Books

A tale of two cities, both London: set in the present day and in 1977-’78

Novelist and editor West Camel explains how he manages both roles in his creative process

West Camel, author of Fall

West Camel
Mon Dec 20 2021 - 10:33

This month the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, warned that unless central government steps in to plug a £1.7 billion funding gap, the UK capital’s transport system will see major cuts, including the closure of an entire tube line. Londoners issued a collective groan, but a particular line caught my attention: Khan suggested that, without extra government support, London faces a transport network “reminiscent of the 1970s and ’80s”.

Born in 1969, I grew up in London in this era and remember well the tatty tubes, creaking slam-door trains, wooden escalators and open-backed buses. I can’t deny that I recall all this with a little romantic nostalgia. But I also can’t deny that the underfunded system was just part of the 1970s malaise that saw its apogee in the 1978-79 “winter of discontent”. I remember that well too: driving through central London and seeing walls of rubbish lining the pavements; the bakers’ strike prompting my mum to try making soda bread; my young mind scrambled by reports of backlogs of coffins as the gravediggers of Liverpool walked out.

My new novel, Fall, takes places in two time periods: the present day and 1977-’78, and there’s no doubt that it is infused with my memories of the tribulations of the 1970s; but not in a direct way. Set on a south-east London council estate, Fall doesn’t recount any strikes or blackouts; I don’t have my characters eating soda bread because they can’t get a white split tin. But I do create the sense that the postwar vision – in which the majority of people had a job for life, and would live in homogenous communities on well-maintained housing estates – was cracking in the hot summer of ’76 and the jubilee year of ’77.

Just round the corner was the winter of discontent, as well as the New Cross fire, in which 13 young black people died. Inner-city riots would follow, as well as sky-high unemployment and the miners’ strike, as the old socio-economic model was dismantled and was replaced piece by piece with Margaret Thatcher’s free-market capitalism.

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If the seventies timeline in Fall anticipates the social and industrial unrest to come, the present-day chapters reflect the outcome of the UK’s Thatcherite transformation. The Deptford estate the book is set on is now being dismantled and reconstructed: gone is the modernist, socialist, brutalist-concrete vision of its architect, Zöe Goldsworthy; her son, Clive, is supplanting it with private housing, turning its landmark 30-storey Thames-side tower into luxury apartments, separated from the social housing around it. However, Clive’s twin brother, Aaron, is resisting the change. He lives in the tower their mother designed, and stubbornly refuses to move out, thwarting Clive’s plans, and in some way honouring Zöe’s intentions when she designed the estate. The brothers haven’t spoken since 1977: which in no way helps matters.

As I wrote Fall, I was focusing on the events of 1976-77 that pushed the brothers apart, in particular the presence in their lives of another set of twins: black young women Annette and Christine. I wasn’t initially concerned with recording or representing the industrial and social turmoil developing around my characters – their lives and relationships were more my concern. But by narrating the book from either end of a 40-year period, I realised that I was commentating on what had happened in between.

As well as being a writer, I’m an editor, and my antennae are calibrated to identify the themes and ideas the authors I edit explore. As the editor of Fall I might have been tempted to point out to its author that he was describing, if in an indirect way, the transformation of the UK at the end of the 20th century. I might even have suggested ways to develop this idea; offered my thoughts on how the characters could provide some kind of commentary on this period of radical change. I had to remind myself, however, that I wasn’t editing Fall – I was writing the damn thing. And the editor in my head needed to shut his trap, because halfway through the MS wasn’t the time or place to intervene.

I hasten to add that none of my authors are ever this rude to me, and I would never upbraid my own publisher and editor in this way. But this does illustrate a process I have to go through when I’m writing fiction. I was once told by an actor-producer about a technique used in film-making in which the writers and the rest of the production team are kept strictly separate during the early stages of a project. The time for edits, rewrites and rethinks is later in the process, and only then are the rest of the creative team allowed to enter the writers’ room.

I impose a similar regime on my writing – the writer is king in the early stages of a book, and the editor just has to wait outside the door. I’ll let him in later, and his skills – honed over many years editing fiction – will be very welcome.

To manage these conflicting personalities – author and editor – I do something simple and practical. Much to the horror of many of the authors I work with, I write my first draft in long-hand – roller-ball gel pen on A4 feint-ruled paper. The editor is allowed to read this, but not comment on it – not until I open my laptop, place my pile of pages by my side and begin my second draft. Then the editor rolls up his sleeves and doesn’t quite push the author out of his chair, but squeezes in beside him. Then together they being the task of editing and second-drafting.

My internal editor had a lot to say to my internal writer about the politics and social commentary Fall was sometimes directly, and sometimes obliquely, engaging in. But his main advice was one I regularly use in discussions with authors: no novel has to record all the details of the time and place in which it is set, but the author’s awareness of those details will inevitably infuse their writing with authenticity.

I realised in writing Fall that I was capturing something of the turbulence of the UK in the late 20th century. I hope in editing the book that I rendered the period authentically.

Fall by West Camel is out now in paperback from Orenda Books