The Canal
This week, Outsideleft celebrates the release of the acclaimed fourth novel, Lie of the Land, from the Black country's Kerry Hadley-Pryce. Charlie Hill says ”Lie of the Land flits with expertly sinister intent between the shadows of the psychological thriller, the murder mystery and the ghost story." Our interview with Kerry began yesterday on top of a Stourbridge multi story car park and continues today at another critical Lie of the Land location, the Stourbridge canal.
Outsideleft: I wonder whether this canal was ever considered a beautiful stretch of water. Not smelly or riven with dread for what lies beneath. Maybe in a certain dappled light on a summer's day. Have you ever fallen in…?
Kerry Hadley-Pryce: Yes. Both times involved a dog – the same dog – who yanked me in because of excitement about geese or coots. Still got the dog. Forgiven, because I survived. As for whether the canal was ever considered beautiful, well, that’s the thing about the canal as a body of water, isn’t it? I have photographs of a silvery mist rising off the surface tension and it looks delicious, and I have often flirted with the idea of selling up and buying a narrowboat. I still might.
OL: Like much of Lie of the Land, it’s made even more foreign for me, by your locations. They are beautiful, integral and purposeful. Your psychogeographer coming out. Here we are on the canal bank, I’m not enjoying it now and I would never be caught here at dusk…
KHP: Understandable, about not wanting to be here at dusk. The canal is a place whose atmosphere changes according to the time of day, for sure: people go off to work down the towpath early morning; dog walkers pass by in the day; then a bit later, just up the way there, you’ll find a posse of men who meet to (apparently) talk nonsense and drink cheap cider. They’re harmless, if a little lascivious as the evening wears on. Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.
OL: I’m just a gossipy guy, I am always hoping for more to be going on with Jemma and her neighbour… There’s an erotic charge.Between two of the characters. It’s a thrilling read. The humanscale low drama of Red wine lapses was vicariously thrilling… (Jemma and Catherine - but I won’t mention that. Or the red wine as I don’t want to identify it exactly) Or is that… my media schooled yet wilful misinterpretation of a simple conversation between two women?
KHP: That is an interpretation, yes. You could say ‘erotic’, but I think women do this thing, this kind of observational investment in other woman. I do it. And yes, Jemma does. And, fictively, it’s part of the reading process, isn’t it, to observe Jemma doing it. Maybe there’s something erotic about that.
OL: Jemma is fascinating. She has this steep arc of being magnetically attracted, she is drawn to people she can’t have. I like it, at the point something or someone becomes available to her, their attractiveness wanes, sinks, becomes a disgust, quite rapidly. Look at Catherine, later tacitly derided for wearing the same dress...
KHP: …and yes, you’re right. Jemma is, essentially, habitually dissatisfied. She pretty much seeks out dissatisfaction – or things and people to be disappointed by. I think we’ve all met people like this: those who manufacture drama for themselves (admittedly, useful for fiction). They’re gamblers, seeing how far they can push their own feelings until the inevitable clunk of disappointment kicks in.
OL: Tracey Thorn has discussed the inverse of the singer not the song. It’s just a song, it’s not the singer and says her fans can be confused. Projecting all of the heart wrenching moments in her music, onto her personally. How weird. And of course you are a fiction-ologist. It’s fiction. And yet here we are, your stomping grounds, your character, how much then is just you seeing, and how much is you being!
KHP: It's all seeing. I think. Though, there are times in the writing process that the intensity of it can feel like some kind of boundary between writer and fiction has been breached.
OL: What could I do to avoid Jemma’s opprobrium?
KHP: Keep out of her way… Honestly. She’ll judge you. And remember, she’s a lawyer, so she thinks she’s clever. There’d be no point in being nice to her or trying to win her over (which I know you’d be really good at.) Don’t waste your time. Look away.
From there we drft to a Stourbridge pub, warmth at last! It has a juke box...
OL: What would Kerry never put on the jukebox? What would Jemma never put on the jukebox.
KHP: Kerry would never put Lionel Richie on the jukebox – too annoying. Hello? Goodbye. Jemma would never put any rap or Country & Western stuff – too wordy.
Tomorrow the final part of our Interview takes place during a dawn walk over the hills…
Essential Information
KERRY HADLEY-PRYCE WEEK at OUTSIDELEFT
1. Introducing KHP...
2. Excerpt from Lie of the Land
3. Brutalist is the multi storey car park in Stourbridge
4. The Canal
5. Welcome to the Walking Week
6. The Happy Shopper (#41)
Main Canal image by Kerry Hadley-Pryce
Kerry at Salt Publishing is here
Kerry is appearing at the Bear Bookshop in Bearwood on January 25th at 6pm, info here
And at the Wolverhampton LitFest with R.M. Francis, info here
