‘FAILURE AND REJECTION ARE GOOD FOR YOU’
Author Gill Hornby on coming from a literary family
She’s married to Robert Harris and her brother is Nick Hornby – no wonder Gill Hornby was hesitant about writing books, too. But she did it and hasn’t looked back There weren’t any books in the house when I was growing up,
apart from a couple of Catherine Cookson novels. But every Saturday, my mum would drop me and my brother at the library in Maidenhead near where we lived, while she did the shopping. We were allowed to borrow four or five books with our library cards and we always had other books on the go, which we then hid behind the library shelves and picked up again the next week.
My dad left when we were little
and it was just my mum, Nick and me. No one explained what was happening, but we knew there were dark clouds above us. I think we buried ourselves in books as an escape.
I started writing novels after I was sacked.
I was writing a regular column for a newspaper and when I was stranded in Tenerife by the Icelandic ash cloud in 2010, I offered them a news story about the stranded British tourists. They said no, so I filed one for another paper. They didn’t like that at all!
I always wanted to write, but I never really believed I would.
I don’t think I ever had the confidence or the subject matter. Also, I had four children, which is quite labour-intensive.
Jane Austen is a huge influence.
She famously said: ‘Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on,’ and that is extremely good advice.
Nearly 30 years ago, we moved into the Old Vicarage in Kintbury, Berkshire; a Grade Ii-listed building dating from 1860. Local people said there was a Jane Austen connection with the house but I didn’t think anything of it. It turned out that her sister, Cassandra, had been engaged to the son of the house and Jane had stayed in the original building. That’s when I became interested in Cassandra’s story.
I feel liberated by the menopause
I have a lot of sympathy for Cassandra.
She was a good, clever, talented, important woman. She was top girl until Jane became so successful. Once fame hits a family, that’s it. All other measures are obliterated and you are judged in comparison.
My brother and my husband have both been so successful
as writers that there’s simply no competition. Even if I write for the next 40 years, I’m never going to sell as they do! So that’s quite relaxing in a way.
My husband and I have such different ways of working.
I have no idea what’s going to happen in my books whereas my husband plots everything. We give each other feedback on our books; I’ve always done that with his. When we get stuck, we walk the dog and it always unlocks something.
I was 60 last year and I’m happy with my lot.
I’m proud to have had four children and that they’ve all kind of made it through to adulthood. I loved the menopause! I feel so much more myself now, in a way I never felt the whole time I was hormonal. I feel liberated. What’s great at the moment is, there are lots of women who are coming into their age as mature women, like Mary Berry – it’s wonderful.
My life advice? Don’t worry about failure and rejection: they are good for you. I’ve been a great failure and I’m often rejected. And all of them have been good things in the end.
Miss Austen (Century) by Gill Hornby is out on
23 January