Boarding House Reach
Boarding House Reach is a fundamentally different novel to Mazzeri. Whereas my first novel explored the myths and traditions of the island of Corsica through the eyes of a young man, Boarding House Reach tells the story of how five individual characters come to spend the weekend in a guest house on the Norfolk Coast. The youngest of these characters is twenty-one, the oldest in her early sixties. Their backgrounds are diverse and their stories encompass blackmail, rejection, infidelity, redemption and love; some contemporary and some as retrospective. As we get to know them, we watch them confront the often painful truths of their personal lives and, towards the end of the novel, learn what they have in common and how some of them are connected.
What made you return to writing after pursuing other careers?
Having written in my late teens and early twenties, I had always intended to return to writing. It was really a question of when rather than if – and that’s assuming the opportunity was always going to present itself. The last few years of business proved increasingly trying. The advent of the internet, and the domination of the motor-trade by a small number of multi-national groups, has transformed the workplace. For twenty five years or more, I traded higher-end cars with people with whom I had built up strong, lasting relationships; trust through character, if you like, was elemental. The internet has erased that style of working relationship and the private garagiste has now all but disappeared. However, over the last twenty years I have kept my hand in – no pun intended – by writing short stories for friends and relations who have suffered extended periods in hospital, and some of those stories I am putting together to make up a book I hope to have published next year. But as far returning to writing goes, I woke up one morning a couple of years ago and felt the time had come to pick up the pen once more. I’m not sure where that desire comes from; perhaps it is what I have heard some describe as immanent.
Please tell us about the characters of Hacker, Phoebe, Audrey, Philip and Stella.
I think the best way to describe how I came to meet the characters of Boarding House Reach is that I bumped into them by accident. After I’d finished Mazzeri, I was inclined to commit some time to character study, thinking that practice might concentrate my style. And once I’d fleshed out a dozen characters, I didn’t have the heart to consign them all to the darkness of a drawer in my desk. That wouldn’t have been fair to them, for they had all begun to engage me – to talk to me. So, I listened to them, allowed them to tell me what they wanted me to know and I merely tied the threads of their individual stories together. Hacker’s is a contemporary tale: an ex-footballer who lives his life the only way he has ever known – the way he lived it on the pitch. He is a would-be Lothario who is desperate to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. Phoebe is a Cambridge undergraduate, naturally bright and a shade precocious; a student who begins to doubt the foundations of her intellect when she uncovers a number of difficult truths about her home life. Audrey is a sixty-something, catholic widow who, in the days prior to her marriage, enjoyed a brief liaison with a boy she met in France. But when the postman delivers her a handful of old letters, she comes to understand that life with her husband was perhaps not a simple as she thought it to be. Philip is the epitome of a young man trying to make his way in the busy capital city: he is happily married with two young children and good prospects. He is the kind of guy who, when walking home from the station in the rain, gets soaked by the spray from the car he hasn’t noticed coming up behind him. And, Audrey is the landlady of the Reach: she is the glue in the story; a middle-aged divorcee who’s way has been to muddle on through life, whatever it throws at her – that is, until the Revenue and the police begin to show an interest in a former resident who passed away on her premises.
Why did you want to set the book in Norfolk?
I set Boarding House Reach in Norfolk primarily because the tone of the novel was suited to the landscape. Many of those who haven’t been to Norfolk have a perception of the county as being flat and bleak and rather grey; it isn’t. It is beautiful and colourful; the beaches, the National Trust houses and gardens, the history and the people make it one of the most attractive counties of Britain. And yet I needed a very tonal location, one that was not too far from London and one in which my characters could tell their stories without too much interruption; Norfolk seemed to suit this requirement in so many ways.
Please tell us about your inspiration behind the book.
My inspiration for the novel came from so many different points of the compass. I’ve just mentioned how the characters found me, rather than the reverse. But the book? A couple of years ago I walked some of the Camino de Santiago. At the finish in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostella, I sat beside a lady who, halfway through the service, got up to whisper to one of the priests seated in their confessionals. Now I’m not greatly religious in terms of belonging to any particular collection of beliefs of customs, even though I like to think of myself as a spiritual being, but when she returned to the pew, there lived such pain in her expression that it set me to wonder what it was about catholicism that could cause someone such phenomenal inner turmoil. It was, for me, an extremely cathartic moment. Also, my daughter Daisy went to college in Cambridge and on the occasions I visited her I was often unnerved with the weight of expectation the young heap and have heaped upon them, and how well so many of them seem to deal with those pressures. These are but two of the inspirations behind the novel.
You are well travelled so where is your favourite place?
Favourite places are difficult. I’m inclined to think it’s what happens to us in certain places which determines how favourite they become – a kindness in a remote corner of the globe can far outweigh the colourful view in another – and it is the people we meet who define and therefore control much of our approbation. But, if I had to name a few, probably Bonifacio on the southern tip of Corsica would appear towards the top of the list; to stand on the promontory overlooking the straights to Sardinia and feel the sun and the breeze is a wonderful release. Kitzbühel in Austria is near the top too. My father loved the place and, after his passing, I learnt why; our children learnt to ski there and the Tyroleans are amongst the most generous you can find. Great Windsor Park; walk beneath the oaks and feel the history; it is on my doorstep. Some parts of the East End of London are still the most vibrant of any city I have been lucky enough to stroll through. And in the mountains around Lake Wanaka in the South Island of New Zealand you will find a peace difficult to replicate. I don’t have a favourite; I’m lucky, I have many.
What is next for you?
Well, I’m writing Ontreto, the sequel to Mazzeri. Ontreto is set in Lipari, an island just north of Sicily; I’m about fifty thousand words in and hope to have it finished by autumn. But I’m also collating the material for a book of short stories I hope to have published in the New Year. I have a thriller, the premise of which is epigenetics, in the planning stage; it may be a shade off the wall for what I’m used to, but I’ll work out whether it’s viable later on. And, I’ve started to put together a novel similar to Boarding House Reach; just research, a little information gathering and the outline of a few characters who might like to tell me their very personal tales. I get restless if don’t write; there’s always so much more to do.