Claire Fuller participated in the Alton Towers Residency in April 2019. We spoke to her about abandoned structures, sculpting, and how her writing career began.
What kind of themes underpin your writing?
Places that people could live but which are difficult for them to live in. All the houses my characters live in – certainly in my novels, and in some of my short fiction – are quite uninhabitable: a hut in the woods, or a country house that is falling down, or a house that was once a swimming pavilion.
What else? Perhaps dysfunctional families. But then I always think, aren’t nearly all books about dysfunctional families? People who struggle to get along and hide things from one another. Oh, and music – lots of music in my writing. People making music or listening to music.
Do you have a particular connection to Alton Towers? What do you find interesting about the park?
I’d never been to Alton Towers before, and I’m not really a theme park kind of person – certainly not a rollercoaster kind of person! Too scary, the idea makes my fingertips sweat! But that’s what I’m fascinated by. Discovering what I don’t like about it, putting myself in those spaces… and watching other people do those things that I don’t like to do.
I have been to theme parks with my children when they were younger, but never before to Alton Towers. It’s been really interesting to come and see it from a writing point of view, and not be in the park. All the other times I’ve been to a theme park it’s been to entertain my children, or to entertain myself… but to go to a place specifically to see it from the outside gives you a completely different perspective. To be notetaking in your head the whole time is quite interesting.
You mentioned an interest in abandoned structures in your application. What is it about abandoned spaces that draws you to them, and makes you want to write about them? How do you find that people respond to this as a theme?
I think it’s about what the places are like after the people who lived with them have left. The things that the people leave behind, not just physically, but emotionally too. Spiritually even, what they leave behind – the feeling of human occupation after they’ve left is, I think, really interesting.
How people respond to that – some people might take that at a very surface level. They might enjoy a kind of ghostly feel to it that gives them the shivers… which is a lovely response. Some people might see other layers and meanings in what remains after humans have left.
You’ve written several novels during your career as a writer. Do you have a favourite? Can you tell us a bit more about your most recent novel?
I guess it’s always the one I’ve just written. I hope that I’m improving each time. The most recent one was Bitter Orange. I hope that I learned things from writing the first two, and so the most recent one is always going to be the one I like the most. I do like elements of them all, of course, and I’m still proud of each of them, even with all their rough edges.
Bitter Orange is about a woman called Francis. In 1969 she’s commissioned to survey the follies in the grounds of an English country house which has been purchased by an American in order for him to take it apart and ship it over to America – although she doesn’t know that in the beginning. She meets a couple in the house where, during the summer, she lives in the attic. The couple live on the floor below, and they’re there to survey the interior. The three of them soon discover the wine cellar, and so they spend the summer drinking wine and eating food and smoking cigarettes and not doing the work they are supposed to be doing.
At the same time Francis discovers a peephole in her bathroom floor that looks through into the bathroom below, and she cannot resist looking through and discovering some of the secrets that the couple living below her have.
How did you become a writer? Can you remember the first thing you ever wrote?
I didn’t start writing until I was 40. I started relatively late. I started writing short stories and then lots of flash fiction, and I think I discovered early on that I don’t like writing. I like having written. So the process I find really difficult, certainly first drafts. I really enjoy editing, and I enjoy having made something.
Although I had to have a full time job, before I was a writer I was a sculptor, and it was the same feeling – I loved having created something, but the actual process I found very hard and had to make myself do it in all sorts of ways – bribing myself with chocolate and lunch to make myself write some words, for example.
The first thing I was proud of was a short story, which I read to an audience in my local library. I had entered it into a (very small) competition there, and I won that month. I got a share of the door takings for winning, which came to £9.77. My first earnings as a writer! That’s what really started it all off.
Do you still sculpt?
I do some drawing still, but not much. I have bits of wood and stone in my garden. Sometimes I do look out the window and see them, and they call to me: “Throw me away or do something with me.” But I haven’t for a very long time. Haven’t picked up a mallet. Perhaps my writing is my creative outlet – I don’t particularly feel the need for anything else at the moment, apart from a little bit of drawing every now and then.
Claire Fuller started writing when she was 40. She’s the author of Our Endless Numbered Days (winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize), Swimming Lessons, and most recently, Bitter Orange. She also writes short stories and flash fiction, and has won the Royal Academy/Pin Drop Short Story Prize amongst others. Her website is clairefuller.co.uk.