Sex is something that’s very interesting because for one person it can be the most casual thing imaginable ... while for another person it can be a cataclysmic, life-changing experience.
Author B.P. Walter on his thriller A Version of the Truth
A Version of the Truth
B.P. Walter HarperCollins
LONDON Here’s the big question. Is B.P. Walter’s new novel totally preoccupied with sex?
Numerous advance readers of A Version of the Truth seem to think so. Check out various websites and you’ll find them aflame with comments. One early reader finds it “full of hypocritical, elitist characters who represent the most vile and narcissistic excuses for mankind that it’s possible to come across.”
That comment is mild compared to the one that contends that everyone in the story is “disgusting scum, including the women” and suggests that only disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein would love a novel featuring “slut shaming ” along with “hateful male characters” and even gay bashing.
On the other hand, the novel has received ringing endorsements from other reviewers who hail it as an outstanding thriller. “It needs to be said that the book covers gang rape, gay sex and other subjects,” one reviewer conceded, while also emphasizing that such incidents are relevant to the story and “not just thrown in for shock value.”
So what does the book’s 26-yearold author think about the charge that it’s preoccupied with sex?
“I would correct that statement slightly,” Walter says. “I think it’s totally preoccupied with people’s perceptions of sex.”
Furthermore, he’s puzzled by the comparisons with a sado-masochistic fantasy like Fifty Shades of Grey.
“I don’t really think it is in that category,” he says. Then he adds with a laugh: “But it might be good company to be in, considering how many people loved Fifty Shades of Grey! But I think this is a very different kind of novel. It’s a psychological thriller, whereas Fifty Shades is first of all a romance.”
What is certain is that his novel is about the dirty little secrets that can ruin lives, offering cunning new variations on that most durable of themes — the way events of the past can return to haunt the present.
The story proceeds along two time planes. There’s Oxford University in 1990 and a working-class student named Holly who’s clearly out of her depth when she strikes up a friendship with a manipulative crowd of older students from a higher social level and finds herself the victim of some vicious behaviour.
But we’re in the present when the reader first meets Julianne, happily married, preparing dinner. It seems an idyllic family unit until Julianne’s son discovers something very strange on his iPad. It’s a discovery that will turn her life into a nightmare.
The two narrative lines will converge and secrets that have festered for a quarter of a century will be laid bare. But is the reader learning what really happened? The question tantalizes.
“The book kind of arrived in my mind fully formed,” Walter says. “I wanted to deal with privilege and memory. Memory is something that really interests me — how it can be so subjective and so altered. These themes sort of crystallized into the story.”
Despite some shocking plot twists, he sees this as a characterdriven novel.
“Even though an air of tragedy hangs over Holly, she is not a tragic figure. I do feel she has this sense of agency at the end … she becomes a figure that a lot of hope is attached to.”
Then there is Julianne, seemingly secure on her cocoon of affluence. “She’s devoted her whole life to her wonderful family and all of a sudden her whole world turns upside down.”
Other vividly realized characters permeate the novel, with the most sinister being Ernest, once a charismatic student, now a rising Tory politician some readers may see as the epitome of evil.
Does Ernest have any redemptive qualities? “I don’t really think so,” Walter says, after a moment of reflection.
Although stressing that the novel is a psychological thriller, he also sees it as an examination of contemporary moral conduct.
“I’m dealing with characters who are careless about other people’s lives, who play games with those lives and don’t really care about the consequences.”
It was with some trepidation that Walter, a male, chose to filter his story largely through the prisms of two females, Holly and Julianne.
“They were alive in my head, these two women,” he says. But, he worried, was he really getting into their minds? “I wrote these voices as honestly as possible to make them real human beings.” Yet he constantly sought the opinions of others. “A lot of my most trusted readers and close friends are female, so every time I gave them a draft to read, I would ask—does it ring true?”
As for the novel’s controversial sexual content, Walter confidently states his case.
“Sex is something that’s very interesting because for one person it can be the most casual thing imaginable, as casual as going out for a drink with a friend, while for another person it can be a cataclysmic, life-changing experience. It may seem to be the same kind of event but the perceptions can be completely different. So in writing this, I was interested in the ways in which people perceive and experience sex.”
And what about B.P. Walter himself ? Well the “B” stands for Barnaby, but it could also stand for bibliophile. He’s an avid collector of books, and when he recently moved, he made sure there was space in his new digs for his evergrowing library.
In fact, books consume his life from dawn to dusk thanks to his day job as social media co-ordinator for Waterstones, Britain’s largest bookstore chain and the nights when he’s toiling away on a new novel.
Furthermore, despite the new era of sexual candour reflected in A Version of the Truth, he can be surprisingly old-fashioned at times.
“I really like Agatha Christie,” he confesses with a sheepish grin.