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Author Paul Torday is at heart a determinist. He believes most of us have little influence on how our lives turn out. Which is interesting, because the English author of the satirical novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and now The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, is living proof you can choose the path you take, even if finding it takes longer than you'd imagined.
As a student reading English at Oxford University, Torday hoped to become a writer. Instead he joined the family business and carved out a career in the engineering, oil and gas industries. Then, almost 40 years on, he changed tack. "I'd sold a business and had more spare time so I thought it would be really interesting to go back and see if I could write a book," he says from his home in Tyneside.
Torday's first two attempts went straight into a drawer. "I thought of them as an apprenticeship," he says. "I've shown them to my wife, who is very kind about them - but didn't disagree with my decision."
Then he did the thing publishers are always hoping and praying for - came up with a highly original idea. Salmon Fishing In the Yemen is the story of a troubled fisheries scientist who is assigned the hopeless task of establishing a fly-fishing course in the Middle East. It resonated as much with the reading public as it did with the publishers and became a bestseller.
Torday's second novel - blacker, less humorous but equally original - looks set to follow it into the bestseller charts.
"When I started to write it, uppermost in my mind was that I didn't want to write another Salmon," he says. "That was a stand alone book. I was lucky with the way it caught on but I wanted to do something completely different."
The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce (Orion, $38.99) is the tale of one man's inevitable decline. Wilberforce, a successful computer geek, is seduced by the world of fine wines, becomes an alcoholic, and kills himself with vintage Chateau Petrus.
Torday tells the story backwards so it opens with Wilberforce a wine-sodden wreck and reveals how he came to be in that state. It's a structure that dovetails nicely with the author's belief in our lack of free will.
"I wanted to write about the nature of obsession. This guy has no real place in the world, he's an outsider and wine gives him a spurious feeling of identity," he says. "One of the themes was: How much choice do people who become addicts have? My strong impression is that addictive behaviour is at least partially inherited and it can also be as a result of family circumstances."
He says his determinist view is, "bleak but not unrealistic. I enjoy reading about genetics and the difference between nature and nurture, and I think we probably have a lot less choice than we think".
Wilberforce's alcoholism robs him of everyone who cares for him and all he has left is wine. From start to finish he is a resolutely horrible character, yet there is a great deal of poignancy to his story.
"What I've tried to pull off is to get the reader to feel compassion for someone who is unpleasant, needy and selfish," Torday says. "But still he is human and mostly like the rest of us."
Researching the story had its moments of fun. "I read up about wine and drank the odd bottle, but not with breakfast and very rarely with lunch." he smiles.
For Torday, writing success relatively late in life is a double-edged sword. It's meant he has greater experience to draw on - and the financial security to be able to write what he likes. But there is a possibility he may be running out of time. "I have cancer and have had an operation although I don't know at this stage how successful it's been," he says. "It seemed like a bad idea to do a major trip after an operation that poleaxed me, but it hasn't stopped me writing."
He's already completed his third book, The Girl On The Landing, which he describes as a sort of ghost story, and has an idea for a fourth which he says is less bleak. Although this is the life Torday always hoped for, Torday remains amazed that it's finally happened. "Absolutely completely amazed. I don't know why I've been so successful."
- DETOURS HOS
