Following the Second World War there
was a tendency, enacted in government policy and expressed
by the popular media, to assume that women would
withdraw from paid employment and get back to the kitchen once
their menfolk were demobbed and wanting 'their' jobs back. At
the same time, more women were actually becoming better
educated and wishing for greater independence. Whilst
it was considered socially and economically acceptable for girls
to take on certain kinds of 'female' employment -
teaching, secretarial, nursing - marriage and children were still
presented as the ideal, and once married, or certainly after having
children, they were definitely expected to retreat to the
home. However, in some more liberal-minded areas of the
workplace, publishing being a notable one, educated women were able more
strongly to make their mark, and Isabel in The Silent Tide is an example.
I've portrayed Hugh, her
husband-to-be, in some respects as forward looking. He admires
Isabel's talents as an editor and intellectually he's very much aware of
the dilemmas that young women face. At the same time, he's a product of
his environment, and deeply conservative underneath it all. Although they
love each other deeply, he and Isabel have false expectations of each other
in their marriage, and it's these that they need to
overcome. Diary evidence suggests that many couples must have
had versions of Hugh and Isabel's experience at the time,
even if they broadly accepted the social norm.
Isabel and Emily both work in
publishing and both have relationships with authors they are representing. Did
you base either of their stories on your own experiences in publishing or did
you think about the opposite of what could have happened in your own life?
I
met my husband (the writer D.J. Taylor) after I published the paperback of his
first novel when I worked at HarperCollins. As we know, very many people
meet their partners in the workplace. However, I was never his editor in
the sense of being involved in the creative process - that was the prerogative
of his hardback publisher. In The Silent Tide I became fascinated by the
idea that the professional, the personal and the gender-political could
become mixed up to the extent that Isabel, Hugh's editor then
wife, unwittingly becomes his muse for a book that's basically
about their marriage! One does hear about writers who fictionalize their
own marriages (Hanif Kureschi being one, Philip Roth another), but I assure you
that I haven't done such a thing and nor has my husband
(yet)!
Did you decide Isabel’s fate when you first
began writing the book, or did it proceed or change as her life went on?
Before
starting the novel, I knew that Isabel had been swept away in the
great floods of 1953 and it was towards this plot point
that my past narrative was working. The issue of
interest for me as a writer, however, was not her demise, but why her
story had been suppressed by Hugh's second wife. Some might see
variants of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca in this, though this wasn't in my
mind as I wrote.
We occasionally get to read parts of
Isabel’s memoir in her own words. Why did you decide not to tell her whole
story in that way?
Isabel
is a girl carried along by the tides of her time. She's
not a person who's naturally very self-aware, nor does
she consciously stand with or against the social
norm. She's a person of feeling who acts intuitively. I wanted the
past story to be a little more knowing than the way she would have told it
herself - hence the third person narrative.
If you could write the biography of any
author, who would you choose? What questions would you want answered?
Oh dear, everyone's been written about. I'd be
interested to ask Harper Lee why she wrote no more books after To Kill a
Mockingbird. Surely she had some more things to say.
The
covers of your books are always so beautiful and intriguing; I am always drawn
to them in book shops. How much input do you have in these?
Thank
you. It was the cover of A Place of Secrets
that instigated the concept of looking through a gate or doorway to a
lovely secret world beyond. After the novel became a bestseller, my
publishers suggested that the backlist should be rejacketed in a similar
way and that the design of future books should build on the
idea, too, and this seemed sensible. I fully understand that my books have
to have the branded look that we're told retailers and many readers
need. However, my publisher has always asked my opinion of
different versions of covers within the general style, and my response has
been largely heeded.
What is your usual process for writing a
novel? What kind of research do you find most valuable?
I tend to develop a general feeling for the
setting and atmosphere of a novel and develop everything from there.
I read a great many books about all aspects of my subject, and after a while
characters and situations start to grow in my mind. After that I
write a two page synopsis, whilst continuing to read and think and work out
details in a notebook. I always know where the book is going to go before
I start to write it, but not always how it's going to get there. Sometimes, as
with The Silent Tide, the unexpected happens!
Which
authors do you enjoy reading? If you could recommend a list of ‘must-read’
books to a book group, what would they be?
I belong to a book club myself and some of our most
successful discussions have been around books that have polarized the
group. We Need to Talk about Kevin is the
classic example. Thinking about it, an issue that often crops
up is whether or not the group 'likes' the central character or finds them
'sympathetic', and Eve in that novel is exactly the kind of narrator
who flies in the face of that requirement. There's something
satisfying about concluding that one might not particularly like a book
but might still recognize that it's fascinating, gripping and
intellectually challenging, and that it has maybe changed the way one
looks at the world. Other recent books that come into this category
include The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and The
Dinner by Herman Koch. My personal perfect list of recent titles? And the
Mountains Echoed by Khaled, Hosseini, The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Kill by
Richard House, The Summer House by Santa Montefiore, The Great Silence by
Juliet Nicolson (non-fiction about the aftermath of WWI), and Why Be
Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson (memoir).
A huge thank you to Rachel Hore for taking the time to answer these questions and for Dawn Burnett at Simon & Schuster for arranging this.
You can follow Rachel on Twitter @rachelhore and find out more about her books at www.rachelhore.co.uk
This is a quick, easy book to read. Described on the cover 'for fans of The Help', Calling Me Home tells the story of sixteen year old Isabelle, who falls in love with her black housekeeper's son Robert. This is an impossible relationship in 1939 Kentucky and they must fight against the hate and violence from the surrounding town and Isabelle's own family. Seventy years later, Isabelle is heading back to a mystery funeral, travelling with her hairdresser and friend Dorrie. As they drive across the country, Isabelle finally tells the story of her past. 
