Chris Cleave
Chris Cleave was born in London and spent his early years in Cameroon. He studied experimental psychology at Balliol College, Oxford. His debut novel, INCENDIARY, won a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and is now a feature film. His second novel, LITTLE BEE, is a New York Times #1 bestseller with over 2 million copies in print. GOLD is his third novel. He lives in London with his wife and three children. Chris Cleave enjoys dialogue with his readers and invites all comers to introduce themselves on Twitter; he can be found at twitter.com/chriscleave or on his website at http://www.chriscleave.com
Q & A
What was your favourite childhood book?
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis
Which book has made you laugh?
Great Lies to Tell Small Kids by Andy Riley
Which book has made you cry?
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
What are your top five books of all time, in order or otherwise?
Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf)
Germinal (Zola)
Voyage au Bout de la Nuit (Céline)
The Road (McCarthy)
100 Years of Solitude (Garcia Márquez)
What is your favourite word?
"Nooba". It's a word peculiar to my family, although I can't remember where it came from or which of my kids coined it. To "do the nooba" is to muck around when you're supposed to be going to sleep. As in, "Stop doing the nooba, boo-boo, it's way past your bedtime." I like it because you can only say it with a smile.
Which fictional character would you most like to have met?
Sally Seton, Clarissa Dalloway's childhood companion, when we were all young.
Is there a particular book or author that inspired you to be a writer?
Definitely. In my teens it was Milan Kundera who made me realise how exciting it would be to write, and Primo Levi who made me realise how important it was, and Tibor Fischer who made me suspect the whole thing would be fun.
“Isn't it sad, growing up? You start off like my Charlie. You start off thinking you can kill all the baddies and save the world. Then you get a little bit older, maybe Little Bee's age, and you realize that some of the world's badness is inside you, that maybe you're a part of it. And then you get a bit older still, and a bit more comfortable, and you start wondering whether that badness you've seen in yourself is really all that bad at all. You start talking about ten per cent."Maybe that's just developing as a person, Sarah."I sighed and looked out at Little Bee Well," I said, "maybe this is a developing world.”
“We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.”
“The Thames was cold and it was the colour of the dishwater at the end of the washing up. I remember looking up through it and seeing the light pale brown and far above and wondering if I would sink farther or float up to it. I stayed down for the longest time Osama. I wouldn't mind drowning but I did float up in the end. Somehow I always seem to.”
“You may think that's funny Osama but you never can squeeze every last bit of pride out of a human being. It's like a tube of toothpaste. You can twist it and you can crush it but there's always a tiny bit left isn't there?”
“Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.”
“On our honeymoon we talked and talked. We stayed in a beachfront villa, and we drank rum and lemonade and talked so much that I never even noticed what color the sea was. Whenever I need to stop and remind myself how much I once loved Andrew, I only need to think about this. That the ocean covers seven tenths of the earth's surface, and yet my husband could make me not notice it.”
“On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
“I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
“We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.”
“It was the month of May and there was warm sunshine dripping through the holes between the clouds, like the sky was a broken blue bowl and a child was trying to keep honey in it.”
“I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us. ”
“However long the moon disappears, someday it must shine again.”
“A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
“Wouldn't that be funny, if the oil rebels were playing U2 in their jungle camps, and the government soldiers were playing U2 in their trucks. I think everyone was killing everyone else and listening to the same music... That is a good trick about this world, Sarah. No one likes each other, but everyone likes U2.”
“Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.”
“If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.”
“Tea is the tast of my land:it is bitter and warm,strong,and sharp with memory.It tastes of longing.It tastes of the distance between where you are and where you come from.Also it vanishes-the taste of it vanishes from your tongue while your lips are still hot from the cup.It disappears,like plantations stretching up into the mist.I have heard that your country drinks more tea than any other.How sad that must make you-like children who long for absent mothers.I am sorry.”
“In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty..... ”
“I planned how I would kill myself in the time of Churchill (stand under bombs), Victoria (throw myself under a horse), and Henry the Eighth (marry Henry the Eighth)- Little Bee”
“A girl like me gets stopped at immigration.”