A few years ago I did a number of author Q&As for NB magazine. Sadly they're no longer available to read on their current website. But I still believe that what the authors have to say about their work and the writing process is important and relevant and interesting to read so I have decided to blog them.
Nudge/nb magazine Q&A with Ewa Dodd
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your first novel and I was amazed it was a debut work because I found the writing so mature and effortless almost, although I’m sure it wasn’t effortless!! Have you always written, even if not for publication?
I’m really glad you enjoyed it. It’s exciting having people give feedback on the finished, printed book – it’s a completely new experience for me. I’ve loved writing for as long as I can remember. Even in primary school, I would put together short story books, which were essentially a couple of pages messily stapled and self-illustrated. I’ve always been terrible at drawing and that hasn’t changed. I’m just hoping that the writing has improved over the years!
Poland plays a big part in this story. I had the pleasure of visiting the country a few years ago and I was struck by the gentle dignity of a people who have endured so much throughout history. Somehow you seem to capture that within your writing and I wondered if that was a conscious effort or an intrinsic part of you, as a Polish writer, coming through?
It’s interesting, because although I grew up in London, Poland has always played a big part in my life. Apart from my mum, my entire family still live there and I go back to visit them frequently. Many of my aunts and uncles talk about the Solidarity years with a strange mixture of nostalgia and relief. They’re glad that democracy won, but there’s a sense that it brought with it a loss of camaraderie. People don’t seem to be friendly with their neighbours anymore in the way that they were. Everyone gets on with their private lives. My grandmother, who is ninety now, has a similar attitude towards the Second World War years.
The Walls Came Down takes place in three different countries. It sounds as if you have intimate knowledge of all of them! Are you well-travelled? Or maybe a meticulous researcher?
I’m somewhere in the middle. I know Warsaw very well as I visit at least once a year. I grew up in London, and have always lived here. I went to school in Ealing, to UCL for university, and now I live in Highbury. It’s a great city and I always feel there’s more of it to explore.
Believe it or not, but I’ve never been to Chicago. We have a family friend who lives there, so I know a bit about it through her, but some of the scene setting is done through careful research into hospitals, care homes and even cemeteries. I’ve been to New York and California, and Chicago is definitely on my list of places to visit in the coming years.
The pain that your characters endured was almost palpable and I was very moved. I also worried that you had experienced something similar to be able to write so convincingly. Is the novel based on your own experiences? If not, what was the motivation?
It wasn’t based on personal experience, luckily. The inspiration came from an article that I came across many years ago in a Polish paper. It was the story of a small girl who had been found over twenty years after having gone missing at a football match. She’d lived a relatively uneventful life in another part of Poland and realised her true background by pure chance.
Following on from that question, Tom’s story is both heart breaking and life affirming. The sections of that narrative that take place in the hospice are so authentic I wondered if you had some first-hand experience of such an establishment?
My paternal grandmother spent the last few months of her life in a hospice, which was actually a much more positive place than I’d initially expected it to be. I was pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere there, and the attitude of the nurses, and it was something that I tried to capture and recreate at Sunshine.
Even those of us who aren’t fundamentally political animals are well aware of the Solidarity movement in the 1980s and Lech Walesa, for me at least, in a positive way. It seemed as I began reading that this novel could have substantially become a political novel, yet it didn’t. Was it a temptation to follow that path or was that never your intention?
It’s a good question. It was never my intention for it to become a political novel. I am fascinated by the fall of Communism and the differences in people’s lives before and after, but I’ve always been more interested in human stories, so it was just about giving the pivotal event an interesting context. I thought a protest was a time of such mayhem that a child could easily go missing.
They say that two’s company and three’s a crowd, but the trinity of protagonists here works so well. Did you always have the three characters in mind from the start or did that change through drafting the story?
Initially it was going to be Joanna and Matty’s story – essentially a sister’s search for her brother, but then Tom popped into my mind one day quite unexpectedly and the novel took a bit of a different turn. I also thought it would be interesting to keep the reader guessing as to who he is.
Did you have a target audience in mind when you started to write the book, or an intended genre? And do you believe such things are ultimately important?
I set out for the novel to be a detective mystery, but I didn’t have an intended audience in mind. I think that people of all ages enjoy that genre, and my protagonists are of two different generations, which hopefully means that the story might appeal to a broader range of readers. I don’t think that an intended genre is always important – if you have a strong idea for a story that you want to tell and you feel passionate about it, that’s all that really matters.
Something I love to ask writers, are you an avid reader yourself? If so, can you remember the first book that made you cry?
I love to read and always have done. Most recently I’ve been reading a lot of Maggie O’Farrell, whose books I’m a huge fan of. Her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, made me cry several times. But the first book that made me shed a tear was Roald Dahl’s Matilda. I felt so sorry for all the kids being terrorised by Miss Trunchbull.
And finally, having enjoyed this novel so very much, I am bound to ask whether you have another book in the pipeline?! And if you’re prepared to divulge anything about it?
I’m exploring a number of different ideas at the moment, also related to Polish history, but I’m not quite sure which avenue I’m going to go down yet, so you’ll have to watch this space!
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