Ferryman guides its author into the world of literary success

Writer buoyant over massive popularity in China of romantic fantasy novel, says idea universal

Claire McFall says she is astonished by how well her book The Ferryman has done in China. In January, nearly 1 million copies of the Chinese version had been sold. In Scotland, the figure was about 10,000, which she regards as excellent, given how small Scotland is.

"It's incredible that the book is so popular in China, but the idea carried in the novel is universal. People love stories about love and being rewarded for being determined. So, even though there seems to be much cultural difference between China and the UK, underneath it's the same."

In January, McFall was in China to sign a contract giving a Chinese company film rights to the novel. The book is about the journey of a 15-year-old girl, Dylan, led by her "ferryman" Tristan, after she dies in a train accident. Dylan has to traverse a wasteland full of scary demons before can she reach the place where her soul can find rest.

"I want Chinese audiences to see the bleak, harsh but also gorgeous wasteland and, meanwhile, I want to see how Chinese people present the wasteland and add to their concept about it," McFall says.

As a teacher in Scotland, she says she had to spend an hour and 50 minutes driving through a "wasteland" as she traveled to and from school.

In a dream one night, she jumped on a crowded train. She dreamed she fell asleep and when she woke she found all the other passengers had gone. When she woke up in reality, she wrote down the details of the dream in a notebook and developed it into a book. On her journeys between home and school, she would spend the driving time making up what happened in the story, and in three months she finished the novel.

By the time The Ferryman was published in Britain in 2013, she had finished nine stories and her agent chose this one. However, in the first draft McFall wrote a sad ending where the hero and heroine went into two different worlds. It was suggested that she change the ending to a happy one, with both of them returning to reality as human beings.

McFall spent another six months discussing the book with editors and making small changes.

She has loved reading and writing since when she was a child, she says.

"If you want to write, you have to read a lot, not only things you love but also different genres and writing styles. Then writing will become a natural thing."

When she created the character of Dylan in the novel, she connected herself with the girl.

"It's based on me. I am always nervous, not very confident, nor comfortable with boys - and clumsy. Despite that, if you are determined and brave, you can achieve anything you want. It's my original concept for her."

At the end of the story, after Dylan arrives safely at her destination, falling in love with her ferryman, she becomes determined and brave enough to break rules to find him and take him back to the world, to "save him".

Now McFall has finished the sequel, which is also a fantasy, dealing with more problems in the real world brought about by various rules being broken during the journey in The Ferryman.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 04/14/2017 page16)