My new novel, A DIFFERENT WORLD, will be published in January 2025 both by Headline in the UK, and by my German publishers, Piper, under the title DIE ANDERE TOCHTER. The story opens in the summer of 1939, when my heroine, nineteen-year-old Olivia Goodland, meets beautiful, glamorous Grace Ruthwell.
Olivia has recently moved to London from rural Somerset to work for a society dressmaker, Violet Beaumont. I wanted the reader to see the era’s gorgeous clothes, the sophisticated parties and elegant houses through her eyes, and to share her excitement at the new opportunities and adventures the city offers her.
As summer lengthens the threat of war grows ever stronger, but Olivia is preoccupied by her relationship with the captivating Grace and her two children, Alice and Frankie. She is attracted to Frankie’s tutor, Rory Madden, a handsome young Scot. And so it’s only slowly and too late that she becomes aware of the darkness that lies beneath the glittering exterior of the Ruthwell household.
The inspiration for the novel came from a variety of sources. I wanted to write about how we go on living when the future seems frightening, during times of political tension or personal difficulty. Wars in Ukraine and Middle East, the climate crisis and the aftermath of the pandemic mean that we live in an anxious and uncertain age. People experienced a similar apprehension in the 1930s, especially towards the end of the decade, when anyone informed and politically aware would have known that war was almost inevitable. Olivia must adapt even though her world is torn apart both on a personal and global level. The events of those early years have a lasting effect on her, and it’s only later in life that she’s able to understand more fully the forces that have shaped her. Her resilience and optimism help her endure, and her generosity and capacity for love remain constant.
The other big theme of the book is the chaos of family life. I wanted to write about the challenges and rewards, the ups and downs of bringing up a family. Olivia experiences rifts and partings, joys and surprises and shocks and disappointments. A DIFFERENT WORLD is a more than usually personal book for me because it draws on my own experiences of bringing up three sons and being a grandmother to six beautiful grandchildren, five of them boys. Like me, Olivia is a mother of sons, so she must contend with schoolboy squabbles, the rashness of male adolescence and the rivalries and jostling for position that can take place between brothers. And because she has sons, Olivia also eventually has daughters-in-law. The mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship is often depicted as a tricky one, though I know from experience it can be hugely enriching and rewarding. Still, it’s a relationship that must be approached with tact and care.
The novel also touches on how it feels when family – including grandchildren – leave the country to live on the other side of the world. To write this part of the book I drew on my own experiences, but also from a letter I read in the newspaper from a woman whose adult child and grandchildren had recently emigrated. She described this as a ‘profound loss’; and yet she felt at the same time that society required her to be positive and cheerful. It was almost as if her grief must be hidden, that it had no right to exist.
Lastly, here’s another small part of the jigsaw that eventually became A DIFFERENT WORLD: one sunny afternoon, I was in the park with my grandchildren, keeping an eye on them while they hurtled about, idly listening to the chatter of another group of children who were accompanied by an older teenager – an au pair, perhaps. The children were called Grace, Alice and Frankie; Carlotta was the name of the older girl. I knew as soon as I heard these names that I was going to use them in the novel I was starting to put together in my head. Grace, Alice and Frankie became the Ruthwell family – and there is one very tiny mention of a Carlotta! I can’t explain why these names seemed to fit together so well, or why they were just right for my novel, but I knew they were.