Helen Simonson
Dear Sussan,
SPOILER ALERT. Just warning my readers before proceeding. Agatha Kent was inspired by a Kipling story "The Gardener" in which an aunt who raised her nephew visits his grave in a World War One war cemetery and the gardener says revealingly (as in the epigraph to my epilogue) "come I will take you to your son.' I wondered who the woman in Kipling's tale really was. Like her, Agatha's 'nephew' may be more to her than her friends suspect. Agatha's fiancé died on his way to their wedding - and she was shipped off to her sister's house where, a few months later, her sister had Daniel. I enjoyed knowing more about Agatha than my readers and it informed how I wrote about her - and her attitudes. But at the end of the book it seemed to me that the women were all 'mothers' with a mother's burdens and that biology almost seemed inconsequential in the love and sorrow felt by all. By the way, such secrets of birth continue in my book. Celeste's child will have Daniel's name. Best regards, Helen S.
SPOILER ALERT. Just warning my readers before proceeding. Agatha Kent was inspired by a Kipling story "The Gardener" in which an aunt who raised her nephew visits his grave in a World War One war cemetery and the gardener says revealingly (as in the epigraph to my epilogue) "come I will take you to your son.' I wondered who the woman in Kipling's tale really was. Like her, Agatha's 'nephew' may be more to her than her friends suspect. Agatha's fiancé died on his way to their wedding - and she was shipped off to her sister's house where, a few months later, her sister had Daniel. I enjoyed knowing more about Agatha than my readers and it informed how I wrote about her - and her attitudes. But at the end of the book it seemed to me that the women were all 'mothers' with a mother's burdens and that biology almost seemed inconsequential in the love and sorrow felt by all. By the way, such secrets of birth continue in my book. Celeste's child will have Daniel's name. Best regards, Helen S.
More Answered Questions
Becky
asked
Helen Simonson:
Is there another book on the way? My book group read and loved Major Pettigrew last year. Now I am recommending that we read Summer this year. I really liked the way the characters grew as the story progressed and how the book itself changed from a sweet little "women's" story to a much larger and more important story as it progressed. That is the way life so often is -- we discover an entirely new and complex world.
John Witsey
asked
Helen Simonson:
I have just read The Summer Before the War, attracted by the title & subject matter as I have a fetish for the period the book is set in. One of my favourite novels is Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End & I couldn't help but notice a number of parallels: Rye, period of setting, intelligent daughter of professor left in perilous pecuniary circumstances by his death, etc. Was this novel an influence for yours?
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