Books interviewFictionInterviewRebecca Watson: ‘This novel was never an act of catharsis’
Anthony CumminsThe Goldsmiths prize-shortlisted author of little scratch on being mistaken for the book’s protagonist, conveying the ‘immediate present-tense experience’, and why her next novel is even more ambitious
Rebecca Watson’s first novel, little scratch, now published in paperback, is narrated over the course of a single day by an unnamed office junior living in the wake of a sexual assault. The New Yorker called it an “extraordinary debut [that] conveys the shapes and the rhythms of thought” by “arranging text in unconventional ways”. Shortlisted for last year’s Goldsmiths prize, it was recently staged in a production directed by Katie Mitchell. Watson, 26, grew up in the South Downs and spoke to me from London, where she works part-time as an assistant editor on the arts desk of the Financial Times.
What led you to the book’s unusual form?
It came from a very clear moment. A colleague walked past me and asked what I’d been reading recently. And for 10 seconds I couldn’t come up with an answer, then I did, and he left. I was just really struck by that encounter, which was nothing, but for a moment had stakes that were kind of far too high. It made me very aware of the layers and channels of present tense. I remember saying to myself, how would you write it? And I just instantly wrote that moment on a [notebook] page to show the way in which things [and thoughts] happen simultaneously. It was only a few hundred words, but in it was the answer to how to present immediate present-tense experience.
What did it look like written down?
It was very much that as you went down the page you passed through time, and that the page also really seemed like the mind: the left- and right-hand side had different feelings to them and there were different kinds of tonal spaces across the page. It flipped a switch: I had the insinuation of the book’s formal system.
The book explores the aftermath of rape, yet a recurring word is “joy”.
It’s a reaction against the often really messy way we talk about rape and sex. I wanted my protagonist to be able to differentiate them; separating the two is part of her ambition right across the day [over which the book unfolds]. I didn’t want rape to corrupt her sex life or sense of desire. It was an empowering position for her to take, and for me to take, to ensure that joy and desire remain, even though there’s not necessarily any resolution in the novel.
Did you feel obliged to point out in the acknowledgments that the protagonist is fictional?
Some people do think it’s me; it was inevitable. It’s about rape, and I have said before [in a 2019 piece in the TLS] that I was raped, but the narrator’s experience is very different to mine; there’s multiple ways that someone can be assaulted, and multiple ways someone can react. I sometimes regret that piece, only because it acts as a springboard in interviews. It always comes up, and I really don’t believe there’s a correlation between it and little scratch, but people try to map the piece onto the novel and interpret it as confessional. This novel was never an act of catharsis. It was a joyful act of creation.
Do readers ever get in touch about the book?
I’ve had some really moving responses from readers who have experienced sexual assault or rape, thanking me for representing how they feel or what they went through, or a process that they found difficult to verbalise or hadn’t seen written before. I’ve also had responses from male readers saying it made them think about their own past behaviour. Both sides of that are pretty powerful and it makes me feel very proud, but it’s a strange thing to get those reactions.
What was it like working with Katie Mitchell?
Really cool. She’s a hero [of mine] and it was the easiest decision ever to say: “Yes, please take it and put it on.” She bought the novel off the back of the Guardian review; she tells me, or at least claims, that she knew it was obviously her [kind of] theatre from about the first page, and that she read it almost like a score. I went to see the show about five times across six weeks. It was amazing.
What are you working on now?
I’m on my fourth draft of my second novel. I was so instinctively in the little scratch voice that there was a lot of necessary time spent learning how to detach myself from it. I’m aware [that] everyone’s perception of me as a writer is actually of a book, rather than of me. This next thing is actually more ambitious: it’s across five days, flipping between present and past tense, which for me is something new. It’s [also] formally experimental and looks strange on the page. It’s about a woman who learns about the death of her brother, who she hasn’t seen for nearly a decade.
What have you been reading recently?
I read Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan over Christmas. It’s really moving. The way he captures the romance of friendship is quite a rare thing. It’s also a beautiful celebration of spontaneous life, which feels really brutal to read during a pandemic.
Did you always want to be a writer?
I’ve always had that propulsion [to create things in words]. I’ve always been interested in voice, rather than narrative necessarily, and I was always writing poetry, or passages, from since I was a teenager. I was an early reader and I would max out my library card every week and just read and read and read. As long as it was fiction, I wasn’t fussed what my finger landed on. I ended up reading Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca when I was a kid just because I saw my name on the shelf. I was reading The Princess Diaries alongside The Thorn Birds; it was a pretty improvised selection process. I just had to keep reading anything I could pick up; it didn’t really matter what: it was like I’d discover some kind of secret that I might lose at any moment.
little scratch is published in paperback by Faber (£8.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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