Weathercock

"This is a bildungsroman about the young life of a character called Dominic Hood. He has a kinship at school with friends, in particular with two friends called Pen and Kelp. But he’s also literally haunted by the ghost of a dead friend from the past. We hear him as the older man reflecting. We realise that—in the same way that Elaine is haunted by Cordelia—this is a literal ghost. That surreal aspect is one of the things I love about Duncan’s work. The character, Dominic Hood, a little later in life is attracted to a girl called Deborah Black, with whom he does some pretty sadistic things, which really plumb the depths of morality. I think that’s why Duncan has been such a huge influence on my work. He has made me braver as a writer. He writes a lot about sex, and a lot about the darker aspects of human nature. He goes where few other writers—and thinkers—will go. It’s really brave, what he writes about. And it’s made me braver. Aside from that I think he’s fantastically funny. Glen’s style is very self-conscious and very playful. He’s a stylist, like Rachel B Glaser, and I think there’s so much to admire in that. That kind of writing gets accused of being overwrought, or over-written. But I like a sentence that twists and turns, and I really like it when I can tell that an author has really tried to capture the meaning of what they’re saying. I think you can tell when a sentence has been worked at, and I appreciate that. There’s that Orwell quote, that good writing should be like a pane of glass, you shouldn’t notice it. But I like stuff where you can really see the sweat in the words. “It baffles me there isn’t more sex in books.” I think Weathercock is his best book. It’s huge, about 500 pages, but it doesn’t feel like that because it’s so lively in style. It explores different relationships, but essentially looks at the theme of kinship—that so many of these books touch on—that idea of a connection between people, for good or bad, that deep connection that tells you someone has got the same essence as you. It can be simultaneously thrilling and unnerving and comforting. But I think Glen Duncan captures that. He writes about sex and about smells, he’s very visceral as a writer. I like that because it baffles me there isn’t more sex in books, and that there aren’t more descriptions of physicality and the way, as humans, we do smell of certain things and we’ve got all sorts of stuff going on in our bodies. I don’t find it repulsive and I think it’s important for female characters to exhibit those and for them to be seen as normal functions. I think within this book you get a real comparison between what friendship gives you and what sexual encounters can give you."