Special feature Q&A: Jane Dalton on her first novel THE SECOND LIFE OF ANTHONY B

 

Is someone playing a cruel trick, or is the impossible really happening?

Photograph by Sarah Widdowson

Jane Dalton is a journalist at The Independent, where she writes about animal welfare as well as general news. She previously worked for The Sunday Times, where she was Regional Editor and an occasional book reviewer. She began her career at the Dover Express, where she launched a high-profile campaign against live exports. You can find out more from Jane's website, and read an interview about Jane’s animal activism and reporting here. 

The Second Life of Anthony B is her first novel.

What if the person you loved most sent you one final email?

Eight months after his wife Maggie dies, widower Anthony Bothwell switches on his computer and discovers an email—from her.

The message is so personal it could only have come from Maggie. And its warning is terrifying.

Is someone playing a cruel trick, or is the impossible really happening?

The emails from maggie.bothwell@theafterlife.org.uk keep coming.

As Anthony's certainty about life, death and everything in between begins to crumble, he replies. Their conversations become tender, funny and deeply moving.

But when a long-buried family secret is uncovered, grief turns to betrayal, and Anthony is forced to question everything he thought he knew about the woman he loved.

Then he meets Brooke, a fellow widow who offers him the chance to begin again.

Can Anthony uncover the truth behind the impossible emails—and find the courage to embrace a second chance?

Jane answers questions from Linda Newbery.

Linda: First, congratulations on publishing your debut novel! You’ve worked for years as a journalist for The Independent – is writing fiction something you’ve always wanted to do?

Jane: Thank you so much. Yes, I started writing my first novel when I was eight. It took me a few more decades to finish writing one, though. After a tumultuous journey to publication (more of that later) I was very lucky that my manuscript was picked up by Poolbeg Books, the Irish publisher that first discovered Maeve Binchy. Not that The Second Life of Anthony B is anything like her novels – it’s much weirder than that.

Linda: The novel is based around the striking premise that Anthony receives emails from his dead wife. Did the novel begin with this idea, or did you begin with the intention of writing a novel about bereavement before settling on this device?

Jane: It began with Maggie, an outspoken woman who’s also great fun. That blended with the idea of emails from beyond the grave, because wouldn’t everyone who’s lost someone very suddenly love to be able to have one final conversation with them? I wrote it for everyone who has ever wondered what happens to us after we die and whether any form of consciousness, such as the soul, survives. I also wrote it for anyone who’s ever wondered how their life would have been had they taken a different path; and for anyone who loves garden birds.

Linda: You’ve written a page-turning mystery which is often amusing, sometimes even farcical, and equally often moving, as we experience Anthony’s deep sense of loss alongside his questioning of how well he knew Maggie. Was this a difficult balance to achieve?

Jane: Funnily enough, it wasn’t difficult. The novel is partly about how couples communicate – or fail to, and Maggie and Anthony’s turbulent relationship allowed both the humour and the sorrow to emerge naturally. That’s how it ended up with depth and bittersweet.

Linda: Did the voice of Maggie (forthright, teasing, assertive) come to you immediately? Our sense of Maggie comes mainly through her emails.

Jane: Yes, it did. She was partly based on a former news editor I had who was a veteran tabloid journalist and who had a long-standing challenge for all reporters to find a “naughty vicar”. I exaggerated Maggie a bit to make her more outrageous – but not much more. On the surface Maggie is flamboyant and larger than life, but deep down she’s extremely vulnerable and sensitive. Anthony is quite different – much more grounded, but also sensitive. Each of them is lovable in their own way.

Linda: Anthony is a thoroughly sympathetic character, and I know that readers who’ve been bereaved, or who are close to someone who’s experienced a loss, will find much that resonates. How and why did you decide that your viewpoint character would be a man in his sixties?

Jane: I’m not entirely sure, but just before writing it I’d been reading a lot of high-quality literature that happened to have male lead characters, such as novels by Ian McEwan, David Mitchell and John Updike. I didn’t want to write another popular women’s novel with the tired trope of a young woman and her boyfriend troubles. I wanted to write something non-formulaic, unpredictable and without cliche. And I forced Anthony to question his assumptions about a lot of things, such as whether people have a soul, that life is short and that the course of life after 50 is fixed.

Linda: Anthony investigates the subject of communications from the dead as the novel progresses – was this part of your own research for the novel?

Jane: To some extent, but I wanted the focus of the narrative to be more on the effect on Anthony of receiving the emails, and how they change him as a person, from being a grumpy sceptic convinced his life is over to someone open-minded to new ideas and able to start afresh. Communicating with Maggie forces him to confront things he’s never admitted before and enables him to move on in life.

Linda: Did you have the whole plot mapped out before you began, or did the novel grow in ways that surprised you?

Jane: I didn’t map it out – I wrote it instinctively, and a great many things in it surprised me. Which is appropriate for the story, because I think the same things will surprise readers, too. I never imagined I’d write a creepy psychological suspense story or one about the afterlife or how it’s never too late for fresh starts.

Linda: I know that The Second Life of Anthony B has had a difficult path to publication – through no fault of yours! Can you tell us about that?

Jane: Getting to publication itself was a drama! My first publisher, Neem Tree Press, a lovely women-only company, was taken over by Unbound, a crowd-funding publisher, which, it transpired, was in difficulty, and the new company collapsed into administration just as my novel was due to be published. I was devastated, because I’d put everything I had into writing it.

Linda: At The Independent you specialise in covering issues of animal welfare / exploitation. Do you think this will feature in future novels? Is a second novel under way?

Jane: They say novelists should not write to champion a cause but I am thinking about it. How can I not? Much animal cruelty is so extreme that it needs tackling. In this novel, writing about the symbolism of birds and caring for them was a bonus. I have already drafted a second novel, albeit not part of my three-book contract with Poolbeg, so I have two more to go.

Linda: Thank you, Jane - I'm sure your novel will be much enjoyed by its readers!

The Second Life of Anthony B is published by Poolbeg.

BOOKS OF THE YEAR Part 3: chosen by our contributors

Here's the final part of our roundup and our chance to thank our reviewers for their generous contributions throughout the year. We couldn't do this without you! Thanks too to all our followers. We hope everyone's found something here - or maybe several titles - to add to your reading pile for 2026.

John Newman chooses something old and something new: My reconnection with the work of Rosemary Sutcliff continued this year and I was really thrilled to find a second hand hardback edition of Knight’s Fee complete with Charles Keeping illustrations. I f could not recall reading of how Randal, an abandoned kennel boy overcomes adversity to become a knight. Sutcliff brilliantly uses his rise to explore how the Saxon and Norman population find a common enemy in the French and those attempting to usurp the throne at the end of the eleventh century.

Sometimes picking up a proof copy can lead to a major reading experience. Such is the case with Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume. The story of how an antiquarian book dealer awakes continuously on the 18th November and how she attempts to adapt is told a day at a time. I'm now up to Volume 3 of a planned septology and I can’t stop recommending them.

John Newman is an independent booksellers at Newham Books. 

Penny Dolan chooses A Voice in the Night by Simon Mason, the fourth in his excellent ‘DI Wilkins’ crime series: Two murders, set in a rather unlovely Oxford: the stabbing of a security guard and a mysterious death-by-drowning of a retired academic.

DCS Wainwright, the ruthless new Superintendent at Thames Valley Police, wants both murders solved. She also wants one of two officers out of the service. Will it be handsome, black, college-educated DI Raymond Wilkins? Or his ‘past partner’: trailer-trash, trackie-bottomed, single-parent DI Ryan Wilkins, who must have ‘no responsibility’, yet somehow fixes on essential facts?

Though each Wilkins goes their own way in sorting out the mystery, they also face painful responsibilities in their own lives. A Voice in the Night, with its compelling heart, makes my Book of the Year 2025, though I must add that the three earlier DI Wilkins novels are worth reading first.

Mary Hoffman: My fiction-reading has involved a lot of re-reads. I discovered Elly Griffiths’ wonderful Ruth Galloway series of detective novels in June and have read all fifteen and am now re-reading them. The first is The Crossing Places and I heartily recommend them. The heroine is middle-aged, not slim and fashionable, but is a forensic archaeologist. Yet Ruth Galloway is not short of male admirers.

I’ve also been re-reading my way through my extensive Anne Tyler collection and am six books in so far. I got the latest Jackson Brodie novel by Kate Atkinson at Christmas last year – Murder at the Sign of the Rook (Doubleday), so of course I then had to re-read all the others. And I belong to a book group which also sometimes supplies titles I know already, including my own choice, The Leopard (Collins and Harvill Press) by Giuseppe Tommasi di Lampedusa, partly inspired by the recent Netflix series, which played fast and loose with the plot but was beautifully cast and filmed. It was first published in Italy in 1958 and the English translation two years later, both after the author’s death. I must have first read it in sixth form; anyway, I seem always to have known it and it remains one of my favourite books. 

Other favourite re-reads of the years have been Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, which I enjoyed much more second time round and Irène Nemirovsky’s Suite Française, which ditto. Our last book club title of the Year is Pip Williams’ The Dictionary of Lost Words and it is a corker.  It may be hard to write a page-turner about a (fictional) girl helping to compile the OED, but Williams has done it. Happy reading!

Mark Davies has also chosen The Dictionary of Lost Words: Set largely in Oxford, the novel is structured to track the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the life of the first-person character, Esme. As the daughter of one of the editors, Esme's awareness of the significance of words begins as a small child. As a adult, she is employed at the Dictionary, and determines to try to include 'lost' words of a more feminine derivation, having realised that the Dictionary was a male-dominated domain: the editors and compilers were men, the majority of cited sources were written by men, and most of the researchers were men. By retrieving otherwise ignored or mislaid words, and by talking to working class women, Esme collects the basis of her own small alternative 'Lost Words' dictionary. This feminist theme is interwoven with the simultaneous activities of the suffragette movement and the nursing of soldiers injured in the First World War, making the book both engaging, thought-provoking, and educational.

Mark Davies is an Oxford local historian, public speaker and guide. His latest publications are A Jericho Scrapbook: Inside an Oxford Community Saved from Destruction and Jericho - a Celebration.

Jane Dalton: My pick is The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel. Ostensibly a warning of the devastation wreaked by ponzi schemes, this strange and haunting novel carries an undercurrent of a world in which women pay the price for men’s crimes and selfishness.

Chief among them is Vincent, who at school was straight-As pupil but whose talents go unrecognised. Without a career, she becomes a fake trophy wife to the "super-rich" Jonathan Alkaitis, while her half-brother Paul plagiarises her video work. He squanders his college education funded by his mother, whereas Vincent is haunted by the loss of her own beloved mother.

The many different shifts in time, perspective and tenses - present and past, including Paul justifying his actions to a therapist in later years - make for a read that’s as unsettling as offensive messages written on a hotel window - a key plot point.At the end, I had to return to the start to better relish the nuances and detail of the rich narrative in context.

Jane Dalton is a journalist for the Independent. Her first novel is currently out on submission to publishers. 

Leslie Wilson's choice is When I Was, by Miranda Miller. What struck me about this novel was the vulnerability of people trying to be adults, and somehow never managing it; the deeply insecure parents are imprisoned by their class and difficult background, trying to negotiate the world without enough tools to do so, at least not enough to fool other adults that they know what they're doing, and aren't we all like that at times? The four children are also struggling through their lives, particularly the youngest, an observant, sometimes truculent little girl who loves her parents in spite of their failings. The family relationships ring absolutely true.

There are passages of wonderful comedy, particularly the abortive excursion to Brighton in a hire car, which turns out a disaster, particularly for the car. There's  also deep and devastating sadness. Engaging, perceptive and compassionate, this is a novel that’s hard to put down.

Leslie Wilson’s latest novel is The War’s Not Over Yet.

Jane Rogers chooses Juice by Tim Winton: I love Winton’s work but I’d read enough utterly depressing cli-fi dystopias to feel reluctant about starting this. Juice is set in a lawless, scorched, barren Australia 200 years in the future – how could it not be grim? But Winton is a compelling writer. His narrator spins his tale to save his own life, at the hands of a lone killer who holds him, and the child he is trying to protect, captive. There are layers and layers of suspense, not just about the narrator but about his mother, wife, and child, and about the violent climate justice organisation both he and his captor have worked for (the chief targets are heirs to Big Oil). Winton is brilliant at raising complex moral issues; blame, revenge, honesty, and love. The astonishing humanity of the story makes it much much more than the recital of bleakness I was fearing. And his introduction of honourable AI in the final third of the novel raises questions which continue to haunt me.

Jane Rogers' latest publication is a short story collection, Fire-Ready.

Becky Jones: The book I loved most this year was The Wedding People by Alison Espach. It was the first book for a long time that hooked me on the very first page. Phoebe, a divorced academic, arrives at the Cornwall Inn to find she is the only guest who is not there for the elaborate week-long wedding of Lila and Gary. When the bride realises, she is furious – this depressed stranger could ruin her meticulously planned celebrations. As things pan out, however, Phoebe becomes important to her in ways neither of them could have imagined.

What I loved about this book was the writing – sometimes I find myself aware of the craft of writing which can sometimes detract from the enjoyment as a reader. But with this book, I could admire the writing whilst laughing and crying and being fully absorbed in the story. The premise was perfect – a week-long wedding in a hotel. It was a stage set for drama, full of surprises with wonderful, fully formed characters and sparkling, funny dialogue. But what I loved most was the way themes of loneliness, depression, grief and being different were treated with such humour. An uplifting read.

Becky Jones' first novel, Searching for Amy, was published this year.

David Breakell has chosen The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Hugh Aplin: Written in the era of Stalin's show trials, this political satire cum fantasy horror was finally published only when the author - and Stalin himself - were both long dead. In a surreal Moscow where most of the humane, moral characters are to be found in a mental institution, Bulgakov skewers Soviet society with prose which is, at turns, darkly comic and terrifying. For me, its most compelling aspect is the 'novel within a novel': the eponymous Master is struggling to complete his manuscript, a historical novel which reimagines a single day - the day of Christ's crucifixion - from the point of view of Pontius Pilate. In the hours after Christ's death, Pilate tries, unsuccessfully, to alleviate his sense of guilt. Sprinkled through the text of the main narrative, these chapters provide a brilliant counterpoint to its satirical message. But also perhaps hope for the Master and Margarita.

David Breakell's first novel is The Alchemist of Genoa - read a Q&A with David next Monday.

The choice of Alison Layland is Audrey Magee's The Colony: There’s something about islands, and I realised recently that I've visited quite a few in my reading this year, all of them as exciting and intriguing an experience as a real-life trip across the sea currents.

In The Colony, the inhabitants of a small island off the coast of Ireland are visited by an English artist and a French linguist, who battle one another for the soul of the island’s people and their language, to the bewilderment of the islanders themselves. In a microcosm of colonialism, their desires and actions have profound consequences. This is a beautifully written, engaging read with brilliant characterisation and dialogue, and so much between the lines.

Other excellent island-based novels I’ve read this year are: Little Great Island by Kate Woodworth; Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy; Muckle Flugga  by Michael Pedersen; Island by Jane Rogers. Maybe I’ve been drawn to island-set novels recently as my novel, After the Clearances, is largely set on the fictional island of Ynys Hudol, inspired by Bardsey off the north-west coast of Wales.

Alison Layland's latest publication is After the Clearances.

Nick Manns recommends Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes: In Rome, one Sunday in November 1950, Valeria Cossati walks into a tobacconist’s and asks the shopkeeper for cigarettes and a child’s exercise book. The shopkeeper says it’s forbidden to sell non-tobacco products on a Sunday. With sudden urgency (‘I need it’), Cossati persuades him to break the law, and with the notebook hidden beneath her coat, walks into the street, past a watching policeman.

‘I need it’ marks the point when de Céspedes’ character steps beyond the role of compliant housewife and selfless mother and speaks for herself. The ‘forbidden notebook’ – her diary of domestic events – becomes a document of resistance: reports from a strange country.

Written five years after the fall of Italian fascism; 18 months after the publication of The Second Sex, Valeria Cossati walks towards our own time. She says, ‘This is what I saw; this is what I worked out.’

Nick Manns has written four novels for young adults and is the founder-director of Dyslexia Lifeline.  

Paul Dowswell couldn't decide on just one, so chose three! Firstly, A Village in the Third Reich. Julia Boyd, who also wrote the fascinating Travellers in the Third Reich about tourism in Hitler’s Germany, excels in this captivating account of the Nazi-era lives of the people of Oberstdorf in the Bavarian Alps. Not a good bedtime read for anyone worried about the state of the world; It gave me nightmares.

Secondly, Long Island by Colm Toibin. I loved Brooklyn, both film and book, so was keen to catch up with Eilis Lacey, Tony Fiorello and Jim Farrell. We’re now in the 1970s and all is not well. Toibin writes so well about the longings and disappointments of his characters and leaves us on a cliff edge. I eagerly await the third instalment.

Lastly, Abbey Road. David Hepworth is a music journalist with a keen eye for the sort of ‘fancy that’ information my fellow music trainspotters love. He's also a successful publisher with a keen understanding of the £££ that oils the wheels of art. This book is a highly readable history of the famous London studio and, simultaneously, the history of recorded sound.

Paul Dowswell's latest title is Aliens: the Chequered History of Britain's Wartime Refugees

From our own Adèle Geras: Andrew Michael Hurley’s Saltwash is a book that lingers in your mind long after you finish reading it. It’s not as frightening as some of his others (try Starveacre for the most terrifying last paragraph I’ve read in years) but it does have what Hurley has always excelled at: an atmosphere that settles around you as you read like drizzle in an out of season seaside town. This is exactly what Saltwash is. I’m very partial to such settings. A man goes to meet a friend in the oddest seaside hotel you’ve ever visited. The friend isn’t there at first but turns up later. There’s a big party on that night, as it happens, and many strange guests are ready to attend. I shan’t say another word! Merry Christmas to all WR readers.

Adele Geras' latest novel, under the pseudonym Hope Adams, is Dangerous Women.

Linda Sargent's choice is What you are looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts: a Japanese bestseller and it’s easy to see why. The story unfolds as we follow the interlinking lives of five characters from a range of ages and backgrounds, but all are at some kind of turning point in their life. They arrive at a community centre/library and are directed to the librarian Sayuri Komachi, who has an uncanny, almost magical, gift for deep empathy and she directs them to seemingly unlikely books that turn out to be exactly what they need. All the while she makes tiny felt gifts and all five of the characters in this story are given one, which is also significant in their progress too. I especially liked Masao’s crab which ends up on his daughter’s bag and is a pathway to their greater connection too. It is a book about community, connection, listening and kindness. Perfect for these somewhat overwhelming times in the world and emphasising the necessary treasure provided by libraries and librarians. I loved it.

Linda Sargent's most recent publication is Tosh's Island.

Jon Appleton chooses The Light of Day by Christopher Stephens and Louise Radnofsky, a compelling addition to the canon of queer British history.

Roger Butler was the first British man to publicly admit his homosexuality, lighting a touchpaper at a time (1960) when society condemned ‘inversion’, before sexual acts between consenting men were legalised. Christopher Stephens was a young Oxford student who became the older man’s friend and was gifted, upon Roger’s death, an episodic letter which revealed not only the unrequited longing Roger had for him (about which he knew) but the man’s extraordinary life as a private citizen turned activist during the early years of gay liberation. Extracts are interspersed with Christopher’s reflections on the friendship, on his own story, on the tricky matter of offering the right levels of affection and admiration to those we revere – not just in their lifetime but after they’ve died. It’s a compelling mix and part of the reason it’s my book of the year is that just a few streets away from where Christopher visited Roger in East Oxford, I made visits to my own friend and hero, writer Jan Mark, and since her death I have grappled with many of the questions Christopher confronts.

Jon Appleton is editor of the gab, which celebrates 20th century children’s literature: lettersfromrobin.com/the-gab

And finally ... a great note to finish on, with good advice for all of us! Venkatesh Swamy recommends Slow Down and Be Here Now, by Laura Brand, illustrated by Freya Hartas. These are times where the normal is rush, rush, rush. One keeps lurching from crisis to crisis and leaps from opportunity to perceived opportunity. For many, life has become one merry-go-round with no stop button. There have been days when I feel that I have been shot out of a cannon. Here’s a book for those moments. 

Slow Down and Be Here Now is a book that immediately needs to be introduced into children’s lives (maybe adults too). As are other titles in the Slow Down series. Written by Laura Brand and illustrated by Freya Hartas, it starts off with a simple tip - Be Here Now! 

Each of the short 46 chapters is fascinating and some of my favourites are: Watch a Duck Coat its Feathers, See a Grasshopper Jump, Watch a Family of Hermit Crabs Move House. And if I get the time, I will do just that. 

The book’s premise? When it is almost impossible to find joy, feel peace or follow curiosity, there are ways you can look after yourself, calm your body and mind, and being immersed in nature is just one of them. All you need do to see them is slow down.

Venkatesh Swami is the proprietor, with Swati Roy, of Eureka! Bookstore in New Delhi.

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