Reader:  When a book comes along bearing a title which is listed by some internet bookstores as illegible, and for which search engines prompt 'Did you mean blind?', then I reckon it's time to hear it from the author's mouth.

Iain Brimswall:  It's a text message title. Just add vowels. Say 'Blairland' and you're there.

Reader:  So why not Blairland in the first place? Legible to all.

Iain Brimswall:  The title is thought-catching. It's a good interview opener.

Reader:  Point taken. Blairland, it is. 'A light satire having an unmistakable parallel with the late Blair period', goes the promotional blurb. The front matter of the book describes the work to follow as 'in the style of a dream'. Whose dream?

Iain Brimswall:  I would say the dream belongs to the principal character, Janice Annison. Back in 1997, a great many of us were presented with a dream. As Janice is to learn, dreams can go either way.

Reader:  For Janice in Blairland, read Alice in Wonderland, right?

Iain Brimswall:  An updated Alice, maybe. Somewhere in the story, there's a reference to the original.

Reader:  I saw it. Yet Janice is no Alice clone, is she? Middle-aged and toothy, a bespectacled spinster dashing around in a pale blue waterproof, an accident prone, orientationally challenged tourist guide.

Iain Brimswall:  Attagirl! She does a good job of holding the story together, bless her. Like the original, Janice can be feisty, though I don't think the current meaning was in use in Lewis Carroll's time.

Reader:  Who is being represented on the book's front cover? Is it an Alice motif?

Iain Brimswall:  It's a tribute. The image was actually drawn by a graphic artist, part of the Brighton scene, when she was only eight years old. A cartoon girl-child like the one on the cover appears in the story on a screen whenever someone keys a palmcator.

Reader:  Palmcators, deskcators, flatcators – I particularly like the idea of the catercator, a home food management unit which can be connected to the T/Stores network of home delivery tubes. These cators, and the ubiquitous one-mo, a sort of covered electric scooter guided by tracks under the road; plus telesperience, which changes the immediate environment using holograms – all these are surely futuristic rather than signifying the late Blair period.

Iain Brimswall:  Technology doesn't stand still, even through the looking-glass. I needed a slightly future feel to accommodate the Primed Minister, hanging on there in his nineties. On the other hand, moments are borrowed from the past. Most of the action clearly belongs in a very recent or ongoing time frame within our own experience. The angst is very now.

Reader:  Some of the social ingredients have a future feel, too, don't they?

Iain Brimswall:  Satire involves deliberate exaggeration. If some of today's trends continue unchecked by reflective rationality, then the next generation may well encounter situations similar to those portrayed in the comedy of satire.

Reader:  Okay. The title, the cover – let's have a word about the writing. This novel is very different from other work as regards production. Iain Brimswall has not so much changed gear as moved over to an open top sports model. Tell us something about the free flow style.

Iain Brimswall:  You sit down at the desk, you write. That's all there is to organic writing. The barest storyline floats about in the head. If it's any good, it trickles down to the fingers and on to the paper. Much of the content for this book came from the daily news.

Reader:  You make it sound easy.

Iain Brimswall:  It is, it was. The writing took less than six months from concept to finish. Could be I've found my natural form, eh? Or should I keep on searching?

Reader:  We'll have to wait and see. The storyline, now. So, we have Janice the tourist guide living in a parallel universe that we can identify as symbolising the here and now spiced with the future.

Iain Brimswall:  We do.

Reader:  She works for Cultexfo – Cultural Exchange Forum – showing foreign visitors the sights of Capital. Capital is London, I take it. And the Euphoric Kingdom – EK in place of UK.

Iain Brimswall:  As it says in the disclaimer, recognition of locales is optional.

Reader:  In the opening paragraph, there's a definite whiff of racism. Elsewhere, it's pungent, especially from security guards, who seem to be everywhere.

Iain Brimswall:  The character Mr Wong observes it from the receiving end. Add to this the official discrimination against foreigners. Xenophobia happens.

Reader:  Mr Wong is Janice's assignee at the start of the story, but she loses him. Her search for the lost charge takes her to Troddenville. Although this is just outside of Capital, it's perhaps the furthest she's ventured over the city boundary. Are you making a statement about Londoncentricity?

Iain Brimswall:  Capitalcentricity. And of course Troddenville.

Reader:  She does find her Mr Wong, but the episode has an unfortunate outcome for her. This is where she decides to leave Capital altogether. Her travels take her to Commuter Fortress, Splatter Hall, the town of Grim-up-North and nearby Islamic Republic. What's behind the writer's itinerary?

Iain Brimswall:  It's a tour of the domestic social landscape. For Janice's first adventure, I chose from a cross section of contemporary life. Perhaps it's more a Lemuel Gulliver journey, but we shan't complicate the picture.

Reader:  A lot of it's very amusing, I have to say. With some serious points underpinning the humour. You mention a cross section – I read this part of the novel as suggesting that society is far from homogeneous, that we live among a number of quite separate societies which just happen to share the same piece of the planet's surface.

Iain Brimswall:  The position resides between 'there is no such thing as society' and 'we are now all one class'. Both of these are unsupportable extremes – nonsense, actually. Society, as Janice discovers, is made up of groups who maintain preconceived ideas about each other or, as in the case of the Splatter Hall crowd, are totally incapable of seeing no one but themselves. Any hopes we may nurse about broad integration are inherently misplaced. Our class-based history repels it from one end, and multi-culturalism works against it from the opposite end.

Reader:  In the story, Janice returns to Capital. The end of her first adventure. Enter the character of Arden Keen. He gave her help at one of her stops and, through a misunderstanding, he believes she is partly responsible for his subsequent rise to national celebrity status as the marketing face of Inflatahomes. Why did you bring the Keen figure into the story?

Iain Brimswall:  You've already found the button. His face is his fortune. A celebrity, but not a very bright one, and at no time is he in control of his life. Arden Keen takes us into Janice's second adventure, overseas.

Reader:  It's brought about when the Primed Minister announces he intends to inverse ME because there are tools of mass desiccation ready to be plugged in and used against EK. Inverse, in an example of the unconventional vocabulary of the book, means of course invade –

Iain Brimswall:  I prefer the word I use.

Reader:  And ME is Middle East or military engagement.

Iain Brimswall:  Take your pick. Is there a difference?

Reader:  Classed as a non-essential worker, Keen is called up and sent to the desert to fight in a trench. Shades of World War One.

Iain Brimswall:  I thought trench fighting à la First World War as a method of warfare was stupid enough to be included in a satire. Perhaps all methods of warfare are stupid, including inversion.

Reader:  Anyway, he's saved the fate of the rest of his unit by being brought back to Capital in order to be the public face of recruitment. Only, his appeals are made to look like they are broadcast direct from the desert. Meanwhile, Janice comes over all motherly. Bored with Capital, she sets off for ME. She doesn't find her Arden but instead ends up in the presence of Terry, the father of Terryists everywhere, the evil that is. Usama bin Laden?

Iain Brimswall:  Not necessarily. Teri al-Tori describes himself as the bogeyman that EK leaders need with which to frighten the people. You know, when the early Catholic church felt they hadn't secured a tight enough grip, they invented the Devil. Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and another devil has to be found. In the story, Terry Tory is billed as the ultimate threat.

Reader:  I notice the Tory element. Two threats in one?

Iain Brimswall:  Bogeymen come in all colours.

Reader:  I must leave the story there, which is a pity since there is a surprise development, and a poignant ending. I'm all right to say that Blairland is an unrestrained punch thrown at our nation's involvement in Iraq and the neighbouring region.

Iain Brimswall:  The latter part of the book is, certainly. The war will be the defining characteristic of the late Blair period. Illegal occupation of another country based on a shoddy lie, and a general screwing up of people's lives there, are bound to leave their mark. Whatever else is achieved within the Blair era, the legacy of war cancels out everything as far as I'm concerned. In this sense, the Blair years have no more progressional value than a dream.

Reader:  I have to ask – where are the Americans in the book? A lone American gets a brief walk-on part – none too flattering, I may add – which has nothing to do with the war. You don't have to look far in real life to find someone who says that Blair's foreign policy comes from an out tray on the Oval Office desk. Shouldn't the Americans be taking the punch?

Iain Brimswall:  The pass is deliberate. If you were to rely on Hollywood for an account of the Second World War, you could be forgiven for supposing that Britain's was a walk-on part. I decided to reverse the distortion, to the point of omission. In any case, Blair is responsible for our country's actions in the Middle East. Make no mistake of that. Blair must take the punch.

Reader:  I see. And what about Gordon Brown? No take on the Blair period, early or late, is complete without a Brown character, I would've thought.

Iain Brimswall:  Gordon Brown was never in the Blair plans for succession – that's my view. A Gordon Brown character has no place in blrlnd. Maybe there'll be a brwnlnd one day.

Reader:  I look forward to it. To conclude – do you believe you have said, in your novel, everything you wish to say? About the Blair watch, I mean. Social fragmentation, the war on terrorism, and all that.

Iain Brimswall:  Have I got everything off my chest? At a personal level, no, I don't think so. I've had a keyboard workout, and I feel better for it. blrlnd was fun to write. I hope it's fun to read. Events will date it soon enough.

Reader:  But now that you have – as you say – possibly found your natural writing form, won't we be seeing more fiction in this style – more satire?

Iain Brimswall:  More open roadster, yes, though it's a writer's thing. The Reader is rarely bothered about the process used. What matters is the finished result.

Reader:  And there's another title in progress?

Iain Brimswall:  Yes, the next book is already started. All I'm going to tell you at this stage is that it's not satire, at least not intentionally. It's not free flow, either. It's meant to be serious, to be taken seriously.

Reader:  Iain Brimswall, thank you for your time. Good luck with the writing.

Iain Brimswall:  Thank you for yours. Good luck with the reading.

top     the novels     publisher's catalogue     interview 7 January 2005