The Gypsy Madonna - author Q & A

Q: What sparked the initial idea for The Gypsy Madonna? Did it start with a character, a scene, or something else?

A: I read an article in the British press during the D Day celebrations. It was called The Forgotten Victims (of the liberation of France) and it featured an interview with a man in his late 60s who was a boy in WWII in a small town in Bordeaux. His mother fell in love with a German officer who fathered him, and at the end of the war his mother was paraded in the town square, shaved, branded with the swastika and tortured. He described how he grew up in a climate of anger and disgust, bullied, tormented and isolated. The interviewer commented that he still spoke with a stammer. That article broke my heart and compelled me to write about it. I have a 3 year old son, which made the story all the more distressing for me as I identified with the mother. How could grown ups inflict such pain on an innocent little boy?

Q: You mention in the Acknowledgements section that you take an annual holiday in France. What is your favorite part of the country? Have these trips inspired The Gypsy Madonna’s French locale?

A: I went to Bordeaux a lot as a child, but I’ve since been to the Riviera and Provence. I love the South of France in particular and I find the French an intriguing lot. These trips made the book much easier to write, as I understand the French. I always base my books in places I know well as I like to be able to get under the skin of the country I’m writing about.

Q: Part of the story takes place during and following the German occupation of France in the 1940s. How did you make certain to not only capture factual details about World War II but also to convey less tangible aspects, such as the feelings and emotions of the townspeople in the post-war years?

A: It’s much easier to write about the war than one would imagine. For a start, there are plenty of people still around who lived through it and they all have wonderful, colorful stories. There are shelves of books and videos based in the war too, which are invaluable. However, I would say that the most useful film I saw was The Blue Bicycle, which is based on a book, which I also read, and a book called Wine and War, about how the wine families survived during occupation, which was fascinating.

Q: Was it a challenge to write a novel with a male protagonist?

A: No. I thought it might be, but writing in the first person was so much fun after having written my previous five in the third person. I settled into Mischa’s shoes rather easily, actually. I don’t know why. I just felt him come alive as I wrote, and I began to think like a man. It must have helped having a son. I think I’ve always been able to empathize with characters in film, whether they are male or female. I have a rather over active imagination! It was so easy writing Gypsy that I tried to write the following book in the first person, being a woman, and it didn’t work! It’s a one-off, I think.

Q: How did you so skillfully render Mischa’s experiences as a child? Is this the first time you’ve told a story partly from a child’s perspective?

A: It’s the first story I’ve written in the first person, although I have written about children in all my other books. I love children and understand them. Now I have my own, aged 5 and 3, I think I have an even greater understanding and empathy. I wrote this book from Mischa’s point of view because I wanted to make Coyote enigmatic. If I had written it in the third person I might have felt compelled to go into Coyote’s mind and that would have taken away his mystery. The reader only sees Coyote through Mischa’s eyes. In the garden with Madame Duval does Coyote really see Pistou, or does Mischa believe he sees him because he wants him to? I enjoy a little magic, and writing from the little boy’s perspective allowed me to indulge. Pistou was very dear to me as I have seen spirits all my life. They are around us all the time, and you’d be surprised how many children see them. The secret worlds of children fascinate me – at what stage do we lose our wonderfully vivid imaginations?

Q: When constructing a plotline do you generally think of a narrative as linear, or is it more like piecing together a puzzle? How about for The Gypsy Madonna in particular, which has a fair amount of twists and foreshadowing?

A: I would love to say I plan my novels down to the last twist – I don’t. I have my basic plot line, which is linear and then I dive in. I do enjoy stories where you begin with a grown up and then flash back to his past. This has been done a hundred times, like the film Titanic, for example, or “The Man Who Would Be King.” I then followed my nose. I had no idea when I started writing that Mischa would fall in love with Claudine. I put her in the childhood section and then when I wanted Mischa to have a love story of his own, she seemed the logical person. It was fun to bring her back, especially married to the ghastly Laurent! I didn’t plan Captain Crumble’s Curiosity Store, nor Mischa’s trip to Chile. I look on a book as an adventure, and I go down the most interesting path and see what I find. The fact that it all ties up together in the end is a fluke! The Laredo song was a big fluke. My husband has always sung it to our children, so I gave it to Coyote as it’s wonderfully romantic and sad. Only at the end of the book did I realize it how appropriate it was. The cowboy was Coyote and I never saw it until that moment. “We all love our comrades even though they done wrong.”

Q: Mischa tells Matias and Maria Elena, “I love old things. I like to feel the pasts that lie within them. They all echo with the vibrations of the people who owned them and the places they’ve sat in…. I love to run my hand over the wood and feel the heartbeat, because they do beat, you know, if you listen.” Do you share Mischa’s affinity for antiques? If so, do you ever imagine their stories—who owned them and where they’ve been?

A: I share Misch’s belief that things vibrate with the energy of the people who owned them. I love old things because they all tell a story—like people with rich and extraordinary pasts. I heard a story once of a man who bought an antique desk at auction and when he got it home he discovered a secret drawer which contained a diary of the woman who once owned it. The diary was a jewel of adventure, intrigue and skullduggery. I’m enchanted by secrets and mystery, as we all are.

Q: Are you an admirer of Titian’s work? Which is your favorite painting?

A: I do like Titian, but I’m a Rafael girl at heart. I chose Titian because The Gypsy Madonna was such a great title and worked so well with the book. There was another Titian that I considered, “Sacred and Profane Love” but its title was too long and complicated, I knew no one would ever remember it!

Q: Is writing fiction a form of escapism for you? Do you write the kinds of book you also enjoy reading?

A: Writing is definitely a form of escapism. I dive into a world of which I have total control. I can allow my imagination to flow and take me to wonderful places. I do write the sort of books I enjoy reading, although my ability pales in the brilliance of some of the authors I admire, like Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Shadow of The Wind. I read non fiction too, which I’d never be able to write and historical fiction, like Philippa Gregory, which I love but couldn’t begin to do myself. I know my limitations. Ultimately I write for my own pleasure. The moment it becomes a bore I’ll quit!

Q: Critics have compared your novels to the works of Rosamunde Pilcher, Maeve Binchy, and Joanne Harris. What is it like to join the ranks of such illustrious writers?

A: I’m enormously flattered. I would never presume to compare myself to any of them and am extremely grateful that someone else has.

Learn more about Titian, one of the most celebrated artists of the Italian High Renaissance, at arthistory.about.com and en.wikipedia.org.

Take a virtual tour of Bordeaux at www.bordeaux-tourisme.com.

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