A Grant County Collection: Indelible, Faithless and Skin Privilege

by Karin Slaughter

  MH: Well, first off I'm not saying there aren't places in Japan where sex is for sale: at one end of the spectrum of hostess clubs in Tokyo are the 'Snack Bars', down at heel places that employ yakuza-trafficked Thai and Filipina girls and in these places the customers really can get a hand-job under the table. (Then there are 'Soaplands' – but let's not get into that.) But sex most definitely was not on the menu in the club I worked and I certainly didn't leave my experience in Japan hating men. Nor did I feel degraded or abused because all I was doing was being paid unfeasible amounts for sitting around drinking and smoking. The only hardship was talking to people whom I wouldn't normally have talked to (though there were some I definitely wanted to talk to – I dated one of the customers for two months). I don't believe there's a soul in the world who can say that in their job they don't sometimes have to make small talk with people they don't like.

  So really, it was nowhere near as seedy as the sound of the words hostess club imply. The girls I worked with tended to be part of that traveller community Alex Garland portrayed so well in The Beach. That community is a movable entity because they gravitate to the same places in whatever city, so you very often meet someone in Bangkok, say, and run into them months later in Kathmandu. In a strange way — considering it extended across several countries – it was quite a cosy group.

  On the subject of men hating (!) it sometimes occurs to me that for those sex workers who, like your friend, hate men it is often the cause as much as the effect of being in the industry. Which came first, the hatred or the behaviour? It's the Aileen Wuornos syndrome, isn't it? When I think about her I'm amazed what she did doesn't happen more often – hatred stepping over into violence. A lot of the questions I'm asked by readers and the press circle around these issues: women and violence, and particularly about what it means to be a woman who writes about violent crime (often inflicted on women). When I think about some of your toe curlers (especially the crime in Blindsighted – I mean, ahem) I feel sure it's something you've been asked about over and over again. How do you answer this question? Is it a male prerogative to write about violence? And do we write differently from men?

  KS: Every interview I've ever done has had some variation on that question – usually with an accusation behind it. Not that interviewers have been aggressive, but the way the question is phrased generally implies that what I'm doing is taboo and that perhaps I'd be better off in the more lady-like territory of knitting mysteries or stories where cats narrate half the book. I actually had a man come up to me after a signing and ask, 'What's a pretty little thing like you doing writing about such nasty subjects?'

  I've talked about this issue with some of my male friends who are thriller writers, and they very seldom get the same questions about violence in their novels put to them. It's much more acceptable for a guy to write about nasty things than it is for a woman to do the same. For years, this was boys-only territory, and especially in the late eighties and nineties you had this myth of the broken woman emerge, where a female character who had been raped or abused had two choices: either be a catatonic or be a martyr, and always, always some brave, sensitive man would rescue her from herself in the end. I understand that this response had a lot to do with what was going on in society at large (writers could no longer rape and pillage in a vacuum) but I found it irksome if not slightly insulting that these women could not save themselves. Obviously, a lot of men did as well because you have great stories like In A Dry Season from Peter Robinson, where he narrates from a woman's point of view in an incredibly believable way, and Mark Billingham is making an enviable career out of having equal-opportunity murderers.

  My own feeling is that it's about damn time women started talking and writing about violence against women. We are generally the victims of these crimes. We are the ones who have to live through it – if we're lucky. I think women authors look at sex crimes in a different way, and with Lena, the character in my series who was brutally raped, you see a different side of recovery than what is normally in fiction. Statistically, her reaction is more common than the martyr/catatonic one. Like many women, she subverts her anger and turns it on herself. She looks for situations and relationships where the abuse is repeated. She self-medicates. These are all stupid things that women can do in response to violence, and I want to talk about that because it's not something I've seen in many books. This is why I love Denise Mina's Maureen O'Donnell trilogy. My God, what a character. She's so raw and out there, and as a reader I keyed into her in a very emotional way that I'd never experienced before.

  It's the same way with your stuff. The Treatment, for example, is a story that has a definite female perspective, just not the sort of female perspective we're used to hearing. It cuts straight through to the heart of violence – visceral, gut-wrenching. The people who said that Aileen Wuornos was the first female serial killer (when there have been hundreds throughout history) aren't comfortable with the thought of women committing violence, let alone understanding writing about it. Yet, if you look at really horrible crimes against children, you see that women are often much more sadistic than men. I also wonder if you get a different reaction to your work because you're British and not held to the standards dictated by America's Puritanical roots. When you wrote about child abuse, for instance, were you trying to make a statement, or were you just telling a story?

  MH: I'm always, primarily, writing a story. I agree with everything you say (a special groan of recognition for the cat narrated novel), however, it has taken me years to be confident enough to say out loud: I'm just telling a story . . . It's the sort of comment that guarantees you'll end up mired in Tolstoyist debates about what defines art, about responsibilities and the writerly remit to educate, elucidate, illuminate. Of course, if I feel moved by a subject (as I did by child abuse for The Treatment and the Nanking massacre for Tokyo,) obviously I'm going to write more passionately about it, but I never, ever set out to write a book with an agenda. I'd be stymied if I asked myself what I was trying to say before I put pen to paper, even if I might look back on a novel in retrospect and recognize my themes and passions. As an extension of this I think that writers are too often encouraged to become pundits for every issue under the sun. For example, would you ask, in a professional capacity, a dentist/checkout clerk/ decorator for his/her opinion on the war in Iraq, and take the answers more seriously than your own opinions? Yet it's the sort of question I've been asked countless times, and I'm fairly sure people took what I felt more seriously because I'm a writer. Just because I've got some knowledge of how to arrange words in a relatively pleasing order doesn't make my moral compass any more finely tuned than anyone else's. In fact, probably less so, since most of my job is about lying convincingly.

  Or maybe I'm just subverting my anger . . .

  KS: I think that any writer who sets out with an agenda is going to have a very forced narrative, and the reader will know it. Like you, it's only after I've written something that I see what issues I've raised, and generally it's about a problem that I've seen happening in the world that has troubled me. If that's subverting your anger, then I'm guilty of it as well. I hope I never get to the point where I'm being didactic or preaching to the choir. At the end of the day, I'm writing for entertainment, not education. I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of in being a good storyteller.

  MH: What you said about The Treatment having a female perspective is interesting, because I was very definitely shying away from writing from a woman's perspective. You've always written both male and female characters with equal believability – for example Jeffery and Sara really come alive in equal measure. Do you find it difficult to get into Jeffrey's head?

  KS: When I write from Jeffrey's point of view, I have to turn off the female alarm all women have – the one that says to always be on the lookout, to know my surroundings and who is occupying my space. The last thing a man is thinking about when he walks into a strange situation is that he could possibly be assaulted. To remove th
at threat is incredibly freeing, and that's the place where I can really get into Jeffrey's head. I know it's extremely reductive to talk about such a complex issue in terms of sex, but for me when I see things through Jeffrey's eyes, I feel all the freedoms he has from being a man. He went to college right out of high school while his pregnant ex-girlfriend stayed at home to raise their child. He was a prolific womanizer prior to Sara and was celebrated rather than denigrated for this fact. His mother thinks he's perfect and no woman is good enough for him. You don't often find women enjoying these same freedoms.

  For instance, I sometimes get letters from folks taking me to task for Lena's cursing, but no one ever says anything about Jeffrey's potty mouth. No one cares when he's violent or insensitive, or when Sara puts aside her own emotional needs to take care of him. These sacrifices are completely acceptable because that's the way it's always been. To bring it all back to sex, I think it really makes some people uncomfortable that Jeffrey and Sara have such a good sex life. Sara is not the kind of woman who sees sex as a chore. She enjoys it and she loves Jeffrey and they are moving towards a somewhat stable relationship. The reader knows that they love each other and with their history you should also know that they're not going to end their relationship because of a fight over who was supposed to take out the trash. Like you, I often have my head in a book, and I can't think of many novels I've read lately where you see two adults in a stable, healthy relationship. Not to say I'm breaking new ground here. Lindsey Davis's Falco series does the same thing – only in ancient Rome.

  But sex is still a tricky thing to write about in detail. I think you really pulled this off well in Birdman. Jack actually gets laid and you read about it. It seems like we crime writers are more than happy to talk about bludgeoning, child abuse and sexual assault, but when it comes to sex between two 'good' characters, it freaks us out.

  MH: This is EXACTLY the point I've been making for years – except not so eloquently, so nobody understood what the hell I was talking about. There's no doubt about it, writing about sex from the perspective of two characters who want 'it' is extremely difficult for a woman – probably for some of the issues you identify earlier – it can be so easily confused and feel like a surrender, a loss of power – so how do you keep a strong female character 'on top' while still letting her have sex. (Or have I answered the question: keep her on top?)

  KS: A friend of mine has said the test about whether or not to show the sex is if you can take out the scene and the story still works. If that's the case, then you probably don't need it there.

  In Indelible and later in Faithless, I think the sexual intercourse (pun intended) adds a lot to the story. I see Sara as multi-faceted. There's the trusted paediatrician, upstanding citizen of Grant and then there's the other side of her, the side that really enjoys sex and wants to be with Jeffrey. I've alluded several times to her gutter mouth during intercourse, but people seem to gloss that over when they're thinking about Sara because of course good girls don't say 'fuck me'.

  There's this really (I hope) great scene between Sara and Jeffrey in Faithless that I worked on for quite a while – sex scenes always take much longer than the other stuff – and I really like how it turned out because it tells you everything you need to know about their relationship at that point. Sara is always going to surprise Jeffrey. I, for one, find that very sexy about her, but then I spend way too much time thinking about my characters.

  MH: The big problem in writing about sex is that it all feels too personal. Maybe that's because a character is easy to portray if they're just eating breakfast, having an argument, selling an ice cream, whatever, because we can be witness to these things: but we don't on the whole (and speak for yourself on this) witness other people having sex, so we have nothing to mimic. It could be the reason death scenes are so difficult – because as a society we avoid looking at death. Of course, all of these problems go up a notch on the difficult gauge when you're trying to write in the first person – then you become utterly exposed, utterly out on display. I've been very squeamish about sex and the first person, but maybe I'm getting over it now, because my next book is all about sex and all in first.

  KS: When's the book out?

  MH: Feb 2006 – I'm just finishing it at the moment.

  KS: And it's all about sex, huh? Sounds interesting. Makes me wonder what on earth you were into as a child . . .

  MH: As a child some very soft porn literature found its way into my house. Henry Miller, plus my favourite – Portnoy's Complaint (although I wish Roth would drop the sex thing now – it's all getting far too Woody Allen). I don't know what was going on in my mother's mind, because although my memory is of a constant Jane Austen/Charlotte Bronte diet, some cool things did creep onto my bedside cabinet. Probably the most memorable was Metamorphosis. That blew me away – age twelve. What did it for me was that much analysed opening sentence: As Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams . . . I think I can trace a lot of my literary tastes back to the moment I read that sentence.

  But how about you – do you ever sit and unpick your influences? What were you reading as a mini-KS?

  KS: God, I had forgotten about Metamorphosis. I must have been around the same age as you when I read it. (Hm . . . some secret international plot to spawn thriller writers . . .?) I'd never read anything like it and that book is probably one of the few stories that I started reading again as soon as I finished. Like all children, I guess I keyed into Gregor's isolation. He's such a tragic hero, and despite the plus of having more arms, who wouldn't be sad to be a cockroach?

  Another book that I feel marked me was The Painted Bird. There has been a lot of scandal about whether or not it's a true account, but I was a kid when I read it and all I knew was that it was a shocking and amazing story. Bird is the first book I remember reading that had graphic violence, but in the context where it actually said something about the characters and moved the story. Up until that point, it'd been John Jakes (soft porn!) and V.C. Andrews (incest!) that occupied my mind, but after reading Kosinski, I think I turned into a more serious reader, which leads me to . . . Flannery O'Connor . . .

  Growing up in the deep South, I had never been exposed to a woman writing about violence in such a matter-of-fact way. I didn't think it was allowed. O'Connor was so masterful at blending everyday characters with horrific events, and she had a wicked sense of humour. I loved the way she used humour to balance the violence. There's this great line at the end of A Good Man is Hard to Find where the Misfit, who has just killed an entire family, says about a nagging grandmother lying dead at his feet, 'She would have been a good woman if . . . somebody had been there to shoot her every minute of her life.'

  How can that not inspire you?

  MH: Well, exactly . . .

  It's been great talking to you Karin. I can't wait to read Faithless.

  KS: I'm really looking forward to your next one too.

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