This week, I'm joined by the talented and versatile author, Moira McPartlin, whose new novel is published on 31 May 2021. It's super. Go on - treat yourself! Read on for a taster and to learn how Before Now came about.
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| Before Now: memoir of a toerag |
Review
The best kind of fiction is the
kind you lose yourself in: the kind that sweeps aside your ongoing ordinary
thoughts; the kind with a personality so absorbing you forget you’re supposed
to take the dog a walk or wash the dishes. This is the kind Moira McPartlin
writes. We’ve seen this in her novels The Incomers, and the Sun Song Trilogy,
and here it is again in the glowing Before Now: memoir of a toerag.
A novel set in a Fife village in the
1990s, Before Now is a story told by teenager Gavin. He’s taken a risk
that’s led to an accident, meaning he’s now immobilised in bed in his
grandmother’s house for three months while he recovers. His mother has presented
him with a notebook and told him to pass his time by writing about some of the high jinks and
scrapes he’s had over the years.
Gavin is initially reluctant. A big,
physically confident lad who’s been able to turn a van on a penny since the age
of thirteen, he’s not at all into schooling, but she persuades him this could
help him achieve his ambition of passing the theory part of the driving test. Just
write, she says. Don’t worry about spelling and grammar. And, freed from the constraints
of having to write in perfect English, Gavin finds his voice.
It’s a voice that liberates him –
and unlocks, for a literary world, a teenage toerag’s dreams and reality. It
does so through shrewd and skilful writing. The book is written in Fife
dialect, but the author has taken pains to make this ‘non-standard’ English straightforward for non-Fifers to follow. In fact, after a paragraph or two, Gavin’s Fife accent became the
soundtrack to my day. Like birds singing in the trees or the chuckling of the
local burn, the rhythm and timbre of Gavin’s voice was an ear-worm I thoroughly enjoyed. Add to this some hilarious, vivid one-liners, e.g. Janey from The Valley ‘hud a clout
like a miner’s shovel’.
Through Gavin’s stories, by turn
laugh-out-loud funny and close to heart-breaking, we learn what it’s like to be
a ‘daft laddie’ growing up in a small town devastated by the collapse of the
coalmining industry. Whether he’s telling us about how they welcomed Tilly the
dug into their lives, or the many times his long-suffering mother got called to
the school about her two boys’ bad behaviour, or meeting many other characters,
we get to know the real Gavin, who loves his mum and even his brother, and
wants to move forward and live a good life. Moira's happy for me to post a couple of extracts. The first gives an idea of the trickier aspects to Gavin's life. The second is very different!
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| Moira McPartlin |
Extract p. 41-2
The next day Chuddy an the gang
ur wantin tae gan tae the chip shop near the swimmin baths, ah walk thum
halfway doon the road then peel aff.
‘Ah’m away tae see ma da.’ Ah
buys two cornbeef rolls fae the corner shop, wan fur him an wan fur me hopin he
might buy sum juice cos ah’m now aw oot eh cash. Ah kent where he steyed coz ah
hud swung roond there a couple eh times just tae check ah hud the right street.
… Ah chapped. Thir wis nae answer. The door hud gless an a letter box. Ah
peered through the gless but it wis too frostit tae see. Ah keeked through the
letter box. The hoose reeked eh fags an soor milk.
‘Da, ur ye in?’ Nae answer. Ah wondered if he wis hidin, but the hoose felt empty, ah could tell. Ah shoved the cornbeef roll through the letter box an dragged ma erse back tae the skill.
Extract (p.81-2 )
So
we dae. Efter huvin tae wait in a queue again fur ages we gets oan. ‘Just
relax,’ ah telt her, but when we reached the board – fuck me – dis she no faa
aff again. An this time ah keep gaun. Ah hear her shoutin.
‘No
Gavin, it’s too misty.’
But
ah ignored her. An then when ah get aff at the top, thick mist mobbed me an ah
cannae remember where Tommy an Janey hud taken me that wis sae guid. So ah ski
tae the top eh a run an it wis like ah sheer cliffside.
‘Whit’s
this?’ ah asks sum bloke that wis starin doon at it an aw.
‘Black
run. Don’t go down that son, unless you’re really good.’
So
ah gan along a wee bit mair an thir wis this fence that hus ribbons oan it an a
couple eh wee guys, wee-er than me, scoot past an doon. They disappear intae the
mist. An it didnae scan too bad. So ah stertit doon an fuck me it got steeper.
Ah gans cross weys an faa ower, ah gets masel up, turned an ski cross weys
again but every time ah tried tae turn roond ah faa ower an thir wis guys
scootin past aw the time, twistin this wey an that an straight doon. How dae
they dae that? Ah just huv tae keep at it – cross, faa, turn. Cross, faa, turn
an eventually the mist cleared an ah spied the café an Maw standin ootside
watchin. Cross, faa, turn. It stertit tae flatten oot an ah hud a great run
doon tae where Maw stood.
‘That
wis great,’ says I. An in a wey it wis.
‘Oh
Gavin. Ah’ve been worried sick. Ah got the staff tae radio the top tae look out
for you but they couldn’t find you.’ She pointit at the slope ah’ve just come
doon. ‘That’s a competition run.’
‘Aye?
Think ah could dae competitions?’
‘Gavin,
you were on yer bum most of the way.’
‘Best
wey tae learn,’ ah chirps.
Efter that she niver took me unless Janey wis there but it wisnae that often coz skiin is dear.
Q&A
CMcK: Hello Moira and welcome to
my book blog! Thank you for giving me advance sighting of Before Now. I
adored it. My imagination bloomed with Gavin’s personality and his stories,
told in a voice that completely captivates the reader. Why did you choose to
write it in Fife dialect? And how difficult was that to maintain in this era of
autocorrect?
MMcP: Thank you, Carol, for this
fantastic review and these great questions. I love writing in dialect. It comes
easily to me and I know, from the comments I received about my first novel The
Incomers, that readers love to read it. I also perform early episodes of Before
Now at open mic nights – the audience always enjoy them and I have great
fun slipping back to the accent of my childhood.
Having said all that, the editing
of a whole novel in Fife dialect was a nightmare. When I wrote the first draft I
was not consistent with my choice of spelling and needed to revise it after the
fact. This was difficult and time consuming. Many eyes have seen this novel and
each time I look at it I still find tiny mistakes.
CMcK: There’s a gradual awakening
in the novel, isn’t there, when Gavin is in that bed for three months and takes
stock of his life. He says ‘Ma life’s been a bit chaotic up tae now. Sumthin
hus tae change.’ (p. 75) Where did you get the idea of writing about this
character, that location, and that time? And using what Gavin comes to see as that ‘catalyst’ of the
accident?
MMcP: I have been working on Before
Now for many years. It began as a couple of short stories. At that time I
was reading reams of teenage fiction and I was bored with reading about middle
class kids, whose teenage angst was very bland and their main worries were
about their exams and being popular. My two boys were never academic and had a
quite different life to the kids I was reading about, so I took a couple of
incidents from their lives and fictionalised them. Once I created the
characters of Sam and Gavin I found I could take it further because I know many
children just like them. But I still had a series of shorts stories. I had to
have some device to pull them all together and provide Gavin with a reason to
tell his stories in the first place.
This was done by giving Gavin an accident and confining him in a space.
I seem to do that a lot in my books. In Ways of the Doomed, book one of
my Sun Song Trilogy, the main character is also confined.
I chose the 1990s because this is
when my kids grew up and it seemed easier to do that because I can remember the
toys and clothes they wore.
In terms of location, I am keen
to show life in semi-rural Fife. Most novels I read in this genre have urban or
West of Scotland locations. I feel Fife deserves its own stories. The location
of Ashlee is a small village just along the road from Hollyburn, my village
from The Incomers. Again, it was easier to fictionalise villages that
are familiar to me in my own life. This is very much a novel of ‘write what you
know.’
CMcK: With the book being written
in first person, the characters are only seen through Gavin’s eyes, and through
dialogue. It amused me no end to read Gavin’s opinions of his mother – that
long-suffering, hard-working, dedicated, ambitious woman. He wasn’t pleased
when her new job took her to Denmark for a couple of months when he was
seventeen, meaning she wasn’t there to cook for him and do his washing! I loved
the way you presented the understated grief, frustration and anxiety of the
mother. She’d been through hard times! Many women writers might have sought to
tell the story from the mother’s point of view. Why did you choose not to?
MMcP: When I first started
writing Before Now I only wanted to write different teenage stories. I
created the character of Gavin and his voice is so strong, and he is such a
natural storyteller I had no choice but to let him tell the tales. When I
showed the first couple of stories to my critique group they picked up on the
fact that Maw’s story was also coming through. It was a bit of an ‘ah, ha’
moment. Suddenly the book became an adult novel and the tone changed. Once I
realised that I could tell more than one story through Gavin’s point of view I
worked hard to weave them in but keep it understated.
CMcK: Where can we buy your books
and read more about you and your writing?
MMcP: You can buy Before Now, in paperback or Ebook from Amazon or you can buy signed copies from my website www.moiramcpartlin.com My website also has lots of information on all my other novels and some previously published short stories and poems.
CMcK: Thank you so much for joining me on my blog to talk about Before Now and your other writing!
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| Before Now |
