Hi my name is Richard Roper I'm the author of Something To Live For. This is
the very snazzy Waterstones special edition with these sprayed edges of
train tracks. This is the story of Andrew, a council worker, who is tasked with
dealing with the situation where someone dies alone. So that means he deals with
their financial affairs, he sees whether they've got a next of kin and if they
haven't got next of kin he often attends the funerals to make sure that at least
someone is there. And as far as Andrew's colleagues are concerned he's got the
perfect life away from this. He's got a loving family waiting for him when he
gets back home. But that is not necessarily the case and Andrew has been
living something of a white lie. And the longer the white lie has gone on the
more he has felt comforted by it and it's helped him feel less lonely and
more normal. And then one day Peggy starts at work and Andrew forms a
bit of a bond with Peggy and the more he does that the more he realizes that he's
got to make a decision. Is he going to carry on living this lie and pretending
to feel normal or is he going to come clean and risk losing everything, but
ultimately have a second chance at living life to the full. So I'm here in
the glorious environs of Waterstones Piccadilly and I'm going to talk to you
about three books that have inspired me as a writer and the first book I'm going
to talk about is Us by David Nicholls. I could have chosen any book by David
Nicholls really, he is I think probably my biggest inspiration when it comes to
writing and I think he is sort of the undisputed king at the moment of writing
the flawed but ultimately lovable male protagonist. And us features
Douglass as a protagonist and I think he probably is one of David's best
characters. And this tells the story of Douglas who at the beginning of the story finds
out that his wife, Connie, of 20 years is thinking of leaving him. And he spends
the rest of this journey trying to win her back and trying to win back the
respect of their son, Albie. And to me this is just everything you want from a
reading experience. It has the perfect balance of funny and sad and within that
there are digressions talking about philosophy and science and it is just a
lovely, gorgeous, brilliant book and if you haven't read it, what are you playing
at? Read it, it's great. Okay we've just nipped up to the biography section
as the second book I'm going to talk about is actually a memoir. This is
The Actual One by Isy Suttie. And the reason I've choseen this book is that I am a
self-confessed comedy nerd, comedy dweeb, I'm not entirely sure which is the
correct term but I've always been obsessed since I was a kid with comedy,
with stand-up and sketch shows and sitcoms and all the rest. And kind of
obsessed with the language of comedy and about jokes and why jokes
work and I always wanted to write something funny. And I remember there was
a point where I was writing the novel and I was just feeling a bit despondent
with it and for some reason it just wasn't working and I took a bit of a break and
I picked up Izzy's book which is a memoir. It's sort of about her trying to
cling on to her twenties when she's actually turned 30 and all her friends
are settling down and it is just for me one of the funniest books I've ever read.
It is that absolute cliché of being on public transport and not really being
able to read it cause you just look like a mad person just laughing away to
yourself. And sort of in terms of the ratio of jokes to page i';s just
absolutely killer. And it really sort of inspired me and reenergized me so when I
came back to writing Something To Live For
I just felt, right, this has got to be funny now and it just really kind of
helped me. And it's been really nice when I've had a tweet from someone saying
that they've read a bit that's made them feel quite emotional but secretly I like
it more when someone says I made them laugh. So cheers Isy, and this is a really
funny memoir and you should all read it. Okay this is my third and final choice. This is
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. The reason why I've chosen this is that
I have a terrible terrible memory for books. I might've read the best thing in
the world and then five minutes later someone asked what was the last thing
I've read and I'll just kind of go completely blank.
But for some reason with Yates there's something about it which I can...
it just feels incredibly vivid to me. And I can remember the moment where I first
started reading this book. I'd just moved into a new house and all my stuff was
sort of scattered around and I got very bored with whatever I was trying to do
and I just picked this up off a box of books I was reading and started reading
it and about two hours later I was still doing the same thing. And this book
tells the story of Frank and April Wheeler who are two suburbanites in America
who supposedly have sort of the best life but behind the scenes lies
something very, very dark and it turns out that they've got aspirations
separate to each other and ultimately leads to quite a devastating conclusion.
And I think what I particularly love about this book is the opening. I think
it's got one of the greatest openings of all time. It starts with this play that April
is appearing in, this sort of am-dram production and everything appears to be
fine, everything's going well and by the time it comes to the curtain call we
actually see that the audience have completely lost faith in what's
happening and they're applauding out of politeness and April is taking her bow
and she's got this sort of rictus grin on her face and everyone knows that it's
all a facade yet everyone is still carrying it on. I think as a set up for a
book that is absolutely perfect and when I came to write Something To Live For
I knew that the opening had to be really strong and really grab people and
hopefully I've done that so cheers Richard Yates
and everyone should read this book because it's ace.