The Sea Change
The Sea Change weaves together the story of a daughter who is caught up in the aftermath of a tsunami with the tale of her mother who was evacuated from her Wiltshire village by the army during the Second World War and never allowed to return. It’s a story about the meaning of home and what it means to belong.
You studied English at Cambridge University, so how much has this affected your writing?
I didn’t write very much at all at Cambridge. I was in awe of the authors I was reading as part of my degree and it was difficult to sit down and write anything of my own when I was constantly being reminded that nobody could ever outdo the likes of Shakespeare or Milton. I had a wonderful three years immersing myself in every aspect of English Literature from Chaucer to Virginia Woolf; I discovered writers that I never would have read otherwise and the experience has definitely taught me that, whatever I write, I’m always going to be a very small fish in a very big pool! Some of the themes of my current novel – abandoned places, ruins, memory the second world war were inspired by books and poems I fell in love with during my degree: Rose Macaulay, T.S. Eliot, W.G. Sebald to name but a few…
You completed an MA in Creative Writing at Warwick University, so how important has this been to you?
The Writing MA at Warwick gave me a community of writers who took their work seriously and were able to give each other honest, constructive feedback. This is so hard to come by as a writer as, in many ways, it’s quite a solitary profession. Your friends and family are always going to tell you they love what you do but, in order to improve, every writer needs an honest and objective reader. Creative MAs don’t teach writers how to write but they do create an inspiring environment in which to nurture ideas. Musicians have music school, artists have art school and so it makes sense that writers should be able to perfect their craft alongside one another too!
This is your first novel, so do you have plans for another?
I do! It’s all under wraps at the moment but landscape and place are a huge part of my work and have continued to inspire my second novel, albeit in a very different way.
You have won awards for poetry, so tell us a bit about your poetry?
Poetry is my way of playing with language. Novels require a lot of constraint: there is always a story to tell and sometimes poetic language has to play second fiddle to the characters and narrative. In my poetry, I love the fact that I can relish words for their own sake and play around with their sounds and rhythms in a way that sometimes my prose doesn’t allow.
What made you set Violet's story in Wiltshire?
The story of Imber – the Wiltshire ghost town evacuated by the military in 1943 – is a true one and the army still use the village today in their training for Afghanistan. When I was researching The Sea Change, I had the chance to go and watch the army train in the village. It was while I was watching smoke grenades being hurled into cottages and soldiers firing rifles at each other from out of the windows of the houses that I started to think about what it would feel like if the village was your home and you were seeing it being used in this way. The villagers were never allowed back after the Second World War, despite campaigning for years for the right to return, and their story remains largely untold outside of Wiltshire. I wanted to bring it to life in my novel and hopefully take it to a wider audience.
Tell us about the development of the characters from your initial ideas for them.
My characters emerged out of the places that I was writing about. Alice is a character who is very unsure of herself: she has a very watery sense of belonging and an uncertain relationship to her home. This aspect of her character grew out of the post tsunami landscape in which her story takes place: amidst the scattered debris of the wave, she is not only trying to find her husband but also piece together her past.
Her mother Violet, on the other hand, is like the village of Imber – frozen in time and clinging on in spite of the constant attrition of war. She struggles to let go of her home because of the way it was taken so suddenly from her and this affects all her present day relationships, in particular, her relationship with her daughter, Alice.
What is a typical day like in your world?
You’ll mostly find me tucked away in the book stacks of the London Library which is a great place for writers to work. In order to make sure that I’m disciplined, I’ll treat it like an office, arriving when it opens and leaving when it shuts. If I worked from home, I’d never get anything done! During the book promotion, I take part in literary festivals, readings and book group tours and this is the aspect of being a writer that I love the most because I get to chat to readers directly about their own responses to the novel.
You used to be a copy writer in the House of Commons, please expand on this for our readers.
I worked as researcher for an MP in an office that was right underneath Big Ben which meant there was absolutely no excuse for being late in the morning! My job involved everything from writing speeches and press releases to fetching the coffee. It was very eye opening to see the inner workings of Parliament and some of the best moments came when I was able to watch my MP deliver a speech that I had helped to write in the House of Commons itself. My old boss jokes that he’ll end up in one of my novels now that I’m an author but, much to his relief, political thrillers aren’t really my cup of tea…or not yet at least!
What is next for you?
Over the summer, I’ll be out and about meeting lots of readers of The Sea Change which has been selected to be part of the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club. I’m taking part in a Laura Marling gig as a writer in residence, speaking at the Hay festival, continuing a book club tour and also finding time to put the finishing touches to the second novel.