MHO'F
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Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed myself. All the best, Maggie -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
Hi there, See above, my reply to our friend PDR... Maggie -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
That's a good recommendation. I'll have a look for it. Thanks. Maggie -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
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 -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
It moved around in time because it was a story which was spread over a long period of time. I don't really see why stories have to be chronological and ordered - I don't think real life is like that. Life is messy and disordered and complicated and I hope my novels reflect that. Also, it was a story split between three people - Iris, Esme and Kitty - so it was bound to be a little splintered. Does that answer your question ...? As for what to read next, have you tried Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper? More women imprisoned against their will ... Maggie -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
Ah, your daughter. I did think she looked rather young to be reading grown-up books... Lavender is one of my favourite plants. Very glad you liked the book. Maggie -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
You are so kind. I'm really, really pleased that you enjoyed it. Maggie -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
Hi, I like your Moomin picture. I'm a big fan of the Moomins. I don't know if I'd see it in terms of 'development'. I've certainly changed in that time - I'm seven years older, for a start. I think you learn a great deal from writing each novel and of course from the things that happen in your life. So I suppose it's inevitable that your writing would change too. As Evelyn Waugh said, "Change is the only sign of life." -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
Goodness, I'm a bit nervous to be coming after Zola ... that's a lot to live up to. -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
Thank you very much. Hope it's still enjoyable. -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
Thank you. I hope you're still enjoying it. Is that lavender in the photo with you? -
Featured Author - Maggie O'Farrell
MHO'F replied to Michelle's topic in Author Interviews and Forum Visits
Sorry, sorry. I'm a bit of a ignoramus when it comes to websites and hadn't worked out how to do replies. But, with a little help from Michelle, I'm fully signed up, present and correct.