MHO'F

Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed myself. All the best, Maggie

Um, I don't know! I don't think it's necessarily true that you have to be over 40 to write a good book. There are plenty of wonderful books written by people younger than that, and plenty written by people older than that. I do think you tend to write different books at different ages. I couldn't write 'After You'd Gone' now, I think. That was very much a mid-twenties book. And I did try to write 'Esme Lennox' in my mid-twenties but couldn't, so maybe it's my mid-thirties book. Maggie

Influences are the Brontes, Albert Camus, RL Stevenson, Virginia Woolf, Robert Browning, Angela Carter. I'd read any of these when I'm not writing. I also try and read anything written by Peter Carey, William Boyd, Michele Roberts, Ali Smith, among others. Maggie

Yes, absolutely. I have a lovely, patient and brilliant proof-reader called Hazel, who has worked tirelessly on all my very messy manuscripts. She spots all the spelling mistakes and grammar errors, as well as things like calling something a "sofa bed" on page 71 and the same things a "futon" on page 132... Maggie

Has your own family influenced this or do you mainly seek inspiration in others? (As you mentioned in your reply to Gyre's question about the "grandmother's cousin") Has your perception of writing families changed since you started a 'new' one with your son and husband? I always, always try to avoid writing about real people in my books. It wouldn't be fair on them. Obviously, things from my own life do appear in my fiction - it would be difficult for them not to - but I don't tend to write autobiographically as a rule. I have to live my life; it would be boring writing about it as well ... And, yes, inevitably, your perception of family changes when you have your own. Having spent 30 years as a daughter and sister, you suddenly have a whole new role as a mother. And what an enormous role that is. Maggie

You're right. It is an important question. And the answer is yes. I got married two years ago and I bought myself some silver Vivienne Westwoods for that. My son had silver Kickers to match... Maggie

Hi Gyre, Is that as in Yeats' gyres? There are numerous brilliant books on the subject, two of which are mentioned int he acknowledgements for the novel. Also, a number of memoirs (The Ha ha, by Jennifer Dawson & Antonia White's trilogy, for example). The Wellcome Library in London was very helpful too. Maggie

Hi there, See above, my reply to our friend PDR... Maggie

Dear Jeremy, In the early 1990s, just after Thatcher had passed her "Care in the Community Act" and the big Victorian asylums were being closed down, someone told me about their grandmother's cousin. She had just died at the age of ninety in one of these closing asylums, two months from release. She'd been put away at the age of nineteen, for planning to elope with a legal clerk. I couldn't forget this cousin and so embarked on research about women who'd been put away for reasons of immorality - and uncovered so many I knew I had to write a novel about it. A book that really inspired Esme was Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. Maggie

You're right, of course. It's perfectly possible even now for women, particularly teenagers like Esme, to be unaware that they are pregnant. And, yes, right again. She's not insane and has no mental illness whatsoever. She's saner than most of the other people in her family. She's misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic, which a great number of women were in the last century. What we'd now recognise as normal, teenage, rebellious behaviour was often seen as evidence of insanity, particularly in women. If anyone's interested in this subject, I'd recommend the two books I mention inthe acknowlegements at the back of the novel - the RD Laing and the Elaine Showalter. They explain it better and in rather more detail than me. Maggie

I always wanted it to be one story told by three people and the third person really lends itself to multiple narration. Kitty's, however, had to be in the first person, because of its jumbled nature. And the way she gives herself away without meaning to. There's no way I could have got across the state of her mind in the third person. It was also important because she holds the key to the story. Does that make any sense...? Maggie

That's a good recommendation. I'll have a look for it. Thanks. Maggie

Because unless someone had told her what signs to look out for she wouldn't have known, wouldn't have had any idea. I don't think it's to do with her madness (she's not mad, of course). Esme comes from the kind of family that wouldn't talk about things like that, so there is no way she could have suspected. I think a lot of girls, especially in the earlier part of the twentieth century, were kept in the dark about reproduction and sex. Kitty, of course, also falls foul of this, in her marital relations with Duncan... Maggie

Well, that's the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day. I love Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway and The Years are my favourites. Maggie

Hello, No, I didn't always feel I was going to be a writer - I hoped I would, which is a very different thing. I've always written, from a very young age, but never told anyone, as I thought people would tell me it woudl never happen. I went to writing workshops when I was a student, and after I left university. I'd written about 20,000 words of what became After You'd Gone when I went on an Arvon Foundation course, which was a brilliant way to galvanise me to finishing the book. i'd recommend Arvon to anyone who wanted to write. Maggie