to describe what happened when she dragged herself out of the river, dried herself off, healed her burns with the help of a local farmer and carried on with life for another thirty years.
Why the Q&A gimmick?
‘It’s not a gimmick. Every question has an answer,’ says Smart.
Don’t living relatives have something to say about Smart digging up their dead?
‘Usually relatives are delighted. They feel it is very positive attention,’ says Smart. ‘I always make it clear that the Genuine Articles are first and foremost fictionalization. But fiction has the unique power of revealing something true.’
Have the critics finally caught on to Smart’s smartness?
‘Ingenious and moving’ (Times). ‘A book which makes the metaphysical as much part of the everyday as a teacup on a saucer on a scullery table in the year 1957’ (Telegraph). ‘Brilliant, profoundly atoning. A deeply assuaging read’ (Guardian).
Is this ecstatic reception unanimous?
‘When will writers and readers finally stop hanging around mendacious glorified stories of a war which may as well by now have happened planets away from this one? Smart’s Genuine Articles are a prime example of our shameful attraction to anything that lets us feel both fake-guilty and morally justified. No more of this murky self-indulgence. We need stories about now, not more peddled old nonsense about then’ (Independent).
What’s next?
Speculations about whether Smart will seek a more lucrative publishing deal are rife; meanwhile, is she tucked away working on Genuine Article number 7? Who will she resurrect this time? Only Smart knows.
What does Eve Smart (
42
) know?
God only knows.
Where was Eve Smart (
42
) right now?
Lying next to Michael in bed in an insalubrious holiday house in Norfolk.
No, I mean where was she with her next project?
Please don’t ask.
Why?
She was as useless as a blunt pencil on the floor of the ‘elegant summerhouse with internet connection-point’ in the ‘mature garden’ of this ‘Tudor Farmhouse next to picturesque village on the Norfolk Broads’. The advert should have read ‘1930s swindle of a summer let off the Norfolk B roads, next to a near-slum full of houses that look like the kind on old council estates’. Someone had stuck slices of old railway sleeper across the ceilings throughout this house. Mock Tudor all right. Eve laughed, but to herself, so as not to wake him.
Why?
Partly because she genuinely didn’t want to disturb him and partly because she didn’t want to have to have sex again. He was asleep with one of the pillows he’d brought from home over his head.
Why did he bring pillows?
He was often allergic to pillows that weren’t his own. Other than that he didn’t find sleeping difficult. He didn’t find beginning anything new difficult either. He was always ‘beginning’ something else, something new.
Why those little ironic ‘ ’?
Eve chose not to answer that question.
What was wrong with the village?
Eve had imagined a picturesque place of big comfortable houses with recording studios in their barns, people summering on decking overlooking Norfolk’s legendary big open skies. Norfolk did have very nice skies. But one of the village’s two shops had a skull in its window with a plastic rat stuck in its eyehole.
Why didn’t they leave?
Eve had paid up front.
Why were they here, exactly?
Break from routine. Change of scene.
Why else?
To get away from 1. dead people’s relations phoning and emailing all the time to agree or disagree or demand attention or money; 2. all the pitiful letters, calls and emails from people all over the country desperate for her to choose their dead relations to be brought back to life in her next book and 3. people from Jupiter phoning several times a week asking her how and where the book was.
How and where was the book?
Please don’t ask this.
Wasn’t she working on it?
Every night at six she came out of the shed, went back into the main house and changed,
Why the Q&A gimmick?
‘It’s not a gimmick. Every question has an answer,’ says Smart.
Don’t living relatives have something to say about Smart digging up their dead?
‘Usually relatives are delighted. They feel it is very positive attention,’ says Smart. ‘I always make it clear that the Genuine Articles are first and foremost fictionalization. But fiction has the unique power of revealing something true.’
Have the critics finally caught on to Smart’s smartness?
‘Ingenious and moving’ (Times). ‘A book which makes the metaphysical as much part of the everyday as a teacup on a saucer on a scullery table in the year 1957’ (Telegraph). ‘Brilliant, profoundly atoning. A deeply assuaging read’ (Guardian).
Is this ecstatic reception unanimous?
‘When will writers and readers finally stop hanging around mendacious glorified stories of a war which may as well by now have happened planets away from this one? Smart’s Genuine Articles are a prime example of our shameful attraction to anything that lets us feel both fake-guilty and morally justified. No more of this murky self-indulgence. We need stories about now, not more peddled old nonsense about then’ (Independent).
What’s next?
Speculations about whether Smart will seek a more lucrative publishing deal are rife; meanwhile, is she tucked away working on Genuine Article number 7? Who will she resurrect this time? Only Smart knows.
What does Eve Smart (
42
) know?
God only knows.
Where was Eve Smart (
42
) right now?
Lying next to Michael in bed in an insalubrious holiday house in Norfolk.
No, I mean where was she with her next project?
Please don’t ask.
Why?
She was as useless as a blunt pencil on the floor of the ‘elegant summerhouse with internet connection-point’ in the ‘mature garden’ of this ‘Tudor Farmhouse next to picturesque village on the Norfolk Broads’. The advert should have read ‘1930s swindle of a summer let off the Norfolk B roads, next to a near-slum full of houses that look like the kind on old council estates’. Someone had stuck slices of old railway sleeper across the ceilings throughout this house. Mock Tudor all right. Eve laughed, but to herself, so as not to wake him.
Why?
Partly because she genuinely didn’t want to disturb him and partly because she didn’t want to have to have sex again. He was asleep with one of the pillows he’d brought from home over his head.
Why did he bring pillows?
He was often allergic to pillows that weren’t his own. Other than that he didn’t find sleeping difficult. He didn’t find beginning anything new difficult either. He was always ‘beginning’ something else, something new.
Why those little ironic ‘ ’?
Eve chose not to answer that question.
What was wrong with the village?
Eve had imagined a picturesque place of big comfortable houses with recording studios in their barns, people summering on decking overlooking Norfolk’s legendary big open skies. Norfolk did have very nice skies. But one of the village’s two shops had a skull in its window with a plastic rat stuck in its eyehole.
Why didn’t they leave?
Eve had paid up front.
Why were they here, exactly?
Break from routine. Change of scene.
Why else?
To get away from 1. dead people’s relations phoning and emailing all the time to agree or disagree or demand attention or money; 2. all the pitiful letters, calls and emails from people all over the country desperate for her to choose their dead relations to be brought back to life in her next book and 3. people from Jupiter phoning several times a week asking her how and where the book was.
How and where was the book?
Please don’t ask this.
Wasn’t she working on it?
Every night at six she came out of the shed, went back into the main house and changed,
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