The Poet's Wife (35 page)

A
huge thank
you for reading
The Poet’s Wife
and I do hope that you enjoyed reading about the lives of the Torres Ramirez family in Granada.

I
would love
to know what you thought about the book and would be so grateful if you could leave a review. This can also help other readers discover
The Poet’s Wife
for themselves.

I
f you’d like
to keep up to date with my latest book news, please sign up here:

Thank you for your support and I look forward to sharing my next novel with you, due to be published in 2015.

R
ebecca

Follow me on Twitter…

• @bexstonehill
  

T
here are so
many people I want to thank for helping turn this book into a reality
:

O
liver Rhodes
, who first believed in my story and Claire Bord, whose insightful and sensitive editing of my manuscript has done it justice a hundred times over.

H
ilary Johnson
from the Authors’ Advisory Service, who gave my manuscript a very necessary shake up and helped me to mould it into its final cast.

F
or reading
the first section of my novel and providing invaluable feedback: Louisa Burns, Jane Cacouris, Caroline Thompson, Sarah & Pete Woods, Betsy Braden and a special thank you to Shirley Read-Jahn whose scrupulous eye for detail didn’t miss a thing.

T
he late Bob Doyle
, an Irish member of the International Brigades, who shared his time and memories with me to gain a greater insight into what it was really like to fight against fascism on Spanish soil.

J
enny Becker
, the most inspiring English teacher a child could ever hope for, who recognised a writer in the young Rebecca and encouraged this throughout primary school.

L
ucia Espiniella Sánchez
, for those countless
desayunos
and ironing out some of my less than perfect Spanish phrases.

M
y mother
, Elizabeth Stonehill, who bought me countless notebooks whilst I was growing up to fill with my ideas and stories and who always believed I could do it. My mother in law, Liz Narracott for all her support, particularly with the children.

M
y brother and sister
, Sam and Louisa, for forming the backdrop of my childhood, the inspiration for many stories and being the stars on either side of Orion’s Belt, plus my extended family and web of wonderful friends, too numerous to name individually, for all your support and belief.

A
nd last but
certainly not least, thank you to my amazing husband, Andy Narracott, for his love and support throughout and my three children, Maya, Lily and Benjamin for putting up with their Mama when her head was hundreds of miles away in Spain.

W
hat first drew
you to writing a novel set in Granada during the Spanish Civil war?

T
he setting came
before the story. I lived in Granada many years ago teaching English and was mesmerised by the beauty of this place: the mountains that encircle the city, the whisper of the rivers, the cypress trees, the light, the people. It wasn’t until I’d left Granada that I started writing a story set there. I knew I wanted it to be in the past as have always been drawn to historical settings and as soon as I started delving into the Spanish civil war and talking to people, I knew I had a story there. I think coming from England where people generally know very little about what happened in the civil war or Franco’s dictatorship (despite more Brits visiting Spain as tourists than from any other nation), I wanted to write a fictionalised account of one family’s experiences to introduce readers to this appalling but fascinating slice of modern European history.

A
ll three women
, Luisa, Isabel and Paloma are strong in spirit and true to their beliefs.  When researching for the novel, were there any real life figures or particular accounts that inspired you to write these three women?

I
read
a lot of Paul Preston’s books, a British historian who is an expert on the Spanish civil war. One of his books is Doves of War: Four Women of Spain. I was very inspired by this, particularly his account of the communist Nan Green who felt so strongly compelled to fight fascism in Spain that she left her children in England for a while so she could work with the International Brigades.

I
was also fascinated
by Dolores Ibárruri, also known as La Pasionaria (the passionflower) whom I mention briefly in the novel giving the farewell speech to the International Brigades in Barcelona. She was a tiny woman physically but her electric oratory skills became a rallying cry for the Left. I’d like to have brought her into the narrative more but there didn’t feel a natural opening for this. I would, however, encourage anyone to read the full transcript of her farewell address as it’s incredibly moving:

Y
our writing has a beautiful
, lyrical quality to it and poetry is a theme that ripples throughout the novel. Eduardo is a huge fan of the real life Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.  Can you tell us a little more about him and why you wanted to weave him into your novel?

I
t’s
impossible to live in Granada without noticing how important García Lorca is to the city’s inhabitants, a man whose life was cruelly snatched away at the age of thirty eight and whose memory lives on in his poetry, plays, art and music. Whilst not overtly political, he was associated with the libertarian movement and this, coupled with his thinly veiled homosexuality, made him a target for the fascist forces. I once acted in his play
Bodas de sangre
(Blood Wedding) at university which was the first time he’d really entered my consciousness but since then, I found myself drawn to this highly talented, enigmatic but shadowy figure from Spain’s past.

T
he family home
, Carmen de las Estrellas feels like such an important part of the novel.  It's the anchor and bedrock of stability for its inhabitants, particularly in such unsettling times.  Is it based on a real villa that you have visited? 

I
n Granada
I visited several Carmen’s which never failed to amaze me as from outside the wooden doors, you’d never imagine them to be hiding a large, open courtyard with all the rooms backing off from it. Whilst the details of Carmen de las Estrellas (which translates to Carmen of the stars) comes from my imagination, that sense of the house being personified as a central family member comes from two places close to my heart. Firstly, my grandparents house in a Cambridgeshire village. I come from a large family with many aunts, uncles and cousins and we would often get together in my grandparents beautiful house. It is long gone but I’ll never forget it: the smell of the books, the feel of the wallpaper, the drafts of cold air from beneath the doors and how it held so many family secrets. Secondly, my father lived in Switzerland and as a child and teenager I’d spend a lot of time in this chalet – it became as familiar to me as an old friend. Memories of our pasts being inextricably bound up in a home is so significant to me.

T
he friendships
and love between Luisa and Aurelia is incredibly moving.  Was it important to you to tell the story of the Gypsies during this particular historical period in Spain?  

L
ike Luisa
, I was also fascinated by the
gitanos
whilst living in Granada and used to love walking out to the cave areas where many used to live and some still do.  García Lorca wrote many ballads and poems inspired by the
gitanos
whom he held a deep respect for. Just as he was singled out and hunted down by the fascist forces, so too were the gypsies and I was interested in all those who didn’t conform or fit the mould of ‘good Spanish citizens’ that General Franco had created. The gypsies of Andalucía have been romanticised and eulogised in so many artistic forms over the years but, after reading what happened to them during the civil war and the following years, this fit perfectly with my intention to portray a darker side of their narrative.

W
hen did
you first realise you wanted to be a writer?

A
s a young child
, I was fairly anti-social and would spend hours reading and writing stories and poems. I think I always knew I wanted to be a writer but it was probably reading Harriet the spy by Louisa Fitzhugh that confirmed it for me. She used to hide in cupboards and up trees spying on people and making notes about them and I duly followed suit, filling countless notebooks with my observations.

C
an
you talk us through your publishing story?

I
t was lengthy
! I spent a long time seeking traditional representation from agents and whilst I managed to attract the attention of a few agents, none of them were prepared to take my novel on. I then sent it off to an authors’ advisory service who gave the structure a big overhaul. After spending a lot more time editing, I did a final read through of the manuscript (reading it out loud which was very helpful) before I finally sent it to Bookouture.

D
o
you have any advice for aspiring novelists?

T
here was
a period of ten years between first starting to write this novel and being taken on by Bookouture. Whilst I never imagined I’d still be working on it after all that time, I wholeheartedly agree with American writer and artist Debbie Millman who once said ‘Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.’ So what I’d say to aspiring writers is don’t give up. If you really believe in what you’ve written, if you truly believe it’s good (because if you don’t, nobody else will), then keep going. Don’t do it on your own – get a variety of people to critique it and consider paying for a professional advisory service as nine times out of ten, a writer is too close to their own work to be truly objective.

W
hat are you writing next
?

A
s I’m currently living
in Nairobi, I’m setting my next novel in Kenya. It’s another historical setting in the early twentieth century when Nairobi first became a colonial settlement and also the Mau Mau emergency of the 1950’s. It will be centred around a young Englishwoman who goes to Kenya against her will to marry a man she has never met and the unexpected direction her life moves in once there.

W
hat
/ who are your top influences as a writer? (authors / specific books you've read / people you've met in life who have inspired you)

I
started writing
The Poet’s Wife
shortly after reading Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. For a long time, I loved reading the magic realism masters Allende, Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez and when I first started writing my own novel, I wrote in a magical realism style that I later moved away from.

I
t would be
difficult for me to pinpoint specific people as there have been so, so many people I’ve met over the years who have inspired me and informed my writing in some way. I’ve dedicated this book to my father who’s no longer alive, but I feel he needs special mention as he was instrumental in helping instil in me that sense of self-belief; that anything is possible if you really open yourself up to it and persevere.