My first novel Hot Gossip (1994) was a satire based on my experiences working on Nigel Dempster's diary column, and was followed by a sequel, Idol Chatter (1995). The Moonbathers, a black comedy, followed in 1998.
The Art of Falling was a complete change of direction, which took five years to research and write. But trying to get it published was like starting from scratch again. In the end, after many false dawns and disappointments, I published it myself under the Stamp Publishing imprint in September 2003.
Almost immediately it became clear that the novel had struck a chord with booksellers and reading groups around my home in Kent. Ottakar's liked it enough to recommend it to their stores nationwide, and the rights were sold to Random House.
The Art of Falling was republished by Arrow in July 2005 and chosen as one of the books for the WHSmith Fresh Talent promotion that summer. It went on to sell more than all the others put together!
Songs of Blue and Gold is in a similar style: a story that grew out of my curiousity about past events and a love for the warmer shores and colours of southern Europe.
My latest novel, The Lantern, has been chosen for The TV Book Club Summer Reads 2011 on Channel4 and More4. I have also written a linked short story for Woman&Home magazine's 2011 summer reading supplement.
I currently divide my time between rural Kent and a crumbling hamlet in Provence, which is the atmospheric setting for The Lantern. (Bio via www.deborah-lawrenson.blogspot.com)
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Now to ask Deborah Lawrenson as few questions...
Where are you from?
I was born in London , but lived all over the world as a child, as my father was in the diplomatic service. These days, my husband, daughter and I split our time between the south of England and the south of France .
Tell us your latest news?
My latest novel The Lantern was published in the UK last month (June) and in the US on August 9. It’s the first time I’m being published in America, and I am more excited and more nervous about this one than any of the previous five novels.
What inspired you to write your first book?
I trained as a journalist because I wanted to write but didn’t have the confidence to write a novel straight out of university. It was while I was working as a reporter on a gossip column in London that I realised that, not only was that a great fun job for someone in their 20s, but that there was the subject I’d been looking for. My first novel was a comic satire on the world of London newspaper diary pages.
Do you have a specific writing style?
Gradually, I have found a style that is lyrical and visual. I really try hard to capture the special spirit of a place, to paint pictures in words that enhance the setting of a strong story. It’s the highest compliment any reader can pay to say that they felt they had been transported to another place while reading one of my books.
How did you come up with the title?
The Lantern actually started as a family joke. (I haven’t told anyone this before!) Summer evenings in Provence are invariably spent outside, often with long dinners for friends in candlelight. I bought so many lanterns for atmospheric light on those nights that my husband and teenage daughter told me consistently that I had gone lantern-crazy. So that’s what I called my novel, to make them raise their eyes to heaven. Seriously, though, it works well because it’s simple and memorable and the lantern in the novel is the symbol of where the past and the present meet.
The novel keys into timeless fears of the unknown, and the uncertainty when the first stages of an idyllic romance are over and real life begins. It’s also a novel of the senses: as well as vivid visual descriptions of the landscape, I’ve tried to evoke smell and taste and sound and feel until there is an inescapable feeling that there is also a sixth sense in play: an instinctive sense of foreboding that cannot be explained rationally.
On one level it’s also a novel about reading and writing, and the imagination - that feeling that there is a parallel universe waiting for us to slip into when we open a page-turning book, and the way what we read can affect how we see the world.
How much of the book is realistic?
The beautiful landscape of the Luberon region of Provence is as realistic as I can make it: the great pleated hills that look as if there are dark rivers coursing down as night falls, the blue quality of the distance, the stone hill-top villages and the fields of lavender.
Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
When my husband and I bought an atmospheric but crumbling old house in Provence , we camped on stone floors and hoped for the best. I re-read Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and wondered…what if I had come here knowing less about the man I was with?
Several events in the novel are true. A ceiling did collapse. The mysterious perfume is real in that I smell it but never find a source. The light that flickers disconcertingly, the discovery of rooms we didn’t know were there, the making of the walnut wine, the man who composes music: none of these are invented either.
What books have most influenced your life most?
I fell in love with F Scott Fitzgerald’s prose as a teenager, starting with The Great Gatsby, and have never stopped loving it. I also lose myself in Lawrence Durrell’s sensuous writing, especially Prospero’s Cell and Bitter Lemons. Daphne du Maurier is a superb storyteller. I admire too the works of Jean Giono and Marcel Pagnol, Antoine de St Exupery and Emile Zola.
Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?
Apart from the authors mentioned above, there is a long list which includes Carol Shields, Julian Barnes, Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford, Kate Atkinson, Armistead Maupin, Margaret Forster, Penelope Lively, crime writers Peter Robinson and Simon Brett, and many others. What strikes me about them, and they all share, is a mastery of their genre and style.
What book are you reading now?
I’m re-reading Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons – Travels in Sicily on a Vespa by Matthew Fort. Evocative, full of lovely food and beautifully written.
Can you share a little of your current work with us?
Here are the first words of The Lantern:
“Some scents sparkle and then quickly disappear, like the effervescence of citrus zest or a bright note of mint. Some are strange siren songs of rarer origin that call from violets hidden in woodland, or irises after spring rain. Some scents release a rush of half-forgotten memories. And then there are the scents that seem to express truths about people and places that you have never forgotten: the scents that make time stand still.
That is what Lavande de Nuit, Marthe’s perfume is to me. Beyond the aroma’s first charge of heliotrope, as the almond and hawthorn notes rise, it carries sights and sounds, tastes and feelings that unfurl one from the other: the lavender fields, sugar-dusted biscuits, wild flowers in meadows, the wind’s plainsong in the trees, the cloisters of silver-flickering olives, the garden still warm at midnight and the sweet musky smell of secrets.
That perfume is the essence of my life. When I smell it, I am ten years old again, lying in the grass at Les Genévriers, on one of those days of early summer when the first fat southerly winds warm the ground and the air begins to soften with promise. I am twenty, as I toss my long hair and walk on air towards my lover. I am thirty, forty, fifty. Sixty, and frightened…
How can I be frightened by a scent?”
(Ends)
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Thank you Deborah Lawrenson for doing an interview with us!!!
Be sure to visit her Facebook Page for MORE!!!
anddddd
YOU can win a Copy of "The Lantern"
Be sure to visit her Facebook Page for MORE!!!
anddddd
YOU can win a Copy of "The Lantern"
Deadline to enter is July 7, 2011 @ NOON California time...
Winner will be announced on the GIVEAWAY PAGE
There will be ONE LUCKY WINNER!
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Bonne Chance - Good Luck!
