Don't call me the new Zadie

Diana Evans' book 26a has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize

12 April 2012

It was always inevitable that Diana Evans would, at some point, be described as the "new Zadie Smith". Smith, of course, won several first novel awards for White Teeth, and now Diana Evans has been shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers for her debut novel, 26a.

Their first books are, admittedly, similar - a story of interracial marriage and a set of twins, set against the backdrop of north-west London in the 1980s - but surely the comparison has more to do with them both being young, attractive black women than anything else. Does she find that particularly irritating?

Diana Evans thinks for a while and says, in her softly spoken way, "I always knew it would happen. There aren't many young black female writers so there is a tendency to lump us together. I knew that people would pick up on the fact that our books are set in the same part of London but that's where I grew up, so why shouldn't I set it there? Does it offend me? Not really, I just think it's quite lazy.

Whenever someone is new, they are always called the 'new' version of someone else."

She found out she had been shortlisted for the new prize, a spin-off of the Orange Prize for female writers, three weeks ago, but it was only announced yesterday. "I had to keep it quiet for a while, which was very hard," she says. "It's very exciting and it did come as a bit of a shock."

However well-meaning the prize is, some wonder why women writers should have a special award (the same was said about last week's Decibel prize for black and Asian writers) but it will do wonders for Diana Evans's book sales. She is the only British author shortlisted - the other two are Americans Nell Freudenberger and Meg Rosoff. "I'm pleased to be representing Britain," she says. "Yes, it is a women's prize, but it has nothing to do with me being black."

Diana's debut novel, 26a, which was only published a month ago to good reviews (The Times critic said it was "full of energy and charm" while The Independent said it had "great heart and humour"), is based on her own very personal experience as a twin. In her book, twins Georgia and Bessi live in Neasden with their sisters, white British father and Nigerian mother who hates the cold and puts cayenne pepper on everything. It was much the same for Diana and her twin, Paula.

In the book, a traumatic event, and the burden of keeping it a secret, eventually becomes too much for Georgia. In Diana's life, her twin, Paula, was always shadowed by a depression that, in the end, became so unbearable that she committed suicide seven years ago. Already a small, neat person - even her corkscrew curls seem delicately and deliberately arranged in place - Diana seems to shrink into herself even more when I ask about Paula.

Was it cathartic to write about her death? "No," she says. "It was really hard. It was a bit like living in a time warp. The second half of the book is quite dark and I was living in this dark space. But I felt I had to do something to mark what had happened. We were very close and when you lose someone like that, it's difficult to say goodbye without doing something big."

Paula was 26 when she died. She had suffered depression throughout her adult life and had been particularly withdrawn in the weeks leading up to her death. When she visited Diana, a few weeks before she died, she told her twin she felt suicidal. "I thought it was an expression of how depressed she felt rather than something that was building into an actual intention - the greatest misjudgment I could have made."

The effect of Paula's death on her family was devastating, but was it somehow worse for Diana? If being a twin makes everything twice as funny, twice as silly, twice as happy, does it also make it twice as hard to lose them? "I'm supposed to be the closest person in the world to her and I should have seen how far gone she was," she says.

"The thing about being a twin is that you've always been a pair and you depend on each other. It's a very particular kind of loss; when your twin isn't there you feel as if you're floating around, you don't know where you are. It's very disorienting."

She had spoken to Paula earlier that week but not on the day she died (she refuses to say how her twin took her life). "Guilt is a big part of the bereavement process but because it was suicide you feel you should have been able to stop it. That made it more difficult. But it was her choice and nobody can keep someone else alive, no matter how close you are to them.

"Paula was a very determined person, always headstrong. I don't think there was anything I could have done to stop her. It was shocking in the sense that it's hard to imagine the finality. I felt winded, as if I had been punched in the stomach."

The twins grew-up in Neasden in a big, loud house with their four sisters. Their father, an accountant, had worked in Nigeria for a while and married their mother, who moved back to Britain with him, where their six daughters were born.

Diana says she never got the impression it was made difficult for her parents, being in an interracial relationship, nor whether it was especially hard for her mother, in the often unwelcoming Britain of the 1970s. "We never talked about it. She loved Nigeria but she always felt that her home was where her children were."

Diana says she wasn't particularly aware of race issues herself; it was only when the family moved to Nigeria for four years when she was seven that she felt different. "My mum said it was like going home but I always felt very different there, that we were just staying there. When we came back to England I felt different in a way that I hadn't before. I didn't feel English but I didn't feel Nigerian, either.

"I'm 'Black British'. It annoys me when people think that there is just one kind of experience of growing up black in Britain. My partner is black and he might tell a different story from my experience. I don't feel a part of indigenous English society but I've never experienced overt racism. I remember once a man in a lift saying that it must be 'lovely and warm where you're from' and I was thinking, 'What, Neasden?'"

But despite the multicultural undertones, 26a isn't about race - it's about twins, growing up together and then alone. Paula and Diana were identical to strangers - acquaintances who don't know that Paula is dead still approach Diana in the street thinking she's Paula - but quite different to their family. "We shared a room and had our own world in our heads that we'd escape to; we had a lot of private jokes. But as we got older, it became more important to be independent."

They went to university in Brighton together but, after that, their lives took separate paths, even though they remained extremely close. "We were living in different parts of London. I was a journalist and I had a fast-paced life, whereas Paula wasn't sure what she wanted to do - she had occasional temporary jobs and did voluntary work. She had a lot of friends, but there was still this recurring sadness."

Does she still consider herself a twin? "Definitely. You're always a twin, even if people can't see it. I don't think I'll ever completely get over it. I'm still really shocked by the idea she's dead."

Diana is now 33, with a five-month-old daughter, and she lives with her partner, a writer, near Portobello Road. "I feel a sense of regret that my twin won't meet my daughter but all the kids in my family have a very strong sense of Paula, even the ones born after she died. My daughter is only a few months old and I'm already talking to her about auntie

Paula. I'll show her pictures and take her to the cemetery. We used to talk about how we would be with each other's kids - how we'd be like second mums to them. That makes me sad. I think her death has made me more appreciative of life. You can't waste time. I have a sense that time is very important. There's an extra urgency now to everything I do."

She used to visit Paula's grave every week, then it was every month, now it's when she feels like it. Her book feels like a way of saying goodbye and she says her family didn't mind her writing it.

"Before, I couldn't imagine what life would be like without my twin, but now I've lived seven years without her I'm getting used to it. I don't miss her day to day but there are lots of times when I think, I wish I could talk to her about this or, I wish she could see this, but it's not like a burning yearning any more. If I'm upset about something else, I end up getting upset about Paula. When it's a really sunny day, I think of her.

"It's an unfillable gap. I think I tried to fill it with relationships with other people but nothing ever matched up.

Eventually I learned to live with the gap. I feel that she's inside me, but in the sense that we were always a part of each other. That's remained since she's gone."

26a is published by Chatto & Windus, £12.99.

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