Exploring what’s mine
‘My latest novel, Mine, has been described by award-winning author Kit de Waal as: “A heart-breaking account of love and loss told by a great storyteller”,’ writes subscriber Alison Knight.
‘This has been the hardest thing I’ve ever written because it is based on real events that happened to my family. It changed all our lives.
‘The story is set in London in the late 1960s and covers a year in the lives of the Wickham family. It’s about how ordinary people make decisions that lead them into extraordinary situations. I’m the only one left who can tell this story. Although I was a young child then, I have some very clear memories of that time.
But, fifty years on, there are gaps in my knowledge of what happened that no-one can fill. So this novel is my imagining of what might have happened. I have taken my memories and those of other family members, newspaper reports and court papers to establish the bare bones of the story and brought them to life using my knowledge of the people involved and the culture of the time. The result is a powerful study of class, ambition and sexual politics in the 1960s.
‘Writing this book has helped me to come to terms with what happened. I gained a new perspective because, before I began writing Mine, my memories were stuck in the mind of a ten-year-old child. But
I had to put myself into the shoes and minds of the people involved and began to see the situation from an adult perspective for the first time. I’ve gained a better understanding of what drove everyone and why it happened as it did. They were the victims of their time. If the same thing happened today, I believe the outcome would be very different. This book is my legacy to my children and grandchildren, giving them the chance to get to know those who have gone before as real people rather than just stark facts in a report.
‘Mine was published by Darkstroke Books on 25 November. It’s a very significant date for me as it would have been my mother’s ninetieth birthday.’
Mine is available from Amazon: http://writ.rs/mine