Phoebe Walker is a writer and development consultant for the arts and social justice sectors. She is a recipient of the Mairtín Crawford Poetry Award and a Northern Writers’ Award for poetry. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Animal Noises, was published by Green Bottle Press in 2020 and won an Eric Gregory Award. Her debut novel, Temper, will be released by Fairlight Books on April 13, 2023. Temper follows an unnamed narrator who has just moved to the Netherlands as she has awkward encounters with other people, works as a freelancer alone in her apartment, and develops a strange fascination with an odd woman named Colette.
The Indiependent spoke to Phoebe about Temper and her writing process.
The Indiependent: Tell me about how you first came up with the idea for Temper and what your writing process was like.
I started writing what would become Temper at a time when I’d just become fully self-employed, and was trying to build a new career as a freelancer. As I was adjusting to my new daily pattern, and trying to build consistent sources of work, I found that I initially had more time than usual on my hands. Writing became a way to fill this time, and something I’d hoped going freelance would give me more scope for, in any case. I’d been writing poetry fairly seriously for a number of years, but prose was much stranger territory.
I was drawn to the idea of writing about unsettling interactions, the attempt – and failure – to connect. This was inevitably sparked by things that had happened in my own life, particularly at a point when the way I lived and worked was undergoing a lot of change, and when many things felt unfamiliar and uncertain. As I spent more time on the same piece of writing, I saw that I could develop these descriptions beyond a vignette, into something with a more expansive narrative form.
I wrote pretty diligently (unusual for me!) every day for a period of several months, and at the end of that time, I had about 30,000 words of what would become Temper. I didn’t go back to this piece of work until about 18 months later, when I thought I might be able to make something of what I’d written, and began reshaping the narrative. Then, after Fairlight offered me a publishing contract, I went through a more intensive editing and restructuring process.
Yeah, I think your depiction of trying and failing to connect with other people was particularly poignant. You have this narrator who is seemingly doing all the right things to connect with other people (she meets up with her boyfriend’s coworkers, goes to a networking event, joins a book group, etc), and she’s interacting with them, talking with them about “pets, taxes, the distinct quarters of the city”, as she says, but she’s failing to make actual friends. Why is there such a big disconnect between her efforts and their results?
I think the disconnect is partly due to inhibition, and partly a sense that the people she meets aren’t ‘her’ people – although she has a hard time defining who those are! – and so there’s this layer of reserve that acts as a barrier, and as a buffer, to getting close to others. There’s a sense in which she’s performing the type of character she thinks these people will like, but ultimately that just results in discomfort on her part, and indifference, or bemusement, from the people with whom she’s trying to connect.
That makes a lot of sense. Then, of course, that’s Colette, whom the narrator meets at a choir and tries to become friends with, despite her initial wariness of Colette’s oddness and falsehood-telling tendencies. Is she drawn to Colette simply because she has no other friends in Amsterdam, or is there something else also at play?
I think there’s definitely something else at play. Initially yes, loneliness and boredom drive her towards this person who is at least talkative and (seemingly) willing to share, but then it becomes more of a fascination mixed almost with revulsion; she feels that Colette is bad news, but also there’s something about her that is compelling. That’s not so much to do with loneliness or especially wanting Colette’s friendship, but more an interest in Colette herself, and her kind of anti-charisma. There’s also a sense, as time goes on, that she’d like to catch Colette out in some of her lies, so there’s some diffident sleuthing going on.
The narrator is a freelancer who works from home, which, for many people, would seem like the dream job — working for yourself from the comfort of your own house. She has had a horrible experience at her last office job, and she acknowledges that what she’s doing now is a definite upgrade, yet there are still signs that this “dream” she has achieved is not completely satisfying her. Why do you think this is?
I think she finds it harder to get off the hamster wheel and out of the rat race (and a lot of rodent-y metaphors here!) than she had anticipated. Work actually is often very different from what we think it should look like, and that latter idea is pretty hard-baked into our society, in the ways we relate to each other, explain ourselves to each other, and assert and measure our own value. So I think the idea that you can immediately break free from those kinds of constructs at the moment of change – in the case of the narrator, the change from office workplace to freelance life – is an over-optimistic one, which explains some of those sensations of disorientation and dissatisfaction.
Yeah, I definitely agree with that last part. Now, we follow the narrator of Temper through four seasons, and get access to her inner thoughts and feelings, but we never learn her name. Why did you choose to anonymize her in this way?
I did go back and forth a bit with my editor about the narrator’s lack of name (and originally I left out the names of other characters as well, although I couldn’t quite get away with all of them!)
I think I made the choice not to name the narrator because of the interiority her story demanded. There’s a sense in which the narrator doesn’t need to name herself – or doesn’t feel that she does – because almost all of the narrative, or is filtered through, the narrator’s perception and memory. Her name is a signifier that other people, other observers, would use, and as those external perspectives are in some sense closed off in this narrative, to use her name herself would be (to her) something of an irrelevance.
I think you definitely made the right choice — the type of story you’re telling warrants an unnamed narrator. For my final proper question, I’m wondering where your head is at with Temper going out into the world in a little over two weeks. How are you feeling about it? What are you hoping readers will take away from your work?
It’s a very strange feeling. I’m excited to have Temper officially out in the world, but slightly anxious about what readers will make of it. Also, because a long time has elapsed between actually finishing the manuscript, and publication day, the thought of publication day also feels slightly remote – I need to remind myself of what I’ve written! And take some time to celebrate, of course.
I hope that the sensation of feeling unsettled, at a distance from things, will chime with readers, in one way or another, and I hope they enjoy the use of language. I’m going to be concentrating on writing poems again for a while, so I’m looking forward to getting into a smaller and (slightly) more contained writing headspace.
Now, let’s do a quick lightning round to finish up. What is a book released in 2023 that you have loved?
I’m cheating a bit here as I haven’t actually read it yet, but I am really looking forward to reading Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. I heard Eleanor speak about the book at an event in Manchester recently and it’s firmly on my must-read list.
What is your favorite book of all time?
It’s absolutely impossible to say which is my favourite book of all time. Books that I faithfully re-read include: Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel, Ulverton by Adam Thorpe, Angel Pavement by JB Priestley, Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton, Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. There’s no way I’m picking just one!
What is a book you recommend to readers who love Temper?
I would recommend My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley to anyone who enjoys reading Temper (and even if you don’t enjoy Temper, you should still read My Phantoms because it’s brilliant).
Words by Avantika Singh