Books: Branching out

His heart-warming novels have amassed him a devoted legion of fans, and even the critics look forward to each new book. Now that Patrick Gale has taken up writing for TV and the cinema, can he attract a similarly enthusiastic audience? Having heard the outline for a forth-coming film, Kate Hilpern says if anyone can successfully bring silliness to the screen, he can.

Expect the unexpected. That's the advice given by previews of almost every one of Patrick Gale's novels. And it's also the advice I would give to anyone meeting this thirtysomething author whose simultaneous contribution to the gay and straight communities has been likened to Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. After all,despite the bizarre imagination and harsh observations that give way to Gale's eccentric adventures, there is a marked sense of coyness - almost vulnerability - about him. A far cry from the commanding, slightly peculiar writer I'd prepared myself for.

Whilst his 11th - and latest - novel, Tree Surgery For Beginners, loses some of the complexity and vigour so prominent in his previous storytelling, it is none the less high in the drama, wit and immodest romance which will be all too familiar to his regular readers. And with critics making claims about waiting for his novels in "in the way some people wait for springtime", I observe that it is a more unexpected time than ever for him to be turning his attentions to writing a succession of films.

"Not really," he protests, stressing that most of his works are packed with dialogue and that one of the projects could have been groundbreaking, had the BBC not just informed him that it was to be called off "for now".

"Together with Kevin Elyot, I was writing BBC2's first gay drama series, a painful comedy set in Hove. But apparently it is not to be," he explains. However, in view of what else he is working on in the world of television and cinema, it hardly surprises me when Gale shows no great despondency at this recent news.A cinematic version of his acclaimed novel Kansas in August is, he says,"teetering on the edge of production", whilst a television mini-series of Little Bits of Baby is also ready for filming. Additionally, he is currently writing a script for a film based on his short story "A Slight Chill", which Gale describes as "great fun - rather like an old fashioned horror film in that it centres on a vampire story in a girl's boarding school". And finally, The Knot Garden, an original script. "It will be a wonderful tear-jerker,"he explains enthusiastically. "It's about a woman who is told she is dying and subsequently sets about choosing and auditioning a replacement wife for her husband. And then, of course, she'll discover she isn't dying at all."

If I was listening to any other novelist whose experience in script-writing was so minimal, I might have laughed. But if anyone can transform silliness into moving yet amusing dialogue, it is surely Gale. "In fact, I think it's turning into something a bit funnier than the producers had planned, but catastrophe does, after all, have an ironic and humorous side. I can't do po-faced tragedy. It's artificial." Granted, this all sounds fascinating. But what about the homosexual aspect?None of these intentions appear to match the controversy that a gay drama series on BBC television might inspire.

"Most of my work includes gay characters but they are rarely in isolation. I feel that writing exclusively about the gay community is, most of the time, of pretty limited interest. In any case, it's so far from my own experience that it can seem like science fiction. After all, I live in the middle of the countryside. For me,the whole area of heterosexuality and the nuclear family set-up is a far richer subject - and one that, as an outsider, I manage to approach differently." In fact, reviewers often comment that Gale writes more like a woman than a homosexual man and so it is no wonder that the script-writing follows suit. "Knowing that most of my readers are women, I get very nervous about not getting them right in my books," he laughs.

Having left his matriarchal home, Gale spent many of his college days neglecting his studies to appear alongside the likes of Hugh Grant and Imogen Stubbs in a variety of student productions. "I was obsessed with acting then," he says. "In fact, I took it far more seriously than writing." So will he take advantage of an ideal opportunity, now that he is back in the film world?

"My dog's going to appear in Kansas in August. So I might be his handler. Something like a `homeless person with dog' for one scene. Hitchcock style!" It's not until I'm about to leave that he remembers one of his most loved current scripts. "How could I forget?" he remarks bewildered, describing the plot of yet another film, this one loosely based on The Graduate.

And since Gale is a shameless romantic, even I guess that there will be nothing unexpected about the conclusion. "You're right,"he says. "In my version the man has the good sense to stay with Anne Bancroft."

`Tree Surgery for Beginners' is published by Flamingo this week