George Carver, Novelist

I meet George Carver at his home in Islington, where he is living with his third wife — Giorgia, a lawyer — and their pet Black Russian Terrier, Mikhail. “I’ve been looking out for Kremlinite sympathies,” Carver says, with a smile, “But he seems more interested in occupying the sofa than Kharkiv.”

Carver and his wife live in a sprawling Victorian home, which contains so many books that it has to rival the British Library.

“I’ll finish reading them when I’m dead,” Carver sighs, “Then I should have the time.”

He pours me a glass of wine — “It is Friday” — and settles down on his sofa next to Mikhail. He is neatly dressed and still has most of his hair at 71.

I am here to talk to him about his new novel, Laura’s Hands — a family history that ranges from Moscow in the 1910s to Islington in the 2020s — but I can tell that we won’t be short of topics for conversation. Soon, Carver has referenced Trump — “an odious thug” — Jeremy Corbyn — “the worst kind of fanatic, because he thinks that he is good” — and social media — “a ludicrous cacophony”.

Carver did not so much burst as sidle into the British literary world in the late 1970s, with his macabre debut novel The Virgin. With the cutting humour of an Amis and the cerebral imagination of a McEwan, he made his name with the Thatcher-baiting satire Bombs and Things, which imagined financiers and entrepreneurs reconstructing an economy in the aftermath of nuclear war.

Kissing Fields, in 1995, was a touching historical drama with innovative elements of science fiction. It was in the noughties, though, that Carver really let his political interests influence his fiction. Rubble dared to chart a course between the warmongers of the Bush administration and the “frauds and useful idiots” of the Stop the War crowd. (“We had skin in the game,” he says, “As Salman’s friends.” These Eroding Cliffs, meanwhile, was a merciless satire on Brexit Britain (“I can’t even bring myself to order a new passport.”)

“I suppose we’re meant to become more moderate as we age,” Carver reflects, “Not me.”

Some, I say, have argued that Carver has got cranky. His occasional comments on the “jejune thought police” with their “idiot screens” have inspired occasional backlash on social media.

“What do I think about it?” He smirks, “Nothing. I don’t think about comments on social media because then I would have to read social media. If someone has an opinion worth considering, they can write a proper paragraph — or two!”

But don’t pretend that Carver is a man of the right. He is deeply concerned, he says, about the “populist mob”. “I struggle to live in a country where the face, never mind the voice, of Nigel Farage does not provoke disgust,” he sighs.

How does Carver expect his novel to be received?

“I’ll just be glad if anybody reads it,” he groans, “I’m not sure that anyone reads novels nowadays — including the people who review them.”

I take an awkward sip of the wine. I reviewed Carver’s last novel, the disappointing Hume’s Wig. But only people that we love can really disappoint us.

“I’m glad I got to live in a time where literature mattered,” he says, “Not as much as it had done before, perhaps, but it did. Money? Flaubert’s Parrot? Those weren’t just novels. They were events. And The Satanic Verses? What an event.”

What keeps him writing?

“What else can I do?” He shrugs, “I’m not about to become a software programmer or a drone pilot. And I’m certainly not going to take up golf or fishing. Anyway, I’m not sure I could stop. At this point writing is as natural as shitting.”

I laugh, anxiously, and take another sip of wine.

I’ve begun to feel bad — drowsy and confused. I feel like I have a hangover — but I don’t.

“Can I have a glass of water?” I ask.

My speech is slurred.

I feel nauseous, and simultaneously hot and cold. Suddenly, the darkness reaches out and swallows me.

Picture credit: Ginny, via Wikimedia, published in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

I wake, step by step — climbing back up into consciousness. It takes a few moments before I can appreciate the reality of my circumstances. I am bound to a chair in what feels not so much like a basement as a dungeon — dark, cold and empty except for an ominous pile of boxes.

There is a cough.

“Welcome back.”

George Carver is leaning against the boxes. He has taken his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves.

“Whaadafuuu—”

I realise that some sort of gag has been tied between my lips.

“I think you’ve done enough speaking,” Carver says, before glancing down at my wrists, which have been tied to the chair, “And enough writing.”

“Lmmeeeouuuu!”

“‘Carver writes for the dead, against the living,’” Carver says, reading from an old edition of The New Statesman, “‘But even the dead might find his sentences on the lifeless side.’ I suppose you think that’s funny?”

It is my review of his novel.

“Here we are, living in an age where no one reads books unless they write them,” Carver fumes, “And this is the sort of sneering, insolent attitude you bring to literature. The fucking dead would be more respectful.”

“Ahmshorrybu—”

“I know, I know. I sound insecure. We shouldn’t respond to critics. But it’s not about my book. It’s not about me. It’s about reading in general.”

I can feel blood running down my fingers as I try and tear my hands out of the wires that have been tied around them.

“Here we are, living in an age where every fucking child is surgically attached to distraction machines, and literary critics are treating books as if they are on trial. What are you doing?”

I’m not sure that it’s me who should be justifying myself. But thoughts of a wry comeback — as futile as it would be — shrivel up and die when Carver takes a utility knife out of his pocket.

“WHAANnonono!”

He runs the blade across my throat, with perverse gentleness, before whipping around and driving it into a box. It slices through the cardboard.

“Giorgia wants me to get rid of some of my books. My books. Even my books. Well, I could hardly argue. I’m not about to get a fourth wife, after all. But I don’t think I can do it. I don’t want to do it.”

He turns around.

“You’re going to get a lesson now. A real lesson.”

There is a book in his hands. A big book. A very big book.

“For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle—”