| I have published four books in the past year. In October comes a literary novella (ghastly description but it will have to do) about a family growing up in the remote rural North of England in the ’50s and ’60s, and how one brother brings shame on them, and tears family and community apart. This June came my fourth Simon Serrailler crime novel: The Vows of Silence.
I’ve written one country book, the semi-autobiographical Magic Apple Tree. I like to try new things, new genres — I like a challenge. I like to have fun. I get bored easily.
For me, my life and my writing are entirely separate. Yet everything in everyday life may (or may not) be grist to the writing mill. Writing has meant I have never, ever been employed by anyone other than myself in my entire life. In the last 20 years it has also given me a very good income.
Twenty years ago I had a very dead patch — no ideas, no money . . . and I asked God for stories. “If you give me the ideas,” I said, “I’ll use them as well as I know how.” I have been bombarded with stories ever since.
Some writing is deep, some not so deep. In the crime novels I like to look at religious faith: who has it and why; who doesn’t, and why not. The only serious influence of faith on my writing has been that I’m trying to deal with four books at once at the moment. I suppose the moral of that is: “Be careful what you pray for: you might get it.” I do write about the Church in the crime novels because it is at an extremely interesting juncture.
It’s great to be a successful novelist nowadays. But I wouldn’t like to be starting out now.
As a writer and as a person, places are vital to me — more important than people, loved ones aside. I’m not a people person.
It’s sad that the Gospels are not much read nowadays — only in churches and by churchy people. I am doing an MA in Theology (though with an emphasis on historical rather than biblical subjects) and the Bible can be, and is, studied without reference to belief. So far as the Church of England is concerned, I am annoyed by the way that people seem to think you can just pick out the bits that suit you and wish away the rest.
Genesis, Job, and Paul are my favourite books in the Bible. I dislike Revelation and, of course, there are a lot of dreary lists in the OT.
I don’t have holidays.
Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Graham Greene, Hardy are important writers to me — but I read a huge amount: some work, some pleasure, some study. . . The act of reading is always a pleasure.
Immediate family is important to me, yes: husband and two adult daughters. I have no extended family.
I had just the one childhood ambition: to be a writer. The most important choice I made was to be a writer. But the choice was made for me, really.
Je ne regrette rien.
I’m not sure that I would want to be remembered. I hope at least some of the books will be.
Joseph Poole was a great influence on me. He was Precentor of Coventry Cathedral in the 1960s and ’70s, when I was very involved there. I still turn to Joseph for guidance if I need to know what to do or think about a particular issue. A good and wise man.
I never buy Fairtrade products. I would if the traders really got a large — not a minuscule — portion of the profit.
If I wasn’t doing this interview, I’d be getting on with one of my new books. Or sleeping. I am an enthusiastic sleeper.
I last got angry about Bishop Gene Robinson. And global-warming rubbish, which seems to have become a religion and replaced the morality of the New Testament. The science is complex and inexact. We know there has been no warming at all so far this century, at a time when carbon emissions have never been higher. The earth cools and warms, cools and warms in response to many factors, always has, probably always will. The idea that it is recent and man-made, ergo man can reverse it, makes man guilty of the worst hubris since the Fall. Eco- and climate nonsense affects the poorest of the world most of all — you only have to look at the biofuel crops instead of food crops. Wickedness.
I feel happiest at home, with the windows open on to the country night.
I do pray, but what for or about is between me and him.
I’d most like to get locked in a church with St Paul. Think of the questions and answers, and the conversations; think of where he went, who he saw, what he did. . .
Susan Hill was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.
www.susan-hill.com
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