Interview with Joan Lingard

Joan Lingard's latest novel, After You've Gone, was recently published by Allison & Busby. The novel marks a return to Edinburgh after her last two novels, The Kiss and Encarnita's Journey.

After You've Gone is a novel with a vivid sense of working-class Edinburgh in the 1920s. How did you go about researching the background?

I read numerous books about working-class life in the 1920s as well as ones about fashion, the cinema and its stars, the theatre, motor cars, dancing and other entertainments. I found that photographs in books like Edinburgh Since 1900 (Archive Publications, ed. Paul Harris) and Malcolm Cant's Old Tollcross, Morningside and Swanston (Stenlake Publishing) were particularly useful in helping to give me the feel and mood of the times. The music department of Edinburgh Public Library provided me with publications on songs of the twenties.
And then there was the Edinburgh Room of the Public Library, a very valuable resource, where I could browse through copies of the Scotsman and old street directories, which contained useful information about location of cinemas, tea rooms, department stores, banks, dancehalls.
I researched everything thoroughly - which does not mean that someone will not pick up something that is incorrect and let me know about it! - and I enjoyed it all. I love having a reason to do research. My novel The Kiss gave me a good excuse to roam around Paris and spend time in the archives of the Rodin Museum, and Encarnita's Journey to explore Andalucia.

"She would not be able to appreciate how limited her time was, reduced to stolen fragments, away from family ties, two of which were waiting outside on the pavement at this very moment." Willa, a young mother and the main character in the novel, finds a refuge in books, away from the cramped conditions of her life. The same could often be said of writers. When do you find time to write and how have you managed to do so in the past?

It is easier for me to find time to write now than it used to be, when I had three young children at home. Before they went to school I would write at odd moments, usually on the kitchen table. I wrote my first books by longhand, moving on later to an ancient typewriter. I had my first book accepted when my youngest daughter was six weeks old and after that I was determined not to give up, even though it was hard going at times. Once they went to school I would start to write as soon as they had gone and stop the moment they came back. I feel fortunate that I was able to write, to do the one thing I wanted to do, and also be at home when my children needed me. I feel I had the best of both worlds and think it is difficult nowadays for young mothers who have to leave their babies at six months and go back into work.

What's striking about the book is the lives of the women characters who are all more or less dependent on men, on their favours, and on their money, and yet there are some small echoes of emancipation in the character of Richard's mother and Mrs Mooney. How did you approach the writing of these women's lives?

The majority of women were dependent on men in the twenties: the man of the house controlled the finances. Few women had their own money. Richard's mother is from an educated middle-class background and Mrs Mooney is financially independent. They have more autonomy over their lives. So does Bunty, in a different way. She has a man in her life but if he vanished from it she would still stand on her own feet and run her newsagent's business. And I think Willa in due course will be on the road to finding emancipation.

The contrast between the colourful and exotic worlds experienced by Tommy on his cruise and the Edinburgh he leaves Willa in is very marked, leaving the reader with the impression that Scotland/Edinburgh was a very drab place in the 1920s. Is this true?! How much of the letters home have come from your own family?

Working-class areas of the city were drab, what with high unemployment, hunger marches, strikes. Families were larger and had a hard time making ends meet. They couldn't afford to buy many clothes or luxuries or go for holidays. But, on the other hand, they could enjoy themselves on little with visits to the cinema (very cheap then) and the dancehall. Also families stayed closer and got together more. All the letters are based on my father's journal, almost word for word.

Your literary output has been prodigious over the past forty years. Which is your favourite among your own books and why?

I think After Colette is my favourite book – out of print, I'm sad to say - and many people seem to agree. I was entranced from a young age by the life and work of the French writer Colette and the research for the novel allowed me to go on a kind of pilgrimage, to Paris and Burgundy, in search of her old haunts. I felt reasonably satisfied after I had written it - which is not always the case when I finish a book!

What was the last good book you read and how did you hear about it?

The book that stands out mostly sharply in my memory from last year's reading is The Kite-Runner by Khaled Hosseini, a very powerful and moving novel. I think I heard about it because everyone was talking about it, Word-of-mouth.

What are you working on at the moment?

I'm the process of thinking and making notes: that is all I can say. I never like to talk about a book until it is well under way and I feel confident that it will work.

Joan Lingard, Thank you.