First, no, I did not make this up (though Jeannie would possibly have been more likely to have this lesson in a women’s only sunday school class or sunday night fireside than a semminary class). This and many other ‘object lessons’ concerning women’s sexual purity were very common in the LDS church for a while, thankfully less so these days – although when I was researching The Friday Gospels I found a sixteen year old who’d been treated to the fairy cake lesson in 2010, so the lessons, and certainly the attitudes behind them, are not dying out altogether.

Not all of the emails I’ve had about the book have been terribly friendly. I’ve been considering quoting some of the high-lights from them here, but decided against it. You’re allowed not to like a book, of course. Even though I personally find the idea a little mad, you’re also allowed to be greatly offended by a novel that you haven’t read. Cool by me. It is kind of gratifying that the mere existence of a book can send people into a tizz and reminds me of why I do what I do. But, in reluctant response to some of those emails: yes, the scene is sort of funny. Yes, it does foreground the lesson itself and the attitudes that lead to it as a bit ridiculous. Experiencing this kind of thing on the receiving end has tuned my sense of humour a little differently to yours, perhaps. It’s a shitty thing to sit in room and be told that reptentance can’t restore sexual purity, and sexual purity is the most significant thing a woman can offer to a man. Shittier still to be so young that you believe it. It’s an act of defiance to find the humour in that situation, and I plan to keep on doing it.

I think I would have let all this pass me by completely (I joyfully retain the Mormon characteristic of being able to tune-out anything I don’t quite like the sound of) if Elizabeth Smart hadn’t returned to the news recently. She’s a US LDS woman who, when she was a young teenager, was kidnapped from her home in Utah and held captive by a FLDS man who considered her to be his plural wife. Recently, she’s spoken out about sexual assault and how the way she’d been taught about sexual purity affected her after she’d been raped. Here’s a quote from an article about her in The Guardian.

“I had a teacher who was talking about abstinence, she said, ‘Imagine you’re a stick of gum and when you engage in sex, that’s like getting chewed, and if you do that lots of times, you’re going to become an old piece of gum, and who’s going to want you after that?”

Indeed. Joanna Brooks, a Feminist Mormon writer and thinker on LDS culture and doctrine wrote, I think, a very good piece on Smart’s comments. She rightly says that while most LDS women would recognise the chewing-gum-lesson as one of a host of ‘object lessons’ involving flowers, fruit, cakes, bananas (!), that you wouldn’t find any of these lessons in the official manuals of the church’s various youth education programmes. She identifies this as a kind of persistent folk doctrine, similar to the racism within the church that persists after the 1978 lifting of the ban on full membership for black members. Read the full article here, at Religion Dispatches.

While on the whole I agree with Brooks’ comments, and generally follow what she writes because I consider her to be something that’s rare in LDS land – a faithful, dissenting voice of objective sanity – she doesn’t mention that this year, in the LDS general conference, Elaine Dalton, the woman who is in charge of all the young women’s programmes (that is the overall direction of social activities, religious education and pastoral-style care) around the entire world chose, again, to speak about ‘virtue’. She’s not an extreme kook, or a fringe member of the church. This is a woman endorsed by the highest authorities and in a very rare position of female influence and leadership.

‘Virtue’ – which she glosses as ‘strength’ but consistently uses interchangeably with ‘purity’ and ‘cleanliness’ – is a bit of a pet topic of hers, actually. You can look at her talk A Return to Virtue here. Or one she gave a little later, Guardians of Virtue. To hear her speak to the young women in her care (including women in countries where rape is commonplace – and only three months after the gang-rape and murder of a student on a bus in Dehli) you’d be forgiven for thinking that the most important thing on her mind, the single message she wanted to impart wasn’t about education, or confidence, or self esteem – values that would empower women to make informed choices in many different areas of their lives. No, it’s about sexual purity. In her latest talk (and her last – she’s no longer fulfilling the leadership role with young women that she was), she quoted a scripture from the Book of Mormon that refers to a brutal mass rape enacted as a weapon of war in order to illustrate her point about the importance of sexual purity. You can read it here. Nice.

I don’t usually use my blog or any other forum I have to speak about these kind of things. I decided that if someone wanted to find out about the finer nuances of a minority religion they wouldn’t turn to a novelist to do it, and that was as it should be. But I changed my mind today and the reason why is because I do think these attitudes are slowly, slowly dying out – in part because in recent years women have been able to speak to each other and compare experiences via web forums, blogs and similar – outside the chaperoning influence of the church – and these conversations have assisted in this change. (For example, many faithful Mormon women were offended by Dalton’s latest talk, blogged about it and opened these attitudes up to a process of reflection and, yes, criticism, that is something new in LDS land. And something good.)

By way of contributing to this conversation – here’s Mormon Iconoclast’s take on it, and from the almost-always excellent Feminst Mormon Housewives, a blog in response to Elizabeth Smart’s remarks and another one on Dalton’s talk. Some of these writers accept the premise underlying these talks and lessons – that purity can be measured by how sexually active a woman is, and in what kind of relationships this sexual activity takes place – but examine the varying harmful ways this doctrine is taught. Maybe one day the converstion will move on and sexual education for young people will focus on helping them to make strong, informed choices, understand what consent is and what the shades of coercion might look like, have the information they need to avoid infection, disease and pregnancy, have the information they need to make it a pleasurable experience for all, and to know, for sure, that no measure of value attached to their personhood has anything to do with sexual choices they have made or acts of violence someone else commits against them. Hey, everyone’s allowed a pipe-dream!

Just a couple of small things…

A Q and A at the Indie and an interview about TFG with Rachel Connor (author of Sisterwives) at her blog, Literary Sisters. Another interview with Alex O’Toole over at the Lancashire Writing Hub. One more interview at For Books’ Sake  and a couple more reviews AND to put the icing on the cake (boom!) TFG was named as ‘the book of the week’ at The Week magazine.

Crikey!*

*I do actually say crikey! in real life. Also, wowzers! I am considering adding jeepers! to my vocabulary. What can I say? I like to be surprised.

If you want to hear me talking about the book in interview with Kirsty Lang on BBC R4′s Front Row you can listen to the programe here.

If you’d like to see some reviews, you can look on this page of this website.

If you’d like to read the 5 Minute Memoir piece I wrote for The Independent, clicking here would be a good idea.

The Guardian ran a piece about My Desktop a little while ago. I did the interview with Ben Johncock while I was in the thick of writing The Friday Gospels so there might be some interesting things about the novel in there too, if you’re into that sort of thing.

If you want to read a short interview I did with Sarah Jasmon about ‘connections, transformation and coming out as a writer’ please be my guest.

If you want to see and hear me (as in, telly) talking about the novel with Nigh Higham, you can catch my BBC Meet The Author slot here.

If you’re in Manchester TONIGHT and you fancy coming to a party to help send the book off into the world once and for all, consider yourself invited. Facebook event with details here. I will be reading with my friend, Russ Litten, who will be launching his second novel, Swear Down in April. The snow won’t put us off!

There will be various bits and pieces of publicity stuff I will be posting up here over the next few days and weeks. And then things will be quiet again, and I will return to my typing, and you will hear from me no more.

What is the working title of your next book?

It is called The Friday Gospels. And that’s the final title. Unlike my first two books, it never went through a variety of titles before it found its name. Someone told me that was a good sign. I hope so. When I think about it, I call it tee-eff-gee.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I was brought up a Mormon, or a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I always wanted to write about what it felt like to be a Mormon. The fiction I read that represented Mormons concentrated on the US experience, and focused on polygamy. When I started, I didn’t know of any fiction that attempted to represent a British experience. The North West has always been fertile territory for my writing, and it’s also historically and culturally significant for British Mormons. All those different things added up to the desire to write the book, and some of the ideas with which it engages.

What genre does your book fall under?

Who knows? Who cares? It might be somewhere in the region of suburban gothic, sit-com noir, bleak humour, accessible lit fic type stuff. My influences are legion. To me, it feels like a natural continuation of the interests of A Kind of Intimacy and Cold Light. But I also think The Friday Gospels is a little more forgiving and because of that change in tone I am prepared for some readers to call it a departure from my earlier work.

What actors would you choose to play the parts of your characters in a movie rendition?

I am hoping, if that question ever arises for me, that the answer to it is none of my business. Jeannie and Julian and Martin have dark hair. Pauline is a faded red-head and Gary is a strawberry blond. I don’t see their faces any more clearly than that, which is why I like the cover of the book so much.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Mormon family with secrets waits for golden-boy missionary son to come home and solve their problems while an ash-cloud gathers; disaster ensues and love conquers all.

Will your book be self published or represented by an agency?

I have an agent. And the book will be published by Sceptre dead soon.

How long did it take you to write a first draft of the manuscript?

The first chapter took me about four months. Then I took a break for three months to ponder and decide if this was the book I was really ready to write. Then I wrote the rest of the first draft in four months. It took me about a year, maybe a little bit more, to do another three drafts.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Goodness me. I can’t think. I suspect that’s the sort of question it is a reviewer’s job to answer.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

A lot of my urge to write comes from a wish to fix the imperfections of the last thing that I have written. It’s a disgustingly self-absorbed process, really. Also, I would like to read a book like The Friday Gospels but it didn’t exist.

What else about your book might pique your reader’s interest?

Hmm. Well, it’s funnier and kinder than Cold Light. It has less dirty bits than A Kind of Intimacy but the dirty bits are really dirty. It has three dogs, and each of the dogs have two names. Like my first two novels, it also contains a buffet.

Okay. I’m supposed to tag people now. But because I’m a pain in the arse that way, I’d prefer just to link to people who have already answered these questions. So here they are. Enjoy.

Richard Hirst at I Thought I Told You To Wait in the Car

Peggy Riley – her first book is out next year: Amity and Sorrow

Valerie O’Riordan – writer, reader and reviewer at Not Exactly True

Carys Bray – another writer of the Mormon persuasion whose collection Sweet Home has just been published.