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Great LezBritain: Interview with Joanna Briscoe

This new AfterEllen.com column, “Great LezBritian,” will be a fortnightly stroll through the very best of British lesbo-centric entertainment and culture. Plus there will be some jolly good interviews with the top ladies who are waving the flag for gay UK.

“Great LezBritain” authors Sarah, a Londoner, and Lee, a Glaswegian, met in a gay discotheque one bleak mid winter, eight years ago and have been shacked up together ever since. When not watching Tipping The Velvet, they find time to write, run a PR company, DJ at their own club nights and love a bit of jam on toast.

Journalist and author Joanna Briscoe and her partner Charlotte Mendelson are two of the UK’s modern day literary darlings. Currently living with their two children in North London, both women have received a barrage of critical acclaim and recently found themselves named a “Power Lesbian Couple” by the London Standard.

Joanna’s novels are the kind that you will gladly miss your train stop for and walk an extra ten minutes back in order to read another few pages. Her plots deal with the uncomfortable, passionate tense moments in life that make delicious and irresistible reading.

Her first book, Mothers and Other Lovers, is the powerful depiction of a daughter’s relationship with her mother’s friend, while her second novel Skin is a provocative portrayal of a women’s destructive pursuit of beauty and love.

Sleep With Me, Joanna’s third book, is our own personal favorite. We read it together in a few days and delighted in the dark, erotic story about the arrival of Sylvie a peculiar French woman who entwines herself into the lives of the soon to be married couple Richard and Leila.

Also seduced by the novel was Andrew Davies, the Godfather of Literary Screenplays and candidate for number one British lesbro (he also gave us Pride & Prejudice, Tipping the Velvet, and Affinity) who adapted it into an ITV1 drama which aired on New Year’s Eve.

We spoke to Joanna a week before Sleep with Me hit our screens to talk about her novel being brought to life by Davies, how she and Mendelson deal with their “powerful lesbionic coupledom ” and what New Year’s resolutions she has set herself for 2010.

AfterEllen.com: Your first novel Mothers and Other Lovers, is about a teenager who has an illicit affair with her mother’s female friend; did you find that a subject matter like that for your debut novel then branded you as a “gay writer.” Is this something that particularly bothers you?

Joanna Briscoe: I have never been particularly branded as a “gay writer” as my novels are so mainstream and have characters of different sexualities. Plot and writing style interest me more than any issue of sexuality.

But by chance, Mothers and Other Lovers was published in 1994 when the whole “lipstick lesbianism” idea had traveled from the US to the UK, so it was publicized in some ways on the back of that, which did categorize it to some extent, but also gave it more wide-spread attention, such as two cover stories in The Sunday Times and a big feature in Elle magazine.

It would bother me to be categorized as any kind of writer, as it’s so reductive, but in this culture, especially in the media, of course it happens. But at the end of the day, I just want to be read, so however that happens. Also, I’m entirely out about my sexuality, so if that make people think I’m a “gay writer,” then so be it.

AE: Were you surprised to win the Betty Trask Award in for Mothers and Other Lovers considering that the award usually goes to more traditional novels?

JB: The award used to go to more traditional novels, but that gradually changed. When I won it, the British Booker-winning novelist Anita Brookner said that Betty Trask would be turning in her grave!

AE: Sleep with Me centers on the power of Sylvie – someone that is attracted to women as well as men. Who or what inspired this character?

JB: Sylvie was the starting point for the whole novel. The idea of that character intrigued me, and I built the novel – the other characters, the whole plot – around her. She was based on a combination of several women I’d met over the years who were apparently mousy, quiet, and unnoticeable even, but had some strange, almost subliminal power. I met one of them at a dinner party and barely noticed her, but thought she had something interesting or intriguing about her.

The next day, I rang the hostess of the dinner party to thank her, mentioned the woman, and she said, “Everyone’s been asking about her.” Apparently people thought they had a unique, special connection with her, yet she’d barely said a word. I found this fascinating. I never saw her again, but I thought about her and a few other similarly unobtrusive, quiet people I’d met over the years who exercised some inexplicable power over people.

AE: Sylvie’s approach to seducing Richard and the way she seduces Leila is very different plus the tone you use to describe them together really differs. Do you attribute this more to Richard and Leila’s sexuality or to Sylvie’s differing motivations towards them?

JB: I think it’s connected with both their sexuality and with Sylvie’s feelings.Richard is more clumsy emotionally and unable to understand aspects of Sylvie that strike Lelia immediately – that her own connection with her is unlikely to be unique.

Sylvie plays Richard very skillfully, while having some genuine feelings for him, largely mixed up with her emotions towards Lelia. Her big passion is Lelia, and she feels desperation, jealousy, possessiveness and true love towards her. What she really wants is Lelia back in her life.

AE: In both Mothers and Other Lovers and Sleep With Me you write about the psychology of your characters more than you write about their sexuality. Is it important to you that the characters in your novels are not simply pigeonholed by their sexuality?

JB: I don’t even think about characters being pigeonholed by sexuality! It simply doesn’t occur to me. I just write about them as rounded characters, and their psychological motives and the influences of their childhoods is important to me. Also, their sexuality is often fairly fluid, or changes as the novel progresses.

AE: All of your novels have female characters that are fundamentally damaged. Why is this type of character of interest to you?

JB: I can’t imagine a straightforwardly happy and balanced character being particularly interesting to read about! In fact, wouldn’t she be actively dull?

Some neurosis at the very least is necessary for any kind of convincing drama or complex interaction. Most people I like and identify with are damaged or neurotic at some level! The male characters in my novels also tend to be damaged in some way, but I usually focus more on the female characters. Sleep With Me was an exception to this in that Richard had the largest narrative voice, though I still think of Sylvie as the center of the novel.

AE: Sleep With Me was adapted by the godfather of screen adaptations, Andrew Davies. How did you react when he spoke to you about adapting your novel?

JB: Oh, I was fantastically excited about the whole thing. I used to watch his Pride and Prejudice and swoon, along with the entire UK. If I’d known then that one day he’d adapt one of my novels – I heard rumors that he was interested for a while, and it took some time for the whole deal to be signed and confirmed. It was really tremendously exciting and flattering.

AE: How much involvement did you have with the Sleep With Me screenplay? Were you happy with the casting choices?

JB: I had far more involvement than I’d expected, given that I’d sold the option, and it was their project. But the company, Clerkenwell Films, really kept me involved, and Ellie Wood, the script editor, passed the drafts by me and took my notes seriously.

The casting was interesting, because two of the characters were very different from how I’d imagined, and one spookily similar. My Richard was white, and a black actor plays him (Adrian Lester), while my Leila was English-Indian, and a white actor plays her (Jodhi May). When Sylvie (Anamaria Marinca) walked into the room for the initial read-through, I got goose bumps. I really did feel a shiver down my spine! There was my imagined character walking into the room.

AE: Diana Letherby from Tipping The Velvet will always have a special place in my lesby heart. Is there a character that has a special place in your lesby heart?

JB: Fraulein von Bernberg. Look her up if you don’t know her! [For those of you who don’t, your homework is to watch Maedchen In Uniform, the inspiration for the more recent Loving Annabelle.]

AE: Writing is notorious for being a lonely profession does it help or maybe hinder you that your partner is also an author? Do you share your ideas with each other?

JB: We talk about keeping a “glass wall” between us, in that we have to retain mental space – so for instance, we try not to do the same festivals, or be interviewed together, and we only read each other’s work once we’ve made considerable progress with it. It could all become too enmeshed and intense, so we make conscious efforts not to merge in terms of our work, and in fact our writing styles are very different anyway. We do help each other a lot when needed. When stuck, the other one can usually throw a bit of plot into the air very easily – far more easily than we can for ourselves! – and we certainly edit each other on later drafts.

AE: The British press have commented that in the current climate, lesbians are of a new generation that are rich and successful and smashing stereotypes with their glamour and spending power! Do you think that this so-called new lesbian wave is prevalent?

JB: I think this is probably largely a media invention! I have no idea of the average spending power of lesbians; the idea of the “pink pound” is prevalent, but how much is that a reality for women, given women statistically still earn a lot less than men? Certainly there are now quite a few “out,” glamorous, successful lesbians, but these few are picked up by the press, and I don’t get a sense that there’s a new wave particularly. Certainly aesthetics have changed as time goes on, though.

AE: You and Charlotte were named by the London Standard a few months ago as a “power lesbian couple.” Were you both delighted?

JB: Really NOT! We were amused, and aghast at the utterly horrendous photo they managed to dig up of us, and I was only aware of it by late afternoon when people began texting me. Again, the whole idea is just media fluff, but fairly harmless fluff.

AE: What is next for Joanna Briscoe in 2010? Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?

JB: To carry on as I am, finish my next novel by early 2011, so I’ve finished it by the time Sleep With Me’s successor is published, and go out and do a few more exciting things. Being on my film set was such fun, I swore I’d let myself out of the library where I write for good behavior. So if I’m writing productively, I’m also going to allow myself time off to see a few exhibitions and just do things that will get me out of that library. For instance, I’ve agreed to teach on a creative writing MA just for one term, as it’s work that doesn’t just involve me and a word processor.

AE: Is there anything else you’d like to say to AfterEllen.com readers?

JB: Happy New Year, and I’m glad to be featured on the website. My next novel – title still being fought over! – is published at the beginning of 2011 by Bloomsbury USA, and I’d love to hear what American readers think of it through my website – www.joannabriscoe.com In the meantime, enjoy 2010, and happy reading.

Sleep With Me is released on DVD in the UK today.

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