Lives of Crime

Westlake: Same characters?

Banville: Yes, about two years on. Various people have died, various things have happened.
For instance, in this second book, [the pathologist] Quirke’s daughter, Phoebe, has become very interesting in­deed. Because of her terrible experiences in the first book, she’s damaged, but she inter­ests me quite a lot. This has never happened to me before, where characters suddenly be­came interesting. Because characters the way John Banville writes, they’re marionettes that I move around. They do what I tell them and they don’t have autonomy out­
side me. I suppose what I’m doing quite late in my so-called career is getting back to storytelling. And there is a deep-seated desire in human beings for story. Always has been, always will be.

Westlake: Yeah. Tell me a story.

Banville: How do you feel about being Stark and West­lake? Do you see a separation, or is it just two names?

Westlake: The separation’s in the language. I don’t want to overstate it, but I bring out a
different vocabulary. I’ll be going along, and I’ll think, wait a minute, Stark wouldn’t say that. That’s a little flowery. Because the Stark books are a little more of a construct. If I have one voice, it’s Westlake’s.

Banville: Westlake is more playful.