An Interview with Jenn Ashworth, author of A Kind of Intimacy
Mostly Fiction's Interview with Jenn Ashworth, author of A Kind of Intimacy
MF: Please describe A KIND OF INTIMACY for our readers.
JENN ASHWORTH: It's a dark, funny novel set in a miserable little sea-side town in Lancashire. It's narrated by Annie - a woman who's looking for love, lonely, fairly odd and very overweight. She tells the story of moving into a new house, being convinced she's met the man next door somewhere before and her attempts to form a relationship with him. Between the lines, the rest of the story seeps out: an unsavoury history of sexual mishaps, a missing husband and child and a peculiar childhood. I don't want to give away anything about the ending, suffice to say that if this were a crime novel it would be a whydunnit rather than a whodunnit.
MF: Annie Fairhurst, the protagonist of A KIND OF INTIMACY is the classic "unreliable narrator." As a writer, do you think that creating a novel from the perspective of an "unreliable" character is easier or more difficult than using a different narrative style?
JENN ASHWORTH: I'm not sure, as all of my first person narrators are unreliable and I tend to write in first person much more often than any other narrative mode. I'm fascinated by the limitations and flexibilities of first person narration (my next novel is a first person narrative too) and right now I can't quite see how you'd write a novel with a character narrator that wasn't unreliable. It's either a problem of memory, or language, or motive, or perspective, or a combination of all of these. First person narration is a very limited narrative mode: I like being able to squeeze in other people's view points between the lines. It's tricky but right now it's one of the things I like best about writing.
Read the complete interview on MostlyFiction
Read Mostly Fiction's review of A Kind of Intimacy
MF: Please describe A KIND OF INTIMACY for our readers.
JENN ASHWORTH: It's a dark, funny novel set in a miserable little sea-side town in Lancashire. It's narrated by Annie - a woman who's looking for love, lonely, fairly odd and very overweight. She tells the story of moving into a new house, being convinced she's met the man next door somewhere before and her attempts to form a relationship with him. Between the lines, the rest of the story seeps out: an unsavoury history of sexual mishaps, a missing husband and child and a peculiar childhood. I don't want to give away anything about the ending, suffice to say that if this were a crime novel it would be a whydunnit rather than a whodunnit.
MF: Annie Fairhurst, the protagonist of A KIND OF INTIMACY is the classic "unreliable narrator." As a writer, do you think that creating a novel from the perspective of an "unreliable" character is easier or more difficult than using a different narrative style?
JENN ASHWORTH: I'm not sure, as all of my first person narrators are unreliable and I tend to write in first person much more often than any other narrative mode. I'm fascinated by the limitations and flexibilities of first person narration (my next novel is a first person narrative too) and right now I can't quite see how you'd write a novel with a character narrator that wasn't unreliable. It's either a problem of memory, or language, or motive, or perspective, or a combination of all of these. First person narration is a very limited narrative mode: I like being able to squeeze in other people's view points between the lines. It's tricky but right now it's one of the things I like best about writing.
Read the complete interview on MostlyFiction
Read Mostly Fiction's review of A Kind of Intimacy