an interview with Jenn Ashworth

Three books in and Jenn Ashworth shows no signs of stopping. The prolific and talented young author won a Betty Trask Award in 2010 for her debut, A Kind of Intimacy. She followed that up with the intense Cold Light. Now she has a third novel out, The Friday Gospels, which follows the Leekes, a Lancastrian Mormon family struggling with the return of one of their sons after a two year spell in Utah. Told by all the members of the family and careening towards a meltdown over the course of a day, the book showcases Ashworth's ability to meld drama, black humour and humanity.

We caught up with Jenn to talk about the new novel, Mormonism and the current landscape for young British novelists.

Hello Jenn, how are you today? What was the last thing you did before we spoke?

I am very well, thank you. Today is a work-at-home day (I go into my office at Lancaster a few days a week) so after emails, and reading, and editing a short story, I went to a tile shop and looked at different kinds of off-white coloured floor tiles. A thrilling business.

You're three novels deep now. What advice would The Friday Gospels Jenn give A Kind of Intimacy Jenn? 

That's a brilliant question. I think I'd tell her to trust the reader more - to be more confident about how much pleasure a reader takes in piecing together a story, a character's motivations, the treatment of a theme. That I don't need to find a way for the novel to say everything. I knew that already, of course, but I didn't always remember it. I'd also advise Jenn-from-the-past to practice more, before doing readings. It helps with the nerves!

It certainly isn't autobiographical (my life is much less dramatic than any of my characters')...Tell us about The Friday Gospels? Is it based on real events, family and place?

It certainly isn't autobiographical (my life is much less dramatic than any of my characters') but it's based in a place and a community that I know well. It is set on one day, and tells the story of a family on the day their middle son comes home to Chorley from serving a mission for the The Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) in Utah.

Each member of the family takes turns to tell the story, and each of them has their own private reasons for wanting Gary to come home. The dad, for example, is desperate for his son to come home and be man of the house because he wants to leave his wife and start a relationship with another woman. The youngest daughter, Jeannie, has a terrible secret she can't tell anyone except her much adored big brother.

They're a tight-knit family in some ways, but by the end of the novel, the reader will know much more about the story and the way their individual decisions have impacted on each other and the resolution of the tale than any single character does.

I was raised a Mormon in a small, working class town very like the one the Leekes live in, and so while none of the events that take place in the book have happened to me, certainly the world and the culture that the novel tries to recreate, I hope with some authenticity, is one that I know well.

I'd spent time watching Big Love and reading novels about Mormon life and culture - and the fascination always seemed to be with the American experience... What was it about the nature of Mormonism and religion that attracted you to the story?

My initial urge to write the story was because, I think, I'd spent time watching Big Love and reading novels about Mormon life and culture - and the fascination always seemed to be with the American experience, and in particular with polygamy. I can see why, of course, but it's alien to most British Mormon families. I didn't recognise the community I grew up in in the novels I read. I also became fascinated with the doubleness of Mormonism - the squeaky clean, wholesome image coupled with a nasty underbelly of, of course, polygamy, and racism, and all kinds of other murk. That doubleness is not exclusive to Mormonism, of course, but it has always interested me, and, now I look back on it, ties in neatly with the way family and small town life is dealt with in my first two novels.

This being a split narrative book, how did you put it together and was this a conscious choice - representing the whole family - when you started?

Yes, very much a conscious choice. Writing about a faith community is sensitive, of course it is. I felt the only fair way to do it would be to create a variety of voices, all interacting with their faith and their culture in different ways. The popular conception of the LDS lifestyle seems to emphasise conformity, and of course that is an important thread of LDS culture. But it's more complex than that. A multi-voiced book seemed to be the most honest way to write about what it might be like to be a Mormon. It's not about Martin's experience, or Jeannie's, or Julian's, or Pauline's, or Gary's. It's all of them. The idea of family was also very important. The eternal nature of family bonds is central to LDS theology, and making each voice an essential part of the mosaic of this story felt like a nod to that too.

The writing I like the best is always a little two-faced.You deal with some serious themes but with a lightness of touch and a good deal of humour. How do you balance out the earnestness and sincerity of what the family go through with the ability to create funny situations and dialogue for them?

That's a tough one! The writing I like the best is always a little two-faced. The same scene, same line of dialogue, even, can be read as cynical or sentimental, comic or tragic. Just as a cheap laugh can be a way of denying the complexity of a situation, so can a relentlessly, willfully bleak take on things. You mention sincerity, and to me, the only way to be sincere is to acknowledge that there's never only one way to see a situation, and that worldview, if that isn't too fancy a way of putting it, comes out through all my writing. The function of the humour works a little differently in The Friday Gospels though. It feels a little more affectionate, to me. This is the warmest of my three novels.

This being your third novel, how has the landscape for young British novelists changed since you started?

That's a very hard one to judge. My first book was published in 2009 so we're not talking years and years ago. People were talking about the death of the novel, the death of the publishing industry, the death of the high-street bookshop and the hardback back then, and they are still talking about it now.

I worked freelance for a while and made a living doing various arts development projects that were all directly or indirectly funded by public money. I doubt I'd be able to make a living in that way now. That's certainly changed, and very quickly.

Some of the students I work with at Lancaster are leaping right into digital self-publishing, and that's something that's appears to be more accepted now than it was even five years ago. How the industry and, more importantly, readers, will adjust to these changes remains to be seen. Whether writers will still be able to make a sustainable career from their work is as uncertain as it ever was. I am relentlessly, possibly stupidly optimistic. I've nothing against e-readers and I think writer will continue to publish good books and readers will carry on finding them.

I certainly don't feel deprived because I don't live in London.Do you ever feel there is a divide between the London literature scene and what is happening outside it?

I'm probably not the best person to ask. I go to London three times a year, if that. If you live where I do and a 'scene' is what you're after, there's plenty in Manchester, Liverpool and Lancaster - no need to travel if you want a place to listen to new writing, get involved in projects and collaborative work. And these mini-hubs aren't cliquey at all - the last reading night I went to - Bad Language in Manchester - was tremendous about advertising other reading and writing events in Sheffield, Leeds and elsewhere. I certainly don't feel deprived because I don't live in London.

What are you currently reading?

A few things. Finishing School, by Muriel Spark. It's very funny. I've just finished The Ravenglass Eye by my friend, Tom Fletcher. And I'm also dipping in and out of the Martin Stannard biography of Muriel Spark too.

Having worked on a prison project working with dads on shared reading… what can we do to encourage more dads to read with their kids?

I think you only need to experience how fun it is to read to a child (mums or dads, actually) - to have a child who can't read pull the book out of your hands and start telling their own version of the story - to want to to it again. A local library with a decent stock of books for children helps too, of course.

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