 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||||
| Interview with Barbara Trapido by Debbie Taylor KNOWING I’d be interviewing Barbara Trapido, I’ve been reading The Travelling Hornplayer (her 1998 Whitbread-shortlisted novel) in fits and starts between editing and obsessing about Mslexia. Like all her books, it’s a total delight: jaunty, intelligent, captivating, witty, with layers of meaning and an intricate plot that comes to a satisfying all-the-ends-tied-up-neatly conclusion. On the journey to Oxford to meet her, I begin to envisage someone like the writing: compact, agile and brisk. But the woman who opens the door is the complete opposite: tall and rangy, rather majestic. She’s surrounded by dogs (there are only two, but it seems like more) whose frantic tails and clattery toenails make her seem soft-focus and vague by comparison as she conducts me into her little kitchen and begins reaching into cupboards for soup and bread. ‘I write in longhand,’ she tells me as we settle down to eat. ‘My hands don’t work to type.’ My eyes are drawn to them: large and brown like a builder’s, and I think it might be hard to make them tap-dance over a keyboard. It’s only later that I discover the extraordinary process she puts them through for each book: the laborious writing and rewriting, the tangles of scrawled alterations – ‘like a demented spider’ – and every word in longhand (see The Trapido Method). It turns out she’s been up all night and apologises in advance if she seems distracted. In a gesture which I learn is rather typical… For the whole interview, read Issue 1 » Subscribe! Go to » Barbara Trapido's Method |
 |
|||||||||
|
For more on BARBARA TRAPIDO, go to www.contemporarywriters.com
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
Top of page | Home | Contact | About | Subscribe | Submit | Advertise | Tell Us