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 helen walsh interview
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Merseylit gains ground with Helen Walsh’s debut novel, Brass. Merseylit? Liverlit? Call it what you will, there is no denying that something bookish is afoot in the place Jung dubbed “the pool of life”. Still buzzing from its crowning as City Of Culture 2008 and with its best glut of bands in years, Liverpool can also claim to be a haven for some of the county’s most exciting literary talent too. Helen Walsh is the newest voice to emerge from the city which already boasts talent such as Kevin Sampson and (“Cymro-Scouser”) Niall Griffiths, operating in and around its real and fictional streets.An adoptive Scouser who hails from nearby Warrington, Walsh’s debut, Brass, follows the rake’s progress of Millie O’Reilley, a wanton 19-year-old student on a self-destructive mission. Button-bright and tack-sharp, she is driven by a combination of profound sadness and instinctive joie de vivre, both fuelled by copious quantities of drugs, booze and deviant sex. For Walsh, a singular devotion to recreation is one of Liverpool’s defining traits. “I think Millie’s character embodies a lot of the qualities of Liverpool,” she says. “She applies that whole principle of pleasure being an inalienable right. And the whole thing of consumer culture, she applies that to sex. I think she even says, ‘The most precious of all interactions can be reduced to a new top from Morgan.’ And growing up there as a student, the weekend had massive significance. The week was just a deviation from the weekend rather than the other way round.” Griffiths and Sampson too have been energised by the dark side of the city’s feral hedonism. Griffith’s Kelly + Victor, which Walsh describes as “a brilliant urban novel”, haunts the same red-light district area as Brass, while Sampson’s Clubland is immersed in the city’s vice scene. Kevin Sampson, Walsh’s boyfriend, she describes as the “king of vernacular”, which comes in handy. She explains: “When I was writing Brass I was convinced that the word a lot of Liverpudlian people use as a gap-filler is ‘thingy’, and me and Kevin had loads of arguments over that. He was adamant that it was ‘thingio’, and after spending a day in the Dingle [a rough area of the city] I surrendered.” So just what is it that Walsh loves about Liverpool? “It’s a very sexy city at the moment, and I think the people more than anything are what make Liverpool so sexy and so diverse.” And, may I venture, so “thingio”…
Michael Williams
Brass by Helen Walsh is out now, published by Canongate.
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