What can you tell our readers about your new novel A Half Forgotten Song?
It’s set in the 1930s and in the present day, and tells the story of Dimity Hatcher, a naïve young girl who has grown up on the Dorset coast, and whose life is turned upside down by the arrival of renowned artist and womaniser, Charles Aubrey. He chooses Dimity as his muse, but his attention changes her, and all of their lives, in catastrophic, unforeseen ways. In the present day, an Aubrey enthusiast called Zach travels to Dorset to meet Dimity, now an old lady, and to research the time the artist spent there. Zach finds that there are great many secrets to be uncovered – ones he could never have dreamed of, which will alter the course of his own life forever. It’s a novel about the dangers of obsessive love and of being careless with other people’s hearts, and the importance of staying true to yourself.
The novel is set in 1937, how much research did you have to put into getting the period elements right?
I actually already had a good working knowledge of life and society in Britain in the 1930s, thanks to my degree, my continuing interest in history, and research I had done for a previous (unpublished!) book. I did more research on rural Dorset life in particular for this book – the wild food, folk charms and hedge pharmacy Dimity and her mother rely upon to feed themselves. It was great fun to learn about!
Why did you decide to set the novel on the Dorset coast, is this somewhere special to you?
I love the Dorset coast – it’s not that far from where I grew up in Hampshire, and we used to go on lots of day trips when I was little, to walk along the cliffs, go to the beach and have picnics. It’s such a beautiful area, and as a result it can be gridlocked with visitors in the summer. I can’t help thinking the residents must get fed up with the tourists, which made me think about how long the area had drawn holiday makers, and how these visitors might have interacted with and affected the locals. Also, a couple of years ago I went down to the Dorset coast for a long weekend in the winter. The weather was foul, but I walked along the cliffs and beaches all the same. I was struck by how bleak and unforgiving it seemed, how different from the soft summer days I’d experienced down there! I could suddenly see that to grow up there, dirt poor, in the 1930s, would probably have been incredibly hard.
How difficult was it to write from a fourteen year old child's perspective?
Truthfully, not very! It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was that age myself (though it was longer ago than I care to add up right now…) and I can well remember how self-conscious I was, how caught up in my own imagination, how sensitive to the least embarrassment or attention… When we’re teenagers we don’t have thick skins, and we don’t have the coping mechanisms we develop as we get older. I think of teenagers, especially Dimity, as being raw and reactive, and sometimes prey to emotions that are too powerful for them to process.
You held down a mixture of jobs from working in a pottery, as a waitress and in a library, so when was it that you decided you wanted to write?
All of those jobs were only to pay the bills until I got published! I started to write my first novel as soon as I’d graduated, and pursued no other career, as such. I took jobs that required little or no mental input, so I could spend most of the time thinking up plots and characters… It took ten years and I’d written six other books before I finally got a publishing deal with The Legacy. It was a huge relief! I kind of hadn’t left myself many other options, career-wise. It’s a privilege and a dream come true to be able to write full-time now.
Was your degree from Durham University related to your current career in writing?
Indirectly, I would say, but yes! I studied history, so it has definitely been relevant. My university essays often came back from being marked with comments telling me I was being too emotive, too descriptive, not analytical enough…which makes perfect sense, though I was rather offended at the time! I can now blame latent creativity. I’m fascinated by history, and the different rules people lived their lives by in the past. Interestingly, the first five books I wrote were wholly contemporary. I only discovered how much fun writing fiction with a historical setting could be with my sixth – I have no idea why it took me so long to figure it out! The excitement of getting a glimpse into a past life, or of uncovering a historical, secret is something I try to convey in my fiction – that thrill of discovery, of a mystery solved.
Who were you main influences as you began to write?
I don’t think any writer writes with a literary hero specifically in mind, or with the aim of emulating anyone. It just wouldn’t work; the early books by any author are about them finding their own unique voice. But at the same time, I’m sure we’re all influenced to some degree by a combination of everything and everyone we’ve read as we’ve grown up…so it’s very hard to say.
Who do you love to read?
I read constantly and am always discovering new favourite authors! Most recently I’ve discovered Eowyn Ivey, whose book The Snow Child held me captivated; and Maria Semple, who’s written a fantastic and funny novel called Where’d You Go Bernadette? I’m also hooked on George R R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series – they’re so addictive! Some old favourites include Margaret Atwood, Jim Crace, Helen Dunmore, Kate Atkinson, Ian McEwan, Tolkein, Sir Terry Pratchett and Rose Tremain. Any author who can make me believe and invest in their characters, and can tell a story that I just have to know the outcome of.
Why did you want to write about an obsessive love?
I’m always interested in looking at the grey areas in human behaviour – the way that morality sometimes doesn’t stretch far enough to incorporate the extreme pressures people are put under. Good people doing terrible things for the right reasons, or even for the wrong reasons, because they see no other way. It’s these pressures that I love to explore – what it is that can make people reach breaking point, can make them forget who they really are, or what they know to be right and wrong. In this instance, it’s Dimity’s obsessive love that leads her astray. I was thinking back to the crushes I had when I was a teenager – how powerful and all-consuming they seemed at the time. I wanted to see what a character might do if they were subjected to such powerful feelings at a time in their life when they were already being pushed close to the edge by their situation and circumstances.
What is next in store for your fans?
I’m currently almost half way through writing my next novel. It has no title as yet, but it’s set in Bath in the 1820s, and is about the mysterious disappearance of a young girl who vanished ten years earlier. The remnants of the girl’s family are determined to unravel what happened, and are aided by a newcomer who proves to have a greater connection to the girl’s disappearance than any of them first realises…
Female First Lucy Walton
by Lucy Walton
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