Booker nominees launch Literature Live
The Centre's new Literature Live season was launched in style on 13 October, when both Colm Toibin and Andrew O'Hagan read from and discussed their work.
Scots writer O'Hagan began by reading a chapter from his recent award-winning novel Be Near Me, in which its narrator, priest David, is driven from his home after accusations of child-molestation. The narrative described his conversation with his mother, a writer of windswept, dramatic novels who had once harboured a hope that he too might write one day.
As the chapter unfolded it emerged that David has indeed held the hand of and tried to kiss a young boy, and would have slept with him had he consented to it. But he does not feel that he has carried out any kind of assault - a view clearly not shared by the marauding townspeople who burn out the ground floor of his rectory that night.
Colm Toibin's readings were both from his forthcoming novel Brooklyn, which documents the experiences of a young Irish woman, Eilish, as she emigrates to New York in 1951. The first described the first night of her rough crossing, during which she is locked out of her shared bathroom, in disturbing detail, while the second concerned rather more heart-warming scenes from her day as a Christmas dinner volunteer in Brooklyn's parish hall.
Surrounded by fellow Irish people, both volunteering and among the mostly homeless diners, she is fooled into thinking her recently-deceased father is among them: a man later revealed to be an outstanding and moving singer who serenades her as a thank you for her day's work.
The event's question and answer session with the audience revealed that, although Toibin hated his fictionalisation of episodes from Henry James' life The Master by the time it was finished, the great writer's techniques and systems have snuck into his own work and many of James's novels still "...fill me with joy."
O'Hagan also confirmed that Be Near Me is currently being adapted for the stage in a co-production between the National Theatre for Scotland and the Donmar Warehouse in London, where it will premiere in January 2009 with a cast including Ian McDiarmid.