EMBARK ON THE NEXT CHAPTER OF A TREASURED TALE

Jessie Burton reflects on writing the longed-for sequel to her bestselling novel The Miniaturist

A few years ago, my life had a pattern. A stranger at a party, or on a plane, would ask me what I did for a living. ‘What’s your name?’ they would ask, and I would tell them. They usually looked blank, but when I mentioned the name of my book, The Miniaturist, their expression changed: ‘You wrote that?’ For a while, my novel was ubiquitous, even famous. I found it difficult. Not because I didn’t want to be successful as a writer, but because I felt painfully exposed, crushed by my only ability, and not sure whether I was deserving of the fuss.

Afterwards, I wrote other books that I knew were inside me. I had never wanted to write only about the dark and velvet world of the Dutch Golden Age. And all the time I spent putting together my other worlds, I never opened the covers of The Miniaturist. The people inside it – especially Nella Brandt – were too powerful, too unwieldy for me. They revealed too much of me to myself, and I needed to look forward.

However, there are some things that, as a writer, you cannot ignore. I could not ignore Nella Brandt. Nor her maid Cornelia, nor her friend Otto, nor his newly minted daughter Thea, now 18 and ready for her life to begin. They had always been there, waiting. The reason I have written their lives again, nearly a decade on, is because I can acknowledge now that they are part of who I am. This new novel, The House of Fortune, is my own refracting story, of women in dialogue, mother figures, the chance of an Eden around the corner. Nella’s needs – to form community, to feel safe, to love herself and to accept her own flaws as well as those of others – are my needs. Nella Brandt, older and maybe wiser, is looking for her fortune. And so, again, am I. ‘The House of Fortune’ by Jessie Burton

(£16.99, Picador) is published on 7 July.