AS Alexandra Shulman's debut novel - Can We Still Be Friends - goes on sale today, she introduces us to its intricately-drawn female protagonists: Sal, Annie and Kendra. Here, she reveals the character she's most "emotionally like" and how the book shows the change in men over the last 30 years:
"There is probably some of me in all of them. They're works of imagination but little details might be from a person or place. I keep notes all the time and they were borne from things I've seen, but they're not based specifically on friends of mine."
"Annie is probably the one I'm most emotionally like - everyone has said that to me actually. Sal is very real to me too - she's like a lot of people I know, with that mixture of catastrophe and charm swirling around her. Kendra is probably the one who's least like people I know, but she is quite like me in some ways - she doesn't want to cause trouble or confrontation. Part of her development was that she becomes more assertive as time goes by."
"Sal's self-obsession I don't really like; she's pretty tunnel-visioned, but that also makes her quite intense and interesting. Kendra moans and sulks - that's not particularly attractive - and Annie just makes the mistake of settling for terrible men."
"What was interesting - it's a cliché but it's completely true - was that they became totally real to me and took on a life of their own. I can completely see them. They did and said things I had no idea they would."
"The only true description of something I experienced in my career was the sea of grey in the news room: all these men with their ties loosened, putting their jackets on to go into a meeting; all looking the same. I think now the men in a newsroom would be more stylish - but in those days you had to look a certain way. Men have changed quite a lot."
"I'd quite like to revisit these characters when they had grown up - I'd be interested in writing something about older people. To me this book is really about the relationships between parents and daughters. Although I didn't mean it to, it became about them trying to get away from their backgrounds."
LAUREN MILLIGAN 12 April 2012
http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2012/04/12/alexandra-shulman-book---can-we-still-be-friends-released
No comments:
Post a Comment