Interview with Louise Fein: Author of The London Bookshop Affair
JMR-Welcome to theBooks Delight, Louise. Tell our readers where you live, what you do for fun andwhat does the perfect day look like?
LF- Thank you so much,I’m delighted to be here! I live in a small village in Surrey. For me, it’s theperfect location as we are surrounded by beautiful countryside but still withineasy reach of old market towns like Guildford and Farnham, and our localstation has great links with London so I can get my culture fix whenever I needit! I love going to the theatre, museums and art galleries, so I am regularly inLondon for that and to visit friends. As for fun, that would be having a rowdydinner with friends, skiing in the Alps on a cold, sunny day, walking in thebeautiful English countryside with my dog Bonnie and spending time with mythree almost grown-up children. As for my perfect day, it would start with alarge mug of tea and a ramble through the countryside with the dog beforesettling down with an equally large mug of coffee to write. Writing in themorning is definitely when I’m freshest and raring to go! After perhaps threeto four hours of very productive writing, a late lunch (naturally magicallyprepared with no effort on my part), I might meet a friend or two for a coffeeand a natter and perhaps go for a run before gathering with the family for theevening meal (again conjured by fairy dust) following which we would all settledown and read a good book or watch a movie. It definitely wouldn’t involveschool runs, tackling the dirty washing piles, arguing with teenagers, preparingmeals and the like. The reality is usually somewhere between the two!
JMR-What’s yourfavorite historical time period? Why?
LF- Oh gosh, that is atough question. There are so many time periods in history I find fascinating, butif I have to pick one, I guess I would have to choose the twentieth century. Somuch tumultuous change, affecting every aspect of human life over a relativelyshort period of time. Of course, there were two devastating wars, the like ofwhich had never been seen before, and which altered the world order. But therewas so much more than that. From women’s liberation and the breakdown of classand race barriers to the impact of radio, television and mass media; the demiseof colonialism to the rise in globalisation and mass migration; from industrialto technological and information revolutions, the impact of the developments ofthe 20th century and the speed of change are unprecedented inhistory. It makes for rich pickings for historical novelists.
JMR-Who is yourfavorite historical figure? Why? If you could ask them one question, what wouldit be?
LF- Again, it is veryhard to narrow it down to one person! I love exploring the stories of those whohave rather been forgotten or misaligned by history, and there are so many. Fortoday and Books Delight, I’m going to choose an extraordinary young French womancalled Jeannie Rousseau who I have used as inspiration for one of my charactersin my soon-to-be-released novel, The London Bookshop Affair. Jeannie wasa talented linguist blessed with a fierce intellect and a photographic memory.She was recruited to the French resistance during WWII and gathered intelligencefor the Allies under the code name Amniarix. Playing the ‘silly girl’ she frequentedthe bars in Paris where Nazi officers hung out and she was both charming and discreetand managed to coax from them in astonishing detail, information about theGerman’s secret work on the V-1 rockets. Pretending she didn’t believe them,she managed to get them to draw plans of the rockets which she memorised andrecreated to be sent back to London. These led to the British raids onPeenemünde, where the V-1 and V-2 rockets were under development, resulting indelays and saving thousands of lives. She was eventually captured and sent tothree Nazi concentration camps, none of which could break her. She survived andlived to the age of 98. She died in 2017. As for the question I would have forher, I would like to ask her about what it was that kept her going during her tortureand incarceration by the Nazis. Her mental strength must have beenextraordinary.
JMR- You previouslyworked in the law and banking; how did you come to be a writer of historical fiction?
LF- Writing has alwaysbeen a passion but as most writers will attest, it is not, except for the veryfew, a way to earn a decent living. I needed a career to be able to supportmyself and after leaving university, becoming a lawyer seemed like a sensibledecision at the time! I moved sideways into banking, working for many years onthe risk side of the business. But I always wrote as a way to de-stress and tolose myself in something I loved. I would write on my commute home – shortstories, poems, beginnings of novels, but I hoped that once I had more time, Iwould be able to write more seriously. That day came when I saw anadvertisement for a master’s degree in creative writing at St Mary’s universitywhich was close to where I lived then. It was specifically geared to writingyour first novel. At that time, I was running my own consultancy businessbecause I had had to take a step back from working in the City of London as myyoungest daughter had been very ill. My husband urged me to sign up for thecourse, and it was during my time studying there that I began working on thenovel which became by debut, People Like Us (entitled Daughter of theReich) in the USA.
JMR- Did you visitanyone of the places in your book? Where did you feel closest to yourcharacters?
LF- If at all possible,I love to visit the settings of my novels. Being historical, these places willalways have changed, but there will often be something remaining of interestand relevance – history is all around us if we choose to look! The LondonBookshop Affair is set primarily in London, and my main protagonist, Celia,lives in Southwark, South London in 1962. Southwark has changed a good dealsince then, but I walked the streets none-the-less, and everywhere there areremnants of the past, from old pubs and warehouses to railway bridges,Victorian cottages and churches. Of course, I also looked at many oldphotographs, studied maps of the streets and records. I also had the benefit ofstories from my grandmother and my mother who lived in Southwark before, duringand after the war. It is always important to research from a number of sources,but nothing beats walking the streets without rushing and finding hidden gems youmight otherwise miss. Celia works in an antiquarian bookshop on the Strand in centralLondon. It is easy to picture her there, loving the smell and feel of those oldbooks. I think that has to be the place I feel closest to her.
JMR-Louise, tell usabout your new book, The London Bookshop Affair.
LF- TheLondon Bookshop Affair is a dual timeline novel, set primarily in London in theearly 1960’s, with another thread set in 1942. It is the story of Celia, anordinary girl from Southwark in south London, who longs for a career and a bitof excitement in her life, but with no qualifications she is stuck working in adusty old bookshop. The day a handsome American walks into the shop, she thinksshe might have found just what she is longing for. But then she stumbles upon adevastating family secret.
In1942 war-torn Paris, nineteen-year-old Anya Moreau, an agent of the SecretOperations Executive, was dropped behind enemy lines, tasked with sendingmessages back to London via wireless transmitter. Cruelly betrayed, her legacyand the injustices done to her were buried to protect others.
AsCelia begins to unravel the hidden truths of the past, she becomes unwittinglydrawn into a murky world of espionage, uncovering furious efforts, both pastand present, to protect state secrets. With the world on the brink of nuclearannihilation, and her new romance taking a surprising turn, will Celia riskeverything she holds dear, in the name of justice?
JMR-What projects doyou have in the pipeline?
LF- I am working on myfourth novel which is my most ambitious yet! Unfortunately, it’s much too earlyto say anything about it, but I am very excited by this novel. It is requiringa lot of research as it is partly set in a very different time period for me, andlocations I need to become more familiar with. I shall be doing much walking ofstreets in the coming months! But I love the research and it is a great voyageof discovery for me.
JMR- Tell our readershow to find you on social media and the web.
LF- I have a website withdetails of all my books. You can sign up to my (infrequent) newsletters for newsand giveaway goodies, as well as the odd free short story! You can find me at: https://www.louisefein.com I am also on X(Twitter): https://twitter.com/FeinLouise/status/1731374355945295956, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louisefeinauthor/and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/louisefeinauthorI can also be found on BlueSky, Threads and Ticktock all under Louise FeinAuthor.
JMR- What question wereyou hoping I’d ask but didn’t?
LF- I was hoping youwould ask for some historical fiction book recommendations! You didn’t, but Ishall offer some anyway! This year I have read some truly wonderful historicalnovels, but I shall just mention a few here. First up is The UnspeakableActs of Zena Pavlou, by Eleni Kyriakou. This novel is inspired by a truecrime in the 1950’s and by the second to last woman, a Greek Cypriot, to beexecuted in England. I absolutely loved it – so beautifully written and anuanced take on the perpetrators of crime, the victim and justice. It was alsoa BBC pick for Between the Covers – they have good taste and I highly recommendit! Another wonderful, evocative read was Elizabeth Freemantle’s Disobedientwhich is the fictionalised account of the 17th Century artist,Artemisia Gentileschi. Written in exquisite prose, it's an unapologetically brutalaccount of the artist’s fight to be recognised for her talent rather than as amere chattel to be passed from father to husband. Continuing the feministtheme, I also adored Weyward by Emilia Hart – a wonderful debut novel withthree timelines from the 1600s, 1942 and 2017 – tricky to pull off, but she hasmanaged with aplomb – with a dash of magical realism. It is, however, a storyof women and their treatment through the ages by unscrupulous men being all toogrounded in reality.
JMR- Thank you Louise for stopping by! Good luck with your new book! Readers, Louise's can be found on Amazon. I've included a link below for you to check it out!
