"I really don't think of it at all as an 'issues' book," says Simon Mason, the shudder in his voice at the thought audible down the phone line from his home in Oxford. "It's a sort of fairytale in a way."
An ultra-modern story, set in contemporary England, featuring an 11-year-old girl with an alcoholic father, involving social services and a supporting cast of characters that includes a five-year-old pie-loving brother and cross-dressing best friend might sound like an unlikely fairytale.
In fact, to his publisher's horror, Mason once declared to an audience of independent booksellers who had loved his previous series of cosy family tales, The Quigleys, that "in this new book it's as if I've taken the Quigleys and I've killed mum and given dad a depression so bad it gave him a drinking problem, just to see what kind of bad effect it would have on the children. It's like a social services of the imagination." The booksellers, Mason recalls ruefully, "looked at me with loathing".
Yet, had any of them read Moon Pie, it would have immediately become clear that the book is anything but misery lit for tweens. It's an incredibly moving and surprisingly funny story of a family under pressure and the resourcefulness of a child who has to take on the parental role and put her family back together. And yes, there is a happy ending, involving the suitably modern device of a Hollywood audition.
Before embarking on Moon Pie, Mason had been working on a collection of modern fairy tales and he was determined that the arc of this story would be traditional, despite the subject matter. "The heroine is being posed tremendous problems and is flummoxed and stumped but eventually finds the means to overcome those problems and, in that fairytale-like situation, love is the key. Love is much more at the heart of the book than, say, alcoholism is," says Mason.
The story was sparked by a scene that came into Mason's head one evening, of a girl letting herself into her house at night, carrying big shopping bags, and stopping to speak to a neighbour who warns her that "he's been doing it again and this sort of behaviour is not acceptable and you'll have to talk to him." The girl agrees to have a word with "him" and goes into her house, where it becomes clear that it is her father who, made child-like by his drinking, is the cause of the bad behaviour.
The scene did not make it into the finished book but it prompted Mason to consider the role-reversal of young carers who take on an "incredible" level of responsibility, almost without questioning. In Moon Pie, Martha makes lists to help her cope ("Hoover the carpet; Clean the windows; Make soup for lunch with plenty of vegetables; Stop him being an alcoholic; Make us a family again; Make us happy; Don't tell anyone") as she desperately tries to cover up her father's increasingly eccentric behaviour and prevent the family being split up.
In summarising it, there is a danger of making the book sound "worthy" when it is anything but. It is rescued from solemnity by the joy of its characters (particularly the delightful little brother Tug with his huge appetite for pies), a lightness of touch in the writing and, above all, the humour.
For Mason, humour is at the heart of not just his writing but also, whether intentional or not, many unlikely life situations. "It seems to me that when you write about serious subjects there is a danger that you will only write about them in a serious way," he explains. "But actually, that's not how they really are ... In life, the serious subjects are completely shot through with comedy, some of it horrible probably but that's the reality: it's there."
"My father has Alzheimer's at the moment. It's serious and it's horrible but he also says the most hilarious things and behaves in the most hilarious ways because of his illness and as a writer I can't deny that the comedy is mixed up with the seriousness," he adds.
The unintentional humour of family life was also at the core of Mason's earlier children's books. The "directly autobiographical" Quigleys stories follow the everyday adventures of a very normal, slightly hapless family. There are, of course, dangers in writing about what and who you know and Mason laughs that "it's so distressing for me when reviewers, especially in America, talk abut how hopeless and terrible the parenting is in the book." He also had a potential copyright dispute on his hands after reading the first book to his children, then aged about seven and five, and being told: "Hang on, these are OUR stories – you can't write these, these belong to us."
While none of the characters in Moon Pie is drawn from friends and family, Mason confesses that he has always has a notebook to hand when around his children, and that the ages of the children in his books have risen in tandem with his own kids. He is working on a novel for teens at the moment, and worries, with a smile in his voice, that "I'll soon have to write about really old people".
He has, in fact, already published three novels for adults, all black comedy and all he will say is that they were "terrible! Except, maybe, the last one", as well as The Rough Guide to Classic Novels. He splits his time between writing at home and a part-time editorial position with David Fickling Books. As someone for whom publicity seems to be a somewhat excruciating process – Mason is self-effacing and deprecating to the extreme - working for his own publisher is "slightly awkward" he admits, especially in meetings when his books are discussed.
Still, mild awkwardness seems to have been a feature of Mason's life. It came to the fore during his time studying English at Oxford University which, he says with vehemence, he "hated". Born and brought up in Sheffield (although he has no trace of the accent, thanks to the elocution lessons his upwardly mobile parents made him attend) he had a comfortable upbringing attending the local comprehensive. While his parents had working-class backgrounds – his father had left school at 14 to become a professional football player, playing for Sheffield United and Leeds United – they had high ambitions for their only child, and shared with him their love of reading and theatre. Yet Oxford came as a shock.
"I had literally never met anyone from a private school, let alone had friends from private school, and then came to Oxford and it was all 'hello, I'm Rupert from Eton' and I was completely gobsmacked," he says. Feeling "overawed" by the social aspect ("where were the sweaty discos with beer on the floor on a Friday night?") he retreated to the library, sitting there reading books until the early hours.
It may not have been the most sociable of university experiences but it was a literary grounding that was to stand him in good stead for a life steeped in books and writing.
