Anita Shreve at the Manchester Literature Festival
Anita Shreve
ANITA Shreve appeared at the Dancehouse theatre on Thursday night (October 9) in a special Festival preview event to talk about her new book ,Testimony, with broadcaster Lynne Walker.
What the almost exclusively female audience lacked in testosterone it more than made up for in diversity, with Shreve's cross-generational appeal very much in evidence.
''I don't believe I've ever written a funny line in my life' admitted Shreve happily.
She cited realist playwright Eugene O'Neill as an early influence to whom she owes some of her preoccupation with disillusionment, but admitted that age had dulled his charms significantly.
''I always try to allow for a glimmer of hope,'' she deadpanned. ''I'm working on it.''
She went on to discuss the emotional impact of inhabiting her characters, the recurring themes in her work, the pleasure of writing in multiple voices and the dangers of self-editing for the creative process.
Commercial success
She defended herself against the suggestion that her female characters are superior, demonstrating her desire to escape the 'women's writer' millstone.
Inevitably talk turned to the commercial success enjoyed by The Pilot's Wife and the experience of adapting that and two others for Hollywood.
Shreve was serene and composed throughout with enough anecdotes to keep her audience happy and one big tipoff: apparently Shirley Hazzard's The Transit of Venus is the ''best book in the English language''.
Discussing her current release, Shreve was keen to reassure the audience that despite the plot being based around the discovery of an underage sex tape, they were in safe hands 'if you can get part the first chapter, you're in the door'.
Wonderful start
The evening wound up with Shreve reading a selection of passages from Testimony that ensured a lengthy queue to meet the author, serving a sign of an extremely successful evening and a wonderful start to the Festival.
Testimony is out now, published by Little Brown. Anita Shreve is also the author of 13 other novels including The Weight of Water, Fortune's Rocks and Sea Glass.
CityLIfe.co.uk is official media partner for the Manchester Literature Festival
Published: Sun, 12 October, 2008
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