All three of my novels have been about families. I’m endlessly intrigued by human relationships. Especially intergenerational ones.
Joy and Felicity is a novel about sisters born eight years apart who have very different upbringings.
Why so different? A combination of reasons. The age gap means that while Joy is a war baby, Felicity is born into an entirely different world. Peacetime; austerity Britain. The intervening years have changed their parents’ lives.
Then, of course, there is the birth order. Joy is very much the big sister, while Felicity is the baby of the family. And that’s not to mention their personalities. Chalk and cheese.
Maybe it’s because I’m one of four children that I’m fascinated by sibling relationships. We four were born within four years – and yet we each experienced our upbringing through individual lenses. Our order in the hierarchy, our particular characteristics, our parents’ increasing experience as parents… well, it all matters, doesn’t it?
As we mature, we are increasingly influenced by those outside the home. Friends and lovers, teachers and colleagues. We have the chance to make more intentional choices. To make our own mistakes. Our circle widens and our paths sometimes diverge dramatically from those of our siblings. Haven’t we all met families where we think, Aren’t they different?
We tell different stories about our own families. We have different insights and interpretations of our history. Sometimes there are secrets, as there are in the Kelly family in Joy and Felicity. Some of these secrets emerge over the course of the novel, while others stay hidden. By which I mean the reader learns things that the main characters themselves never uncover. Truths have a habit of shape-shifting within families, anyway. As Bridie – the girls’ mother – points out, memory’s a slippery thing. Narratives within a family are rarely straightforward and frequently unreliable.
I suspect all families have their hidden stories. My mother, who died last year, once tearfully shared a secret with me that I’m fairly sure she never told my brothers. Does that matter? I think so; it was something she entrusted to me with great care, for a particular reason. As far as I know, only two other people on earth know that truth. She may no longer be with us, but I see no reason to share it now.
The privilege of the novelist is that we have access to our characters’ history and thoughts and feelings. Their entire life history, should we want it. Unlike in real life, when none of us is ever wholly known and understood even by those closest to us.
And that’s the fun of it, I suppose. While in real life we can be left bewildered by other people’s choices or behaviour – perhaps also by our own actions and reactions – the novelist has privileged access. One reason we write, of course, is to help make sense of other people and understand the world a little better.
That’s why, if I’m ever asked what I want readers to take away from my novels my answer is that I don’t set out to be didactic. I write to entertain. The closest I have to a message is a plea for compassion. We’re all flawed beings, formed by our history and our genes and our character.
If we can understand other people and the choices they make, we’re half-way there. If we can forgive each other too, well that’s better still.
Joy and Felicity is a novel about sisters born eight years apart who have very different upbringings.
Why so different? A combination of reasons. The age gap means that while Joy is a war baby, Felicity is born into an entirely different world. Peacetime; austerity Britain. The intervening years have changed their parents’ lives.
Then, of course, there is the birth order. Joy is very much the big sister, while Felicity is the baby of the family. And that’s not to mention their personalities. Chalk and cheese.
Maybe it’s because I’m one of four children that I’m fascinated by sibling relationships. We four were born within four years – and yet we each experienced our upbringing through individual lenses. Our order in the hierarchy, our particular characteristics, our parents’ increasing experience as parents… well, it all matters, doesn’t it?
As we mature, we are increasingly influenced by those outside the home. Friends and lovers, teachers and colleagues. We have the chance to make more intentional choices. To make our own mistakes. Our circle widens and our paths sometimes diverge dramatically from those of our siblings. Haven’t we all met families where we think, Aren’t they different?
We tell different stories about our own families. We have different insights and interpretations of our history. Sometimes there are secrets, as there are in the Kelly family in Joy and Felicity. Some of these secrets emerge over the course of the novel, while others stay hidden. By which I mean the reader learns things that the main characters themselves never uncover. Truths have a habit of shape-shifting within families, anyway. As Bridie – the girls’ mother – points out, memory’s a slippery thing. Narratives within a family are rarely straightforward and frequently unreliable.
I suspect all families have their hidden stories. My mother, who died last year, once tearfully shared a secret with me that I’m fairly sure she never told my brothers. Does that matter? I think so; it was something she entrusted to me with great care, for a particular reason. As far as I know, only two other people on earth know that truth. She may no longer be with us, but I see no reason to share it now.
The privilege of the novelist is that we have access to our characters’ history and thoughts and feelings. Their entire life history, should we want it. Unlike in real life, when none of us is ever wholly known and understood even by those closest to us.
And that’s the fun of it, I suppose. While in real life we can be left bewildered by other people’s choices or behaviour – perhaps also by our own actions and reactions – the novelist has privileged access. One reason we write, of course, is to help make sense of other people and understand the world a little better.
That’s why, if I’m ever asked what I want readers to take away from my novels my answer is that I don’t set out to be didactic. I write to entertain. The closest I have to a message is a plea for compassion. We’re all flawed beings, formed by our history and our genes and our character.
If we can understand other people and the choices they make, we’re half-way there. If we can forgive each other too, well that’s better still.
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