Teesside writer and all-round nice guy Richard Milward talks to Steve Pratt about his latest novel, which concerns the consequences for a nice person of deciding to turn nasty

IT’S five years since Richard Milward’s debut novel Apples was published when he was 22. His second, Ten Storey Love Song, followed two years later. Both earned him critical acclaim and the stamp of approval from his hero, Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh.

Now comes Kimberly’s Capital Punishment, which Milward himself has described as “a jet black comedy”. He adds that it could also be seen “as a blow-byblow account of one woman’s descent into madness, or a nightmarish satire based around some people’s tendencies to exploit the kind-hearted”.

Outwardly, at least, he’s very relaxed about his writing. The three-year gap between books was simply a case of him taking his time. He doesn’t have deadlines. Publishers Faber are happy for him to work to his own schedule.

“It makes more sense to take your time. You want to do justice to it and feel it’s not rushed. Sometimes it’s nice just to give them 20 or 30 pages. They’re quite relaxed about it,” he says.

He’s been writing since he was 12 and counts his latest as his seventh book, one influenced by the Surrealists and which draws creative inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams.

Kimberly is a girl who tires of her athletic boyfriend Stevie and decides to be as vile as humanly possible to him. When that results in his death, she takes another approach – what she calls “unadulterated altruism”.

Milward rounds it off by offering the reader a choice of six endings and letting them decide her fate.

“It was like a juggling act between these six strands. I wanted to do each ending justice, At first I came up with the idea just to have multiple endings – a happy or a sad ending. Then I came up with the dice and that’s six-sided,”

explains Milward, who moved back to Middlesbrough after studying for a fine arts degree in London.

“After the last gasp no-one really knows what happens when we pop our clogs. So I give the options – heaven, hell, resurrection, reincarnation, ghost, left in peace.”

He wants each of his books to be conceptual.

Ten Storey Love Song, for instance, was written as a single paragraph so each solid block of text on each page looked like a block of flats.

RATHER than a North-East setting, as in previous novels, his latest is London-based. “I spent three years in London at art college and amassed a lot of local stories,” he explains.

“With the surrealistic aspects, it made sense to place it in the capital because it’s quite a dream-like place.

When walking around, you get all this imagery. It has its own person. With Middlesbrough, you kind of know what you’re getting. People seem to understand themselves more. In London there’s such a disparate crowd you get a lot of tension.”

He says there’s definitely more of him in his new novel, notably the nice bit. “I do pride myself on being as nice as possible. There are different tensions when you are indiscriminately nice. I’ve been accused of being too nice. People see it as a weakness or something.”

Milward discovered the Surrealists when he was at college and sees himself approaching writing the same way they approached painting. He gave up English at A-level and went into an art background because he wanted to do things differently.

“From childhood, I was encouraged to be as experimental as possible, like chopping up potatoes and throwing them in ink. With English, you’re encouraged to stick to the rules which seems a bit stifling for my work.

“I believe you can do what you want with the page. The page is a blank canvas.

I guess I will always be experimental, but my 20s seem to be a good time to experiment as much as possible.

“Maturing doesn’t seem to be the right word, particularly with these three books but it’s developing language as much as possible. I guess I’ve I’m improved linguistically more than anything. Perhaps when I get into my 30s, my attitudes will change. I might accidentally father a child in the next few months and it could all change.”

Apples has already been made into a stage play by Northern Stage and Milward has been involved in a screenplay for a film adaptation, while Ten Storey Love Song is in the early stages of being turned into a TV series.

Milward is already at work on his next book. He still writes with pencil and paper.

“It seems, what’s the word? I don’t want to say intimate, but it seems clinical on a laptop, so pencil and paper is the opposite of that.”

  • Kimberly’s Capital Punishment (Faber, £14.99)