Jo Caruana meets up with Malta-based Glaswegian author Lizzie Eldridge, who recently returned to her hometown for a public reading of her book Vandalism.
It must be a very proud moment for any author when they see their book pop up on shop shelves.
What must be even more special is watching it appear (and hopefully disappear from!) the shelves of a big city bookshop – especially when that big city is one you used to call home.
That’s exactly what happened recently for Malta-based author Lizzie Eldridge, whose book Vandalism has made it to pride of place in the Byres Road branch of Waterstones, in her hometown of Glasgow.
“Shortly after Vandalism was published, I went to Glasgow for Christmas and wandered into that branch of Waterstones with a copy of Vandalism in hand,” Lizzie explains. “I expected nothing, but the manager, Xavier Jones-Barlow, expressed an interest from the start.”
As a result of that initial and rather random encounter, Eldridge packed 10 copies of the novel into her suitcase and made her first delivery to Waterstones in May 2016. She has delivered more on other visits since.
“In spite of this rather makeshift mode of business transaction, Vandalism soon found its home in Waterstones, sitting alongside Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, Alasdair Gray’s seminal Scottish novel, Lanark, and Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, a book which has a very specific place in my own personal history,” Eldridge continues. “When I first saw this display, I did wonder if I was in some heightened state of illusion and, if not, what the hell I’d ever done to deserve this.”
Eldridge’s journey with Vandalism started years ago, during one of the most difficult periods in her life. It was 1997 and her long-term relationship with the father of her child was breaking up in an extremely messy and traumatic way. Her mum was also suffering from breast cancer and she died in September that same year.
“Although the novel isn’t autobiographical, it clearly draws on aspects of my own experience, but the fictional framework and the physical activity of writing enabled some kind of structure to take shape while the actual world around me was, quite literally, falling apart,” she explains.
The book tells the story of a young woman, Moira, whose best friend, Connie, is dying of breast cancer when Ewan, a man from her past, reappears in her life. The narrative moves between the past and the present, and Moira’s love affair contrasts sharply with the rapid deterioration in Connie’s health.
“Set in Glasgow, it’s a specific story that takes place in a particular location,” the author says. “But the responses I’ve had from readers – and readers from various different countries – suggest that it describes experiences, ideas, and basically a story that people can relate to. I think this is because Vandalism deals with fundamental, maybe universal, aspects of human existence – love, death, betrayal – and the brutal contradictions involved in all of this.”
Vandalism was given pride of place, sitting alongside Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, Alasdair Gray’s seminal Scottish novel, Lanark, and Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
It was at the beginning of 2014 that Eldridge sent the opening chapters of Vandalism to Chris Gruppetta at Merlin Publishers. He quickly asked for the complete manuscript and, not long after, announced that he wanted to publish it.
Lizzie smiles, “I was, to put it mildly, a bit surprised: a Maltese publisher wanted to publish a book set in the cold, grey, rainy streets of Glasgow, and a story which was, to my mind, distinctively Scottish. Despite this, Vandalism appeared in bookshops across Malta in October 2015, and that, in itself, was nothing short of immense.”
An additional and unanticipated honour occurred last year when Vandalism was shortlisted in the Best Novel category by the National Book Council (Malta). “To say this was more than I could ever have dreamed of is, despite the cliché, the only way I can describe it. To have this Scottish novel, which had been such an integral part of my life, acknowledged in Malta, and so publicly, was an incredible thing, and even the notion of gratitude doesn’t capture exactly what I feel,” she continues.
And the latest milestone in the Vandalism journey came when she was invited to host an author’s evening at Waterstones in June. Byres Road is the main street and reference point in the West End of Glasgow where Eldridge grew up, and it’s a central location in Vandalism. “The prospect of reading from my work in this particular place had a real sense of the magical about it and I can’t overstate this. Coupled with this was an overwhelming sense of homecoming at a personal, professional and deeply psychological level.”
So in June, she was standing in front of one of the leading booksellers in the UK staring at the copies of Vandalism, which winked back at her from the window of Waterstones Byres Road, a street she’d stomped down a million times in both reality and memory. “Here I was, with a novel that had followed me through the various different pathways of my life, a novel set in Glasgow but picked up in Malta, the country where I’ve always felt so very much at home. Here I was, in both Glasgow and Malta, and simultaneously, with a novel that had somehow become such an important bridge between the two.”
And the journey is now set to continue. More copies of the book have been ordered, and it is hopefully going to be placed in other branches of Waterstones too. Meanwhile, Lizzie has also recently been selected to work on a year-long project organised by More or Less Theatre in collaboration with the Valletta 2018 Foundation and Arts Council Malta that combines her writing and theatrical skills, and she sees this as a very timely opportunity to work with both. “I will be writing and developing a one-act play that will be translated into Maltese and become a touring theatre production performed in non-conventional theatre spaces across Malta.
“Not only does this tie in with my own political ideologies but, as part of the process, I’ve been assigned a mentor who’ll work alongside me as I develop the script,” she says.
“And another coincidence? My mentor is a mathematician and stand-up comedian who just so happens to come from Spain... the fact that Duende is so closely linked to Spain simply brings everything full circle!” she smiles.