Books
To Heller and back
18.07.08 Alison Flood
“It’s always been much easier for me to write unpleasant characters,” says Zoë Heller, a note of pride in her voice. She is talking about the dysfunctional family of social justice campaigners she has created for her new novel, and about violent reactions to characters in her previous two books.
Notes on a Scandal’s Barbara, a ferociously lonely schoolteacher, is “truly awful” according to one Amazon review; Everything You Know’s Willy is “a thoroughly ’orrible man”, says another. Now we have the Litvinoffs of The Believers (Fig Tree, September), a New York family whose beliefs—whether in radical leftist politics or orthodox Judaism—almost override familial affection.
The genesis of the novel was an article Heller read about research to find the “believing gene”. “[Scientists] thought they had found the gene that made people likely to be credulous,” she says excitedly. “Depending on nurture, you might then be an ardent Catholic or a communist. This appealed to me because it seemed to back up something I had felt intuitively, that certain kinds of left-wing true believers had a sort of religious approach.”
The book, delivered in Heller’s biting, vivid prose, traces the story of Audrey, a cantankerous and combative mother who has spent 40 years championing the leftist politics of her husband, radical lawyer Joel, only to make a distressing discovery about his personal life as he lies in a coma. She and children Rosa (who has shunned a life as a revolutionary in Cuba to become an orthodox Jew), Karla (overweight and in a miserable marriage) and adopted son Lenny (back on drugs) struggle to come to terms with the gaping hole Joel’s absence has left in their lives. The Litvinoffs are, in all their aggressive beliefs, a hard family to like, but a very compelling set of characters.
“I’ve noticed in the three books I’ve written that people always say: ‘God, what a very unpleasant person,’ ” Heller says. “My ambition in all of these cases has been to write difficult or dislikeable people with whom you nevertheless end up feeling some sympathy or even affection. In that sense, the two most difficult people to like or love are Audrey and Rosa, and in a way Rosa most of all because she is rather cold and unforgiving of other people. But I hope that in all of these cases you feel some fellow feeling for them in the end.”
Heller has been in the Bahamas for the last year writing The Believers; she finally finished in late June and is nervous about its reception. Although Notes is a publishing success story—a spot on the shortlist for the Man Booker in 2003 and the film adaptation in 2006 have helped sales soar to a lifetime total of almost 350,000—her first novel Everything You Know was slated on publication in the UK. Heller has described it as being “shat upon from a great height”.
She then “had a hard time selling Notes, particularly to the Americans. It wasn’t an obviously American book; I remember several editors saying: ‘It seems to be about a boring old bag; who cares?’ Even so, I remember feeling some kind of inner core of confidence about it. With The Believers, I’m a little bit more anxious—it’s such a departure for me, in terms of many characters, many points of view.”
For The Believers, Heller—author of the pre-Bridget Jones girl-about-town column for the Daily Telegraph—has moved into the third person for the first time. “It was very hard,” she admits. “I found it much more arduous and confusing. Once you have committed to the discipline of making everything through the consciousness of one person, you have a very clear set of rules and all you have to do is follow them. I found having the point of view mixed up with lots of different people really quite challenging.”
It was also a leap of faith to write about Rosa’s conversion, to imagine—as a non-believer herself—how it feels to find God. “She’s the one character who most embodies the idea of a believer. When she finally, after a very traumatic journey, disowns revolutionary socialism, it is almost inevitable that she will find somewhere for that displaced faith—another home for it. She was the most difficult one for me to write. I’m not a believer in God, and what I wanted to do was write somewhat sympathetically about a believer without a snootiness about it. And also to write believably, credibly, about somebody finding God. That took a leap of the imagination for me.”
While Heller won’t express unequivocal happiness with The Believers—“I’m still at the point where I’ve baked a cake and I don’t quite know what it tastes like”—the success of Notes means that film rights have already been sold to Notes producer Scott Rudin.
“It will be interesting to see if it gets an English or American director,” muses Heller, who has lived in America for 15 years but still feels “deeply English”. She does, however, feel she’s “lost her innocence” in terms of language. “It’s about pausing. I do it in life too, when I’m not quite sure whether to say to-mah-to or to-may-to, hence both sound a little affected.” Her two children, born in America and with American accents, imitate her as she calls them in for a “barth”—“In the same way, in writing it’s not clear what words to use any more. I very much have to consciously choose, to try and figure out what’s appropriate.”
For now, she’s off to speak at Liz Calder’s literary festival in Brazil, and will then enjoy a Bahamian summer. She has an idea for her next book already bubbling under but “my husband [screenwriter Larry Konner] has made me promise I don’t start for a while”. She thinks it’ll be in the third person, but expects a fair amount of chopping and changing before she settles into it: “I start out with a vague road map, for good reason, because it’s a dead thing if it stays exactly as planned, whereas you know it’s still alive and evolving if it’s changing.”
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