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Simon Tolkien |
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Simon Tolkien talks about his inspirations, his influences and how a New Year’s Resolution in January 2000 helped him change direction from life as a criminal lawyer to life as a writer taking up the famous Tolkien mantle.
So Simon why did you wait so long to go into the family business?
Funnily enough I was convinced until quite recently that I couldn’t write fiction at all. Authors need to use words as tools but I was always hung up on what the words sounded like, and in my twenties I wrote some pretty average poetry (I guess I’m not alone in that). Then I was in St Louis staying with my wife’s family at the Millennium and I thought that a new century called for a completely new start – I began writing fiction for the first time on January 1, 2000. Of course it takes more than a New Year’s Resolution to change direction, and I think I was very concerned at the time about having turned forty in 1999. I wanted desperately to be a person who was more than just the grandson of someone famous. I wanted to have done something in my own right. Many people may think that being related to a famous writer would make it easier to become a writer yourself, but ironically I have found the opposite to be true. I think that I always unconsciously felt that I would be measured against my grandfather’s huge achievement and that this kept me away from fiction for a very long time.
What kind of experience do you want your reader to have?
My aim is to tell a story which will involve my reader sufficiently to make him leave wherever he physically is and be mentally transported into the world that I have created. I don’t want to use the story to send a message or comment on an issue. The point of my novel is the story itself. At the same time I don’t want to keep my reader’s attention only through plot or action, although these are obviously important. I try to give my characters real human depth and to confront them with difficult choices. I guess my aim is to make people really want to read without leaving them feeling slightly sick at the end as if they had eaten too much fast food.
Who has inspired you as a writer?
I get ideas from many different books, films and personal experiences. Let me mention two particular inspirations for The Stepmother. Firstly, David Gutenberg’s Snow Falling on Cedars is a very good book and gave me the idea of a criminal trial linking a series of related flashbacks. Secondly, I have always loved Alfred Hitchcock’s films. Their outcomes so often seem to turn on the loss or finding of small objects – a key in Dial M for Murder or a lighter in Strangers on a Train. In my novel, a golden locket worn by the victim and found in the possession of the accused turns out to be of critical importance.
To what extent has your grandfather been an influence on your work?
I have always loved The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. My grandfather’s unique achievement was to create an entirely imaginary world in which his readers completely believe. At the same time he was able to tell a story in such a way that they really need to know what happens next. My novel is set in this world and is obviously entirely different from my grandfather’s work. However, his mastery of the art of storytelling will always be an inspiration to me.
What did you read as a child?
I was an only child and grew up in a rather isolated English village. There was no computers or cable TV back in the 1960s and the Beatles were a long way away. Books were my main source of entertainment and throughout my childhood I overdosed on them. I started off with the classic childrens’ writers of which my favourites remain R L Stevenson, Kenneth Grahame and of course my grandfather, and then went on to the nineteenth century writers like Dickens, Collins and above all Trollope. They were real masters of how to tell a story. I think it’s extraordinary that so many of their novels appeared in weekly magazine instalments – that kind of deadline must have been a real challenge!
How has your work as a criminal lawyer influenced your fiction?
A courtroom is an extraordinary place. Witnesses often tell their stories in the most dramatic fashion watched by a silent jury who have to decide who is telling the truth (I often think of my readers as if they were the jury). My experiences as a criminal barrister in London have provided me with many ideas for stories, a wide experience of human nature and an insider’s knowledge of the English criminal law which means that I can make my fiction true to life.
One of the themes of The Stepmother is class structure. Do you think this is still an issue in Britain today?
Class was something of which I was very unpleasantly aware when I was growing up. At thirteen I went to a boarding school in a remote rural area and the local young people hated the privileged schoolboys with a passion. Venturing outside the school walls on dark evenings carried a serious risk of violence. People spoke with different accents and a ‘posh’ one was sure to create hostility. I escaped this by going to London to study law in my early twenties and I’ve never been personally aware of class hostility in London. However, I do believe that accent and education still play a very important part in determining who is successful in British society.
Another theme of The Stepmother is what one generation inherits from another. What have you inherited from your grandfather?
Who knows what genes we get from our different grandparents? I can only speculate, but I do think that I have inherited some of his enormous determination, which is essential for writing books. I hope also that I have a little of his great store of human affection. He was a wonderful grandfather for me in the difficult years that followed my parents’ divorce when I was five, and I feel that he would be very pleased about my book if he was alive today.
