This puts into motion a chain of events which results in her meeting Gerry, an older man who she sees both as a kindred spirit and a possible escape route. Both have experienced loss recently – Laurie’s mother has recently died, whilst Gerry served in the army, coming into contact with death on a huge scale in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Their jobs are a further source of angst. Laurie attempts to maintain some control and humanity at work; rebelling against the machine-driven nature of her interactions, she ‘experienced a sort of sympathy Tourette’s’, and ‘started giving every fifth customer a bill credit’. Gerry is a hospital radio DJ, but his persona is far from the bubbly persona you might expect. For him the job is ‘too heavy… all operations, bad news, dark nights of the soul. I can’t stop thinking how many people have died listening to one of my shows.’
Laurie aspires to a fresh start; she attempts to find her own space, leaving her job for a cleaning shift in the hospital where Gerry also works nights, and inching further and further away from Ed. Visiting Gerry’s flat, she is impressed by his lack of materialism, which she talks up into a ‘rolling stone’ philosophy – maybe she can muster the strength to leave her domestic situation behind completely and start again. However, their relationship is hampered by Laurie’s indecision and Gerry’s inability or unwillingness to discuss his past. Matters are bought to a head by a chance encounter in the hospital canteen. They come into contact with a young man who tells a story of a car crash, and hints at abuse at home. Gerry seizes on this as a chance of redemption, and comes up with an escape plan for the three of them; Laurie comes along for the ride, seeing it as a chance to discover the real Gerry, the man of action who still lurks within. Finding themselves holed up in an isolated cottage, the three characters are forced to confront the issues that have been holding them back, in a process of catharsis and ever-shifting alliances.
Anywhere’s Better Than Here is an understated literary depiction of depression and the search for identity, the sort of thing that used to make up a lot of Virago’s list. Venditozzi injects enough black humour into the narrative to lift the tone, particularly in her description of Gerry and the dark side of hospital radio. She empathises strongly with her characters, and brings the strands of plot together in a tight denouement without appearing to force matters. I spoke to Ms Venditozzi to find out more about her writing career, and the ideas behind Anywhere’s Better Than Here.
One of the big themes of the novel is feeling trapped, and searching for an escape route - does this reflect your mindset when you started to write Anywhere's Better Than Here?
I think most people can identify with a point in life where you think, what am I doing? Laurie represents the fact that while women have many choices and options available to them now, we often still make the same mistakes that our mothers and grandmothers might have made. But I think it’s true for everyone that even when your life is essentially how you want it, everybody has times where they think, what if?
Your characters all have complicated relationships with their mothers, whilst father figures are largely absent - was that lack of parental influence something you thought about a lot as you developed the characters?
That’s an interesting question as it’s one of those things that you write without realising until it’s quite entrenched in the characters and storyline. I’m very interested in grief and how people process (or ignore) it and I knew that I wanted Laurie to have lost someone close to her so I could explore that. Also, the idea of having these different mothers interacting so differently with their sons was really compelling to me. I think the lack of male influence on Laurie and Ed might explain their lack of maturity very slightly and might also explain Laurie’s interest in Gerry as a sort of surrogate parent. As creepy as that sounds…
How did you come to get your first novel published? Had you written much before?
I finished the novel while I was doing my MLitt in Creative Writing at Dundee University and I had invaluable support there from Kirsty Gunn. Towards the end of the course, I sent the manuscript out a few times and thankfully, Sandstone offered to publish it. I had written quite a lot in the few years preceding that and have actually got another novel that I’ve finished but that needs editing - I put that one to one side when I started the MLitt. At some point I’ll go back to it!
Which current authors do you most enjoy reading?
I’m a big fan of American and Canadian writers – particularly Margaret Atwood (in fact Anywhere’s Better Than Here is my sort-of homage to Atwood’s The Edible Woman), Alice Munro, Barbara Gowdy, Lorrie Moore, J Robert Lennon, Mary Robison, Karen Russell, A.M. Holmes, Wells Tower, Junot Diaz and Denis Johnson. In terms of British writers I like Pat Barker, Agnes Owens (who is criminally under-read), Janice Galloway, Tessa Hadley, Rachel Cusk and Kirsty Gunn. Although, like all mad keen readers, that list grows all the time.
What are you working on next?
I’m working on a collection of short stories which I’m adding to now and then but I’m also working on another novel (tentatively entitled Vitals) which is about a neurotic and lonely young mother who meets a teenage girl who may or may not be psychic. I’ll finish the first draft of that in the summer.
Do you have a routine for writing?
I write far too infrequently and once my youngest child (I have three of them) starts school in August, I’ll be starting a proper writing schedule of every day. At the moment I write once a week on a Sunday morning while my husband takes the kids swimming. I sit in a pub round the corner from the pool and write a thousand words. During the summer holidays I write a bit more, but I’m really focused because I have so little time. When I sit down to write I have to power through as much as possible!
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