'TELLING THE SEA' - A New Novel And An Old One: Pauline Fisk on revisiting the past
In 1990 I started writing a novel called ‘Telling the Sea’. I’d had success with my first novel, Midnight Blue, and my publishers were on at me to write a sequel. I’d sketched out some rough thoughts, then gone on holiday. I had a young family of five children, a weary husband and a hyperactive, far-from-weary dog. We took ourselves down to the cottage where we always went on holiday, in Pembrokeshire. Only a three-hour drive from home, it was the easiest thing to do. We knew the place. We knew where to find the best baker, butcher and fish & chips. We’d been going down there for years, which meant the unwinding process didn’t begin on Day Three – it began on the journey. We only had to get over those Cambrian Mountains, heading in the direction of Aberystwyth and the long road down the Welsh coast, and the unwinding would begin at our first glimpse of the sea. I was there in the same cottage last week, working on ...