ImtTView
beekeeping, but I juSt made things up at the same time as I started finding beekeepers to incerview. In the case of Eva MOties the Furniture, research played a crucial role in the novel because I'd wriucn so many versions that didn't work. Then I found this book in a secondhand bookshop about a pioneering plastic surgeon in the Second World War, and I realized that the Second World War was the cradle of plastic surgery in Britain (to mix my metaphors). I found it wonderfully interesting material and also wonderfully apposite for what I was trying to do in the novelto show the gap between appearance and reality. So that was a case where research made a huge difference. I do find research quite ad~ dictive, so if I did it ahead of time, I might never start writing the novels [laughing}. BG: In the lovely passage you read last night from Banishing Verona, your forthcoming novel, I noticed that the character Zeke, while ex~ temally dissimilar to Freddie in The Missing World, appears to share with Freddie this generous-and perhaps unwarranted--compulsion to help other people, including a stranger he's JUSt met. I wonder if you agree and, if so, what draws you toward this kind of character. ML: I think I'm very incerested in what some people call the problem of altruism. For me, the opposite side of random bad behavior is ran~ dom goOO behavior. Why do some people reach out and help others? I hadn't thought of it before but you're right: Freddie and Zeke do share this characteristic, though I see it as coming from rather different impulses. In Freddie's case, it's this terrible thing that he feels he's done in his past that he's always trying to make up for, whereas in Zeke's case, with Verona, I don't think he ever really sets out to help her. He just falls in love with her and wants to get her back, and ifhe has to help her along the way, he will. BG: Often writers with a number of books behind them seem dis~ tanced from their early work. Even though your novel Eva MOties the Furniture is your most recently published book (with the exception of the novel that's about to come out), it was the first of your published novels that you began to write, and it took you fifteen years to write it. For this reason it occupies a sort of unique place in your oeuvre. How would you describe your relationship to this book? ML: I'm totally thrilled that it's out in the world. It was the novel I put most of myself into. I pestered so many people to read different drafts; I wrote so many different versions; I tried so many different Winler 2004-05
6J