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Laughing out loud with Barbara Trapido
Laughing out Loud with Barbara Trapido by Miranda Glover
There’s a true talent in writing humour and one which is often lacking in contemporary women’s fiction. When you come across it is like a breath of fresh air, reading it makes you feel lighter in spirit. It’s a skill that many agents look out for, often complaining of the introspective, domestic nature of many first novels submitted by aspiring women writers. When I recently interviewed the novelist Barbara Trapido at the Henley Literary Festival I discovered that her natural propensity for comedy in her novels reflects in her personality. Laughter pervaded the talk and when she read from her most recent novel, Sex &Stravinsky, the comic undercurrents flew from the page. Hearing extracts fro m the novel read aloud made the humour more pronounced. It is particularly in the thought passages and dialogue between her female, teenage characters that it is most artfully drawn. ‘He sounds like a total nerd,’ Zoe says, secretly wondering if Mattie and Magg’s insides are also turning to jelly over the French exchange, or if it’s only her. “And I bet his sister’s a cow,” she says. When she writes internal monologue she captures the essential voice of the teenage girls with extraordinary accuracy; the language-usage is culturally accurate and the turns of phrase contemporary. She reflects the insecurities and inconsistencies of the teenage psyche through their meandering thoughts which are riddled with teenage anxieties and disparaging observations about the adult generation. In one comic passage one character, Cat describes mother’s accumulation of old stuff, Like none of her friends’ parents have got that kind of snobby stuff – well, that’s like when she had any friends to speak of, like before Michelle and them decided to decided to start freezing her out. But anyway, she’s got all these old cupboards and desks and things called dopy names like ‘tallboy’ and ‘whatnot’ and ‘davenport’, just like she wanted the whole family to be wearing crinolines and living in la la land or something. We often feel we need to become more serious when we put pen to paper, in Trapido we learn that the serious is often most pertinently addressed through the use of comedy. Think about the way you recount tales to friends, it is commonplace to add a touch of humour to make the story more entertaining. Give it a go in your own writing, you may surprise yourself and even enjoy the experience. Trapido has written seven novels.Her books are stages set for theatre and she confesses to a love of dramatic devices, the use of multiple characters and comedies of error. She was born in Cape Town in 1941 and grew up in Durban before emigrating to London in 1963. After many years teaching she became a full time writer in 1970. Three of her books have been nominated for the Whitbread Prize. Her semi-autobiographical Frankie & Stankie, one of those shortlisted, which deals with growing up white under apartheid, was also longlisted for the Booker prize. Sex & Stravinsky buy now! Frankie & Stankie buy now! |