Bullies, Writing, and Growing up in the North
Andrew Kirby Talks About What Influenced His Debut Novel
Sep 10, 2009
Andrew Kirby’s debut novel Bully (published by Wild Wolf Publishing) takes the protagonist to his dark past in northern England where he’d participated in the murder of a fellow student. Here, the author tells Suite 101 about his own experiences and how music helped shaped his unique style of writing.
What life experiences did you use to write your book Bully?
‘I grew up in a small town just outside Stockport which borders on the Peak District. A place which in certain lights is picture-postcard perfect, but take the time to scratch the surface and you’ll discover the rotten core, the darker side of the street, the horror of the place. Small-town life can become a real Albatross round your neck. And sometimes you’re also carrying the hefty weight of the names of generations of your ancestors too. Sometimes, you become like a walking family grave….
‘This idea of graveyards in small towns reverberates through Bully. As does the small-town-gone-bad idea. I suppose it’s a little like a more horrific version of League of Gentlemen. But as well as the straight horror, the supernatural tale of revenge from beyond the grave, there’s a real attempt to look at the machinations of living in small town Britain and how it can shape our personalities.
‘My town always felt like it was at war; at war with ‘outsiders’; tourists or walkers, commuters or farmers from outlying villages. We built up our own mythology, became something of a tribal clan; whenever anyone from our small town set foot into nearby Manchester, we went with our backs-up, shouting the name of our town from the rooftops so everyone would know who we were and what we were here to do… scary.
‘And finally, I have to mention the bullying. When I started secondary school, I was overweight and hence on the receiving end of some pretty cruel taunts in my time. Two of my teeth were smashed out of my mouth for no other reason than I was sitting on the wrong bench at school.
‘But I lost my ‘puppy-fat’ when I was about fourteen/fifteen and suddenly was treated like a different person, despite being exactly the same inside. At the time, acceptance was my biggest goal, as it is with most teenagers; I’d built it up so it became unbearably important. And so, when I lost the weight and started to move in new circles, the younger me felt like I’d really arrived.
‘Shamefully, instead of trying to show my former bullies the error of their ways, I joined in with them for a while, and revelled in the power it gave me. Writing Bully allowed me to exorcise some of my own demons. I’d been bullied and bully. Both have shaped me as a person.
‘Both have also shaped my writing. I suppose they both resided in me, unresolved until I exorcised them through writing. At the time, I thought the schoolyard power struggles were the biggest thing in the world. Now I see that they are not. It’s just unfortunate that I’ve worked in many places in which people behave in exactly the same way that they did at school. If I’ve learnt anything, it’s just not to get involved.’
Who influenced your writing?
‘My writing is influenced by artists in a number of different fields. Music is a big one; punk, with its have-a-go-even-if-you-can’t-play attitude, encouraged me to get back into writing despite no knowledge of where to begin, what to write about, and how to write it. Music is all about finding the right method of expressing what you hear in your head. I used to be a musician, but what I heard in my head was always words, was always characters speaking. I just had to tune in to the right station.
‘I’d love to be as good with pacing a story as the master conductor himself, Steven King. I’d love to be as in command of my vocabulary as Will Self. I’d love to be as adept at giving the feel of a place as Ian Rankin, as able of creating a new place as Neal Stephenson, Margaret Atwood or Dan Simmons, as out-there as Iain Banks, as in-there as David Peace, as gritty as Irvine Welsh, as cynical as Martin Amis, as hopeful as Yann Martell, as page-turning as Kate Atkinson and as cool as Neil Gaiman.’
If you become the next big seller, what would you do to change the world?
‘One ambition I do have is to start a Leeds Literature Festival. Hard as it is to believe for a city the size of Leeds we don’t have our own festival. So many smaller cities and towns do. And there’s so much good writing going on in Leeds; we are a real literary city and need a festival to match. We can make our city proud of our writing feats, and encourage more people to tell their own stories in the process.’
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