Chris Killen and John Wray @ EIBF

 

The dynamic of Book Festival match-ups must be difficult for programmers to predict, but Thursday’s pairing of Canongate stable-mates Chris Killen and John Wray worked a charm. On the face of it, their reading-styles couldn’t be more distinct. Killen read from his darkly comic and psychologically bare-knuckle novel The Bird Room with slightly hesitant, uneasy delivery exactly suiting the charred and damaged lives of his characters. Reading from his most recent novel Lowboy, a vivid portrait of a runaway young man suffering from schizophrenia, Wray performed the voices of his characters with confidence and flair. This contrast between the two personalities made for any number of charming and revealing moments, such as when Wray self-deprecatingly said his motivation for writing was fear of failure and insecurity, with Killen nodding agreement beside, or when, discussing his predilection for lonely characters, Killen insisted that he wasn’t totally alienated and that he did feel connected to other people, Wray interjected to make sure he wasn’t just saying that to protect the feelings of his girlfriend in the audience. Ultimately, what made this pairing such a success was the rarer-than-hen’s-teeth frankness and sincerity of both writers in answering questions about the drive to write. [Colin Herd]