She didn’t think she’d walked very far down the beach, but when she turned to look back at Alf, she was shocked by the distance between them. He looked so small and far away, sitting there on his horrid old towel, waving at her. She waved back, allowing herself a moment to savour the joy she’d found, so unexpectedly, so late in her life. His kindness to her seemed fathomless, as if he’d been stockpiling it for years, only waiting for someone to share it with.
Annie turned again so that she was facing the sea and beside her Lottie sat squarely and searched the beach too, though she couldn’t have known who they were looking for. They wouldn’t walk any further, thought Annie. She felt too far away from Alf already; she didn’t wish to put any more distance between them. In any case, it was a hopeless quest. Finn could be anywhere; he could be in the dunes behind her, or all the way down the distant reaches of the beach, to the right or to the left. She’d imagined, as they approached the beach from the lane, that he would find her the moment she stepped onto the sand – her scent on the breeze, perhaps – but she knew now that was foolish whimsy. Chances were, he wouldn’t even know her any more.
‘Come on, Lottie,’ she said, and she turned to walk back, and then suddenly there he was. Finn, trotting purposefully towards her, head up, tail high, threading expertly around the strangers with a broad smile on his face, because there was his best and oldest friend, waiting for him on the sand.
This Much is True
Reading group notes
Q&A with Jane Sanderson
It’s an interesting title – what inspired it?
Good question! It can be so tricky, naming a book, and I did start with another title altogether, so when Orion first alighted on the manuscript, my novel was called The Dog Days of Annie Doyle. But there was a feeling in the team that this didn’t do justice to the dark heart of the book: the twists and turns of the plot, and Annie’s tenacious dependence on a buried past. But being asked to re-name a book when for two years you’ve known it as something else is a bit like re-naming a baby a couple of years after the christening. Nothing struck the right tone. Then a friend of mine, aware of my difficulty, texted me to say she was going to see Tony Hadley in concert, and might there be a title for my book in the lyrics of ‘True’? Well, this was genius, for which I remain completely indebted (to my friend and to Spandau Ballet!). There’s something so perfect about This Much is True that I feel it must have been waiting for me all along.
Why does the title work so well, do you think?
It sums up Annie Doyle, somehow. She’s a complex character, who can only deal with the misery of her life by ignoring it. But by degrees she is forced to confront her past, as if in spite of her deeply private nature she’s ultimately made to sift through the lies to reveal the truth. I wanted her new friendship with Josie and Sandra, and their dog walks together, to be a catalyst for change in Annie’s life. Just spending time with these women leads Annie down a different path, shows her a different way of being. But also, I’m interested in the lines we don’t cross in our friendships: the things we know about each other, the things we don’t know, the stuff we share and the stuff we’d never talk about. I think we protect our secret selves in all our relationships, although not – I hope – to the extent Annie feels compelled to do. All of this is reflected in the book’s title.
Annie’s life, on the surface, is completely ordinary but there are secrets – potentially destructive ones – at the heart of her story. It’s a brilliant premise, but did you find it difficult to balance?
It was a challenge, certainly, to stay true to the two versions of Annie: the one she allows her friends to see, and the one we see through the flashbacks to her earlier life. The difficulty lies in not giving away too much too soon, but not giving away so little that the reader loses interest. But this dichotomy between her public and private persona is so often the case in real life, so I wanted it to slowly become clear, as the novel progresses, that there’s far more to Annie than we at first realise, and that her own sense of guilt and shame and – to an extent – defiance is as important a part of who she is as her ordinary, everyday respectability. Writing this book has made me look at older people and think, what are you not telling me? Everyone has a story to tell, and the older we are, the more secrets we keep.
Martha is such a pivotal character in the novel but she is largely a mystery throughout. Can you tell us about how you decided to have Vince mention her on his deathbed then allow the novel to build to a dramatic climax.
Annie knows what Vince knows; she believes that he’s the only person in the world who could blow her cover, and she feels protected, to a large degree, by his advanced dementia because any fragments of the past that emerge when he speaks can be put down to the ramblings of a befuddled mind. The reader, too, might recall things he said to Annie in the early pages of the book, and realise that Martha’s existence was in fact hinted at from the beginning. Annie would like him to die as soon as possible, and take her secrets with him, which is why – I hope – his mention of Martha on his deathbed has such dramatic impact. But also I think it’s entirely plausible that the fog in his brain might clear for a moment and allow him to reveal a truth to the family; advanced dementia sometimes offers up crystal clear glimpses into the distant past. For Annie, Vince’s moment of clarity is a personal disaster because it shines a light on decades of meticulously denying her own history.
The novel looks at the difficult side of family relationships, particularly the flashbacks to Annie’s childhood and relationship with her parents. Did you find these difficult to write?
No, on the contrary, I found Annie’s dysfunctional past very easy to write, which was a relief because I felt it was a crucially important aspect of the story. The segments in her early childhood, her lonely girlhood and her ill-advised marriage as a young woman to Vince, were all intended to shine a light on the buttoned-up, socially uncertain elderly lady Annie has become when we meet her. I always knew there was a danger that readers might not warm to her, but she had a place in my heart from the very beginning. I grew up in South Yorkshire and I knew women just like Annie Doyle, with nets at the windows and a mistrust of friendly strangers. I wanted to explore the idea that all sorts of secrets may lurk behind an utterly respectable façade, and that everyone has a story to tell, however dull their life may appear to be on the surface.
Apart from Annie, did you ever consider having another character’s point of view?
No, I wanted us – by and large – never to leave Annie’s side, to view the action through her eyes. This way we become more intimately acquainted with what makes her tick. If Josie and Sandra had shared centre stage I think the strength of Annie’s narrative would have been watered down.
The novel has a very strong sense of place. Can you tell us more about the locations that are featured?
I do like to use real locations in my writing, because then I find the dialogue comes more easily – I can hear the characters’ voices, especially when we’re in Yorkshire, where I grew up. But there are a mixture of locations, and while most of them are real, some of them are imagined and others are a combination of both. Hoyland exists – my own hometown, sitting in what used to be the mining belt of South Yorkshire, between Barnsley and Sheffield. But the details of the place – street names, outlying villages, the precise geography – are often altered, because after all this is a work of fiction. The reservoir where the friends walk their dogs exists, as does Ecclesall Woods. But Wentford, where Josie lives, is invented, as is Wheatcommon Lane, which is Sandra’s address. The same applies to Coventry, where Annie lives as a girl, and where she meets and marries Vince. The geographical details are slightly fudged here and there, although there is an underground river in Coventry called the Sherbourne, and I must say I found this a fascinating and inspiring detail.
Do you have a writing routine and a favourite place that you prefer to write?
I am a most undisciplined writer, fitting in this work between
all the other commitments and distractions that rise up to fill an average day. Dogs to walk, dinner to prepare, parcels to be signed for, washing machine to empty or to load, grass to cut, chickens to feed … I’m just not one of those writers who can shut themselves off from domestic concerns to write for solitary hours on end. However, when I do write, I work quite quickly – I believe my years as a journalist are to thank for this – so even though it’s a haphazard process, the books do seem to get finished. I always write on my laptop, at a small desk facing one of our bedroom windows. There’s the most magnificent view of Hay Bluff and the Black Mountains, but I can’t see it, because if I open the shutters the light seems to bleach the computer screen, and anyway I’d start to think how grubby the windows look, and how tatty the paintwork, and before I knew it I’d be abandoning the writing yet again.
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Make a start. You can’t edit an empty page, but you can always improve upon a first draft. And keep reading other writers’ books: good ones, bad ones – they all serve as inspiration, one way or another.
Who are your favourite authors and are there any books that inspired you to write?
When I was writing my first three books, which were set at the turn of the twentieth century, I used to keep at hand a copy of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, as a masterclass – when I was bogged down in my own plot lines – in how to imbue the distant past with freshness and originality. But other than that, I suppose everything I’ve ever read has inspired me to write – even the ones I didn’t enjoy, because it’s always helpful to believe you can do better than an already published author. As for favourite authors … well there are so many. Time and again I go back to Jane Austen for her sly and brilliant comedy, but currently featuring in a pile by my bed are Carol Shields, Elizabeth Bowen, Muriel Spark, Carol Birch, Karen Joy Fowler and Anita Brookner. A thousand apologies to all the others that I love and haven’t mentioned.
Questions for discussion
• As Annie Doyle’s story unfolds, it becomes clear that she’s lived a life of guarded secrets and repressed emotion. Do you think this lack of openness is typical of her generation and is it ever justifiable?
• There are some fraught family dynamics in the novel, particularly between Michael, Andrew and Annie. What – or who – do you think lies at the heart of their problems?
• Annie can be difficult: prickly, defensive and over-anxious. But the flashbacks to her childhood and early married life show that she endured much loneliness and rejection. Does this help the reader to understand the less acceptable aspects of her behaviour?
• This novel’s central plotline concerns the extreme lengths to which Annie was prepared to go in order to keep Andrew. Does she lose the readers’ sympathy along the way, or retain it?
• Do you see Annie Doyle as a victim? Or do you regard her as a survivor, made stronger by her suffering?
• Is Annie’s relationship with Josie, Sandra and Alf somehow key to the unravelling of her carefully guarded life, or is it simply an additional layer to the narrative? Discuss the theme of friendship in the novel.
Further Reading
The Food of Love
Amanda Prowse (Lake Union)
A Life Without You
Katie Marsh (Hodder & Stoughton)
I Found You
Lisa Jewell (Century)
The One Plus One
Jojo Moyes (Penguin)
Leaving Time
Jodi Picoult (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Husband’s Secret
Liane Moriarty (Penguin)
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Andrew Gordon for keeping the faith, to Jemima Forrester for picking up the manuscript and to Ben Willis and the Orion team for running with it so seamlessly. Thanks to Carolyn Baker for helping come up with a title that everyone loved, and to Anne Sanderson for her red pen and eagle eye at the proof reading stage. I’m grateful to Rob Orland (and his fascinating Historic Coventry
website) for advice on the River Sherbourne and other aspects of 1950s Coventry. Any inaccuracies are mine alone. And finally, to Brian Viner, a thousand heartfelt thanks for your boundless love and support.
Also by Jane Sanderson
Netherwood
Ravenscliffe
Eden Falls
Copyright
An Orion ebook
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Orion Books
Ebook first published in 2017 by Orion Books
Copyright © Jane Sanderson 2017
The right of Harriet Cummings to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 6824 9
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK company
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Table of Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
Epilogue
Q&A with Jane Sanderson
Questions for discussion
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Also by Jane Sanderson
Copyright
This Much is True: How far will a mother go to protect her shocking secret? Page 34