Meet the Author
Isla Dewar A Day Like Any Other, Polygon, £8.99
Edinburgh-born novelist Isla Dewar rarely speaks publicly about the death, seven years ago, of her 37-year-old son Nick. Nick, who like his prominent cartoonist dad Bob Dewar, was an illustrator, had been living in Los Angeles when he lost his battle with cancer.
His mother is reluctant to mention such monumental loss in the same sentence as the business of books. But despite her obvious discomfort, she accepts that grief has inevitably coloured her writing – albeit in a way that surprised her.
The East Neuk of Fife-based writer – also mum to Adam, 40, and grandmother to Sonny, four, and Ida, one – tells P.S.:“I don’t talk about it a great deal for obvious reasons, not that I don’t grieve. But when you realise you won’t ever get over it, you can heal. It is a hard thing to know that life goes on, but it does.What surprised me was that I started writing quite light-hearted books.”
Her latest, A Day Like
Any Other, the 17th by her reckoning is, she says,“quite comedic.”
But that does not equate to a comfortable read. Lines lightly laced with pathos combine to pack a punch so powerful they often leave the reader reeling.
Despite this, Isla, 70, admits she fears people won’t want to read the book set in Scotland’s capital because it focuses on the lifelong friendship of two old ladies.
Her worries are unfounded. Advancing age may have rendered Anna and George invisible to the world, but so well drawn are they, readers across the generations will be attracted to the golden pals who between them have “clocked-up 130 years, three abortions, one miscarriage, four children, 10 lovers, four husbands (one gay), wild nights, quiet television evenings, and enough wine to float a battleship.”
Surprisingly, the inspiration for the story was a simple shopping trip.
Isla, whose second novel Women Talking Dirty became a film starring Helena Bonham Carter, reveals:“I had just had a big operation on my knee and when we were coming home from hospital we had to go to Tesco for some food. I couldn’t get out of the car, so my husband went in and two women came out.
“They were older but they were fabulous. One was dressed almost totally in black velvet with bright red shoes and the other was more hippy but nobody even looked at them.They were engrossed in chatting, waving their arms about and laughing together. So I gave them a life and decided there were things they were ashamed of.”
Example? “Like dancing naked on the steps of the
National Gallery with dyed green pubic hair,” she chuckles.
“I just wanted to say older people have done stupid things too and I thought that was funny.The book is saying please see the person and not the age. Please don’t think this person has been old all their lives.”
She admits that if she had written the tale decades ago, while not ageist, it would have been different.
“There are things you see as you get older,” she muses.“I think you realise you have all these regrets, but there’s not much you can do about them. It is about the letting go of guilt and living in the now.”
And the ultimate message? She smiles:“It ain’t over until it’s over.You can still have fun. You can still laugh and you can still do stupid things. None of it ends.”