From a Q & A about Clear at her publisher's website:
How close to the David Blaine spectacle were you? Were you living near the exhibit at the time, or were you influenced by the media blitz covering it?Read the complete Q & A.
I was very close to it. I live in a flat just over the other side of Tower Bridge, on the river. When I found out that Blaine was coming to my neighborhood to starve himself, I thought it was the most ridiculous idea I'd ever come across. I just ignored the whole thing. I wasn't interested. But after he'd been there for about a week, my curiosity got the better of me. I used to take my two dogs out running in the morning — very early — and so changed my usual route to cross the bridge and have a quick look at him. As soon as I arrived on site I was hooked. From there on in I went to see him most days. I was initially delighted (and amused) by the impact Blaine was having on my local environment, but then things started to turn nasty and it grew increasingly difficult — as a local — not to feel implicated in the whole thing. Even responsible. The media coverage was almost entirely superficial and violently anti-Blaine. It was unbelievably inflammatory. I ended up writing a letter to The Guardian in response to a repugnant column by a journalist who felt it was funny to actively encourage people to attack Blaine. Ironically, I'd recently published a novel (Behindlings) which was entirely about the nature of charisma. When I went to see Blaine it was as if the novel had split open and come to life. It was a very strange feeling. All of these factors made me sit down (a week before the fast ended) and start writing. The book took only three months to complete. I wanted it to be a snapshot of a particular moment. I wanted to try and make the people who derided Blaine sit back and think — to analyze why it was that he made them feel so angry and so threatened.
The Page 99 Test: Nicola Barker's Darkmans.
--Marshal Zeringue