We can't really let that many people in that close - it would redefine close. And would there be that many people you wanted to be really deeply involved in that way?"

There's a strong undercurrent of redemptive love. But also the suggestion that this often comes at a high personal price.

"Well, yes. Unless you're very lucky. It probably can't redeem unless you know what it's worth and probably involves previous pain."

Kennedy undertook several years of research into psychic scams and audience manipulation. I wonder who were the biggest charlatans she met or uncovered, and what were their most outrageous or disturbing actions.

"Oh, I wouldn't want to pick on any of them - that whole world is unpleasant enough. I would just advise people to stay well away. I rarely met anyone pleasant and I never met anyone convincing."

Her radio play, Confessions of a Medium, which aired on Radio 4 last year, could perhaps be viewed as a kind of companion piece to the novel.

"The play was based on an anonymously-written book of the same name which I read as part of the wider research. It's a Victorian book, so not strictly relevant, but it was such a lovely story that I didn't want to lose it, so I did a radio adaptation. It was useful to hear a very, very fine performer - Bill Nighy - playing the medium, because mediums are very rarely in reality good performs, or even credible performers."

There's an acknowledgement to Derren Brown at the back of the book. So how did the self-styled illusionist, mentalist and sceptic help the research, and how does he rank among historical masters of the psychic arts?

"Mr Brown was very kind and generous with his time and I was able to ask him specifically about some areas - to do with language mainly - which I found unconvincing, but were being sold at me (and others) very hard. He was sure that they were nonsense and so I could happily ignore them and move on to trying to find other ways of making the book a magical object. There are, in fact two magic tricks you can perform using the book and the deceptive upper page numbers. And obviously, he's another superlative performer. Although he is most assuredly not at all psychic in any way. I do have a soft spot for his re-creations/reworkings/imaginings of very old magical and mystical effects - spirit cabinets, slate writing and so forth..."

And don't doubt that Mr Brown will be similarly charmed by the new novel.

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AL Kennedy's The Blue Book is published by Jonathan Cape.
Mark Reynolds is a freelance editor and writer and Literary Editor of The Drawbridge.

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Tuesday, 2 August, 2011