I was in two minds whether to write this blog piece but it’s annoying me so much that I need to get it out of my system. Yes we have the hide of rhinos, you have to in this job, but occasionally someone sticks in a pin and it hits a nerve. Yes, I'm a bit cross.
I was half-expecting it, to be honest, for we live in a sensitive climate and I probably wouldn’t have touched a trans character had ‘Astrid’ not been a recurring character who has been so very well received by readers. And when I first wrote her many years ago, she was only ever meant to be a person who was in one story… but, as so often happens, some flower and grow and decide that they are going to stick around for another book. Or more, as in Astrid’s case. There was no political agenda. Yes I know women are feeling ever more subjugated, their spaces eroded (I am one, I KNOW) but this is one (fictional) person, one situation. Astrid arrived fully formed in my head as this Amazonian German with a heart as soft as a tub of Lurpak on a radiator and so I am determined not to fall out of love with one of my own beloved creations who is a great favourite among readers.
I’m sure the majority of readers realise that novelists have very vivid imaginations (no shit Sherlock) and we can write about things our characters do that we, as the humans behind them, wouldn’t necessarily agree with. Take for instance my latest book Same Time Next Week. I saw a comment on a readers group (yes, I am a reader too… so I have a perfect right to join as a reader) where someone said I ‘obviously had an agenda to push HRT and so I was preaching about it’ and I’m afraid I happened to reply that I absolutely didn’t – and wasn’t. I’m quite capable of writing a character whose life is transformed by some drug or a running club or a one-night stand without having my experiences at their back to call on. I’m quite capable of having a woman stay in a relationship that I would run from with my arse on fire. I’m quite capable of writing about a woman falling in love with another woman when I’m straight, or wanting to travel the world with a backpack when that would be my worst nightmare or loving caravans (or even marzipan). Maybe it’s flattering that my writing is so convincing that one might imagine it always comes from a place of personal experience, but the tone of the criticism is telling me that it’s anything but. And yes, I can tell a ‘preach’ when I hear one and I despise them. I’ve gone off one of my favourite ever authors because his books now seem to be injected with a lot of his own politics and I just want to read the book not be spouted at.
In the reviews of The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew, is one from someone who ripped ME to shreds because I’d chosen to write about a posh Tory family and therefore I made things very obvious which political party I didn’t support. I was dying to write and tell her that I was a floating voter because they’re all a bunch of ****ers and I end up using my votes on who is presently the least shit. But you do have to sit on your hands and swallow. But it's annoying when someone 'knows' something that is, in fact, total bollocks.
I was also jumped on once by a militant bunch of vegans who objected to one of my characters not wanting to share a house with someone who didn’t eat meat for fear of being judged. The character felt like that, not me… but some people just cannot separate the two and that was bloody scary with probably the scariest bullying I’ve ever encountered online until I actually called it out as that (helped by some very nice vegans who didn't jump on the bandwagon and were as gobsmacked as I was by the reaction!). But then, I have seen it often that some of the ‘be kind’ brigade can be particularly rigid and cruel and they don’t see the irony in their own actions. (Debate and differences of opinion need to come back quickly before we all crash and burn!) Then, blow me, when I wrote a vegetarian character who had a vegetarian and vegan business I was ‘pushing that agenda’ and set on by another bunch. It is possible to write about someone pushing an agenda without actually pushing that agenda yourself.
Whatever size - width or length - a character is, whatever hair colour… someone will have a pop and accuse you of singling them out. ‘You have a thing about people in HR, why is that?’ ‘Why does your villain have a big bum?’ ‘Why does your villain have a small bum?’ I had a villain with a set of braces on her teeth (at a time when I was writing the book with a set of braces on my own teeth) and I was poking fun at her, apparently. Yes I was, she was an awful character and that's how she was in my head. I was hardly saying if you have a gob like Jaws, you're a monster. I wasn't a monster for having braces (I hope). We can’t win. And I actually want to describe my characters who are all different shapes and sizes so my readers can visualise them. So I will be carrying on doing that. Niceness and nastiness, neither fit into a natural shape. There are beautiful knobheads and some of the nicest people would never get on the front cover of Vogue.
As for Astrid, my dear lovely Astrid, who joins a friendship group NOT a menopause group in Same Time Next Week. I am very clear that Astrid cannot go through that physical stage, but she is at an age where she is feeling that changes need to be made in her life. The book is primarily about change, not just menopausal changes. And as for the woman she chases out of the group… hello!! Women can be gobshites, as 'Janine' is and once she is gone, the energy of the group flows. One person does not a political agenda make. I stay out of all those big issues because I don’t need to lay on my readers what my beliefs are, political or otherwise, so don’t think I’m surreptitiously doing it to influence you all. I’m quite blatant about recommending things when I need to – ie Honeylove bras, P & O Cruises, M & S baby sprouts. Contention? You can keep it. I'll stay out of the debates that others are better arguing.
I remember when Me Before You came out and Jojo Moyes had to come out and say that the ending was appropriate for THAT ONE character, it didn’t mean that it would be right for every person in the same situation. That wasn’t the message. You can be decent and inclusive without banging a political drum and you can judge individuals on their own merits and situations as (most of) my characters do. Thank you to everyone who is delighted to see the lovely Astrid return and judges her as they find – one of those people who gets a lot of fan mail and I’m chuffed to buttons about that.
I get letters that I should put more people of colour/less able-bodied/etc people in my books. No I shouldn’t. All my characters appear in my imagination as the ‘right people for the job’. Mr Singh, Charlie and Robin, Erin… they’re in my books because they turned up in my head and said ‘hello, I think we can work together.’ No, I’m not getting into virtue signalling and being ‘right on’ just to tick boxes and make myself look saintly, because that’s what it’ll come across as and give you all the ick. Besides, I’m doing my bit for the under-represented with the working class, something no one can accuse me of not knowing about first-hand. It’s my comfort zone, my world.
So do give us a break. But if you are that sensitive that you need to write to an author to tell them that you are furious and will never read another of their books again because a fictitious character in one of their books has done something you don’t agree with… maybe you shouldn’t read any mmmm/f erotica, Lolita or Chris Carter books.
Authors are not their characters. *drops mike*. Also Astrid is BACK and going on on cruise in book 24!!!
