The book concludes with a poem supposedly written by Violet. How difficult did you find it to compose something suitable?
A. I’d already written that poem and it is what set the book going. It appears in my second novel, ’Instances of the Number 3’. It was when I began to receive letters from US doctoral students asking where they could find information about this H.V. St John that I became aware she had taken on an independent existence. It was this poem that planted the seed of the idea for a book about her. Q. Your previous book, Where Three Roads Meet, your contribution to Canongate’s ongoing Myths series, is centered on a dialogue between Freud and Tiresias, the seer of Greek myth. Freud’s dream theory also gets a mention in Dancing Backwards, but you also explore characters through their interaction with the arts, which is quite Jungian. Are you a particular adherent of either psychoanalytical school? A. I was trained as a Jungian and Jungians are supposed to be more arts friendly. I don’t know if this is really the case. I have a huge admiration for Freud, particularly Freud the man, though I think
