Penguin: Why did you want to read How to be Good?
Frances Barber: I am a massive Nick Hornby fan and although he perhaps is perceived as being more of a lad's writer he is witty and canny and obviously likes and sympathises with women. All his females have to put up with these hopeless boys and their obsessions and yet he avoids making them sanctimonious. I was thrilled to be invited to get to read his new novel before anyone else and I have now recommended it to all my girlfriends. I think it's his most considered and most accomplished to date.
P: Much has been made of the fact that this is Nick Hornby's first novel with a female protagonist. Do you think Hornby was successful in his portrayal or did you ever feel your Katie was battling with his male-perspective Katie?
FB: Katie is not only someone I completely recognise but she's the sort of woman I would like to have as a friend. I read Hornby's audiobook with fewer mistakes than I have ever read anything and that can only be because I was so inside her head that the thoughts and dialogue just flew out of my mouth as if they were improvised observations of my own. I never heard a male perception in her comments and internal battles; it was like having a conversation with myself. It's a triumph of empathy that reminds me of the character of Anna I played in Patrick Marber's play Closer in which I was staggered by Patrick's knowledge and sympathy with a real woman I knew as well as I know myself.
P: How far could you identify with Katie and her moral dilemmas? Did you find yourself siding sometimes with Katie and sometimes with her husband David, the man actively searching for what it means to be 'good'?
FB: Because Katie is such a complicated and totally believable creation, she allows herself self-doubt throughout the book. As the story unfolds she changes her mind about David and his new foibles because she also is suffering a moral dilemma about their lifestyle and Islington-dwelling affluence. They are a perfect example of the Blairite nation we have evolved into, seemingly without realising that we have lost our old beliefs. It is an incisive and brilliantly observed rap on the knuckles for all of us who find ourselves in this New Labour world without questioning how or why we arrived here. Consequently I found I was siding with both the irrational response of David and the realistic approach of Katie. Katie won, but I think that says a lot more about me than it does about the moral argument at the heart of the book. |
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