Arthur's Eventful Weekend, by Mike Horwood

I recently read Mike Horwood‘s new novel, Arthur’s Eventful Weekend. I liked it very much. It’s a deceptive book — much more than the casual narrative style lulls you into believing. It’s experimental yet accessible and, considering nothing much happens, a real page-turner. Needless to say, it led me to want to ask Mike all sorts of questions about it, and here are some of his responses:
Hi, Mike! Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions about  Arthur’s Eventful Weekend. This book is very different in style than your previous novel, The Finn’s Tale. It almost seems experimental. Did you set out to do something different and did that cause your process to be different this time around?
You’re quite right, Arthur’s Eventful Weekend is very different to The Finn’s Tale. I’m not sure that I began with the intention of doing something different in the sense that difference would be a goal. Rather it happened that certain ideas for Arthur formed in my mind and as I developed them they took me in a very different direction to the one I had followed with The Finn’s Tale. So I suppose I would say that I did not set out to do something different and that that caused a different process, but rather that the process just was different and that led to the result being different.
Right. So it was really an organic shift then, wasn’t it. And I’m also intrigued on your use of thematic allusions and how you worked them into your story. Could you give us a synopsis and discuss your use of allegory?
The novel is a first person narrative, a feature that it shares with The Finn’s Tale, but whereas The Finn’s Tale concerns the protagonist’s actions in the present of the story, Arthur is concerned much more with an internal dialogue. Arthur, the character, has cause to take stock of his life and situation. His elderly mother inadvertently makes a remark that leads him to suspect that his ‘father’ may not have been his biological father. This makes him question his sense of self and his identity. He takes an overview of his life from childhood to the present in a series of recollections. Arthur is speaking to himself in effect, so the style is very much stream of consciousness. The scenes that he recollects are interspersed with the quotidian events of the weekend. The recollections and the domestic events gradually build up to a crisis.
I pursued a variety of techniques in composing this novel, one of which was to take elements from the Arthurian legends as a structuring device. I should state right away that this is very much in the background. I imagine many readers will not notice this device and I believe that it is not necessary to be aware of it in order to respond to the book. However, if I mention why I have used this device it will reveal something of the themes that concerned me in writing it. The Arthurian legends are very much concerned with the knights finding the right way to live in their world. They are concerned with how to be complete men, since the principle figures are male, and complete humans, since there is an awareness in the various tales that some concepts of masculinity may leave the man sadly incomplete. The relation between the sexes is also a theme. So King Arthur and the knights have adventures that test their concept of themselves as they try to become full and complete human beings. Their search for identity and selfhood relates very much to my idea of Arthur in my book.
King Arthur and the knights are very imperfect characters; so is my Arthur. They are also inconsistent, partly due to the fact that the legends have been written by several hands over a long period. King Arthur starts as a near-superhuman hero, but in later tales can be represented as a weak, ineffectual figure. Yet throughout all the legends, there is a sense of this search for identity, and expressive of this is the fact that several of the knights and King Arthur himself, do not know their true family origins. In most cases, that means they don’t know their father. Some don’t know their true name. Naming is a vital element in conceptions of identity. My Arthur is interested in the words – names – that might be applied to himself.
So this is one of the thematic elements in my novel. But the style of my Arthur and Malory’s, for example, is hugely different. I’ll give two very brief examples of how I have adapted events in Malory’s work. My Arthur opens with a description of a toy shop in Arthur’s childhood village which was run by a Mrs Lake. Eight-year-old Arthur buys a toy gun which is described on a hand-written sign as a ‘cap gun’ , but which Arthur mis-reads as ‘cat gun’. He creates a fantasy around the strange name the gun has, turning it into a weapon with magical properties. This is my version of the legend of the Lady of the Lake and the magic sword, Excalibur.
Another example is when the young Arthur, before he is King, pulls the sword from the stone because his brother (who is not his biological brother, though Arthur does not know it) has left his own behind and is without a sword for the jousting tournament. In my novel, Arthur is attending a children’s music recital. His cousin is about to play the violin but realizes that he has no bow. Arthur rushes off to get it from the car. It isn’t there. On his way back to the hall he notices an unattended bow on a table and takes it. He arrives back brandishing the bow like a sword.
You will see how tenuous and much-changed these links are, yet they run all through my Arthur and they relate to the characters’ experiences in establishing their identity. The legendary Arthur initially rejects the title of King; it’s a name that does not accord with his sense of self. My Arthur, looking back in time, wonders whether he knew the bow he took did not belong to his cousin. What does that make him?
Fascinating. I could go on asking you questions all day, but I better stop here. Thanks for indulging me, and best of luck with this wonderful book!  You can buy the book in paper or ebook either via the publisher, the Book Depository, or at the usual suspects.