Ben McPherson
Author Interview - Ben McPherson
Author of Love and Other Lies
“Cal and Elsa have the perfect relationship: they are still deeply in love after seventeen years of marriage, they have three incredible children, and most importantly, they never lie to each other. But this golden couple's life is about to be ripped apart, when their oldest daughter, Licia, disappears during a summer camp shooting outside Oslo, Norway. Cal believes his family is strong enough to weather this blow and hold out hope for Licia's return, but as they each deal with the disappearance in their own way, doubts creep in. Their younger daughter, Vee, is clearly hiding something from her parents. And Elsa would never lie to Cal, but is she telling him the whole truth? As the reality of what happened at the camp comes to light, each family member will be tested. In the end, will their love for one another be enough to hold them together? And what will happen when they meet the perpetrators face to face?”
Author Interview - Ben McPherson
Author I draw inspiration from: This is going to sound pretentious, but it's Gustave Flaubert. I studied French at university and was appalled that we had to read so many nineteenth-century novels. Not what I had signed up for. Then I read Sentimental Education, which was dark, and funny -- so funny, in fact, that I would be laughing out loud in the university library and people would stare. Flaubert's novel opened my eyes to a world that really hadn't interested me before. His narrator plays tricks on the reader -- there's a shift in point of view in this book that turns the world upside down for seven pages, and then we return to normal and it's NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. The characters learn nothing about love, despite the title. And yet it's a book with a lot to say about love. There's so much here for an author to enjoy, and to learn from.
Author Interview - Ben McPherson
Favorite place to read a book: On a little dive boat in Egypt, after lunch, before getting back into the water for the day's second dive. Diving is calming. It puts you in the right frame of mind for reading, and makes you receptive to good writing.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: It would have to be Patricia Cornwell's Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta. I love the way Scarpetta seeks to understand the victims of the most horrible crimes, and through painstaking dissection of their bodies, to provide the dignity and justice that was stolen from them in the moment of death. It's not a job I could ever do. I don't think I could stand calmly in front of a corpse and ask the right questions of it. But I'm glad there are people, in real life and in fiction, who do that job. There's something very compelling about that absolute commitment to the truth.
Should you meet your heroes, though? I worry I'd be tongue-tied. I mean, where do you start?
Author Interview - Ben McPherson
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: I've always written for myself, but what tipped me into wanting to be a writer of novels was covering a criminal trial here in Norway in 2012 for a small English-language news website. You might remember the case. The perpetrator detonated a bomb in the centre of Oslo, the capital city. He then travelled to a youth summer camp, where he deliberately targeted children and young people. In all he killed seventy-seven people.
The case disturbed me: this was a man who actively targeted children, and whose own childhood was heavily picked over for clues as to his adult behaviour. His lack of repentance, his pride in his own crime: these things made me deeply uneasy. What makes a person do this, and what do we do with people like that? These are obvious questions, and I used to think I knew the answers to them, but the case shook my belief in easy answers.
Don't get me wrong: I don't believe in writing as therapy. It's not that my books are about this case. But these are important questions, and they're not easily resolved.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: I love new technology, but for me an e-reader gets in the way. The page turns are slow, and the interfaces are clumsy: it's like using a computer from the 1990s. Is that really the best we can do?
I love hearing good actors bringing something new to a text, so I enjoy audiobooks, but for me the real pleasure is in reading for myself; for that I want a book, paperback or hardback, and a good strong cup of coffee.
The last book I read: The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani. It has the most repellent opening of anything I've read recently (opening sentence: "The baby is dead."), but it's so thrillingly written, so layered with compassion, and so deceptively simple that it draws you in and doesn't let you go. Who are these people, and how could this happen?
Author Interview - Ben McPherson
Pen & paper or computer: Both! I love a good pen, and writing with ink on paper helps clear my thoughts on days when I'm struggling to map out a scene. I am drafting more and more in this way at the moment, using a heavy brass Karas fountain pen that feels like a proper tool. I love the process of redrafting on to the computer; you see new things during that part of the process.
By the way, every writer should know how to touch-type, because how else can you keep up when your thoughts are racing?
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: John Self in Money by Martin Amis. He's an awful person, full of self-loathing, but he's weirdly compelling too, and very funny. He reminds me of a lot of people I knew in West London thirty years ago. A lot of fun on a night out.
Author Interview - Ben McPherson
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a: I'd still be a television producer. I made programmes for the BBC about art and culture, and it was had work but very rewarding. You got to see parts of the world other people don't. We filmed Botticelli's Birth of Venus at the Uffizi gallery in Florence, and they turned off all the alarms so we could move close to the paintings. I remember wondering how far you would get if you lifted a canvas off the wall and casually strolled out...
Favorite decade in fashion history: I'm sure I'd have hated the 1930s and that growing realisation that we were heading for another world war, but they did have some amazing clothes.
Place I’d most like to travel: Right now? Back to the UK to see friends and family. I miss them.
My signature drink: Everybody should know how to make a martini. It's a simple drink -- it's really just gin and a splash of vermouth -- but it's easy to get wrong, and a bad martini is horrible. A good martini is a combination of salt and citrus flavours. I like mine dirty (you dirty it by using a little olive brine), but I serve them with lemon peel and olives, which I know is wrong. It's supposed to be one thing or the other. I like both.
You don't need any special equipment to make a good martini, but you do need to keep everything COLD. The gin, the mixer glass and spoon need to be in the freezer, and the vermouth in the fridge. For two people I add about 16 ml of gin, plus a single capful of vermouth, pouring it over the ice cubes, which I like to have standing ready in the mixer glass. If you're going to add brine, now is the time. Then you stir for twenty seconds, before pouring the liquid off the ice into your cocktail glasses. Your martinis should be so cold that you get tiny little shards of ice. Beautiful. Serve quickly before the shards disappear.
Favorite artist: Dawit Abebe, an Ethiopian painter, is just amazing. He brings something completely new to portraiture.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/arts/international/technology-expands-the-world-for-african-artists.html.
Number one on my bucket list: When the pandemic is over, when our children are a little bigger, my wife and I want to go back to the Galapagos Islands and dive again with whale sharks.
Anything else you'd like to add: Thank you for having me! I love your site.
Find more from the author:
@thebenmcpherson (Twitter),
@benmcpherson_books (Instagram),
Ben McPherson, author (Facebook)
Author Bio: Ben McPherson is a Scottish author who lives in Oslo, Norway, with his Norwegian wife and their two sons. Love and Other Lies is his second novel. Publishers Weekly said in a starred review:
"McPherson dramatically highlights the tensions between Norway’s native and immigrant populations as the plot builds to a devastating conclusion. This powerful, thought-provoking novel deserves a wide readership."
