Kathleen Jones: A Fictional Dilemma
A couple of years ago I wrote a novel. Nothing remarkable about that. But when I told my (then) agent, it seemed a species of crime - a biographer writing a novel? Apparently it wasn’t what people wanted from me. But it was a book I loved writing and felt very comfortable with. The novel is set in the 1930s and is about two girls, displaced by the political and economic shifts that preceded World War 2. Anna Weissmann is the daughter of a Bavarian hotelier and his English wife; Tamar Fell’s mother is the feckless, good-time-girl Sadie and a father who [Tamar’s been told] died before she was born. Both girls arrive in the north of England, with their mothers, at the same time and, although very different personalities, they become friends. Tamar loves books and escapes her dreadful home-life by spending time in the Carnegie library; Anna is determined to become a painter and fights stereotypes and lack of money to get the training she needs. The outbreak of war in 1939 alte...