Kit de Waal’s bestselling debut novel, My Name Is Leon, was shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Desmond Elliott prize and the Costa first novel award. Born in Birmingham to an Irish mother and a Caribbean father, she worked in criminal and family law for 15 years before becoming a writer. Her new novel, The Trick to Time, is published by Viking on 29 March (£12.99).
Your new novel is about a young couple of Irish immigrants in Birmingham, Mona and Will, and a tragedy that tears them apart. What came to you first: the characters or their heartbreaking situation?
Mona came first. Characters always do for me. It was getting to know her that gave me the story; it was driven by her identity and her history. I wanted to write something about my Irish heritage. I wanted to talk about my mother’s generation moving here from Ireland and explore the dislocation they felt when they first came, how quickly they were assimilated into the culture while never actually becoming British. The Irish very much remain Irish wherever they are. My grandmother, honestly, you would never have thought she left the fields of Wexford.
The story is set at the time of the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974 amid much anti-Irish sentiment. Do you remember those negative feelings when you were growing up?
Completely. After the bombs there was a definite turning against the Irish, a massive suspicion, and this assumption that if you were Irish, you were pro-IRA. I kept very quiet about my background at that time. There had always been jokes about the Irish being stupid, but now people talked openly about the dirty Irish, the terrible Irish, how we were all terrorists, very much as some people speak about Muslims today.
One of the main themes in the book is ageing and the passing of time. How pressing are those issues for you?
I am completely out of touch with how old I am. When I started writing Mona, who is a few days before her 60th birthday, I started writing her as an old woman. And then I thought, what am I doing? I’m 57, she is only two years older than me, she is not an old lady. In my mind I’m 35. I don’t feel at all grown up or mature. I don’t feel like winding down. I feel like there’s lots of life left to live.
Do you think starting to write later in life has made you a better writer?
Yes. I know that if I had started writing at 20 I would have written shite. I was so full of it, I thought I knew it all. Everything would have been black and white, good or bad. The older I get, the more I realise that so few issues are black and white. I don’t think I was very compassionate in my 20s either.
Since publishing My Name Is Leon, you’ve become a vocal campaigner for more inclusivity in publishing. What drove you to speak out about this?
It was actually a throw-away comment that started it all off. I was interviewed by somebody just before Leon came out and I said I would really like to see more working-class writers. It seemed to strike a chord and afterwards I kept getting asked to talk about it and write about it and I was invited to make a Radio 4 documentary on the subject. But I didn’t feel like I drove it at all. I’m very happy to be looked upon as an activist and a freedom fighter, but it’s absolutely accidental. I’m not that nice and selfless.
What books are on your bedside table at the moment?
I’m currently judging the Orwell prize so there is a pile of 64 books and pieces of journalism – not all of them actually on the bedside table. I am getting an absolutely brilliant education in contemporary politics and I’m loving it. I feel like I’ve got a little more authority now when I start gobbing on about something.
What is the last really great book that you read?
I can think of three. The first is My Absolute Darling. It’s brilliant and the guy that’s written it [Gabriel Tallent] looks about 12. The second came out in the 60s, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love by Kathleen Collins. It’s a series of short stories about interracial relationships, not necessarily sexual, and it is so good, she has such a light touch. It is very nuanced, subtle and powerful and all the better because it’s not preachy. The third is Donal Ryan’s new book, From a Low and Quiet Sea. It is vomit-inducing, it’s so good.
Which other novelists and nonfiction writers working today do you admire?
Laurie Penny – I had to read Bitch Doctrine for the Orwell prize and I really like that book. I like its fuck-off attitude, I like her controlled anger, I like that she’s a young woman, bravely saying very intelligent, hard-hitting stuff about what she believes in. In fiction, I would say Sebastian Barry. I just love his writing. I think it is real and very rooted but it’s so lyrical and poetic and just lovely. I’m really jealous of his work.
Do you prefer to read on paper or on screen?
I have got a Kindle and an iPad but I read books on them absolutely under duress. Otherwise, it is paperback every time and hardback if I can afford it, which is rare.
What kind of reader were you as a child?
I was not a reader as a child. We didn’t have books in our house. We had the Bible, because my mother was a Jehovah’s Witness, and we had my father’s News of the World: two classics. I read at school but I never, ever read at home. I voluntarily read my first novel when I was 22 – Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe. After that, I spent my 20s and 30s working through the classics.
What’s the best book you have ever received as a present?
It wasn’t exactly a book, it was a session with Ella Berthoud, who co-wrote The Novel Cure and is a bibliotherapist. You tell her what’s going on in your life and she gives you a literary prescription to cure it. I did think it was bit bollocks at first, but it was actually really good. The books she prescribed – Jane Gardam, Anita Brookner, Elizabeth Taylor – were spot-on and I ended up confessing loads of stuff to her. It was a therapy session disguised as a chat about books.
What book did you last put down without finishing?
I don’t know about not finishing, but there’s only one book I’ve thrown across the room and that was North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. Oh my God! It seemed to be all foreplay and nothing ever happened. I hated it.
Is there a book or an author that you always return to?
Graham Greene – I think his novels are so beautiful and clever. They are so slender compared with some contemporary novels, yet they pack in worlds.
What do you plan to read next?
While I was reading all those mostly male classics in the 80s and 90s I missed out on all the women’s literary fiction that was being produced at that time by writers like Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker. So there are these big gaps in my reading history. I’ve seen the films, I watched The Handmaid’s Tale recently and loved it, but I haven’t read the literature and I feel there’s some work to be done.
• The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal is published by Viking (£12.99). To order a copy for £9.69 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
