Interview with Frank Egerton

The author of The Lock, Frank Egerton, talks to Smaller Sky

Frank Egerton’s first novel The Lock is set in Oxford and Gloucestershire. It is the study of an Oxford don’s infidelity and the effect this has on those who are close to him, including his wife, their two daughters and his best friend. It is a fascinating psychological study of pleasure and the misery it can cause - and at the same time a full picture of Oxford town and country on all its many levels. John Bayley, author of Iris and the Friends, called the book 'Illuminating and absorbing.' The following extract is taken from a longer interview with Frank Egerton by Will Wain

Will Wain: You were an undergraduate at Oxford - at a college not too dissimilar to Newman College in the novel. To what extent does the book reflect your experiences of the university?

Frank Egerton: I think it has some relationship to the real Oxford - at least the one I experienced. But it’s also fairly stylised. On the one hand I’ve tried to capture something of the cloistered elegance of college life - the sometimes quite hermetic and sealed off nature of that life encapsulated within these amazing buildings - but I’ve also had to concentrate some of these effects in order to create the kind of atmosphere the particular parts of the story need. And I suppose that means the Oxford in the book is necessarily a distorted one. It’s a fictional creation.

WW: Was it important that the central character be a don? I mean it’s a story about infidelity - did you think of him, Gerald, as a don from the beginning?

FE: As far as I remember, yes. Although it’s a story about the emotional effects on the people who are close to Gerald, I also wanted to write about a rational man having an affair. I wanted to explore what happens when someone who has made a living out of trying to rationalise the world suddenly starts doing something which is not just irrational but something over which he has no control. Hence the title - one of its meanings has to with the idea of a river lock - a rational regulatory system if you like - breaking down and letting through a great rush of uncontrolled water. WW: Was that the real starting point of the novel? FE: Actually, the very first idea I had was the one behind the book’s figure of eight structure that begins with Gerald having an affair with Alex. The figure of eight being what happens in the second half of the book. But to talk about that would give away too many surprises.

WW: Yes, it would! - although on that point, it’s not giving too much away to say that there is a big shift of focus in the second half. The attention moves away from Gerald to his wife, Elizabeth. This is part of what you call the figure of eight process. Did you find it difficult as the writer to divide your sympathies between these two kind of competing characters?

FE: Up to a point, yes - and of course it’s not just a question of dividing my loyalties and those of the reader between Gerald and Elizabeth. The narrative is in the third person - it’s a story told by an anonymous omniscient narrator - and so you get inside the head of pretty much all the characters apart from one. It would have been easier to write the story from the point of view of just one character but I was determined to try and think it through from all the different vantage points. That way you don’t have heroes or villains. I hope that readers will have sympathy for different characters at different stages of the novel and that their opinion of the characters will change as the story develops - and are sometimes torn between which character to support, as it were. I think that this approach makes for something that’s more realistic; more like life.

WW: But you’re not leaving the reader completely on their own, are you? You do structure the novel in a way that suggests how it should be read.

FE: Yes, that’s true. It is ultimately a novel that has a moral. You know that one particular character has had his or her comeuppance. But on the other hand the ending is still open. I hope that the characters and situations are vivid enough for the reader to feel that there is a life for them after the printed action has stopped and that even the character who’s behaved badly will continue to develop. They haven’t been written off.

WW: Is this in-the-round way of writing something you prefer - would you consider writing in a different way?

FE: Absolutely. In fact my next novel will be written from just one point of view - a first person narrative. Having said that I do like writing in the third person and giving the reader access to the thoughts of each character. It seems to me to be a very democratic approach - and like all good democracies, it stimulates rather than dilutes debate. Writing in-the-round, as you call it, was very important for me when doing my first book - maybe, dare I say it, for reasons that were instinctive rather than wholly rational - but then each approach produces varied effects and it’s good to try new techniques. I’m looking forward to exploring a new kind of writing.