| | PrizesWar Crimes for the Home has been longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
InspirationOne spring I read a wonderful book called Boxy an Star, by Daren King. It's told from the point of view of an addle-brained, teenaged drug addict called Bole, who can barely muster a train of thought. It was quite a stunt to pull off in a novel, but it worked brilliantly. I loved the voice, and I immediately wanted to do something similar, creating a uneducated, barely literate, confused character who nevertheless manages to be compelling.
I experimented with a child's voice for a while, but then it struck me that it could equally well be someone ancient, who is suffering from the beginnings of senile dementia. And that's how Gloria was born. Being old, she'd have lived through the war, so alongside her present-day life in a dismal seaside old folks home, I also began giving her memories of wartime Britain.
And as it happened, the flashbacks took over. Re-constructing events that happened long before you were born is a dodgy thing to do when there are plenty of people who remember it. You can't afford to get it too wrong. Researching GIs and the life of women in wartime Britain was a real departure for me, because I'd always prided myself on relying on my imagination. I felt a bit shackled to start with, and almost resentful of the idea that I would have to be a slave to the truth. Isn't getting away from reality one of the reasons I write fiction?
But as it happened, the more I read, the more I revelled in the wartime slang, and the funny stories, and the little details of daily life, and the sheer excitement of the times. At a couple of literary events I attended while writing the book, I steeled myself to read aloud a sex scene from the work in progress. To my delight, some of the older women came up to me afterwards (in the Ladies, of course) and eagerly confirmed that there was indeed a lot of sex about in the good old days - pre-marital, adulterous, homosexual, you name it. British girls particularly adored the GIs, because they looked like movie stars. `You didn't hold back,' said one, `because you might be dead tomorrow.' Good, I thought. I am on the right track.
My next piece of good luck was to receive a travel grant from the Society of Authors, which enabled me to go to the States to interview a GI bride and her husband, whom I'd found on the internet. This was a huge breakthough for me, because although I'd already created my characters and most of my story by then, the part that dealt with America was still very vague. In California, Olivia and John Poole entertained me for hours with their their moving, harrowing, funny and beautifully detailed wartime recollections, and their stories of life back in post-war America. In addition, I plagued them to trawl their memories for wartime jokes and anecdotes and song-lyrics, and came home a week later with a bulging notebook. It was exhausting and exhilarating for all three of us, and it added a huge amount of atmosphere to the book.
Having been a sceptic about research, I now know how seductive it is.
|
