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Letters to the Lost

Page 43

by Iona Grey


  I’ve read – and loved – lots of novels set in the war in which women take on the new roles the conflict afforded them; delivering aeroplanes, working in government departments or for the S.O.E. doing terrifying and dangerous missions in occupied territory. The bravery shown by those pioneering women (who must have faced a degree of prejudice from their male colleagues in addition to everything else they had to deal with!) is fascinating and inspiring. However, I wanted a heroine who absolutely wasn’t heroic. Stella is shy and mousy and painfully self-effacing. She infuriates Nancy and at times she infuriated me. Wearing red lipstick on a night out is the closest she gets to daring, until she meets Dan.

  I wanted to write about a woman like that because I think there must have been a lot of them, and history (understandably) doesn’t record their experiences as much as those of the pilots and ATS girls and secret agents. I think I was influenced by the stories I heard so often growing up, from my grandmother and godmother, about the challenges of feeding a baby in an air raid, or getting a new dress for a dance. Stella starts out being afraid of everything, wanting to bury herself in domesticity and almost pretend that the war isn’t happening, but when that becomes impossible she has to draw on inner reserves of courage to face the situation she finds herself in. It was this quiet, ordinary brand of bravery that interested me.

  Which part was easier to write – the past or the present?

  I wrote the past story, in its entirety, first, so in a sense that was the easiest. It was the core of the book, and its spirit – the spirit of the 40s – was the one that I wanted to evoke most strongly. I think of it now as being an absolute breeze to write, though I recently opened up my first draft document and saw all the scenes that were slashed and abandoned, so I think I’ve slightly deluded myself about that! The first scene I wrote was Stella and Charles’s wedding, which is initially seen through the eyes of Ada, and her voice came into my head with absolute clarity and really led me into the period. She’s only a fairly minor character but for me she was the lynchpin.

  The present-day storyline was trickier in that it needed to be fitted around the past one, so I had to keep half my mind on structure. At the start, with Stella and Dan’s story still so vivid in my mind, Jess and Will were very much secondary characters whose main purpose was to discover and reveal what had happened seventy years ago, but as time went on they really sprang off the page for me and their story took on a life of its own.

  If you could write a letter to anyone from the past who would it be?

  My grandmother; my mother’s mother. My mum was only ten when she died so I never knew her, but I’ve always felt her presence in my life, I think because her absence had such a huge impact on my mum’s. She was a remarkable woman: a doctor, who graduated from Glasgow University with her degree in medicine in 1933 (and was awarded a gold medal for her thesis) and spent her career working in public health. I’d like to write to her and ask about the challenges she must have faced as a female medical student in the 1920s and 30s (Were there many other women in her year? What was the attitude of the men in her classes?) and, of course, about her experiences of being a doctor during the war, as well as a first-time mother. My mum was born at the end of 1940 and her mother went back to work almost immediately, partly because there was a shortage of doctors to look after the civilian population, but also because she loved her work and (unlike Stella!) wanted a life outside the home, in a time when this was relatively uncommon. She sounds like such an interesting person. How wonderful it would be if, somehow, I could receive a letter from her in return . . .

  You have a pinterest board with loads of great photos on it, including some of film stars who inspired you while you were writing the novel. Who would you love to see playing the leads if Letters to the Lost was made into a film?

  I’d be a Casting Director’s nightmare as I tend to take my inspiration from actors from all different eras. So, I’d need Richard Gere in his Yanks incarnation (circa 1978) for Dan, and Four Weddings-vintage Hugh Grant (1994) for Will. Gene Tierney, the 1940s actress, would have to be Stella (if she could do a good English accent), but I’ve never come across anyone who looks or sounds like the Jess of my imagination. (If anyone has any suggestions I’d love to hear them – and add them to my Pinterest board!)

  What novels inspired you as you were writing?

  Completely by coincidence, the day after I started writing the book the postman delivered a signed copy of Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, sent by my lovely friend Abby Green. I don’t think any writer could help but be inspired by Atkinson’s effortlessly vivid writing. She makes it seem so easy and natural; having her voice in my head as I plunged into those first few chapters gave me a big boost of confidence.

  I’m also a huge fan E.M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady and its sequels, and love the way she juxtaposes gravely serious events with small domestic detail. And I can’t help but be influenced by books I first fell in love with as a teenager – the big, sprawling stories of Rosamunde Pilcher, Jilly Cooper, Maeve Binchy. Books you would fall into and lose yourself for days, emerging to find that reality was a pale and faded imitation of the world you’d discovered between the covers. I learned so much from those books – including what I wanted to do for a living when I was older!

 

 

 


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