Maggie O’Farrell: ‘Having a stammer was instrumental in making me a writer’
When I was a child, I lived in a town that had a Carnegie library, an imposing stone building with a spiral staircase and very idiosyncratic smell of polish and print. It had parquet flooring against which my T-bar shoes made a satisfying squelch with each footstep. I visited it once a week to take out my allotted three books.
I spent my primary-school years in south Wales. Welsh education was canted towards art and culture (I hope it still is). We were expected to sing in unison every morning; recite poetry by heart in both languages; write stories and verse; play instruments; listen to Welsh myths; and to take part in yearly Eisteddfods. We did maths and science, of course, but it was the music and stories that left a lasting impression.
Before I could read, I remember being transported by Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Max’s rebellious behaviour, the transmogrification of his bedroom walls, the gleeful rumpus, the magic of his supper still being hot when he returns. It was my introduction to slipping into a parallel world.
Having a stammer has been the single most defining experience of my life. It’s a crippling and agonising affliction, especially if you happen to be a teenager, but I’m certain it was instrumental in making me a writer. Watching words flow from your pen, unchecked, feels like a magic trick to someone who can’t rely on their verbal fluency.
You don’t choose the books, the books choose you. The best novel you can write at any given moment will be the one that’s calling your name the loudest or tugging most insistently at your sleeve.
I lived in a Scottish seaside town when I was a teenager but, to my mind, I belonged in Paris’s Left Bank in the 1920s, or in 1970s New York. I was in the wrong place and the wrong time, which sums up your teens. If I could go back and visit that 16-year-old, I’d say, “Don’t worry, it gets better. And tone down the eyeliner.”
The most rebellious thing I’ve ever done is telling my mum I was going to a friend’s house and instead catching the train to Manchester to go to the Haçienda. In my defence, it was 1989 and the Stone Roses were playing. Obviously I had to go.
It was a shock arriving in Cambridge University from a Scottish state school, something I perhaps naively hadn’t anticipated. It seemed enormous, the workload overwhelming. I was surrounded by people talking about gap years and tutors who assumed you had a working relationship with ancient Greek. A chip on your shoulder, however, is detrimental only to the wearer, so I realised fast I had to shake it off.
It’s always the gaps in stories that interest me, the missing elements. I’m drawn not to the main characters in history, but the people who inhabit the shadows, the ones you can catch only a glimpse of from the corner of your eye.
I have a quote on my pinboard, which I try to use as a guide to being a mother, and a good creed to live by. It’s by Vita Sackville-West: “They [Algerian irises] are the most obliging planters, even if maltreated, but a little extra kindness and understanding will bring forth an even better response. As is true of most of us, whether plants or humans.”
When the Stammer Came To Stay by Maggie O’Farrell (Walker Books, £14.99) is published on 21 November. Order it now for £13.49 at guardianbookshop.com
