Webchat with Jonathan Freedland, author of The 3rd Woman, on Thursday 6 August at 1pm

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello

We’re pleased to announce a webchat with Jonathan Freedland on Thursday 6 August at 1pm.

Jonathan Freedland is an award-winning journalist, No. 1 bestselling author and broadcaster. He is the Guardian's Executive Editor for Opinion, and also writes a weekly column. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, and presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series, The Long View. In 2014 he won the Orwell special prize for journalism.

Since 2006 he has published five internationally bestselling novels under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, which have sold over two million copies and been published in over 30 languages.

Jonathan has recently published The 3rd Woman, listed in our Summer E-book Reads. Set in an alternate universe against a background of political upheaval and corruption, journalist Madison Webb is on the trail of the serial killer who murdered her sister.

You can read an extract of The 3rd Woman here, and buy a copy here.

Please do join us on Thursday 6 August at 1pm - or if you can’t make it, leave a question for Jonathan below.

Thanks
MNHQ

Obvious question (sorry) but what made you decide to abandon Sam Bourne and publish this book under your own name?

Thanks for coming on Jonathan.

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian today warns against Corbyn, even though she's constitutionally even further to the left. How should a lefty vote in the leadership elections?

Hi Jonathan,
Great to have you on Mumsnet! Welcome.
I've always been curious why an author chooses to write in their opposite gender. Are you confident your voice can reflect the female thought process? Do you relish the challenge?
Thanks and best of luck with it.

Hey Jonathan,

Thanks so much for coming in. What would be your desert island books (and indeed discs, if you have the time and inclination to tell us)?

Hi Jonathan - welcome.

You said recently in your article about US gun laws that Americans must find 'the courage to say that the US is not the country it was more than two centuries ago, and can no longer be bound by those rules'.
Do you think this is something that can realistically be done? It seems like the NRA and the GOA will always win out in the end.

Thanks so much for coming to chat!

Hello!

I don't know if you've heard this George R.R. Martin quote but he once said there are two kinds of writers: gardeners and architects. Meaning the architect likes to plan their novel vigorously, knowing exactly when and where every detail will be, whereas the gardener just digs a hole, drops in a seed and just sees what comes out.

Which of these two would you class yourself as?

Hi Jonathan. The 3rd Woman would make a great Netflix-style political thriller. Have you ever fancied getting your work made into TV series?

Hi Jonathan, thanks for coming on

I've seen The 3rd Woman described by several people as "dystopian" - what's your take on that?

Welcome Jonathan!

Where do you find the time to think up and write thrillers alongside your (I'm assuming very) busy day job? Do you have a specific time of day that is Book Time, and the rest for your journalism? Or do you work on a word count target per day?

Ooh another one to do with the book - I saw a piece of yours recently (which I didn't have time to read, sorry!) where you discussed the idea that the crime novel is a naturally leftist genre, while the thriller was intrinsically to the right. Can you expand here?

Hi Jonathan,

What do women want?

Hello. I really enjoyed the little video clips you did during the election. Is there any chance of these becoming a regular feature? Or maybe, even, of the editorial conference being streamed or broadcast?

Thanks for coming on!

Hope you don't mind a non-book question (I'm enjoying the extract - thanks for that!). I'm an ex-publishing bod who saw the book industry change dramatically as it (v-e-r-y slowly) embraced all things digital.

I just wonder where you think it's all going - does the future lie with Kindles/reading newspapers online, or is there still a place for print? I still love paper books but so rarely read newspapers in print now.

Hi Jonathan,

Welcome to MN. I was wondering, what's been the highlight of your journalistic career?

Hello Jonathan
Good to see you on mumsnet. Several years ago I read your wonderful exploratory autobiographical book Jacob's Gift and found it one of the most interesting and moving examples of that kind of personal genre. You sub-titled it: A Journey into the Heart of Belonging. I myself am familiar with this journey as my parents came to the UK from Germany in 1939, as your family came from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s. How do you think your family's struggles to belong compare with today's immigrants? Is it that much harder now or is it just more of the same but related to different immigrant groups?

PS: I enjoy your political commentary in The Guardian as well.

Hi - thanks for your time and considered opinions!

As a writer - but also as a citizen and journalist - what do you think the long-term consequences will be of the current attack on libraries?

Barnet, for example, is proposing to cut 60% of its service with a focus on closing the libraries that show the best growth in borrowing by kids (kids' fiction borrowing is up avg 20%+ at libraries targeted for closure). Although ownership of smartphones & tablets has grown 300% in the last 5 years, teen fiction borrowing - as physical books - has not fallen and kids borrowing is growing. This week DCMS data shows 11-15 year olds are visiting libraries in greater numbers than ever. But... with councils, like Barnet, interested in selling off property with the zeal of corporate raiders, what will the long term consequences be, in your opinion?

As libraries are the number one means of book discovery for 5-7 year olds, how will authors and publishers find a route to market if the Barnet model becomes the norm?

If the UK creative industries are worth £8bn and much of it starts with stories - like Harry Potter - what will happen when there are no more libraries? (And have you ever been tempted to write a children's book? It seems the upside is that Peppa Pig just sold for £1bn; the downside is, with devolution of power/budgets to councils who are anti-literacy and pro-asset stripping, you'll have to do A LOT of Mumsnet chats to find an audience!)

Did libraries shape your experience as a writer?

Thanks!!!

Hi Jonathan,

How do journalism and fiction-writing differ? Does the one complement/inform the other, or are they entirely different disciplines?

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for joining us today.

Why did you choose to incorporate China the way you did in this book? It's fascinating and I'd love to hear more about this aspect of the 3rd Woman.

Hi Jonathan, I've just started reading The 3rd Woman and really enjoying it so far, my question is, how did the idea for this book come to you?

Also, how important is sense of place when writing this kind of dystopian fiction to you? Did the characters shape the space, or did the dystopian world come first?

post

Hi there everyone - and thanks to those who've already posted some questions here. ANd thanks to Mumsnet for having me.

By way of intro, here's my reply to these questions Mumsnet asked:

What childhood book most inspired me? Not quite childhood but I'd have to include George Orwell's 1984 - not often read that way, but it's the definitive political thriller.

Advice for anyone attempting to write fiction? Read a LOT. Work out what you like, then read the best ones again. And then work out what makes those work. And then think if you could do whatever it is those writers are doing...

@kittykitty

Obvious question (sorry) but what made you decide to abandon Sam Bourne and publish this book under your own name?

Thanks, kittykitty for that opener. Partly it's because of social media. My publishers reckoned that readers now want to engage directly with an author. Unless you’re dead, it seems they expect you to beon Twitteror Facebook. And a pseudonym gets in the way.

Also: the original justification for Sam Bourne – the idea that the novels inhabited a different realm from the world ofmy day job– has melted away a bit. The heroine of The 3rd Woman is a newspaper journalist. Yes, she is looking for a man she believes is a serial killer – but against a backdrop of a US election and turbulent geopolitics: the novel is set in an America that has lost its place as the world’s leading superpower to China. In other words, if this is a book packed with journalism and politics, why hide the fact that I’m a journalist who has been writing on politics for the Guardian for more than two decades? That was the thinking anyway.

@woeface

Thanks for coming on Jonathan.

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian today warns against Corbyn, even though she's constitutionally even further to the left. How should a lefty vote in the leadership elections?

Hi woeface (why that name, I wonder?) I think the heart of Polly's argument is really persuasive: that you can have all the pristine lefty positions on the issues you like, but that's useless if you can't win power. Polly reckons that Corbyn just couldn't win a general election – and I fear that's my view too. She suggests a principled vote would be to see Labour's first woman leader and she's backing Yvette Cooper for that reason. That sounds pretty persuasive to me.

@Chipsandsalad

Hi Jonathan, Great to have you on Mumsnet! Welcome. I've always been curious why an author chooses to write in their opposite gender. Are you confident your voice can reflect the female thought process? Do you relish the challenge? Thanks and best of luck with it.

Thank you Chipsandsalad -- and thanks for the welcome. “relish” is a good word for it. The 3rdWoman is not written in the first person as a woman – I think that would be an even tougher challenge – but it is written from the vantage point of a woman. It's the third time I've done it and I have noticed that readers have tended to respond more warmly to the female protagonists I've written. And that's partly what gave me the confidence to do it again in this book. Big encouragement came from my editor, Jane Johnson, who wisely advised, “Don't write a woman, write a person.” So long as you think like that, and don't get hung up on the superficial gender stuff, then I think it can work. It probably also helps that I grew up in a very female household: a strong mother and two older sisters.

Welcome Jonathan! Good to have you here.

What piece of journalism has impressed you recently? Anything you'd recommend reading?