Es Blue Mondaythe third Monday in January, for some the saddest day of the year, and this is noticeable in London: it is cold, the sky is overcast, people walk quickly with their heads down. Where there is no trace of unease is in the brilliant face of Chris Whitaker (London, 43 years old), rising star of the world literary firmament, who in 2022 dazzled with We start at the end and now he reaffirms his talent with All the colors of darkness (Salamander). “I’m happy, jet lag aside,” he jokes. He just got back from New York.
He receives EL PAÍS at the offices of his agency on a trip paid for by the publisher to talk about his new novel, set in 1975, in the fictional town of Monta Clare, in Missouri, where several young women have disappeared. “The main idea came suddenly,” says Whitaker. “I imagined two kidnapped teenagers, a boy and a girl, and the boy falls in love with her. He has never seen it, but he has heard it, and when he is freed, he begins a three-decade journey in search of that mysterious love.” Not a bad starting point.
How do you start a novel when the previous one has been a resounding success that has set the bar high? “Fortunately, I started this book before the other novel came out. I started writing it in confinement. The worst confinement in the world, by the way: my daughter had just been born and we had removed the roof from the house the day before the ban on going out. We were without a roof, we had to cover it with plastic, water was leaking in… the house was a ruin,” he explains. “And the promotion of that one was all on Zoom. Anymore; I would much rather be sitting here talking to you,” he laughs. In addition, during the confinement he was arrested: Whitaker, who worked as a stock market trader, was accused of market manipulation. “The charges were dismissed, but the investigation lasted 10 months. The most stressful of my life,” he laments. In that magma he wrote All the colors of darkness.
Her previous novel also followed the adventures of a troubled teenager, Duchess, although only for a year. “I wanted to follow the path of a character much longer, to see how he deals with a traumatic event in the future.” And what a character: one of the great successes of All colors… is its protagonist, Patch (actually Joseph Macauley, but everyone calls him patch because he wears a patch; He was born with problems in one eye and his mother made him patches so that instead of feeling bad he would identify with a pirate). “If you are a teenager, and something terrible happens to you, how do you deal with it in your life? To what extent does it mark you?” asks the writer, who knows well what he is talking about.
Because, despite the childish face and the feeling of gratitude that surrounds each of his sentences, Whitaker has not had it easy. When he was a child, his mother’s boyfriend beat him: he even broke his arm, put out cigarettes on his skin. “I had kept all that in a part of my mind that I had closed, but it came out when I was writing these two novels.” He started connecting the dots. “When I was writing the part where Patch is trapped in a basement, I felt… It wasn’t panic, but I was anxious. I didn’t enjoy it, something was wrong. “I realized it had to do with my own childhood.”
His adolescence was no better: drug and alcohol abuse, bad life. He was even stabbed at the age of 19, when he confronted the guy who was trying to steal his cell phone. “I can trace the good and the bad that has happened to me in my life and it is all linked to that traumatic childhood. “I confronted that thief because I had a visceral fear of feeling helpless, of feeling like a victim,” he explains. “If all that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be a writer. I realized that if you can learn something from it, then it was worth it. Maybe this book can be cathartic for anyone who has experienced a similar situation,” he says, and shrugs his shoulders. “Thanks to these books I no longer feel that shame, I can talk about it,” he explains. “I could make up a lie, say that Patch came from somewhere else,” he says, excitedly. “But I spoke with the publisher about how to approach the promotion and we decided to be honest. Also for my children. Especially the 11 year old (the middle of three), who asks me what my life was like at his age. Well, very different!” he laughs. “He worries about Arsenal winning, about his friends at school. “It’s what a child should worry about, and my greatest achievement is being able to give my children the childhood that I didn’t have.”
He says that his children don’t let go of Tik Tok. “It’s crazy, I try not to spend too much time on social media, but it’s difficult. In any case, I understood that when they read a book it is always something similar, with short chapters; I think it is the only way to maintain interest today, that is why I have tried to imitate it.” Again, getting something positive out of a bad situation. “The networks are a nightmare. My New Year’s resolution was to leave them. “I deleted Twitter and now I only use my phone to reply to Instagram messages.” Do you respond to messages from your readers? “To each and every one. It’s not a big deal, sometimes I just put in a simple ‘Thank you’, but they have taken the trouble to read the book. “I owe it to him.”
Whitaker uses prose that returns to the great totalizing narratives of authors such as John Steinbeck, Jonathan Franzen or John Irving. “It’s funny that you say it: yesterday I received a message from a reader. He said he was afraid because John Irving would at some point stop writing. He told me that, after reading my book, he was a little less afraid,” he laughs. Is there a new John Irving in town? “It was the best compliment you can give me, Irving is someone very special to me.” What did Whitaker read growing up? “Stephen King, of course, taught me a lot about building characters and environments. Also many thrillers: James Patterson, Lee Child… from the last thing I read, what I liked the most is Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, of Gabrielle Zevin. I recommended it to my father. He had doubts when he saw that it was about video games, but then he read it and was fascinated. “It’s a book about friendship over the years.” As All the colors of darkness.
For months it was published that Disney was preparing an adaptation of We start at the endbut Whitaker has news: “We recovered the rights from Disney and have sold them to David E. Kelley (creator of Ally McBeal o Boston Legal) and Universal has the rights to all colors…we are going to do a series of three seasons,” he celebrates. And how do you deal with this transmedia ecosystem where what seems to matter is the intellectual property more than the book itself? “Personally, I love that a story can exist in multiple formats. My children might never come close to my novel, but we can reach them in another format; If they can reach this story of trauma and overcoming through other means, it seems perfect to me.”
Can trauma be shelved, then? “I think so,” he answers. “At least, in my case, I think I have found my place in writing. I would continue writing, even if I didn’t make money from it,” he confesses, before bursting out laughing: “Well, be careful with that phrase, because my editors are going to take advantage of me!”