.: an evening with... Salley Vickers
 Salley Vickers, author of the bestselling Miss Garnet's Angel, Instances of the Number 3 and Mr Golightly's Holiday came to Sandhurst Library on Wednesday 25th April 2007.
Salley has worked as a university teacher of literature and a psychoanalyst. She now writes full time. Her latest book: The Other Side of You has just been released.
Salley's publisher noted that she was a late starter to writing, having raised children whilst teaching at adult centres, and then moving into psychoanalysm - or psychotherapy, as she prefers to call it.
Salley is well aware that the same themes and threads run through all four of her novels. She says that she never reads her own books, at least not in the way a reader would: in relaxed anticipation. "You know more than I do," she says and explains that she's always in perpetual motion, completing one work, dipping back and forth to develop the narrative and then moving onto the next.
She's unlike most writers in the manner in which she writes - having no idea about what the plot is up to a third of the way through the first draft, writing "hour by hour, day by day". She says she has no knowledge of what is coming. "Writers," she says, "are as many and varied as people are." Whilst some do plan, others do not but know what their subject is; Salley does not, quoting Somerset Maugham, 'There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are'.
Although the themes for her books are the same, she says she's not just re-writing the same book. "Jane Austen," she says, "my favourite author; she rewrote the same book," taking a basic plot and providing a different setting each time.
It wasn't until her second book was published that she was invited to talks and discussions about her books and it's taken her a little while to grow accustomed to the act of questions and answers. She feels now that she is used, for the most part, to the types of questions that are always asked.
 Her first book, Miss Garnet's Angel begins:
Death is outside life but it alters it: it leaves a hole in the fabric of things which those who are left behind try to repair. Perhaps it is because of this we are minded to feast at funerals and it is said that certain children are conceived on the eve of a departure, lest the separation of the partners be permanent. When in ancient stories heroes die, the first thing their comrades do, having made due observances to the gods, is sit and eat. Then they travel on, challenging, with their frail vitality, the large enigma of non-being.
Her publisher advised her to remove the entire opening paragraph, afraid that it might turn readers away, but Salley was resolute. "It's good to take advice," she says, "but we're all intuitive. I knew it was right."
Keeping the opening led to Salley's trademark and main theme: Her books begin with a death, and, as an American reviewer pointed out, her preoccupation with death was evident. Salley was surprised by this observation, having thought herself to be ever the optimist. However, whereas the publisher's focus was upon the opening portion of the paragraph, Salley's interest is in the last half. The books may start with a death, but she and her books look at death from the point of view of being a beginning, not an ending. "Death is the catalyst," she says, "and it's that which drives the theme."
Salley has a natural interest in how people deal with tragedy, and how they try to repair their lives as a result. "There's nothing more universal than loss, trauma and misfortune." It is the reparation and the ways in which the lives of those left behind can be improved which drives her.
Harriet, from Miss Garnet's Angel, is recognisable in other characters throughout Salley's books. Her character, and the characters like her both are and are not there. The reader never meets her as a flesh and blood character because she is dead, and yet we come to know her through Miss Garnet. Furthermore, as Miss Garnet explores herself, so too does she explore her memory of Harriet and who Harriet is/was. This develops both characters, leading, at the end of her book, with a change in the way in which Harriet's name is referenced (attuned with her enlightenment). It ends on a subtly ambiguous note with Harriet somehow brought back to life (not raised from the dead) and waiting for Miss Garnet's arrival.
 "People who die," says Salley, "don't die. They continue to live on in our hearts and minds." She makes it clear that this isn't on a theological level, but rather that memories of them affect who we are and what we do. This is the message she is attempting to investigate and convey.
Having grown up in a communist household with staunchly atheist parents, Salley was in the oxymoronic position of having godparents, and it is the memory of her godmother teaching her how to wash up that she uses as her example. Her godmother is there whenever she does the dishes.
Through this theme is a note of the supernatural. In Miss Garnet the Archangel Rapael moves between the two stories, in Instances of the Number 3 it is Peter who plays the supernatural role, and there are elements also in Mr Golightly's Holiday. Salley wants to be clear, having been asked in the past by journalists, on the fact that she's not writing about her own beliefs. She's writing what others believe, about what she terms are the invisible events.
"The trouble with psychology," Salley says, "is that it uses terrible jargon." The ancient stories, by the Greeks, the Hebrews and the Hindis, deal with the same psychology only they deal with it in a more poetic and dramatic. Their stories focus upon the gods, but not as gods. They are always placed into human situations and yet remarkable moments are described.
Ghosts and angels are Salley's invisible events. She likens their presence in her novels to those moments when you are going through your normal life and you have a sudden, unexplained feeling of being haunted or elevated.
Mr Golightly's Holiday deals in a similar fashion to the ancient stories and old traditions to using themes of creation and recreation. Mr Golightly goes away to write and is plagued by being unable to write. The book looks at the ways in which we can be creative or not creative with our own lives. "Psychology," says Salley, "helps people by getting them to talk about art." It's the sort of thing that get their creative thoughts flowing, livening them up; which features as the point about which her latest book, The Other Side Of You, revolves.
Those first three novels are really just the retelling of an old story. "I like to nick old stories," she says. "T. S. Eliot remarked 'minor poets borrow, great poets steal'." Instances of the Number 3 takes from Hamlet, just as Hamlet was stolen originally by Shakespeare. "Old stories have something to teach us, both writers and artists."
 And through this, Salley is able to define the Vickers brand name:
- Retelling an older story
- Life after death
- Dealing with loss
- Creativity and reparation
The Other Side Of You has moved, for the first time in her writing, to first person point of view, and this time into the voice of a man. When her son read it (one of the few she allows to read her unfinished works), he said, "Well mum, it does say The Other Side Of You Salley Vickers." Ironically then, for the other side, this is the first to draw upon her own specific knowledge and experiences in doing work that she has given to her narrator. "You'll find that people in that kind of work," she says, "usually have had some kind of close personal experience with trauma."
"The qualities of silence are very interesting," says Salley. When she was writing The Other Side Of You, she didn't know up until a third of the way through what the story was about. It took her to travel to the other side of the world, Australia, for her book signing tour for Mr Golightly's Holiday, where she met a psychologist friend before she realised. They were talking about what it's like to sit in a room and not know the other person's story - that moment of silence - when everything clicked.
The Journey to Emmaus came to Salley:
The Bible references that Jesus was seen in Emmaus, the very day of the resurrection, after Jesus' appearance to Mary Magdalene and after Peter and John ran to the tomb only to find it empty (John:20). While two disciples (including Cleopas) are walking along the Emmaus road, Jesus appears to them and begins interacting with them. When they reach the village of Emmaus, the disciples ask Jesus to stay with them to eat as he seemed willing to walk on. After he prays and breaks the bread, they recognize him, and he disappears. Then they come back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples about it, and while they share their excitement Jesus appears once again. (Luke:24, John:20).
Salley was struck by how their mood lightens. "You're two," she says, "and then you invite this third person, this third reality in," speaking of a shared reality where memories return a loved one to us, give us something in common with those we are with.
But, good relations, she says, dont make for good literature. Its hard to write about good people.
In each of her books, Salley allows herself one favourite character (who, like the other characters, isnt Salley), to whom she gives her opinions. In The Other Side Of You that character is Gus, a fellow psychotherapist to the protagonist David. In Gus, Salley gets to make the observations that as the narrator she otherwise cannot make lest she detract the reader from their suspended disbelief. In one particular scene within the book, Gus shows David a painting that plays a role within the rest of the story, a painting that, in the scene Salley read out, David doesnt have much time for. Salley explained that this particular scene was added after she came to realise what the story was about.
Since she writes without direction for the most part of that first draft it is no surprise that one American reviewer said they thought Miss Garnets Angel was about X, then Y, and finally friendship. This is Salleys favourite review, encapsulating a style that simply lets nature take its course. Her protagonists learn to make friends, learn to reciprocate friendship.
The first question of the evening regarded cultural differences. Since Salley is in print across the world, do the cultural differences allow readers to make positive adaptations of Salleys ideas?
Different cultures, says Salley, do take different things from the text. In the US they are more open to ideas whereas the UK is still rather reserved. Different responses are good though. The book grows through being read, just like the journey to Emmaus. It allows the author to share something special with the reader, three different viewpoints, me, the reader and the book.
The writer doesnt own the book once its out there, says Salley of the multi-layered writing in her books, covering art, relations and psychology.
Miss Garnets Angel only had an initial print run of 1,000 copies. A quiet book, her publishers thought. It had a slow burn, beginning with independent booksellers, making hand sales. Salley is certain that without those booksellers shed not have made it. Miss Garnets Angel wouldnt be published in todays climate, she says. It became a bestseller only through word of mouth, and it took a good year before it was well known. It could have disappeared completely, she said. As such it was only reviewed once it reached paperback. Literary reviewers must choose out of a stack of books to read.
She always wanted to write, though she thought about it for a long time. She thinks for a long time, even though this doesnt constitute planning, and then she writes very fast most of the work having already been done in her mind. As a writer you need get much more out of life, she says, before you start to write. One should be doing other things first. In the same vein, she doesnt like the idea of teaching creative writing.
Finally, Salley spoke about her recent accomplishment, completing a rewrite of Sophocles Oedipus Myth for Cannongate. Having taken on the task she became suddenly daunted when she realised Sophocles couldnt be bettered by any angle she could choose to take. Which is when she came up with the idea of taking the blind seer, who forsees Oedipus future, to see Freud (on his deathbed). The seer, decided Salley, should set Freud right on the theory of the Oedipus complex.
The Other Side of You
'There is no cure for being alive.' Thus speaks Dr David McBride, a psychiatrist for whom death exerts an unusual draw. As a young child he witnessed the death of his six-year-old brother and it is this traumatic event which has shaped his own personality and choice of profession. One day a failed suicide, Elizabeth Cruikshank, is admitted to his hospital. She is unusually reticent and it is not until he recalls a painting by Caravaggio that she finally yields up her story.
We learn of Elizabeth Cruikshank's dereliction of trust, and the man she has lost, through David's narration. As her story unfolds David finds his own life being touched by her account and a haunting sense that the 'other side' of his elusive patient has a strange resonance for him, too.
Set partly in Rome, The Other Side of You explores the theme of redemption through love and art, which has become a hallmark of Salley Vickers's acclaimed work. As with her other highly popular novels this is a many-layered and subtly audacious story, which traces the boundaries of life and death and the difficult possibilities of repentance.
Web site contents Copyright Richard Howse 2007, All rights reserved.
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