Philippa Holloway’s Shelf Life

Philippa Holloway is a writer and academic with a varied career history that includes being a goatherd, a medical technician at a racing circuit, and a library assistant. Her short fiction has been published internationally, and her debut novel, The Half-life of Snails was longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje prize for ‘a distinguished work evoking the spirit of place,’ and has been featured in an international podcast, serialised in a national newspaper, and praised on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row as ‘powerful, evocative... a terrific book.’

How and where are you?
I’m currently in my pyjamas in my little study at home in Lancashire, drinking my second cup of coffee of the day and knocking back painkillers. I’ve had a tough month as I lost my father recently, am changing jobs, and have a number of writing commissions due, but am trying to be gentle on myself – hence the pyjamas and coffee at half ten in the morning on a weekday. I can see fields and trees from my window which helps, and have my dog, Mortimer, on my lap. She keeps me safe and healthy, mentally and physically.

What are you reading right now?
I have just finished reading White Noise by Don DeLillo again, and although I thought I remembered it from studying it at Uni in the late 1990s, so much of it felt new. Strangely, reading about Jack and Babette’s negotiation of their fear of death just after witnessing a loved one die has helped me to process things. I have struggled to read as much as I’d have liked to over the summer, but have just received a heap of fiction that I am retreating into whenever I can grab a few moments. I love all genres as long as they are well written, and so am flitting between: Q by Christina Dalcher for fast-paced female-led resistance to dystopian near future possibilities; The Last Word by Elly Griffiths for cosy crime that is beautifully cynical, clever, and clearly written by an intelligent literature lover; and Birdsplaining: A Natural History by Jasmine Donahaye which is a stunning and honest literary non-fiction exploration of the constraints and uniqueness of women’s experiences of nature. I also have the second of Margaret Atwood’s Madadam trilogy waiting in the wings. The first of these books, Oryx and Crake, stunned me into a reading hiatus earlier this year. It was written 20 years ago and yet felt so prescient and relevant I couldn’t read anything else for about a month. I will need to fortify myself for The Year of The Flood as I know it will consume me. I also cannot wait to read Private Rites by Julia Armfield, but my close friend and colleague has advised me to hang on a while due to the subject matter. I read a sneaky paragraph though, and just those few lines have seeped into my consciousness and remain there waiting for the rest of the book to join them.

And, of course, watching or listening to, or otherwise consuming?
We recently dug out our DVD boxset of The West Wing and have been watching a few episodes a week as comfort TV/an antidote to current politics. I’m hoping it will see us through the US election and help keep us sane as the news cycles ramp up. I also listen to a lot of radio plays/stories in the car. The Limelight productions on BBC Sounds are excellent and give me the chance to fill my head with stories even when I’m doing something else - Harland was especially good. Alternative Stories also bring some amazing new talent to the fore, and their audio dramas, literary showcases and short series fuel my addiction to varied genres. Other things I’m consuming…I managed to grow a hearty crop of goth French beans this summer in old chimney pots on my tiny front garden. They are black/purple and change colour to deep green when cooked, and this little act of mutual nurturing between myself and these plants has nourished me in so many ways. Oh, and my tardy tomatoes are finally ripening!

What did you read as a child?
Everything I could get my sticky little mitts on. I spent my early years living on a small, troubled council estate at the edge of a pit village in Nottinghamshire during the decade of pit closures, and my wonderfully radical single mum chose to educate us at home. We had no money for books, but our tiny local library became my second home and we able to pursue our education in a self-motivated and discovery-led way. Yes, we did proper classes at the kitchen table and learned grammar and maths and created big projects in folders, but we read, and read, and read some more. Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias, Children’s Fiction and Crime Thrillers, Horror, Non-fiction, and the Classics. Enid Blyton one day, the Brontes the next. I loved books about nature more than anything, and read Jack London, James Herriot and Richard Adams and cried over them all. No one made me stick to a specific section of the library, and so I read Frankenstein and Dracula early enough to for them to imprint on my identity, as well as Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley series. I discovered Poppy Z. Brite at the time I was hitting my teens, and reading her contemporary horror alongside Marquez, DeLillo, Okri and Rushdie unlocked whole new voices and possibilities for my own strange story ideas. I am drawn to realist stylistics, but with weirdness at the core. Real life is gothic, weird, unsettling and magical, and my childhood certainly was, so maybe that’s why my own writing runs headfirst into this kind of space.

Which books and/or writers have inspired and influenced you, and what have you learnt from them?
Can I say all of them and not sound like I’m being evasive? The thing is, it’s true. Every book I have ever read, or am reading, or will ever read, teaches me something about writing. I can discover what I don’t want to do as often as I can see what is possible and where I can glean ideas for approaches, stylistics and modes. Sometimes I can unpick a structure and see how all the parts work, and other times I’ll just read a sentence or paragraph over and over and focus on the use of language, the imagery or specific feel of the words. I read The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall near the start of my PhD and her use of free indirect discourse showed me the way to find the right tone and fluctuating intimacy level for The Half-life of Snails. Also, Jenn Ashworth’s novels, written in and brilliantly portraying the North West give me confidence that I don’t need to try and set my stories in London, but can continue working with the complex and fascinating landscapes I know and am interested in. Reading contemporary fiction where the characters do not conform to stereotypes, but rather respond authentically to their circumstances also gives me the confidence to keep writing my characters as grounded in whatever weird reality I place them. If they don’t challenge me, how can I expect anyone else to be interested?

What’s the worst review you’ve ever received?
The first review of my debut novel, The Half-life of Snails, that came from a reader described the protagonist as ‘dumping their child on a relative and going on holiday’ despite the book carefully and clearly revealing that the reason for her leaving her child was to do with preparing him for her potential death, and the trip was definitely not a holiday! It was from an anti-nuclear researcher and activist, so maybe they were more familiar with legal and technical writing than literature, but it did sting that an authentically complex woman making tough choices could be reduced to ‘bad mother’ status just because she doesn’t conform to stereotypical ideals of womanhood or motherhood (I’ve never met a woman yet who does!). To be fair to them, I deliberately wrote a character that I knew would challenge readers and didn’t want a character who was anything other than flawed, realistically impacted by her life-experiences and who, like all of us, makes decisions for what feels like the right reason at the time. I actually like that she rubs folks up the wrong way, because that means she is true to herself, and not written to please or reaffirm a ‘type.’ Most readers love and dislike her simultaneously, which is great. That review also then went on to say the book ‘does for civil nuclear what Briggs and Shute did for the bomb’, so I will take that comparison and leave smiling! Generally, though, once my stories are out there, I’m happy however people want to respond – you cannot please every reader, and no writer can write for every reader, so the fact some people might hate or misunderstand my work doesn’t bother me, as someone else will find themselves within it, and that’s who I’m writing for anyway.

Tell us a little about your creative process.
Every piece of writing demands something different from me, and I am always trying new things. For The Half-life of Snails I wanted to draw on the phenomenology of being in the landscapes and communities around nuclear power stations, and so spent a lot of time hanging around Wylfa in North Wales (near where I lived until I moved to do my PhD) talking to residents, visiting Heysham NPP in Lancashire, and I took a trip to Ukraine in 2016 to spend time alone in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. I wanted to adapt the psychogeographic practice of moving through varied spaces and seeing how the sensory details of place affect emotions and behaviours to spaces that had an intangible and yet defining extra element – radiation. I visited the self-settlers in the Zone, babushkas who had returned and lived and farmed in half abandoned villages, and one got me very drunk on her homemade cherry liqueur! I drew on all these complex and rich experiences to ensure the book explored the complexities of civil nuclear power and how it impacts people – the story grew out organically of the embodied world in that sense, but I also did careful research to ensure historical, political, sociological and scientific facts gave it a solid foundation.

My short stories can take just a few hours, or years, to make it to the page. Again, I get a lot of my ideas from close observation of place, people, and asking why and how. I know that for me, the best way to write is to get away from my laptop and go for a walk, do some housework, swim. I can then go back to my desk, and I’ve got things swirling, sorted, and waiting to be put into a narrative. I once sat on the side of a swimming pool scrawling on the back of a begged-for accident report form, because the exact paragraph I needed finally fell into place as I was doing laps. The lifeguard thought I was mad, but that paragraph was published pretty much exactly as I wrote it there, dripping wet, my feet still dangling in the deep end. I’ve also come to trust the process of putting words on a page and seeing what emerges. Writing begets writing. Once I get a few lines down, test my way into a voice, perspective, image, and I have something to work on, it triggers the next line, then the next.

The process for the non-fiction book I am currently writing is far more research based, and involves flitting between books, websites, and old photographs, mining memories, and visiting places I once lived as well as exploring new sites. The style of this book is more fragmentary, so there’s a lot of shuffling and rewriting as I go along. I can also dip in and out of it a bit more easily, crafting shorter scenes and sections. To say I am always learning sounds horribly cliched and trite, but I couldn’t write to a formula, I’d just get bored. For me it’s always an act of reaching, stretching, testing, and play.

How has your experience of the publishing industry been?
Despite getting interest from agents, I knew I wanted my first novel to be published by Parthian, so as soon as they opened a reading window I sent in all my hopes along with the sample chapters. I just knew they would ‘get it’, and it would be safe in their hands. When it was accepted I felt such a sense of relief… overwhelming relief, as if I’d been hunched and holding my breath the entire way through writing and pitching. My editor there, Carly Holmes, is the perfect mix of damn fine writer and astute critical editor. That she approaches her editing from this dual angle means I can trust her suggestions, questions and comments absolutely. I am deeply intimidated by her skill as an author, but it makes me want to be a better writer to impress her! One of her short stories, Sleep, is just so perfectly written I experienced intense professional jealousy and awe when I read it, but it also gave me a boost that if she liked my work, maybe I was okay at this business myself. Parthian make the whole process so friendly, collaborative and joyful; I cannot say I’ve had anything other than a positive experience so far. I was approached by an agency after my novel came out and after a few deep conversations decided to sign with them. Again, it’s been great so far, and their feedback and support on the non-fiction I am writing is certainly pushing me in the right direction. Having people you can trust and be honest with, and who will give truthful feedback is crucial. My friend, Mel, is also excellent at that. As a literary critic she gives the perfect scathing and honest comments on my drafts that have me grinning with delight - she won’t allow me to slip or be lazy with language. That she always takes time to read deeply and discuss the literary layers in my work means I can assess when I am writing well. A friend like that is a rare and precious thing.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Years ago, when I was still doing my MA in Creative Writing, my brilliant supervisor, Graeme Harper, told me to stop being so careful and self-conscious and to start ‘going around the corners on two-wheels’ with my writing. The discipline of writing is one thing – learn the skills, practice the techniques, all essential and necessary leg work - but until I started having fun with these skills, my writing was technically good but too safe, too cautious. The first time I read a short story I’d written with this new playful, risky approach at an event, an editor gave me her card with the words ‘send me this story’ scrawled on the back. That was the first piece of work I had published.

What are you working on right now?
Too many things at once, as usual. I have been commissioned to write some creative non-fiction for a book about R. S. Thomas, so am exploring my tangled relationship with the landscapes and language of North Wales where I lived for most of my life. I still speak Welsh, even in my dreams sometimes, and use Welsh when I can’t remember the English for a word. I am also co-writing a chapter for a book about empathy, the natural world and writing, with a brilliant friend and author, Craig Jordan-Baker. So, there’s all that, as well as my next novel which I have barely looked at for months, numerous short stories that are being slowly patchworked into collections, and the whispering, buzzing, demanding voices of future novels I keep scratching out notes for. But right now, I am still in my pyjamas, it’s after lunch, and later I am teaching semantics to some brilliant Ukrainian writers online, so I should probably get dressed and put off my writing for another day while I get on with my lesson planning. Of course, at some point I’ll slip out to take my dog for short walk and end up scribbling something on the back of a receipt and away I’ll go…