Bamboo Grove

Bamboo Grove is the first novel by Romy Wood. In among the rich variety of subtly drawn characters and evocative atmospheres, Ian Macrae discovers that mental health is one of its central themes

Reading Romy Wood’s first novel is rather more like watching a TV show than reading a book. A number of plotlines develop in parallel in short scenes intercut with each other as the action shifts from London to Bangkok; characters move in and out of each other’s lives; even time doesn’t pass in a linear way.

One thing which is central to the plot, however – perhaps it’s the glue that ultimately sticks it together – is the mental health of one of the main characters, Jessica.

She has bipolar, a condition she shares with the book’s author. So it’s not surprising that I begin by asking Romy Wood that most banal of questions, to what extent is the book autobiographical.

“It’s a first novel, and lots of first novels are autobiographical,” she says while acknowledging that this fact then leads to another obvious question.

“When you say it’s autobiographical, you might think, well, which character is the author?”

And the answer to that question?

“I think I’m in more than one character. I think it’s very difficult to write a character that hasn’t got anything you can identify with. So it’s a case of which characters have got the most of me in them. But I’m definitely mostly in Jessica.”

While it would be simplistic and a little dangerous to come to that conclusion on the basis that the author Romy and the character Jessica share a mental health condition, that fact is material. But there are other similarities. Both, for instance are mothers: Jessica gives birth as the plot unfolds in Thailand to her daughter Yin-Yang, and it’s their relationship which is perhaps the central one in the book.

But it’s difficult to discuss something with a disabled author whose work contains a character with the same condition without addressing the importance of that condition – bipolar – to both book and author.

To the reader, particularly to a disabled reader, bipolar may appear to run through the plot like lettering through a stick of rock or, more appropriately, like an impairment runs through DNA. But would Romy Wood herself confirm that impression?

“I wouldn’t say it’s a central feature of the book, but it’s where it began in that the first scene I wrote was because I asked myself what must it be like to have a bipolar mother. So I wrote this scene from the point of view of Yin-Yang watching her mother and how that feels to her and the rest of the plot developed around that relationship.”

As we talk, it emerges that Romy Wood (pictured right) is somewhat out and proud about her condition. She has definite views on the kind of quiet proselytising she does attempting to confound people’s stereotypes of how someone with bipolar is likely to live and function. This emerges when I ask her whether it was important for her to write a book which included a character with bipolar.

“Probably,” she admits, “I’m interested in exploring mental health, and I’m interested in exploring emotional intelligence more than mental health.

“I’m kind of vocal about being bipolar because I think it helps if people meet intelligent, professional, functional people and say, ‘Oh look, here’s someone who spends time in psychiatric establishments and yet they function in society and are a good parent and are a professional’ and so on. The more people that you do that with, the more people are going to be increasingly comfortable with the idea that having a mental health condition doesn’t mean being isolated in some way or excluded.”

She is, however, wary of the trap that she saw, for example, the movie Rain Man create for itself and its viewers. The notion that the character in some way defines, or at least typifies the condition.

“It’s not a book that aims to promote knowledge or interest in bipolar as such. But I think that’s such a big part of me and that’s why it probably became such a major strand.”

So taking that point, I wonder whether what she’s trying to say is that the book isn’t flag-waving.

“There are two things here. There’s what I say and what the book says. So I guess I flag-wave a bit if I’m chatting to someone, but in terms of the book, Jessica is a different character from me. She’s more demanding, more dependant, and perhaps copes less well a lot of the time than maybe I do. So I don’t think the book is flag-waving.

“It’s a book with a character with bipolar in it and it is a bipolar book, but it doesn’t claim to define that in any way.”

It’s also a book full of subtle characterisation. No one is wholly good nor wholly bad.

There’s Moses, a definitely dodgy, almost fake Buddhist monk whose sole aim in life appears to be to use his position to sexually exploit as many women as possible. But he’s more complex than that says Romy Wood.

“Moses is not an entirely bad character. He grants people’s wishes. He does it cynically and he does it for self-promotion and because he finds the whole thing entertaining, but he does grant people’s wishes.”

What then does Romy Wood regard as the central message of the book?

“I don’t think it’s got one single message. My children say it’s like a soap opera, because you just explore these characters, these interactions, these societies.”

• The Bamboo Grove by Romy Wood is published in paperback by Alcemi books. Price £8.99. Alcemi.eu