Too dark for home market? Paul Cleave talks to Nicky Pellegrino

While hundreds of thousands of his books have sold overseas, Christchurch writer Paul Cleave reckons here in New Zealand it’s difficult to find a shop that will even stock them.  So winning this year’s Dame Ngaio Marsh Award last Sunday {August 21} for his novel Blood Men (Random House, $36.99) was a rare and welcome piece of local recognition.

“I was really excited,” Cleave tells me over the phone from his hometown, “because I didn’t expect to even make the shortlist. People seem to either love or hate my novels so I thought statistically, with seven judges, three would be bound to hate it.”

Blood Men is the story of Edward Hunter, an accountant whose world falls apart when his wife is shot dead in a bank raid. Destroyed by grief he reconnects with his father – a notorious serial killer jailed when he was a boy – and finds the darkness that has always been inside him.

When I reviewed it last year I praised this book as, “a real triumph of disturbing, bleak, bloody, compelling crime writing” and the judges agreed with me, with one saying: “Cleave tells a gruesomely gripping story in clean, sharp prose, with authentically laconic dialogue and flashes of very dark humour. The twists and turns of the fast-moving plot are often surprising but never illogical. This is world-class writing."

All of which makes it extra frustrating for Cleave that he can’t find copies of the book in his local bookshop.

“I haven’t seen a copy of my books in any Whitcoulls for two years and I can’t tell you how upsetting that is after you’ve worked so hard. If they sell overseas why not here?’

Cleave says he’s been told his novels are too dark. “But I don’t think they need to censor my books from the readers.”

Internationally though he is on a roll. He’s been signed up by one of Europe’s top literary agents, Jane Gregory, who represents crime writers like Val McDermid, has sold the film rights to his debut novel The Cleaner to a producer he admires, and so far has been signed up for publication in 19 countries.

“Sometimes I think why should I care about doing well in New Zealand?” admits Cleave. “The flipside is being in New York having lunch with my publishers, or in Paris talking to a movie producer. But this is my home country so of course I want to be proud of what I’ve achieved here. I had to sell my house and make a lot of sacrifices to become a writer and it sucks not to get taken seriously.”

For the past five or six months Cleave has been in London but came home for the Dame Ngaio Marsh Awards ceremony partly because he admires what founder Craig Sisterson is doing to promote homegrown crime fiction. “He’s done a lot more than anyone else for the genre and it’s starting to get the recognition it deserves thanks to him so it was good to be there.”

London though has been a buzz and Cleave’s been loving the opportunity to rub shoulders with fellow crime writers like Val McDermid and Mark Billingham. He plans to continue setting his novels in Christchurch but he’ll be heading back to Europe where he’s appearing at book festivals in England, Turkey, France and Gerrmany.

He’s also started work on his seventh novel…although it doesn’t sound as if it’s been too arduous so far. “I’ve been lying in a hammock by a pool in 32 degrees with a notebook jotting down all these ideas,” laughs Cleave. “I think it’s going to be good.”

Footnote:
Nicky Pellegrino is a succcesful Auckland-based author of popular fiction, The Italian Wedding was published in May 2009, Recipe for Life was published in April, 2010, while her latestThe Villa Girls, was published in April this year.

She is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review, and the following Booklover column were first published on 28 August, 2011

Booklover

Raymond Hawthorne is directing Raising the Titanics which opens at Auckland’s Q Theatre this week

The book I love most is…There are two, both autobiographies by men whose work has influenced my thinking. The first is Timebends by American playwright Arthur Miller. The other, by filmmaker and theatre director Ingmar Bergman, is The Magic Lantern which remains a constant touchstone for me.

The book I’m reading right now is…A biography of my old friend and mentor Yvonne Rust: Maverick Spirit by Theresa Sjoquist.  In 1953 Yvonne came to Hastings High School to teach art and a group of us became her ardent followers. Very nostalgic reading for me.

The book I want to read next is…Top of the list and already dipped into is Keith Richard's  autobiography Life. Very informing and enlightening. Can't wait to pick it up again!

My favourite bookshop is…I have two: Unity Books in High Street, and The Women’s Bookshop on Ponsonby Road. Both have friendly, helpful and informed staff and you always find a treasure.

The book that changed me is…From five to eight years old I had rheumatic fever which meant lots of time off school sick.I read avidly. Most changing and disturbing to me was Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Our family were horse lovers and when Ginger died I was heartbroken. I hurled the book across our backyard and didn't finish it for years but it sure stuck with me.

The book I wish I’d never read is…If I don't like something I'm reading I chuck it. Time is so precious isn't it?