A Summer Like No Other

Quick-Fire Q&A with Martin MacIntyre

Join us as Martin MacIntyre, author of A Summer Like No Other, takes part in our series of quick-fire Q&As!

What is a quick-fire Q&A?

We have our interviewee pick a number at random and we ask them the general question listed next to it.

Shortly after we switch to asking book-specific questions, to give you a brief insight into our wonderful writers and their books.

What attracted you to writing in this genre? 

I've always enjoyed stories. I've always enjoyed reading. I certainly read a lot as a child. And over the years, I suppose I've probably read more fiction.

And I think I've also just always been attracted to stories. I was told a lot of stories growing up, oral stories, and I tell stories orally as well from tradition, so I suppose I quite like that linear narrative. I think to take myself and take others to another world that you could, you know, get totally immersed in.

I'm attracted to strong characters, and I like that fiction lets you get into not just what they do in their actions, but also into their minds, their thoughts. With other genres, you have to rely on the dialogue or whatever, but with fiction, you can get into how they're feeling and how they’re thinking

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

To just do it. You can postpone; you can procrastinate forever. You can be researching your first novel for years and years, but at some point, you've just got to sit down, on a windy Wednesday or a sunny Monday and say, ‘right, for the next hour or two I'm going to write something. I'm going to try.’

So that's one thing, just to set the time and make the time to do it and also have the self-confidence, have the self-belief to sit down and give it a go. One thing I always say to any aspiring writers is, whether it's a poem, short story or a novel, what you're writing just now, it's just the first draft. And you will have an opportunity to go back and revise that. The best writers that we know go back and rewrite and write many, many, many drafts before that final version, and they get editorial support as well before that final version is viewed by the public. So do not be afraid of the blank page and say to yourself: this is the first draft.

I guess as a more practical step, I think going to writers’ workshops would be good because you'll be alongside others who are of the same mindset and are also, you know, hoping to write. And you can pick up some key tips as to how to start to write or to potentially write shorter works in the first instance.

I think one of the beauties, if you do like writing fiction, one of the beauties of the short story is you can see the light at the end of the tunnel sometimes, you know, after a few hours or a day or two, whereas a novel is a big beast. So, I think writing short fiction can be helpful to the aspiring writer as well, just simply because you can get something finished. Then you can go in and shape and redraft.

Do you have a favourite place to write?

First of all, I would say that I've rarely written the first draft of anything – anything meaningful – on a laptop. I've written the odd report or short blogs or whatever straight onto the laptop but I'll admit – I don't know if it’s an admission in this day and age – nearly everything that I've written, the first draft of it has been pen and pad. Including this novel! What I like about that is I can just get into that world; when I'm on the laptop, especially nowadays, or on the phone, there are just so many things intruding.

I think to get going, I will take myself to quite a nice place at a cafe or something that's got good light in it. I'll be there for a couple of hours, and I'll literally take my pad, sometimes that pad will maybe have had notes of research or whatever in it, but I’ll just turn a blank page and I'll write on that pad to get myself going. So, just that kind of environment.

And then if it works, I return to it. Not necessarily the same coffee shop, but that same environment just to kind of keep the magic of the now. I think it's increasingly difficult for us in this generation, this world that we live in, to spend time in the now.

That’s one of the things I really enjoy about writing fiction is that once I get going, I'm in the now of that world and also the now of our world. Then once I've got going, I can sustain it in less congenial places, you know, because I've got myself going.

But I think just being in a specific place that I've gone to write.

What was your favourite thing about writing this book?

What I really enjoyed about writing A Summer Like No Other, which is the English version of a book that I originally wrote in Gaelic called Samhradh ’78, the summer of 1978, was that I was able to take myself back to a time that I do remember, although I am about seven years younger than the protagonist. But I was there. I was in South Uist in 1978. I wasn't doing any of the things that Colin was doing; the World Cup had been and gone, I think, by the time I'd got there. Certainly, Scotland's participation had been and gone. But it took me back to that year because there was a lot of excitement about Scotland's fortunes in Argentina.

But also I've got a clear memory of being in South Uist with my family that summer, and it let me go back to that time. I mean, in 1978, I was 13, so I was doing things that a 13-year-old was doing, you know, out and about playing football, playing tennis, that kind of thing. I didn't go on any of the journeys that Colin went on, I wasn’t collecting folklore or anything like that, but it allowed me to be back in that period that I had lived through many, many years ago. And to bring that alive for a modern audience because, you know, huge things in life have changed.

I suppose one of the things that I was trying to capture also was, and I was aware of at the age of 13, a changing life. The village that we went to in South Uist had thatched cottages, and some of them didn't have electricity. At that time, when there were also spanking new bungalows going up, there had been a change of local government as well. For the first time, the Western Isles Council had come into being in 1975, three years previously. So there was a bit of that hope as well about the islands having a more joined-up future together. They'd been previously split into different councils. But anyway, it let me go back and sort of imagine that world and bring it alive, but also bring in the elements as well of things that I'm interested in, in terms of traditional oral culture, and its relationship with the modern world.

What sort of emotional reaction do you expect people to have to the book?

I would hope that readers would engage with Colin’s narrative and empathise with his coming of age journey and also with his increasingly intimate relationship with his Uncle Ruairidh and his appreciation of where he is at his stage of life, which is he's just on the cusp of retiring having been a busy general practitioner in the Borders town of Duns.

But Colin is also on another journey. So his mother was from Barra; he grew up in Greenock, but he spoke Gaelic at home. And Ruairidh, his uncle, is also from Barra but I think just slightly at a distance from Barra being in South Uist and also his relationship with the people in South Uist including Ealasaid and Jane and also the old fellow, Alasdair mac Seumais Bhig, you know, from whom he records all these amazing stories.

I think he also comes of age in terms of his Gaelic identity. I think they would be strong chords that the reader would relate to and hopefully enjoy.  There are also darker elements in the book, maybe a reminder that the 1970s were a dark time in terms of how people behaved as well. There were fewer potential, I don't know, checks and balances in place at that time. And Colin becomes aware of some of those elements, and his life is affected greatly by them.

Another thing I would like the reader to be aware of is that it is a world at a time of change. You know, the old world is still there in lots of ways in terms of oral culture and stories and songs, that's embodied in some of these old people.

But the world is also rapidly changing. So I think I would want the readers to have that feeling of a changing world.

Would you and your main character get along?

I think we would, I think he's an open and tested individual on a journey, and I think I would get on with him now when I’m probably closer to the age of Ruairidh. But I would also have got on with him then. He is quite witty, and he's quite a generous-spirited young man. He doesn't exactly know where he's going in life, but he has a positive outlook. He's generous, and I think he also can care and love, and that's shown in his relationships with many of the people throughout the book. He's young and he can sometimes be a bit irreverent at times but he's genuinely also respectful of the people in his life who care for him.

I think we would get on well.