Niven Govinden Q&A with Exclusive Extract from 'All The Days and Nights'

Niven Govinden

‘Govinden is the kind of gentle modernist that contemporary British fiction needs; entertaining, intellectual, emotional, poetic, fabulous.’ Deborah Levy

Niven Govinden

Niven Govinden is an English novelist. He was born in East Sussex and then educated at Goldsmith’s College where he studied film. He has written three novels, We Are The New Romantics in 2004, Graffiti My Soul in 2007 and Black Bread White Beer in 2013. He is also the author of a number of short stories.

PMcV: Can you tell me a little about your journey as a writer. I know you were a big fan of Hanif Kureishi, which other writers did you love to read? When did you start writing?

NG: I read everything I could get my hands on as a kid. Fitzgerald, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Selby Jr, Miller, made a big impression on me as a teen. Plenty of others later who meant much more: Cheever, Maxwell, Welty etc, but these were some of the writers I couldn't get out of my head. Mostly macho dudes with vaguely sensitive sides. Also, Jean Rhys. Was obsessed with her too. There was a point at around 15, when I was aware that I wanted to write - that the need to do it was stronger than anything else. That was the starting point. 

PMcV: You've written short stories as well as novels. How do you engage with each form? Do you have a preference or is it that an idea is either/or?

NG: Short stories was how I started writing, as a teenager. Both forms remain incredibly important to me, and my desire remains to master both. I love the freedom and tyranny of each, although having spent a long time between novels concentrating solely on short stories, I'm feel more inclined to concentrate on longer work. This position could change tomorrow, but for now… 

PMcV: When you look back over your novels and short stories do you see a common thread - an arena that you operate in as a writer? 

NG: My intuition guiding the work is what links everything, I suppose; honesty, and detail. I only came to that conclusion recently. Until then, the notion of a common thread did weigh on my mind, but it's a waste of energy ultimately. The start of every book should feel like an open field. If you spend too much time congratulating yourself on what you think your strengths are, you become hemmed-in as a writer. 

PMcV: Can you tell us about the your new novel 'All the Days and Nights'?

NG: It's the story of two people nearing the end of their lives: a painter working on her last portrait, and her husband, off to look at the paintings he has sat for. It's both a creative manifesto and a summing up of a life given up to Art. A cross-country hunt for paintings, and a reflection on the American century; dying days, all. 

Buy here

           The Guardian:  "It is an exercise in style, in controlled meandering that heaps memory     

              upon memory, presenting a portrait of the couple as layered and complex as one of Anna’s 

              paintings. Govinden’s prose is lush and dense..."

PMcV: The prose at times feels akin to poetry - there's weight to the sentences and a rhythm that's almost hypnotic. It struck me that the style was an excellent way of illustrating the mind of an artist. I wondered how you went about creating the voice of the artist Anna Brown.

NG: Purely by instinct; a voice/tone/rhythm that rings true to my ear. I know pretty much straightaway. 

PMcV: When Anna talks about her husband who's missing she tells us what he is doing though she isn't there. This is quite an unusual device to employ. How did you come to this decision and what were the motives behind it?

NG: I really wanted her to tell John's story. I was aware of that very early on. Something that links all my work, is an attempt to keep certain main characters in shadow. The enigmatic appeals to me, and the idea that a character can be both deeply understood but in many parts unknown. Also, the voice, the meter of Anna's voice, was very strong, so the chapters where John's story is explored - addressed as 'you' becomes more involving as a reader. (It made me think a lot about Cheever's Oh What A Paradise It Seems after I finished writing it). It reflects both Anna's longing and her desire to control the story - as she does with her painting.

        ‘A short, lyrical and densely written exploration of the relationship between artist   
         and muse.’ Financial Times.

PMcV: Anna takes us back through her relationship with John in memories of their time together. There's a sense where she was detached from the events, that her work comsumed her. Do you feel there's a connection between the writing process and the workings of a painter? Is this detachment necessary to 'see' the world as an artist?

NG: In my mind writing and fine art processes are intertwined. I'm thinking about the rigour and the single-mindedness needed to create - and keep creating - work. Stories stacked up in a pile on your desk is no different to the unseen paintings Anna lines against her studio wall. For the work itself, both involvement and detachment are needed. You need to feel part of the world, even when you're locked away from it.  

PMcV: What is on your desk at the moment?

NG: I'm working on another novel. Feeling the urgency of it. There's nothing more invigorating.

PMcV: What was the best piece of advice you were given and how did it impact on your writing?

NG: When you start writing you take all your advice from books. Reading Cheever's journals was pivotal for me, as was letters from other writers, including William Maxwell and John Steinbeck. The desire to write was stronger than anything, so realising that the only way to progress was to keep writing every day, was phenomenally important. Also, one time on a panel with Jake Arnott, where he said 60% of the novel is just thinking about it. That always stayed with me, and had a direct impact on my work from my second novel onwards. Each day I found myself writing less and thinking more, and not crumbling under word count guilt. Nowadays the calculation feels more 70:30, at least for me. It suits the way I work, for I write by hand, making the process far slower. So long as I'm moving forward every day, I'm happy. 

Here's an exclusive extract from the opening All the Days and Nights.

***

Where were you when the sky collapsed; rain falling in pinched sheets, but constant, and the mist descending as if gravity was its master, until it settled on the front step and the path? Was the sky in collusion? Had you conspired with the elements to stay hidden from me; not satisfied with withholding so much of yourself, now your physical body had to be hidden too? Your intentions have brought the mist. You have unsettled nature. The swallows nesting above the window fret over what is to come. They scratch the roofing felt with urgency and speak their fear with a caw that rises from the pull of their guts. How instinctive their talk is, how deeply felt. The cassette spool from the answering machine in the hall hums and burrs more audibly than before, making me think of a hornets’ nest under the bed; each creature whirled into a fury and ready to break out. Everything is angry. But what signal is ours? What cry or call will reach you, muffled by cloud, lost in the mist? The dank has whitewashed the landscape, reducing you to a wisp, a dot in the meadow. Is this where I have driven you: into the chill of first light, to be soaked to the skin, slipping on the edge of the path as gravel gives way to mud as you walk toward town and the store that is not yet open, but the rail station that is, and the incoming train that will take you away from me, if you have decided that this is the day? There will be nothing in your pockets bar the silver-edged comb that belonged to your father and your frayed notebook, wedged in the back and struggling to be held. There will be no metallic clink as you walk, keys left behind and no money to speak of, but if you have decided, woken from the bed on the other side of this wall and filled with the determination you’ve previously threatened, you will find a way to be on that train, through charm, or theft, or an attempt at forced entry. Reviving the same hobo spirit that brought you here. If this is the day.


But it isn’t, is it? I know you too well to be crippled by surprise. You forget how I hear your footsteps as you creep down the stairs. Even in your stealth I can read you; the difference between the tiptoe to the doorway of the outbuilding where you punch your frustrations into the hay bales stored there; the steps that lead to the liquor cupboard in the middle of the night, when you believe that I am asleep, and not numbed enough to follow. A man, seventy years old, with the furtive steps of a teenager. Then those that take you to the bottom of the path, where you stand in your shirt and jeans, the same as when you arrived, hesitating at the gate before turning back. Innumerable times I’ve seen you at the gate, a shadow filling the cleft in your chin, the rising motion as your face twists southward to take in the house, deciding whether you have had enough of it. When you no longer lift your head, when there is no pause, fingers not drumming on the latch, where the echo of flesh pounding metal falls flat against the window and culls the ringing in my ears, I’ll know. Until then, we’ll carry on as before, in our spurts of comfort and unease. You will continue to sit and I will continue to paint you, because that, John, is why you are here.

Vishni burns the coffee. She is distracted by the thickness of the rain and the absence of you. Usually she would wake to find the fire in the kitchen lit, the stove light on, possibly some voices in heated argument on the radio; whether Carter can hold his own against Reagan; new anger for a new decade; one of the few things from the outside world that interests you. She expects these things and today they are not there, disturbing her in a way she had not anticipated. She stands in the darkness of a barely broken morning for several minutes, wondering if there was a note mentioning a business trip she had forgotten, or whether she had paid scant attention to the clock before leaving her room. She wrings the excess bathwater that has soaked her plaited hair into the sink before re-coiling it into a bun, all the time, thinking. An epoch of wondering passes until I hear the rip of the light cord as the rise and fall is pulled. You never sleep late, nor leave the house without some kind of welcome for her. She is undecided whether to march or creep up the stairs and so manages a little of both. The door of your bedroom is opened in the same confused manner and then closed again within seconds, the final crack of the handle pulled hard against the door frame and ringing through the hall. This is Vishni all over: covert but ultimately clumsy. Bureau drawers not entirely closed and overdue bills stuffed roughly back into envelopes are typical of her handiwork. There is nothing to see there: the bed will be made, the curtains drawn. If I had the voice I could save her the futility. At our ages, we think of economy in all things. She is breathless with exertion, her heavy lungs punishing her for this impulsiveness. As she stands outside my room, more hesitant than before, her wheezy rasp seeps through the gap under the door. She knows it is unlikely that you will be here but wishes to be thorough. The door handle rattles with her uncertainty, to wake me with a knock or ease the door open to spy on someone who despises being watched, who has made a career of being invisible.




***




Thanks to...
Niven for taking the time to do this Q & A.
Niven's publicist Madeline Toy.
The Friday Project and Harper Collins for the extract.


More details and links to buy All the Days and Nights here.