Join Patrick Gale to talk about our June Book of the Month, A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN, TONIGHT, Weds 27 June 9-10pm

[TillyBookClub]

Patrick Gale is fast becoming a National Treasure. Our June choice, A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN, is his seventeenth book. That alone deserves some kind of gong from the Queen. But it is also his particular style of quiet, intelligent, clear and humorous writing that makes him a very British talent. You always feel as if you know his characters, that they were in your local Post Office just this morning, and you recognize their human frailty and tangled emotions.

Barnaby Johnson, the hero of this month's book, is a priest in a small West Cornwall parish. Each chapter is a snapshot of different people in the parish, at different times of their life, all of whom are connected to Barnaby. Slowly and deliciously, the story unfolds like backwards origami, with secrets and triumphs and betrayals opening out in sequence.

A novel that makes you reflect on many issues - faith, marriage, adoption, mental illness - but most of all, shows you humanity in all its complex, crazy mixed-up wonderfulness.

The book of the month page with more detail about A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN and our giveaway of 50 free copies of Patrick's book will go live tomorrow (Thursday 31 May) at 10am. We'll close the giveaway after 24 hours and pick 50 names randomly, and we'll email you to let you know if your name was chosen within 48 hours.

And if you're not lucky enough to bag one of those, you can get your Kindle edition or your paperback here

We are delighted that Patrick will be joining us to chat about A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN, his writing life and all his previous books, on Wednesday 27 June, 9-10pm. We'll be discussing the book throughout the month so don't forget to put your thoughts and questions up here before the chat.

Hope you can join us...

[ProfCoxWouldGetIt]

Just finished the book this morning, and while I enjoyed reading it, I found the jumping around to different stages in different characters lives quite disorrientating, was this intentional?

I agree with the comments about Barnaby being a spectator in his own life, but found it odd that those close to him viewed this trait as a strength, where as I felt it was a weakness and that he seemed to wash along with life threw at him, rather than ever really fighting for something.

I can't help but wonder if keeping Dot a small character was deliberate, because as others have said she seemed to have the potentail to play a much bigger role in the story, was this done so as not to distract us from Barnaby's story?

[TillyBookClub]

Great questions, everyone. Looking forward to hearing Patrick's answers. See you at 9pm sharp.

[valiumpoptarts]

Sorry, once again I have failed to finish the book, I expect Tilly to kick me out of book club at this rate.
Patrick my question is this, how did you research the character of Barnaby and to what extent did you find yourself being careful not just to write a characture of a vicar? DH is a minister type and when I told him about the book he told me about two people he'd dealt with just that day who wanted to kill themselves. If you did do research on it at all did it change your view of the job?
(Sorry Tilly, I know thats two questions too!)

[GeraldineMumsnet]

Patrick Gale just posted this on Twitter: "Good thing it's not radio. So excited at prospect I ate delicious Moroccan chicken far too fast and now have hiccups..." If you want to follow Patrick on Twitter, he's @PNovelistGale. And if you want to follow MN book club, we're @Mumsnetbookclub .
But we're quite excited too...

[Abcinthia]

I really enjoyed reading A Perfectly Good Man.

I wanted to ask about Modest. I found him a very very creepy character. His stalking of Barnaby, the obsession with the red book and he just had a dangerous feel to him. It was almost like Barnaby was prey and Modest was a hunter circling overhead, waiting to strike.

I was wondering if this was to make Barnaby seem all the more good and his faults seem insignificant when compared to Modest.

[domesticslattern]

Looking forward to the webchat!
I finished the book yesterday and really admired the clear, elegant prose style, as well as the sense of place. There were also some excellent turns of phrase: that skill of describing things just so. The characters and plot sometimes seemed implausible though; some places the dialogue felt 'written' rather than spoken, IYSWIM, and certain characters like Modest Carlsson felt like story tale characters not real people. Still, I enjoyed the book, especially the portrayal of the young Dorothy.
Did you write the story chronologically and then divide it and mix it up?

[TillyBookClub]

Evening everyone

I am thrilled that Patrick Gale is here tonight to throw light on the inspiration and research behind A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN, and hopefully (although an hour isn?t nearly enough, I feel) talk about all his other books too.

We?ve got many fans keen to talk and many questions to get started with, so without further ado...

Patrick, firstly, many congratulations on another wonderful, beautifully crafted book. And thank you very much indeed for taking the time to join us. We'll kick off with the advance questions from further up the thread. And then we'll aim to get through as many new ones as possible over the next hour.

I'd also like to add our two standard MN Bookclub questions (which we like to ask all authors, and will be archived on the site):

Which childhood book most inspired you?

What would be the first piece of advice you would give anyone attempting to write fiction?

Over to you...

[PatrickGale]

Thanks, TillyI was a Puffin Club member and devoured about a puffin a week for a year or two, but the novels I repeatedly re-read were Tove Jansson?s Moomin novels, Norton Juster?s The Phantom Tolbooth and Lewis Carroll?s two Alice books. All of which I still return to when in need of comfort? As for the writing thing. Don?t start any actual writing until the story in your head feels so real to you that it keeps you awake at night. And when you start, try writing in longhand or only working while disconnected from the Internet.

[Tiggywinckle1]

I loved Barnaby but was a little confused at times with his family, uncles etc. Had to re-read a couple of times to work out who was who, but that's fine

[PatrickGale]

@Hullygully

I've finished. I retract my earlier Jodi Picoult remark made after page 10 or something.

I think the current trend for piecemeal stories is interesting for sliding perspectives, different connections and points of view, and admire it technically for the jigsaw nature, but I am left as usual with a feeling of curious bloodlessness. While definitely gripped by the story, I didn't actually feel engaged with, or care about, any of the characters, just wanted to know how it would all come out.

What do you think, Patrick? Which of the characters (if any) did you see as the hero/es? What were we (if anything) supposed to feel about Barnaby? I felt I had no grip on or understanding of who he was at all. I can see the glimpse of an explanation for his religion given at the end, but nothing as to his feelings, for Dot, or anyone else. Does that even matter?

Likewise, I am not convinced by how Modest travelled from A to B and became who he was, nor Phuc. Is it the "make the reader do some work and fill in the gaps" stuff?

Those are my questions, but let them not detract from the fact that I did enjoy the story and thought it very well constructed.

Oh dear, Hullygully. I wasn?t aware it was a trend; evidently I should get out more! I like fractured storytelling because it feels closer to the free-associative way our brains and memories work than the artificial a-to-z approach of tradition. That said I?d hate to get pigeon-holed as that back-to-front writer so I dare say my next one will be less broken-up. If you weren?t engaged, I can only apologise and suggest going back to Ms Jodi P! Barnaby is plainly the central character (hero feels a bit morally freighted as a term) which is why his (lion?s share) of chapters provide the book?s spine. Like Rachel, in my Notes from an Exhibition, I had him reveal himself to us in slow stages, leading us back to the sad scenes of his youth. But the real heroics I feel lie with the three women around him, because they all endure and, just like Rachel, he?s not an easy person to love or live with. And, to answer your third point, yes, I like my readers to do some work by joining the gaps because I feel this makes them unconsciously give a bit of themselves to the piecing together of the story. The hope is that some, unlike you, will feel more deeply engaged emotionally with the narrative than if they were just sat back watching it unspool.

[PatrickGale]

@BiscuitNibbler

Not quite finished yet, but have to say that the misogyny that overwhelmed Notes From An Exhibition was much more subtle in this book, but still came through strongly in the way the Dorothy character was treated.

Apart from that, I find books written in this way, just showing glimpses of the characters, always seem quite lazy, as though we're just reading a draft of the final story. Why is this becoming so popular with modern authors?

Saddened that you feel I?m a misogynist. Unnerved too, because I so love writing from female viewpoints just as the wonderful likes of Patricia Duncker and A L Kennedy love writing from male ones. I?ve only been accused of that once before, in a rather cruel review by Joan Smith for whom, as a naïve, v young ex public schoolboy, I provided a handy target for practice. I wonder if you?d feel the same if the same stories had been written by a woman? These are novels, after all, not political manifestos or polemics, so I try to have them reflect the range of attitudes and behaviours I see around me rather than portraying ideals or observing political correctness. Thus not all my women are feminist icons and not all my gay characters are perfect ? even though I have a weakness for loading the dice in favour of both groups. Dorothy has a terrible time ? as plenty of women stuck in remote rural communities do ? and she puts on weight (ditto) but she remains strong to the end, and I hope any cruelty in her fate is balanced out by Nuala and Carrie. Sorry. You struck a nerve there, as you?ve probably guessed by now. I?d be interested to hear if any of your fellow readers ? male or female ? found either this book or Notes misogynist as well...

[PatrickGale]

@gazzalw

Hi Patrick, I note you were brought up in prison environments with your father having been a prison governor. I note too that Patrick McGrath had a father who was a doctor at Broadmoor Hospital. Do you feel there are any parallels in the way you two write or do you see any similar themes in your works?

I got a real feel of personal, emotional claustrophobia amongst many of the characters in A Perfectly Good Man - is this a recurring theme of your novels (sorry I haven't read any other but intend to do so now) and is this influenced by the oppressive, contained environment in which you were brought up as a child/adolescent?

Dear gazzalw, I was so very young when we left Wandsworth prison that I don?t think it marked me nearly as deeply as Broodmoor must have done Patrick McGrath. I love his work, especially its more Gothic bits, but suspect the only parallels emerge when I write short stories and let my dark side out. I feel my novels are pretty touchy-feely compared to his, though I think we share an interest in psychology and the ways childhood damage can emerge in our characters? adult relationships. If prison life interests you, you might enjoy my Rough Music, which is based on our experiences as a family in HMP Wandsworth.

Interesting you should note an emotional claustrophobia in the novel. I don?t think this had anything to do with my childhood but wonder if it?s caused by the novel?s structure; my writing tends to feel very ?internal?, dealing as it does with the workings of the characters? thoughts and feelings more than with their actions. Perhaps in this case the extremity of Pendeen as a setting, its unrelieved quality, combined with the sense of Barnaby?s voluntary imprisonment in his job and marriage also brought on a sense of airlessness. Don?t know. Part of the fun of writing is that I have no control over the effects my writing will take on different readers, so it?s fascinating to hear reactions like yours!

[Tiggywinckle1]

Did not feel any mysogyny in this book. Dorothy (Dot) is a strong empathetic woman and the characters of Nuala and Carrie are inspiring!

[PatrickGale]

@NoraHelmer

I hadn't realised that this novel was intended as a companion to Notes from an Exhibition, which I have also read, but did notice several characters from that novel crop up in this one too.

My question for Patrick is based purely on having read these two novels (will be reading more of them). You obviously know Cornwall very well, in particular the area surrounding Penzance - do you feel that Cornwall (the places and people) is integral to your novels? Or do you think that you could have written the same novel setting it elsewhere? Reading it I felt the strong pull of the close-knit community that notices an outsider and isn't always welcoming to them. (I think this could have applied to last month's book, Night Waking, too.)

I was glad Modest Carlsson got his comeuppance, of a sort, at the end. What a thoroughly unpleasant character.

Hello Nora. Oh I loved Night Waking. It was one of the highlights of my Costa judging last year...

I know Cornwall well and use it a lot but I think I?d use anywhere I happened to be living. I?m strongly influenced by landscape and a place?s atmosphere to the point where it can have an unconscious effect on what I?m writing. In this case it was utterly conscious; I wanted Pendeen to feel like a strong character because it has shaped at least Dorothy, Carrie and Lenny as powerfully as any parent. But what always grips me ultimately is the characters and their relationships so I think I could have set this book equally in a village in Wales or East Anglia.

Glad you approved of Modest?s comeuppance, although, of course, only Tabby and the reader are a party to it and I fear he?ll probably slither off and work similar mischief in a different parish?

[TillyBookClub]

Prof and Buttercluck, both characters drawn in a rather unflattering light, worship engineering and science and rationality; their rudest terms are to call someone ?irrational? or ?sentimental?.

Do you feel that people like this are somehow missing the point of life? Should there be less rationality and more mystery?

And am I allowed to ask if you do/don't believe in God?

[PatrickGale]

@southlondonlady

I've just finished the book and enjoyed it. I'm not sure what to make of the ending though, the wedding scene is lovely in some ways but I kept thinking, there are still these secrets, so the happiness isn't built on strong foundations. I felt for Carrie particularly, having never known about Lenny.

So my question for Patrick - did you write the ending to be happy, sad or otherwise?

Otherwise, is a good place to aim for I think. I?m a sucker for happy endings but I need them to feel real for my readers, which usually means having a thick thread of sorrow or insecurity running through them. What touches me, time and again, is our capacity for happiness, our will to make it happen despite the odds. I think Carrie and Morwenna will be happy; they have earned it and are clear-eyed about the way things are. Not so sure what will happen to Nuala and Barnaby?

Interesting you should think of the wedding as being the novel?s ending when, of course, it actually ends years and years before that, in the back of Barnaby?s father?s car! As with Notes From an Exhibition, the novel has two endings, the chronological one, and the - wince face at sounding pretentious - spiritual one...

[PatrickGale]

@Geeklette

I've delayed posting my question up until now because I normally like to give a discussion book at least two readings, but unfortunately time's been against me so my thoughts are based just on my original read-through.

I didn't find Barnaby a coward, as such, but I did very much get the impression that he was a spectator to his own life. I'm not sure if this was so much because of Barnaby himself, or due to the way the book was written in a series of vignettes. I felt this disengaged me from the characters slightly, in a way that a more narrative series of events might not.

My question to Patrick is about Dorothy/Dot, and covers a point that I had intended to pick up on during a second read of the book. My impression was that Dorothy was a well-rounded, engaging chacater with a lot to contribute to the story, and that this changed completely after her last miscarriage. I felt, in a way, that she was 'abandoned' both by Barnaby and Patrick (the changing of her name to something she didn't like, the comments about her putting on weight that she never bothered getting rid of, the lack of inclusion in the story until, almost as an afterthought, her final encounter with Modest in the church).

Was it Patrick's intention to present Dorothy/Dot as two separate characters? What was Patrick's motivation for switching from having a vibrant sidekick for Barnaby, to having a matronly wife as wallpaper?

Dear Geeklette. I adored Dorothy. I write my novels one character at a time and I wrote Dorothy?s chapters before anyone else?s because I instinctively liked her and felt I knew her inside out. The novel is hard on her but then marriage to a priest is often hard and I needed to reflect that. I certainly don?t think of her as two characters but I tried to show how the disappointments in her marriage, and the shock of Barnaby?s infidelity, actually lead to her growing beyond the narrowly proscribed set of possibilities her mother gives her initially. She ends up having a life apart from Barnaby and a deep fulfillment, independent of him, within the church. Yes she puts on weight, as a lot of not entirely happy people do, but I never meant that to mean I had rejected her.

[calypso2008]

Hello Patrick - I love your work so much.

Stunned anyone would find your books misogynist - I feel exactly the opposite.

On another note...
I am mindful every day with being impatient with my 4 year old daughter as that scene (I think from 'Notes') where the mother is so impatient about the scampi for her birthday treat that she cries, it haunts me a bit. So I thank you for making me maybe a better mother!

Sorry, I posted this earlier so if it appears twice, apologies. Will be treating myself to your new book this summer.

[PatrickGale]

@DowagersHump

I haven't finished the book I'm afraid but a more general question - I've noticed that religion (or faith or lack of) is a recurring theme in your novels. I wondered why that was. It's entirely outside my own experience so I find it fascinating

Dear Dowager, (or should that be Your Grace?).
I seem to write about religious experience as often as I write about sex, which is probably cause for concern now that I've turned fifty! I?ve always been drawn to the experiences which are hardest to put into words ? the effect of art or music on us is another recurring element in my work. I had a deeply religious childhood from which I retreated as an adult and with which I?ve now arrived at a comfortable, if cowardly, accommodation. I?m certainly not a regular churchgoer but I find the residue of my childhood faith seems to be stitched into the fabric of my being and I can?t ever quite unpick it. It gives me solace or moves me at unexpected moments, on walks or in concerthalls as often as in church. It?s odd because, as with psychotherapy, I don?t think you can be any good as a novelist unless you have a thoroughly examined life; you need to know yourself inside out and back to front and be constantly reexamining your own thoughts and behaviours since these, willy-nilly, provide the template for the thoughts and actions of your characters. And yet there?s this great bit of me ? the god-shaped bit, if you will ? that lies entirely beyond the powers of my intellect. And of course I find that completely fascinating and keep circling back to it like a cat to a dying bird!

[southlondonlady]

Hello, thanks for answering my question. Yes def saw the wedding as the "ending" of the story, although not the actual end of the book. Interesting that you are not sure how Barnaby and Nuala will end up, I felt slightly queasy about the rekindling of the relationship, perhaps because I liked Dorothy so much.

Could not see any misogyny in the book no!

[PatrickGale]

@blubberguts

Patrick, why does Phuc dislike his parents so much?

@NoraHelmer

wondered about that too, blubberguts. I came to the conclusion that he was angry because he knew nothing about his Vietnamese heritage, they had unwittingly removed the only connection he had to his birth mother by renaming him and trying to make him wholly Cornish. Also, he must have sensed that Dorothy didn't love him. He didn't know about his father's affair with Nuala, unless we are to assume that he had found out somehow?

Dear Blubberguts and NoraHelmer. It was mainly that poor Dorothy couldn?t love him but the dawning sense of how he?d been cut off from whatever security his Vietnamese heritage might have given him made matters worse. He never knows about the affair and neither does Carrie. I researched this storyline pretty closely and it seems to have been a fairly common problem among the second wave of ?Boat People? immigrants and adoptees, many of whom lacked blood family contacts. A well-meaning, very Christian family I knew growing up in Hampshire adopted a Vietnamese baby but raised her in a totally deracinated way and the poor girl went badly off the rails for a while as a teenager. But the race/culture point shouldn?t be overstressed; I think the failure of love in an adoptive mother, however good her intentions, is often devastating whatever the background of the adopted child.

[PatrickGale]

@Hullygully

I think as well there is a tension with writing stuff as it really is eg people are conflicted, alienated, cowardly, ambivalent, amoral etc and simultaneously fulfilling the needs of fiction for the majority of readers: engagement, caring and warmth.

Do we read fiction for "real" life?

This is a really interesting point, Hullygully. As a novelist, I want to create characters who feel like real people, with all the ambivalence and conflict real people carry in them, yet I?m always aware that many readers look to fiction for a kind of comfort they can?t find in real life.

I suspect the answer lies in narrative structure. The right narrative structure can deliver the comfort ? and I don?t necessarily mean happy endings, I?m thinking more of emotional satisfaction, justice if you like ? while the characters can cause a lifelike lingering discomfort or worry. It?s good when readers get angry about a character or worry about what will happen to them next; I think that presses more satisfactory buttons in a reader?s emotions than simply giving them sympathetic people to spend time with. I reckon the important thing in characterisation is to offer up details we can all recognize, feelings we have felt, impulses we may have been tempted by.

[yUMMYmUMMYb]

Not quite finished the book yet but wanted to say that so far it is such an engaging read.I really like the way the book is written, it makes the charactes seem more real somehow. I have your other book - notes on an exhibition - on my reading list. Thanks for a good, easy read. Which of your other books would you recommend and has your writing style changed over time?
This book also strikes me as something good for TV, would yoube happy to have your books turned into TV dramas?

[PatrickGale]

@gazzalw

Another question for me is that as a bloke I feel the male characters are a lot more shaded than the female ones - is that purposeful or just because as a man yourself you are more easily able to portray male angst, moral ambiguity etc...?

Your point about masculine characters is hugely cheering for me but unsettling too. I?ve always taken huge pains with my female characters, precisely because I?m not a woma. In fact with me the risk is always that it?s the male characters who will be underwritten. I hope the women aren?t really as pallid here as you seemed to find them. APGM was conceived as a masculine counterpart to Notes From an Exhibition, which centres on a woman (who is arguably as destructive a parent and spouse as Barnaby manages to be).

[Hullygully]