Some people just drop off the radar

Cape Times book reviewer Julian Richfield had the chance to speak to author Rosie Fiore about her latest book, What She Left, on the eve of her returning to South Africa for a family holiday.

ROSIE was born in Johannesburg, but for the past 17 years has lived in London.

I began by asking her what inspired the story of What She Left.

“Three-quarters-of-a-million people go missing in the UK every year.

“When I read that figure, it staggered me.

“The vast majority come home very quickly, but some people just drop off the radar. So who are they?

“And what happens to them, especially in this age of electronic footprint?

“Have you ever fantasised about walking away from your life and starting again?

“Whenever I talk about this to people, they often respond with surprising enthusiasm. I guess we’ve all had that fantasy… but we don’t do it.

“We love our annoying families too much, or it would be too hard.

“But in my book, What She Left, Helen Cooper actually does it. She’s the perfect school gate mum and wife and she walks away from everything and disappears.

“Why? And what does it do to her, and to the family she leaves behind?

“This was a difficult book to write: I think we’ve heard lots of stories of men who walk away from families, but it’s unusual for a woman to do it, and I think we judge them more harshly if they do.

“I hope readers will be intrigued by Helen and her husband Sam and want to find out the secrets that led to her disappearance… and what happens next.”

What were her reasons for having the story told by four of its main characters?

“I like multiple-person perspectives because it’s always so revealing to see how different people experience the same situation.

“It was a good challenge to tell first-person stories from the perspective of both man and child, and I really enjoyed it. I think Sam is particularly interesting, because I wanted to show how someone can see their behaviour and actions as perfectly reasonable when to others they patently aren’t.

“Lara is, in many ways, our most dispassionate witness, and Miranda sees things with that uncanny, black-and-white clarity that children have.”

I asked Rosie if her characters developed lives of their own as she wrote them?

“For me, writing is entirely and always about character. I think this might stem from my drama training at Wits University. In order to find out where a story is going to go, you need to inhabit each character, think their thoughts and walk their steps.

“Often you think you know where they are going, but they speak up (quietly at first and then louder) to say that their path is different.

“Whenever I have tried to ignore those voices and keep writing, I’ve had to delete tens of thousands of words and go back and rewrite. “I’ve learnt my lesson!” Your characters have complicated family relationships, they support each other, but also have secrets and betrayals?

“I have never met a family that didn’t have secrets, tensions and hidden depths.

“Sometimes the hidden depths are trivial, but sometimes they are immense.

“But, no one can love us, needle us and hurts us like our families.

“I am endlessly fascinated by what goes on in families.”

Why did you tell Helen’s story in the third person while the others speak in the first?

“I wanted the reader to learn about Helen from everyone else before they met her… forming a picture from the negative space of her absence. And when we do meet her, she’s still full of mystery – I wanted to keep her at arm’s length.”

So what is next after What She Left Behind?

“I moved to London in 2000 wanting to be immersed in culture and write books.

“But London is an enormous, difficult city and it’s extraordinary hard to survive here. I’ve had some very, very hard times and struggled hugely.

“I’ve also had some of the greatest times imaginable and experienced things I could only have dreamt about.

“It’s an abiding, love affair, and I still thrill every time I cross the Thames or see the sun shine in Regent’s Park.

“This ancient, crowded, unbelievable, diverse city is now the home of my heart and I think it will always pervade my writing.

“It’s taken me nearly 18 years to see my writing dream come to full fruit, and 2018 may well be the most exciting year of my writing life.

“Under the pseudonym Cass Hunter, I have written a book, The After Wife.

“My publisher is calling it a ‘high-concept romance’. I call it a tear-jerking love story… with a robot.

“As I speak, international rights have been sold in eight countries (outside of the Commonwealth), and there’s talk of a film version in China.

“What this means for me is that after 15 years of writing in my ‘spare time’, I am finally able to stop working in a fulltime

It’s taken me nearly 18 years to see my writing dream come to full fruit

job and be… a novelist.

“It’s the realisation of a lifelong dream. The After Wife is due out in March 2018 and I am working on a new speculative fiction, and maybe with my drama training, writing a play might also be a possibility.”