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| Interview with Helen Simpson by Daneet Steffens Helen Simpson is cat-sitting in Edinburgh. She’s using the opportunity to work on a story, a commission for the William Boyd-edited 50th Jubilee edition of Granta, out early next year. She also has some writing going on the side: With only feline company to entertain her – a large, grey ball of fluff peers balefully through the window at us half-way through the interview – Simpson’s been keeping a cat diary for her friends’ amusement on their return. ‘Yesterday the cat brought a mouse in,’ she says, smiling but matter-of-fact. This is, after all, just nature running its course. ‘The mouse was alive and he had it in his jaws and he just sat under the sofa and growled. Cats love to do that; they like to play. This one’s quite the same.’ The cat-sitting gig, it turns out, is most timely, as Simpson’s daughter has just finished her A-Levels. ‘That’s why I came here,’ she says. ‘I saw the dates and I knew as soon as the exams stop, they’ll all let it rip, that it would be like the last days of the Roman Empire at home.’ She laughs. With her deadline looming, ‘this was perfect: seven days of a place of my own. I’m nearly done with the first draft. I was going to take this afternoon off and reward myself with a visit to the Richard Long exhibition, but’ – wry smile – ‘I’ll be finishing this damn story.’ She’s returning to what’s left of the Roman Empire the next day. Relaxed and comfy in khakis and a zip-front jumper, Simpson talks warmly for a cosy couple of hours over mugs of ginger tea. After reading her cunning and canny stories, exquisitely poised somewhere between bittersweetness, rage and satire, I fully expected to see a glint of mischief in her eyes, but in fact, under terrifically tousled reddish hair, she’s got a refreshingly open gaze, her nearly-grey eyes soft but direct. Similarly, her voice is pleasantly low, with moments of huskiness that lend an element of gravitas to it. You get the sense that if she detected any bullshit, she’d just turn away, recognising it as a waste of her time. This is someone, you apprehend, who understands the preciousness and limits of time, and guards hers fiercely. But gain her attention, as I was lucky enough to, on that sunny Scottish morning, and you command it completely. Simpson has perfected the writer’s art of hoarding ideas, events, anecdotes, squirrelling them away, then, when the moment is ripe, drawing from them to turn the shrapnel of everyday life into gems of irony, humour, sadnesses, frustrations and love. Sit down with her for a chat, and she entertains you with stories from her life – catching up with an old tutor in Edinburgh, a family walking holiday in Northumberland, having someone die on a plane a few seats away from her – and you wonder which one she will draw from next to create a barebones-but-complete snapshot of this modern life that fascinates her; she captures it perfectly in her short stories, sans frills, but with kind touches of compassion and forgiveness for our oh-so-human foibles that can, too often, keep us at odds with each other. For the whole interview, read Issue 35 » Subscribe! |
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For more on KATHLEEN JAMIE, go to www.contemporarywriters.com |
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