Q&A: Jane Rogers interviews Linda Newbery about THE ONE TRUE THING

 

"Each of the three characters - plus Adam, first appearing as a young artist, who isn't a viewpoint character but is equally important - finds, or tries to find, the activity that gives purpose and meaning to life ... "

Linda answers questions from our regular contributor Jane Rogers.

When the ground shifts, where is one true thing to be found?

Jane, in her twenties, is left parentless when her father dies suddenly; a second shock follows when his Will reveals the existence of a son no-one knew of. Now Wildings, the family home, must be sold. Spanning two generations, the novel tells the story of Bridget, Jane’s mother, trapped in an unhappy marriage on which her career depends, and of stone-carver Meg, who wants only independence but is enmeshed in conflicting loyalties and desires when Adam, a young artist, enters their lives, to devastating effect.

Now far from Wildings, Meg is bound by a promise to support Jane in her loss. Having thought of herself as an observer who saw everything, she’s forced to realise how much she failed to see – and the cost to those she loves ...

 
Jane: Congratulations, Linda! Re-reading this book (Jane read an earlier draft) transported me back to the beauties of Wildings and filled me with admiration all over again, for your clever plotting and beautiful descriptions of nature. I’m interested in the way you can shift between writing for children, and adult fiction. In your best-known book for young readers, Lob, you conjure a beautifully innocent child’s view of the world, where love of nature and a powerful imagination are the key ingredients. And that book appeals to adult readers too, because we all have a nostalgia for that kind of innocence.

In complete contrast, The One True Thing is a very grown-up novel, in its exploration of a whole range of sexual relationships: Bridget and Anthony’s marriage shifts through passion and intimacy to downright hostility and back, via infidelity, to a benign accommodation with one another; we learn of Meg’s lesbian love affair with Carrie, who dumps her for a man; there are hints of incestuous attraction between two other characters. How conscious are you of your readership, as you are writing? And does a story always present itself clearly to you as either YA or adult?

Linda: The One True Thing was never going to be anything other than an adult novel, and that's true of my work in progress, too. With teenage fiction there have been times when the boundaries (if there are boundaries) have been less clear: for example with Set in Stone, which I began as a YA novel but for fairly sophisticated readers, and with the hope (which I always have) that it would be enjoyed by adults too. Sometimes I find that a story wants to go in a direction I hadn't planned at the start, and that's what happened with Set in Stone, which caused some controversy when it won the Costa Children's Prize. Some argued - and I'd agree - that it isn't a children's book. But the eligibility for that category does include age groups up to and including YA, so the same could and probably has been said of other winners more suitable for the upper end of young readers. But I won't write any more YA - my focus now is on adult fiction, alternating with stories for young children. 

Jane: The creation of Bridget’s garden is at the heart of the book. Did you have to do a lot of research, or were you already a gardening expert?

Linda: I certainly wouldn't call myself an expert, but I do know quite a lot about gardening and had a clear idea of Bridget's style and approach. I did need to research Chelsea Flower Show garden criteria for the particular year in which two of my characters make a small artisan garden. At the time I was writing the novel, I attended a talk by James Alexander Sinclair, who lives locally and is a Chelsea judge; after the event I emailed him with a few questions, which he very kindly answered, showing me where to find out more.

Jane: Where did the novel spring from? Can you talk us through the inspiration, the starting points? Or maybe I should say, the seeds?  I was fascinated by the precise descriptions of Meg’s work as a stone mason, and I note the book is dedicated to a stone-mason. Can you carve stone? Is this another of your hidden talents?

Linda: I can't exactly remember the starting point - several years ago - but I do seem to have developed a fascination with stone. That started with my late mother's photograph of a caryatid at Copped Hall in Essex, which set me off on The Shell House - Graveney Hall in my novel is based on Copped Hall, inhabited by a fictitious family, but almost destroyed by a devastating fire in 1917, just as the real mansion was. The caryatid, and the sculptor who made it, didn't feature as much as I'd expected, the novel being concerned with a First World War relationship and with a young photographer who discovers the ruins in the present day. So, fairly soon after I'd finished it, I began another novel more focused on stone-carving: Set in Stone. While doing some hands-on research for that one with a local stonemason, Bernard Johnson, I learned to appreciate the beauty of letter-carving, and wanted to have a go. My efforts are very clumsy compared to Bernard's exquisite work (which you can see on his website) but at least I had the tools in my hands and began to understand something of the materials and techniques. I wanted my present-day stone-carver in the new novel to be female, and the character of Meg grew from there, along with how she'd fit around the other characters. 

Jane: What is your writing process? In this novel, Bridget, Meg and Jane all have their own stories and points of view, which are intercut. Did you write them like this, or work on each woman’s story-line separately?

Linda: I seem to have to work like that, moving back and forth in time and/or with intercutting viewpoints - my work in progress has a similar structure, and so do several of my young adult novels (Set in Stone, Sisterland, The Shell House). I don't think I could do it by working on each character individually, because so much depends on the juxtaposition, and what I want the reader to think, wonder, predict or piece together at any one point. When finishing a section from one point of view, I need to leave off for a while, go and do something else, then return (probably next day) with my head in the viewpoint of another character. 

Jane: I hope you won’t mind me saying that I found a lot of you in this novel; yoga, gardening, Extinction Rebellion! 

Linda: Yes, at times while writing I feared that I was using up everything I knew and could write about with authority ... but luckily there are more interests left over (photography, animal activism, an artist I've been intrigued by for many years) for the novel I'm working on now. In The One True Thing, each of the three characters - plus Adam, first appearing as a young artist, who isn't a viewpoint character but is equally important - finds, or tries to find, the activity that gives purpose and meaning to life. Meg is the one who uses the phrase, but it's significant for all of them. 

Jane: I know this novel has been a long time coming to fruition (sorry about the gardening metaphors!) Both you and I, and indeed many other writers, have had trouble finding a publisher for a completed novel – can you tell us the publishing history of this book?

Linda: Sadly, it can be very difficult for an author, even a well-established one, to find a publisher if her or his sales are less than spectacular - and that category includes most of us! Having published only one adult novel before (Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon, in paperback as Missing Rose) I'm not yet established as a writer for adults, and I've heard from you and from other acquaintances that much better-known authors than me are finding it a struggle. The One True Thing was submitted, but isn't what publishers are looking for at present, and even though most praised the writing, characters, etc., they clearly didn't think they could make money from it. Although it's tough being rejected, I never lost the sense that readers would enjoy my novel, so I refused to give up on it. 

I'm grateful to Fiona Mountain, a well-regarded and traditionally published author of historical fiction who I met through a reading group, for telling me how and why she had self-published her latest novel, Keeper of Secrets (which I recommend). When I discussed this possibility with friends Celia Rees and Cindy Jefferies, both of whom have wide experience of the publishing industry, Celia had the brilliant idea of forming an imprint, Writers Review Publishing, linked to this blog. That was a moment of epiphany! I'd felt diffident about publishing and promoting my own book as a solo effort, but being part of an author collaborative would be really rewarding - helping other writers to launch new books or reissue backlist titles that deserve to reach new readers, and all benefitting from joint publicity. It was so liberating to find that everything I needed was available: cover designers, interior layout designers, proofreaders, publicists. It had never occurred to me that I could commision my own audio book, but I've now done that through Audio Factory, choosing my preferred narrator. 

It didn't take long to assemble three of us - Judith Allnatt, Mary Hoffman and myself - to be part of the launch. Both their titles are excellent reissues: Judith's The Poet's Wife tells the story of Patty, the wife of poet John Clare, while Mary's David: the Unauthorised Autobiography imagines the life of the model for Michelangelo's iconic sculpture. Two other well-established writers, Dennis Hamley and Sheena Wilkinson, will publish with us later this year. How we progress will depend on what comes our way - though we already have plans for 2026. Watch this space!

The One True Thing is published by Writers Review Publishing. The cover design is by Owen Gent.

Jane Rogers' short story collection, Fire Ready, is published by Comma Press. Read more here.

The other two launch titles for Writers Review Publishing are Judith Allnatt's The Poet's Wife and Mary Hoffman's David: the Unauthorised Autobiography

Special feature: Q&A with garden designer Cleve West on THE GARDEN OF VEGAN

"It’s not a subject you can really ignore any more, especially now mainstream media is making the connection between animal agriculture and climate change, not to mention the link with pandemics."

Photograph by Chaz Oldham

Cleve West is a highly-regarded garden designer, with six Chelsea gold medals and two Best Show Garden awards to his credit. Recent projects include his Horatio's Garden for Salisbury Hospital's Spinal Treatment Centre (the first of several, all by leading designers) and work with primary school children, bringing them to his own allotment and helping them to set up gardens at their schools. He is a passionate advocate for animals and a committed vegan, both of which inform his gardening practice. The Garden of Vegan covers a wide range of subjects: personal reflections, sustainable gardening and farming, ecosystems, animal abuse, the nutritional and environmental advantages of a plant-based diet, and even his own recipes. As well as photographic illustrations the book includes poignant portraits drawn by Cleve's wife, artist and printmaker Christine Eatwell, of animals photographed as they await slaughter.

Cleve West answers questions from Linda Newbery.

Find out more about Cleve's work and campaigns from his website, and on social media: Twitter @clevewest Facebook Cleve West and Instagram cleve_west

LN: You've been well known for years as a top garden designer. Now it seems from your social media activity that your animal advocacy and championing of the vegan lifestyle have become at least as important as your design career, if not more so. What triggered that change?

Cleve West: It was the shock of seeing the horrors of animal agriculture and the damage it’s doing to our health and the environment. Not speaking out about it felt like complicity. I spent a lot of time wondering whether I should use different social media platforms to keep my advocacy for animals separate from work, but that felt like an apologist approach. I may have lost followers/clients as a result but I’m only showing and speaking about the realities of animal agriculture and the threat it poses to life on earth. If people can’t handle the truth they can look away or keep scrolling until they find a photo of a pretty flower! What’s alarming is that, given the current circumstances, there is still reluctance to engage with these issues that are making the future increasingly uncertain for our children.

LN: In the introduction to your book you say that you'd begun to question the importance of your design work, in spite of (or because of?) having achieved such outstanding success. But you write movingly about the Horatio's Garden you designed at Salisbury, and since then you've brought school groups to your allotment and worked on gardens projects for their schools - in all of which plants and gardening contribute to the wellbeing of others. Does this mark a change in your work ethic?

Horatio's Garden

CW: Yes. Before I was vegan, while I understood the therapeutic value of gardens, I’d often consider my worth as a garden designer in terms of what I actually contribute to the world. Being vegan has accentuated that and made me question Thomas Church’s maxim that “gardens are for people”. I realise it’s impossible not to harm things unknowingly as we build our homes and gardens, but now that we understand more about the many other life-forms that share the garden with us (and that arguably they're more important in keeping things ticking over) it seems fair that they should be given consideration when planning our interventions. Horatio’s Garden and the Bee Kind Garden for Christ Church School have helped me understand how we can garden for both humans and non-human animals alike, but the emphasis is still from an anthropocentric point of view. Natural gardens or gardening for wildlife is still quite challenging as an aesthetic. I don’t have all the answers, so I suppose the short answer is that I’m still learning.

LN: Do you think the horticultural industry has been slow to embrace sustainability? What changes do you applaud, and what changes in attitude are still needed?

CW: Yes, I had a conversation about sustainability with Geoff Hamilton in 1994 when I built my first show garden. It’s disappointing in that almost twenty five years later people are still using herbicides, pesticides, slug pellets and peat products in their gardens. Revelations by Dave Goulson in his brilliant book The Garden Jungle about how chemicals in the plants we buy from nurseries can harm bees are really alarming.

As with transitioning to a plant-based lifestyle, convenience seems to play a major role in stopping consumers from making ethical choices. Profit is also a big factor for nurseries, so I hope that the current crisis will focus the industry on what they can do to create more sustainable products and practices.

LN: I love your book but need little persuading, as I'm already vegan and a veganic gardener (though I hadn't heard that term before!) Are you hoping to reach out more widely - to people who haven't considered veganism and in particular how it might relate to their gardening?

CW: Indeed, the intention is to inspire gardeners to adopt a plant-based lifestyle. When I first started speaking out for animals I used a lot of graphic footage to raise awareness about the cruelty involved in animal agriculture. Naturally, most people looked the other way, so it was a revelation to me when I realised that vegans and gardeners share the same USP… plants. As gardeners we all love plants. We love growing them and eating them, so if a plant-based diet can help us mitigate climate change, reduce the chances of future pandemics (I’m kicking myself for not including that in the book!), feed an ever growing population and relieve the pressure on the NHS by keeping us healthy, it’s a win-win situation on so many levels.

BUPA Garden, Chelsea Flower Show 2008: Gold Medal and BBC People's Choice Award

LN: It's clear on your website that you want your ethos to be evident in every garden you design. Have you ever had to curtail a project because the client wanted something you felt unable to deliver on principle, e.g. because it would destroy a habitat?

CW: To be honest I’m still finding my feet on that one. One or two current projects involve a fair amount of earth-moving which is something I’m feeling increasingly uncomfortable about these days. I’m encouraged by conversations I’ve had with prospective new clients about things like wildlife and biodiversity. People are beginning to acknowledge the importance of the environment and to be interested in enhancing the natural world in their own small way. What I keep reminding myself is that if I walk away from a job, then someone else is going to do it and that person may not be as sensitive to a site nor make any effort in mitigating disturbance to habitats, etc.

LN:  In a recent interview you said that the fire has gone out of you as regards making show gardens. But are you being offered chances either to create show gardens or to take on longer-lasting projects to demonstrate your principles? You're probably in a unique position to influence others by showing the way.

CW: There’s a vegan-inspired show garden on the back-burner (a collaboration with Darryl Moore and Heywood-Condie) but it needs a suitable sponsor. I’d prefer to concentrate on real gardens for now and will be happy to work with clients who appreciate the bigger picture, or indeed to encourage those who haven’t considered the wider environment before but are willing to learn. I’m sure there will be others joining the dots now - it’s going to be interesting to see how the Covid-19 experience will inspire the next generation of designers at future shows.

LN: Anyone involved in animal activism will inevitably come across harrowing evidence, much of it photographic, of gut-wrenching cruelty and abuse. How do you strike a balance between keeping yourself motivated on the one hand, and on the other, becoming so thoroughly sickened at the scale of brutality that campaigning seems hopeless?

CW: Yes, the reality and scale of the oppression, violence and exploitation is beyond anything we can imagine - if you dwell on it too much it can break you. I limit the amount I look at these days but use it to keep the fire stoked and help me remember that while using levers such as the environment and health to persuade people to go vegan, the main reason is to put an end to the unnecessary harm and suffering we cause to sentient beings.

LN: How is your campaigning zeal seen by your garden design peers? Are you seen as extremist / eccentric, or are they willing to listen to you and consider veganic principles in their own work?

CW: That’s a good question. To begin with, when the shock of watching films like Earthlings, Cowspiracy, Forks Over Knives made me try and turn the world vegan in a day, I think many of them thought I’d lost the plot and they were right, I had. A couple of people have called me an extremist but interestingly won’t watch films like Earthlings, Dominion or Land of Hope and Glory. If they did I’m sure they’d understand the true meaning of the word ‘extreme’. It’s difficult being patient when so many animals are slaughtered every second of each day, but over the years I’ve had enough encouraging messages from designers and gardeners (who have either gone vegan or are getting close to it) to feel encouraged, and have stood shoulder to shoulder with a couple at vigils and protests which is great. Of course, there are still quite a few who find the whole subject too challenging or inconvenient to take on board, but it’s not a subject you can really ignore any more, especially now mainstream media is making the connection between animal agriculture and climate change, not to mention the link with pandemics.

LN:  A question about the writing of your book. It's so wide-ranging, comprehensive and fully-referenced that I wonder how on earth you combined work on this with your design business. Did you set aside dedicated time to write, or were you fitting it around your other work?

CW: My assistant at the time, Ruth Lewis, did a great job keeping the design work on track so I could concentrate on writing. I tried to keep it personal to make it more digestible and to help readers relate to it. The fact-checking was a real pain and frustrating (my editor at Pimpernel Press, Nancy Martin, was brilliant at double-checking and keeping me on my toes) because I knew it would be out of date by the time the book was published with new studies and reports (not to mention pandemics!) coming to light. Some people might still look for loopholes or argue with the facts and figures, but even if they were only half-true they should still be more than enough to persuade anyone with an open mind to consider a vegan lifestyle.

LN: Finally, what gives you the most hope that attitudes towards animals will change?

CW: I’m not known for my optimism as far as the human race is concerned but I was buoyed by the heartening messages I received when the book was launched. That said, it’s a challenging read so it’s not going to fly off the shelves! I think economics, the threat of climate change and future (potentially far worse) pandemics will be the main drivers to a substantial shift to a plant-based world but, in the meantime, I’ll keep encouraging gardeners to join this important movement - plants might just be able to save us from ourselves.

LN: Thank you so much for this interview, Cleve. I hope your book will fly off the shelves, and give gardeners and others new insights and inspiration.

Killed at Newman's Abbatoir on 13 December 2017: drawing by Christine Eatwell

The Garden of Vegan is published by Pimpernel Press.

Also: find out more about Horatio's Gardens here, and see a short film about the Salisbury Hospital one (with Cleve talking about it) here:

NATURAL SELECTION: A YEAR IN THE GARDEN by Dan Pearson, reviewed by Linda Newbery

"Dan Pearson credits both Christopher Lloyd and Vita Sackville-West as writing mentors, and yes, his own writing gives the sensuous pleasure he admires in theirs. This is a book to relish for the eloquence of its description as much as for the information it imparts."

Speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival in March, Dan Pearson said that his love of writing developed alongside his passion for gardening from an early age, and he illustrated his talk with some of the lists and stories, journals and notebooks he has kept from childhood. Now one of the most influential garden designers working today – his Chatsworth garden at Chelsea in 2015 won both a gold medal and Best in Show, and his design studio has worked on prestigious projects in Japan and Italy and many others including Maggie’s Centre in London and Lowther Castle – he somehow still makes time for writing alongside the many other demands of a busy career.

Until 2015 he wrote weekly pieces for the Observer magazine (where his page was the first I’d turn to, and still miss …) and his new book, Natural Selection, brings many of those articles together as a year-book companion, following the seasons’ progress. But while progressing through the months we move back and forth in time and through many different settings – his own plots in Peckham and now Somerset; his childhood home; deserts, forests and coasts he has studied on his travels; a visit to George Harrison's extraordinary Friar Park garden - while other sections compare the merits of various roses or magnolias or planting combinations, or simply look at the joys of a particular season or day: “The garden is a sanctuary of sorts and one that allows me to combine mindfulness with the purely physical.” Although there's a fair bit of dirt-under-the-fingernails detail on semi-ripe cuttings, seed harvesting and growing salads for succession, this isn’t a how-to gardening book so much as an appreciation of plants, landscapes, seasons and the effects of light and shade.

Dan Pearson credits both Christopher Lloyd and Vita Sackville-West as his writing mentors, and yes, his own writing gives the sensuous pleasure he admires in theirs. This is a book to relish for the eloquence of its description as much as for the information it imparts. Here’s a camellia he saw in Japan: “… There it was in the gloom, a white, autumn-blooming Camellia sasanqua. Its delicate branches had formed a perfect dome four metres high and swept down to knee height to fan out as if it was doing a curtsy. Each leaf, a slim twist of the darkest, most lustrous green, reflected what light there was left in the afternoon, and along its branches was the peppering of flower. Pale and pure glistening white, the five-petalled blooms flared informally away from a golden boss of stamens.” Walking in Greece, he came across “a bowl-shaped valley giving way to oaks with juniper clinging to the cliff faces. The dark shadows at their base were lit by a surf of moon daisies, and a hush descended for a moment as my ears adjusted from the waves to a roar of bees feeding in a sea of Lavendula stoechas.” At home, on writing days, he brings a posy of flowers indoors, to notice “the way a flower is put together and how it sits on the stem … You can witness the passage of bud from opening to demise, see how the colour is infused and then diluted, or in some cases intensified by ageing. The seed and the berries and even the skeletons, come the winter, are of just as much interest.”

The hallmarks of Dan Pearson’s designs are the subtlety of his response to place and atmosphere and the inspiration he takes from wild landscapes. Beth Chatto was an early influence, from whom he began to learn the art of “achieving a delicate balance between steering nature and being part of it rather than trying to dominate,” and “gardening with wild plants rather than overworked cultivars”. He knows the importance of quiet moments of appreciation, whether in exotic locations or in his own garden. Of his planting for Maggie's Centre for cancer care and a friendship that developed with one of the patients, he writes: "I have always instinctively known that intimacy, sensuality and sanctuary in a garden are key to creating a sense of wellbeing, but it has been made so much more vivid seeing it through the eyes of someone who is seizing life with a new intensity."

Natural Selection is a beautiful object to hold, printed in dark green rather than black ink and with endpapers, cover design and an illustration for each month by Clare Melinsky. It’s a book to read twice at least: first to devour the lot in one go, as I’ve just done; then returning to each section in its own month. And I recommend keeping a plant encyclopaedia or i-phone handy as you read, as you’re sure to want to look up some of the plants and gardens mentioned and add to your wish-list.

To keep in touch with Dan Pearson’s journal, and the development of the garden at Hillside, his Somerset home, follow his regular blog and newsletter, Dig Delve. There's also an interview there with artist Clare Melinsky.

Natural Selection is published by Guardian Books / Faber.