Author Allan Radcliffe on the writing of his cinematic second novel, Blurred Faces, ‘a tale of two souls attempting to find themselves’.
An enduring cliché in the music industry is the notion of the difficult second album. I wouldn’t say that writing my second novel, Blurred Faces, was any more labour-intensive than writing my debut, The Old Haunts (all writing is hard work, in my view), but it certainly posed a different set of challenges.
Chief among these was the question of where to start. Having taken time away from my writing desk (the kitchen table) to promote The Old Haunts, there were now so many ideas swimming around in my head, clamouring for attention, that the prospect of marshalling them into some kind of coherent whole was leaving me paralysed. I knew I wanted to write a novel set in Edinburgh. I was interested in following the fortunes of two gay men who had grown up in the 1980s, but whose lives had developed in different ways. I was interested in themes of belonging, homecoming, and exile. I wanted to explore intimacy in gay male relationships. In outline, this looks like a straightforward enough set of creative aspirations, but in practice it took me a long time to find the right shape for these ideas.
Pen to Paper
This tortuous attempt to de-clutter my brain before putting pen to paper stood in contrast to the clarity I felt when I began writing The Old Haunts. I first came up with the idea for the book when I found a collection of fairy tales in my parents’ house, with a dedication from my mum and dad, wishing me love on my fifth birthday. Reading through these stories, with their hair-raising illustrations, I was reminded of that mix of safety and fear that accompanies childhood bedtimes. I was struck by how many classic fairy tales were about children navigating an adult world, whether city or forest, without their parents. I began to sketch out a present-day story about a queer man, negotiating life following the sudden death of both his parents. The tale would be partly set in an isolated forest, and there would be frequent reminders of his past, coming of age at the time of Section 28 (which banned discussion of homosexuality in schools), as well as encounters with strange characters.
The image I held in my head as I wrote the novel during the lockdown period of 2020 (in between stressful rounds of home-educating my then seven-year-old son) was of two figures holding hands in the middle of a forest, with the trees leaning in towards them. When I was shown the cover for the first edition of The Old Haunts, I was astonished at how closely Sam Kalda’s illustration matched my own visual sense of the story, so that there was a clear through-line from conception to realisation.
Blurred Faces: Theatrical Monologues
Fast-forward to 2023, and I only gained purchase on the writing of Blurred Faces, when I decided to structure the novel as a series of alternating, and sometimes conflicting, monologues. It’s a device that recurs in fiction, but I was mainly inspired by theatrical monologues, of which, it has to be said, there is a rich tradition in Irish writing, as witness plays such as Brian Friel’s Faith Healer and Conor McPherson’s Port Authority, in which nuances of language and contrasting memories are used to raise questions about the reliability of the storyteller. In my story of two men from similar backgrounds, but with different recollections of their shared past, I was eager that readers should be kept on their toes, questioning the integrity of the narration.
Blurred Faces opens with a charged encounter between two men in their forties, Jordan and Davie, who have hooked up on a dating app. Their one-afternoon stand unfolds with all the awkwardness and anonymity you would expect, except that, in the afterglow, Davie recognises Jordan as someone he was at school with. In fact, as he discloses to the reader, he was a part of the gang than relentlessly bullied Jordan. Jordan, meanwhile, doesn’t remember Davie. In between running from the bullies, his youth was spent negotiating the heartache wrought by his alcoholic father, which eventually led to him abandoning Scotland. Davie remained in Edinburgh and has recently endured a painful breakup from the lover he spent most of his adult life with. Following their internet date, the pair goes their separate ways, immersing us in their contrasting lives and memories. But, while Jordan has no intention of remaining in Scotland, and Davie is terrified that Jordan will remember what he did to him as a child, they are repeatedly, tentatively drawn together.
Structural Symmetry
There is a symmetry to the structure of Blurred Faces, as there was to The Old Haunts, which moved back and forth in time between the framing narrative and Jamie’s upbringing. Having chosen to tell this new story in the form of interior monologues, the biggest challenge was in honing the different voices so that both protagonists would feel alive to the reader. This required a lot of close-reading and multiple rounds of editing, which I remembered well from the experience of polishing The Old Haunts. The hesitancy I felt before embarking on the writing of this second novel was doubtless due to a sense of anxiety at getting the text just right, and a remembrance of the amount of effort required to create something worthwhile. In that sense, the process of writing fiction is very different from my day job as a journalist, where deadlines loom constantly, and there is never any time for procrastination.
With Blurred Faces about to hit bookshops, I’m looking forward to the next stage of the publishing process: getting to meet readers and chatting about aspects of my writing life. No doubt it will be a while before I get back to the kitchen table, even if I already have an idea for a third novel, which, unlike its older siblings, will not be set in Scotland, doesn’t feature a gay male protagonist, and is narrated in the third person. So, a departure, and a new series of welcome challenges. Watch this space.
(c) Allan Radcliffe
About Blurred Faces:
‘I mean, it’s nothing really. An old face from the past.’
When two men meet on a dating app, it’s supposed to be a casual encounter between strangers. Jordan is only back in Edinburgh to visit his complicated family, and Davie is reeling from a painful breakup.
Yet Davie recognises Jordan as someone he knew long ago, when they were both closeted teenagers at the same school. Back then, Jordan was relentlessly bullied and Davie was one of the bullies. But Jordan doesn’t remember him at all.
Against the backdrop of a city steeped in memories, Davie and Jordan find themselves drawn together again and again. A fragile intimacy blossoms between them, but can anyone ever be free of their past?
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