Author David Looby tells us of the inspiration behind his novel, A Billion Sharp Pieces . . .
I began writing A Billion Sharp Pieces with a very simple premise: exploring male youth and toxic relationships. The characters I used to explore this couldn’t have been more different: Todd McCarthy and Jack Salback have a friendship built on obsession which brings out the worst in both.
We see the characters’ lives run in parallel through a series of flashbacks to their school, home and college lives in University College Cork. A Billion Sharp Pieces is a bildungsroman in that it explores Todd and Jack’s formative years. It’s also psychosexual in this respect as we see Todd and Jack’s motivations. I wrote the novella in a very descriptive way, focusing on physicality and the senses a lot to immerse the reader in the story with an ambition to make them ‘disappear’ into the characters in what is a fast paced, propulsive plot.
Drawing from my own youth
When I started the novel, I reflected on my own youth: the sense of expectation, the disappointments and the connections made – both surface and meaningful – and felt I could add to the canon of literature covering this period but in a contemporary, Irish way. I had read books which brilliantly described the lives of young teenage boys like The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman and Shuggie, but I hadn’t read one which interposed toxic masculinity.
In Todd I created a vulnerable, lost character who needs the light of a successful, charismatic Jack Salback to come out of himself. The novel shows the conflict that emerges in this relationship which plays out through the haze of alcohol and drugs.
We see both characters through the warped lens of their relationship. The book explores how teenagers,
in particular, struggle to find their identity and often lose themselves in trying to emulate people they look up to; people who seem to have a foothold on the social ladder and seem to be on an upward trajectory because they have a girlfriend or are popular.
Jack is someone who is privileged and dominant. He is cruel to those closest to him, so the book explores Todd’s mental health and his downward spiral; the challenges he faces as he finds himself in the undertow of Jack’s narcissistic behaviour. The novel explores the psychological rupture that occurs for many young men who aren’t able to express themselves and who bottle up their emotions, and who consequently end up in situations they cannot reconcile themselves with.
Searching for identity
The search for identity sees the character in their late twenties, where we meet them in the first chapter on a stunning beach in San Sebastián. All the darkness of their youth seems far away, but as they meet by chance in this city, this long dark shadow comes to engulf them, upending both their worlds.
A Billion Sharp Pieces explores the painful birth of identity, like a snake shedding its skin by pushing and rubbing against rocks and dirt and earth, to be reborn. Set in one of Europe’s most beautiful cities, the novella juxtaposes beauty and horror. The shifting mirror of memory and the past is reflected through Todd and Jack as they cross paths again later in life. In Jack we meet someone who comes from a wealthy background and yet is always out of control as he can never feel fulfilled. He is the archetypal successful young man: a talented athlete, who has everything going for him, but he is in no way empathetic towards others. To fill a void within, he relies on getting pleasure from the suffering of others, moving through life like a wrecking ball, with no conscience.
A Billion Sharp Pieces: an ending
I didn’t have an ending in mind when I started A Billion Sharp Pieces. The story was more instinctual as I let the characters dictate the plot. The idea was to see where the characters took me.
Todd is also morally ambiguous, and he was interesting to write as his future hangs in the balance throughout the book. Similarly, Jack, even though he had every advantage a young Irishman could wish for, was also somebody who you never know how his life would turn out. We all know a Jack and we all know a Todd.
In Jack, I was reminded of Bram Stoker’s inspiration for Dracula, which came via a Victorian actor who enthralled by the force of his personality, exerting a powerful hold on the imagination of the budding Irish author. To create this larger-than-life character, I exaggerated examples of this kind of person I had met over the years to imbue Jack with these psychological traits, showing how for this kind of person to survive, others, like Todd, have to suffer.
In Todd, I wanted to explore someone who is pushed to their emotional limits by another and to encapsulate the battle between darkness and light in the context of interpersonal relationships.
(c) David Looby
About A Billion Sharp Pieces:
On a sun-drenched beach in northern Spain, Todd McCarthy sees an old college friend – a friend with whom he shares a troubled past. The life he has forged for himself – with his partner Jade – is suddenly upended as their paths cross once more.
A Billion Sharp Pieces asks how far someone can be pushed before they crack and what does it take for Todd to realise there are only two choices: living or dying.
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