Novelists might lack practical skill, but their characters needn't

Literary editor/columnist

Saturday 14 July 2012

In 2004, when Muriel Spark came to the Edinburgh Book Festival, she checked into a hotel in Melrose.

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Rosemary Goring

Across the street was a bookshop, where she spent some time. The night before her event, she sat up reading into the small hours. What, her friends asked the next day, had kept her up so late? A page-turning work of fiction? A biography she couldn't bear to put down? No, she said, it was a DIY book, explaining how to do everything, from unblocking a toilet to boiling an egg – neither of which, it must be said, she had ever previously considered doing in her life, nor seriously intended to tackle the future.

I thought immediately of Spark's fascination with domestic tips when a similar compendium landed in the Herald's book cupboard with a thud. How To Do Just About Anything – Your A-Z Guide To 1001 Practical Skills And Household Solutions (Readers Digest, £14.99) is unputdownable. I started with a flick – opening at the page about how to reseal your bath – and ended up taking it home where, like Pooh with his jar of honey, I could give it my undivided attention. This truly is one of those books that might save your life: it tells you how to deal with strokes, allergic reactions, choking and fits. Less alarmingly, and far more interestingly, it has easy, illustrated instructions on how to do the Charleston, groom a horse, tune a guitar, sharpen knives, mend a chair, dress a crab, train your dog ... as you can see, the list is long and inventive.Deep down, I suspect that only the terminally clueless turn to a book like this. Your average domestic goddess or handyman would curl their lip at being seen with a manual that states the obvious, along with the odd. They probably, and rightly, think that any adult who needs to learn how to sew on a button or hang a picture is a pathetic specimen. The fascination with such books, though, goes far beyond thinking you actually need this advice. They are snapshots of the times we live in, an alphabet of survival skills required for the modern age. A thousand years from now, this guide will be almost as valuable to historians as Magna Carta. But for someone like Spark, on an artistic level such a work's function was immediate and practical. After all, there are only so many things a writer can possibly know from personal experience. I would defy any novelist to read How To Do Just About Anything and not find themselves inspired to pitch a character into a situation they'd never previously have considered – see dropping an anchor, or constructing a fence – or indeed create a character specially to demonstrate such skills. My favourite part, on how to escape from quicksand, includes the advice: "If you sink in to your midriff, don't panic and don't thrash about. Lean back and paddle very slowly with your legs to inch yourself towards firmer ground. Then turn over and crawl on your elbows and stomach until you're clear." I mean, how much more encouragement does a writer need to add this sort of material to their plots? You can conjure up quicksand in almost any environment, and that nugget of wisdom might almost be typed verbatim into the required chapter.I exaggerate, of course. Yet what strikes me on reading modern fiction is how few practical skills characters demonstrate. I still remember fondly a novel about a fridge engineer, which was fascinating not only because it was well written, but because it illuminated a whole new realm of practical life. Of course, it could be that novelists think readers would be bored watching people changing a car wheel or operating a chain-saw. It seems far more likely, though, that many writers are domestically challenged. Or that, even if they are mechanical geniuses, they don't realise how convincing a light powdering of such details are. I'm not asking for a glut of DIY novels, just a sprinkling of nuts and bolts to add a bit of stability, a solid foundation if you like, to the whole structure.

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Novelists might lack practical skill, but their characters needn't

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