Siobhan Dowd talks about her latest novel, The London Eye Mystery.

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SIOBHAN DOWD interviewed by NIKKI GAMBLE

Siobhan Dowd was born to Irish parents and brought up in London. She spent much of her youth visiting the family cottage in Aglish, County Waterford and later the family home in Wicklow Town. Today she lives in Oxford with her husband. Siobhan read Classics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. After a short stint in publishing, she joined the writer's organisation PEN, initially as a researcher for its Writers in Prison Committee. She went on to be Program Director of PEN American Center's Freedom-to-Write Committee in New York City. On her return to the UK, Siobhan co-founded English PEN's readers and writers programme, which takes authors into schools in socially deprived areas, as well as prisons, young offender's institutions and community projects. A Swift Pure Cry, Siobhan's first novel, was published by David Fickling Books in March 2006. In May 2007, it won the Eilis Dillon award in Ireland for a first-time children's author. Her second novel, The London Eye Mystery (a story for 9- to 12-year-olds), was published by David Fickling Books on 7 June 2007

Your latest book, The London Eye Mystery, was written before A Swift Pure Cry, can you tell us about that?

Yes, it was in the main. I started writing it in 2003 and got as far as halfway through the first draft when Mark Haddon’s book exploded on the scene. I was absolutely gutted, because my book is about an Asperger Syndrome boy who solves a mystery. It was a long time before I could face reading Mark’s book.

I can understand why you would feel that, though they are very different books.

They are. Hilary, my agent advised me to keep going. So I went through a second draft with Hilary, and at that point we showed it to a couple of publishers. In fact, Mark’s book had become stratospheric at that point, so although they liked it, they didn’t think it was a book to launch my career. I put it to one side and wrote A Swift Pure Cry. After that I wrote Solace of the Road and during the revisions for that book, I returned to The London Eye Mystery, and revised it. Originally it was a slightly older read but I brought it down an age range, shortened the chapters, things like that. I sent it to David Fickling but was unsure whether he would take it …. he did.

Yes, on the one hand it could be read by children as young as nine without any difficulty, but there are some darker passages. Did you have a particular readership in mind when you wrote it?

When I was working on the Readers and Writers Programme, we identified Year 6, Year 7, the transition years between primary and secondary, as years in which children were often lost to reading. I remember my own transition being quite hard, so it is a time of life that I’m drawn to as a writer. If I’ve managed to create a readable book that helps children at that period to stay focused on the joys of reading, then I’ll be a really happy woman.

It’s true that there is that little dark moment in the book, but then I think stories need the darkness for the light to shine through.

 I was interested in the episode when the family go to view the dead boy at the mortuary and you mention layers of knowledge. Ted realises that it is possible to know about death on the surface level, but he is conscious of acquiring a deeper kind of knowing… insight through experience.

Yes. I actually remember when I first realised I was going to die. I’d known this in one way, but the day when it finally penetrated, I was extremely troubled, I remember. I was about eight when I had that epiphany. So, I think that children are, at this age starting to grapple with their own mortality. Ted’s reflecting that.

Now, the idea of somebody going up on the London Eye and not coming down again is such a fantastic premise for a story. How did it begin?

Well, I was a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes when I was a youngster. I loved stories like The Sealed Room in which somebody is murdered in a sealed room by a snake which comes down a bell rope.

In Sherlock Holmes there was one sentence that always beguiled me, which was Watson saying, “Oh, shall I tell you about this case? No, it’s too sensitive,” or, “Shall I tell you…?” He passes over these cases. He never tells you the story. And in one of these colourful interludes, he says, “I could tell you about the case of Arthur Ranimore who, on returning into his house to fetch an umbrella, was never more seen in this world.” I was thinking about that wonderful way in which he just disappeared. What would have happened to that man that went into his house and never came out again? It made me think about disappearances in odd situations. At the time, I was living in Kennington, about a 20 minute walk from the London Eye. I used to walk up and down the South Bank with my husband regularly. One day, the Sherlock Holmes quote came into my mind, and there in front of me was the London Eye, so the two things fused together.

The narrator’s voice is totally engaging. Even before we know that he has Asperger’s syndrome we sense that he’s different from the way he observes his world and describes it. When did you know that this was going to be the voice you were going to be writing it in?

I went to my literary agent, Hilary, with some ideas for books, with Asperger Syndrome being in there somewhere in the mix, based on the fact that I have a close relative who was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome in about 1994. At that time I hadn’t heard of it. I had to learn about it from reading. So watching that relative learn how to cope with the world, and seeing it from a very different perspective, was inspiring. That’s what drew me to write about it. And then it occurred to me that this was the sort of book that would carry that voice. Normally I find writing in the third person a little easier than the first. And it took me a while to get Ted’s deadpan voice. It’s very hard to maintain that first person narrative, unless the character whose voice you’re speaking in is exactly like you. It’s always tricky when you’re writing children’s books because you have to enter the voice of the child.

I know names are very important to you, even when those names are quite ordinary, they still seem to have been chosen with care and are apposite for the characters. Gloria for the aunt, and Faith for the mother, and Ted is a very down-to-earth name. Do the names just pop into your head or do you sit down with a baby book with the intention of choosing something appropriate?

I don’t really know where Ted’s name came from, but I like simplicity in names. Shell, Ted, Holly. Spark seemed right because he’s obviously very sparky, and they’re a bright, sparky family all round. I get names sometimes by asking my nieces and nephews, who are of the age that I’m writing for, to give me lists of names of the children in their classes. I find that very helpful. The name Shell, short for Michelle, was on a list that my niece Hannah wrote. I loved the idea of the hollow centre of the shell. The surname Talent is less easy to attribute to any particular instance though my sister, Enda, had a friend at her school whose surname was Talent. That was in the deep recesses of my mind and I’ve only just barely brought it back. So they, sort of, come from all parts of your conscious and unconscious.

When is your next book going to be published?

Solace of the Road is coming out in February. That’s a teen book about a girl who runs away from foster care. She’s trying to get to Ireland to find her biological mum, so it’s a road story on the A40. I’m really happy with that one; it’s a very different story from the other two books. Again, it’s in the first person, and again, it took me a long time to find Holly’s voice. The third person is my natural story telling voice.

Thank you Siobhan Dowd for talking to Write Away!