When Matt Haig hit upon the idea of a dog – a labrador, to be precise – as the hero/narrator of his first novel, not everyone showed unbridled enthusiasm.
In fact, hardly anyone did, least of all his partner of 10 years, novelist Andrea Semple.
"I told her one morning and she shook her head and just went like that," he said, making a thumbs-down sign and pulling a face.
"That made me want to prove her wrong. I'm a bit obnoxious, so I just kept writing it and she eventually liked it."
The Last Family in England tells the story of the Hunters, Adam and Kate, and their teenage children Hal and Charlotte, whose life together becomes increasingly threatened by the arrival of an intriguing new couple and their out-of-control springer spaniel, Falstaff.
Themes of pleasure versus duty abound. Prince, the narrator, is the Hunter family's dog, a labrador, and the Labrador Pact motto is "Duty over All", unlike the hedonistic springer spaniels, whose motto is Pleasure over Duty.
Matt says: "I was always a dog person and I found it so much easier writing from the point of view of the dog."
A bit of cheek never goes amiss when trying to get a foot in the literary door, and Matt sought the eye of some established writers, including Jeanette Winterson.
"I contacted her cold," says Matt. "I pasted at the bottom of the email the first 1,000 words. I'd done it to a lot of authors and most of them completely blanked me – well, didn't get back to me. But she looked at it and liked it and told me who to contact in terms of the publisher and gave me a quote I could use." That quote was: "I love this book. It's fabulous and moving and funny and strange. It will go down among the great animal books."
Matt says: "That really helped. When you're going out with no press, as you always are the first time, you need something."
Not that it was plain sailing. The response was at first pretty mixed when he sent the book out to literary agents.
"I got quite a few rejections. Some people said they had no idea where they would place it – it didn't fit in because it's not a crime novel or a typical literary Booker Prize sort of novel or a typical commercial novel.
"Some people got back and said they didn't buy the whole thing of the dog-narrator, so I'd written it off in my mind really. Then about two months later I got a call from the last agent on the list. She said she wanted to go with it."
And so it was that The Last Family in England was published by Jonathan Cape to rave reviews – "multi-faceted", "clearly destined to become a cult hit", "a carefully plotted maze of tragi-comedy" – with Matt hailed as a rising young star in the literary galaxy.
The hardback made it on to the bestseller lists, the paperback has just come out, and Matt Haig is now very much in demand.
Born in Sheffield in 1975, Matt moved to Newark in Nottinghamshire as a baby and grew up there with father, Richard, an architect, mother, Mary, a head teacher, and younger sister Phoebe (who is now also a teacher).
It was a stable, happy family although, as most of his friends had single parents, it did sometimes feel that they might well be one of the last families in England.
"I was a shy kid," he says, adding that he hated secondary school. "I was pretty much going downhill gradually." His teachers would probably be surprised to learn he'd become a published novelist.
"I wasn't the one of the year going places. I was just hideous. For three years I was the tallest in my year, completely self-conscious. And I'd always get this giant spot. You're made who you are in the teen years, in that peer group."
Matt went to Hull University, where he read English and History and met Andrea, author of popular fiction novels The Ex-Factor and The Make-Up Girl. They have been together now for 10 years and live in a flat in the centre of Leeds.
"It's not a coincidence that we're both published writers. I was the one initially, even though Andrea's first book came out first. I'd written half of the book before Andrea had got published. We both really got into it, researching together, and she probably wouldn't have started it if what happened to me hadn't happened. It made us both reassess our lives."
What happened was that Matt developed a drink problem. After university he and Andrea worked for three years in Ibiza, for Manumission, the largest nightclub in Europe. "I wasn't like a full-scale alcoholic in the sense that I'd get up and crave drink," he says, "but I was drinking a hell of a lot every day.
"I'd have about 12 pints during the day and vodkas and coke through the night – and we're talking about quarter-pint vodkas here, about four or five of them. So yes, I was a heavy drinker." He began suffering panic attacks and decided in 1999 that it was time to go home. He went back to detox with his parents for a while, and then he and Andrea moved to Leeds and set up an internet PR company together. That led to Matt being commissioned to write a book on internet PR, and then eight other titles for a business publisher, the biggest of which was called Brand Failures, which has been translated into 11 languages. "I was on the bestseller list in South Korea," he says.
Matt now doesn't drink at all. He's a vegetarian too. "I've always been an all or nothing person."
The company was a success, but when Andrea's mum became ill with cancer (she has since recovered), they went to look after her in County Durham for three months, during which time Matt began to work on the novel. Andrea began her first novel later, but still managed to find a publisher first. Was there not a tiny bit of professional jealousy? "Well, yeah, a little bit," Matt admits. "But I was quite philosophical as well, because I thought, if one of us has got a foot in the door..."
There has been talk of a film of The Last Family In England, but in the meantime Matt has another book out early next year, called The Dead Fathers' Club, a dark comedy loosely based on Hamlet (Last Family was loosely based on Henry IV Part I) about an 11-year-old boy whose father dies and returns as a ghost. He's also working on a children's fantasy book.
"I am very ambitious, and I do want to get into the top league," he says.
Few doubt that he's got the talent and – no matter what he says – the tenacity, to do it.
stephanie.smith@ypn.co.uk
The Last Family in England is published by Vintage in paperback at £6.99. To order a copy from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232.