Tom McCarthy's rise from an obscure art-house author has been quite spectacular, culminating in C, his third novel, being shortlisted for this year's Man Booker prize. In something that can only be described as an amusing coincidence, my own novel The Canal was shortlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker prize in the same week. So, with more than a nod and a wink to the three English greats who witnessed our first meeting, I thought it fitting that I should meet up with Tom to discuss this and his novel C in one of our favourite London pubs, the Three Kings in Clerkenwell.

Lee Rourke: You're probably sick of people asking you about being shortlisted for the Man Booker prize so we shouldn't talk about that. It's just a competition, isn't it?

Tom McCarthy: I should congratulate you for making the shortlist of the Guardian's Not the Booker prize instead. That's a better way to start. That's the cool one to be on, right? I mean, we all remember the lines from Not the Nine O'Clock News

There are many stories Tom McCarthy chooses not to tell in “C,” his tour de force new novel encompassing the short life of one Serge Carrefax, born at the turn of the 20th century on a rural English estate. Serge’s father, a manic tinkerer with early wireless technology, runs a school for the deaf but seems oblivious to his own deaf wife, Serge’s mother, who’s so blinkered on opium (supplied by a mute gardener who grows the poppies himself) that she nearly lets Serge drown in a creek at age 2. Serge’s beloved older sister, Sophie, becomes sexually involved with a friend of their father’s and winds up committing suicide at 17 — possibly after having an abortion. Serge’s relationship to Sophie is preternaturally close, with incestuous overtones, and her death severs his only real human connection. But these dramas are merely suggested, their shadowy outlines ignored, sublimated or flat-out denied by those involved; Sophie’s self-poisoning is deemed an accident.

McCarthy, author of the

A hot summer day, C not yet out, the Booker judges still busy deciding on this year’s longlist, I go to meet Tom McCarthy. On the way to the cafe, I remember the last time I interviewed him, a couple of years ago, when C was but a distant signal in the space, part of the white noise. Back then, Tom said the book was about mourning, quickly adding for my benefit: “Mourning with a ‘u’.” He was the first to burst out laughing, but the memory still does little for my confidence as a critic, so the first question I ask him is: “You’ve read my review of C – what did I get wrong?”

Tom McCarthy: I don’t think you can actually get things right or wrong when it comes to books. As a writer, you can only set up a number of possibilities, things to be interpreted. It there were one interpretation it would probably be a rather one-dimensional book. But then again… who am I to say? I can just share some anecdotes of its production.

3:AM: Let’s do anecdotes then. Your Black Box Transmitter project h