"A journalist came today from the local newspaper (I'd asked, the publicity girl in London to arrange this. A bit of regional press never hurts; they like to feel ones taking the trouble to talk to them.) I took her out on to the lawn and we sat opposite one another on deck chairs...She was a mousy little mouse who didn't have a tape recorder. When she wrote on the pad, with her end chewed pencil I could see and upside down read her writing: no short hand either. She was so young and girly she still put circles above her i`s. I felt as if I was talking to the school magazine. But give her her due - she'd read all my books"
Coming across the above extract in "Finding Myself" (Toby Litt's 6th novel) a couple of days after interviewing him, I couldn't help but cringe a little. Though a fictional account written from the perspective of a fictional author ("Victoria About" not Toby Litt) - it was nonetheless an accurate description of our meeting. I hadn't bought a tape recorder, didn't know short hand and in addition to the insult of my end chewed pencil, had also forgotten my notepad...
Victoria About, the "Finding Myself" author of Litt's imagination would have been, in fact was, scathing. But had Toby Litt, dressed causally and seemingly a model of understanding, actually been thinking the same? Fiction is all about imagination. In "Finding Myself" Litt imagined he was About - About wasn't actually him. Except for this: Is it actually possible to be completely other than yourself? Whether Victoria had been made from a little bit of Toby...or Toby had absorbed a little bit of Victoria, it is difficult to believe that finding himself in virtually the same circumstance as her, he would not experience more than a little de ja vu and perhaps start to think some of the same things.
So, besides perhaps thinking his latest interviewer a little crass, what did Toby Litt think about his own authorial voice? I began by asking him:
"I am not a writer that has a voice. Martin Amis has a very strong, instantly recognisable voice, but is embarrassingly bad if he has to do someone else. My books are unrecognisable from one another."
This is certainly true. In "Finding Myself", he is the irreverent female author of above. In "deadkidsongs" (book number 4) he is a homicidal 11 year old capable of committing unspeakable evils. This is a writer who can throw his voice. However, with each character and each book so radically different from the last, how should we think about what he is trying to do?
"What I do is mainly about identity: how people put themselves together- not a simple thing of inner essence but that we're made up of things around us and these are self conscious. The things we're imititating aren't simple things like family as they used to be, they are Reality T.V and Eminem. In Adventures in Capitalism (my first book) someone who wins the lottery decides to believe every advert and follow them to the letter and so loses themselves. " 
If this is the consequence of living outside of yourself why would anyone do it? I think about the 21st century brands, whose huge marketing budgets are dedicated to making us feel naked without them: Beckham in Nike, Madonna in Gap. Buy this and be somebody... without it you are nothing. In "Adventures in Capitalism" Litt was stepping outside of himself and into his lottery winning character to help us see what goes on commercially and perhaps take a step back from it ourselves.
Often referred to as an author that takes risks, in Ghost Story: Litt's latest novel, you get the feeling that he has risked most. Of all his other work he denies reality saying: "I don't mind people making the mistake of thinking things are true, but that wasn't my intention: I was posing a `what if'.
Tragically, in Ghost Story there is a departure from this as "what if" becomes "what was". The main body of the book is the fictional story of Paddy and Agatha: the bereavement they suffer and the devastating impact it has on their relationship. The preface of the book is the true story of Toby and Leigh: The author and his girlfriend - and the consecutive deaths of their three unborn babies. Reading this the reality is crushing.
This time there are no games of what is and isn't. There are no horrifically or comically exaggerated circumstances. There is the truth of miscarriage, the pain of the author describing it and perhaps the catharsis of writing: of healing, reconciliation and reaching out.
As this book comes out in hardback the author and his partner are again expecting. This time things look different with only a few more months to go, so perhaps the ghosts of the past can finally be put to rest. It spoils nothing to say that the book ends by asking us to hold Agatha and Paddy in our minds. We will of course, as we also will their real life shadows.
www.tobylitt.com
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