B
ack in 2011, Evie Wyld read at Structo’s very first event. She had just won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize for her debut novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice and we were captivated by her work. Her new novel, All the Birds, Singing, was released earlier in the year and comes only a few months after she was included in the fourth Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. I caught up with her in the Review Bookshop in Peckham, which she runs. — Keir Pratt structo: Congratulations on the new book and for making the Granta list.
wyld: Thank you. Yes... a busy year. structo: Of course you read for us years ago, so we’ll claim all the credit. [Laughter] What do you think it means, now you are in the club with Rushdie and McEwan and Amis? Is it pressure? wyld: It’s funny. It’s obviously really good, I don’t know how the pressure thing could change much; I mean, you just write what you write and you hope it does well. It’s not like it’s made me go right, I must sit down now and write a best-selling novel. It just doesn’t work like that. I wish it did. But, no, there’s no aggressive pressure from my publishers or anything like that. They’re pleased with my books, pleased for me; so we’re just carrying on at the same pace. There are a lot more articles, and time is difficult because I work here four days a week at the minute and I run it as well. When I was writing the first one I was just here two days a week and I wasn’t running it so I had a lot more time. It’s all got a bit mad now. [Laughs] structo: Did you put pressure on yourself? wyld: I suppose yes, more than the Granta thing, just the pressure of writing the second novel. I mean, it’s a lovely pressure to have, that the first one did well, but it is frightening, the idea that you would write something that people don’t like after liking the first one. And it’s bound to happen, because you have two things and people will like one thing more than the other thing. But yes, it was quite nerve-wracking, but you just have to write what you are going to write, and do it as well as you can, and keep your fingers crossed. [Laughs] structo: Resist writing a twist!
13