ordinary Wales. This is Super Wales, as in a remote island off the tip of the Llŷn Peninsula. Thorne finds himself stuck on this island—which is steeped in myth and legend and is supposed to be the resting place for 20,000 saints—with a dangerous psychopath and no way back to the mainland, so chances are things are not going to go well. Obviously it gives me the chance to make predictable jokes about how Welsh is the only language that makes speakers sound as though they are trying to cough up furballs, but the location does actually give me the opportunity to cut Thorne off in a number of different ways. It’s not just the mainland he becomes remote from as things begin to fall apart. I HAVE made a rod for my own back, however, as I will be called upon to record the audiobook sometime soon and if there’s one accent that’s always a challenge, it’s Welsh. I have a number of scenes featuring a group of threatening, flint-hard men from North Wales, and I know very well that within moments of me starting to read, they will all sound as if they’re from Calcutta. Have you ever been tempted to do your own audiobooks? I’ve seen you read your stuff in front of audiences often enough . . . I think I can pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, but only after six pints of Eighty Shilling Ale and a dodgy kebab. I did think that one of the supposed benefits of Wales getting their own CHRIS:
parliament was that the vowel shortages would abate, but evidently there’s been little improvement. I have been asked many times about whether I’d be interested in narrating my own audiobooks, but unlike yourself, I am not a trained actor, and people fail to appreciate the versatility and range that is required to pull off such a project. I have developed a reputation over the years for being a lively and humorous reader of my own work at events, and I get invited to lots of literary festivals largely on the promise that I’ll lighten up the programme by making the audiences laugh. However, when I’m selecting a single passage to read aloud, it’s usually easy to find one that is particularly suited to live performance and that allows me to showcase the things I do well. Reading the entire novel would merely showcase my limitations. For one thing, Bred in the Bone is largely narrated from the point of view of its two women protagonists, and I don’t think that the female sensibilities I strived to bring to bear in my prose would be terribly well served by hearing them in my voice. Those feminine perspectives were particularly important in Bred in the Bone, as it is about the consequences of violence for those who have carried it out, as much as for its victims. I sometimes find that there is a tendency among male writers to be a little too impressed by tough guys, so writing about that world through the eyes of two women was vital in defusing that. It’s not a charge that could be levelled at you, however. I 63