Cambridge Edition June 2019

BOOK CLUB

CAMBRIDGE EDI T ION Boo k Clu b BRINGING YOU TOP NEW FICTION PICKS, AUTHOR INTERVIEWS, DISCOUNTS AND LOTS MORE BOOK CHAT, THE EDITION BOOK CLUB IS A PARTNERSHIP WITH CAMBRIDGE LITERARY FESTIVAL AND HEFFERS

INTERVIEW BY CHARLOTTE GRIFFITHS

ISLAND SONG BY MADELEINE BUNTING AN INSIGHTFUL EXPLORATION OF THE NAZI OCCUPATION OF GUERNSEY I sland Song is the first novel by acclaimed author Madeleine Bunting, better known for her non-fiction work. Her meticulous research embroiders every page of this evocative tale of impossible choices made in the occupied Channel Islands – and the potentially devastating consequences that ripple through time. The novel follows London-based lawyer Roz as she returns to Guernsey to uncover the secrets of her late mother Helene’s life on the island during the second world war: but is the truth better left hidden? Published in 1995, Madeleine’s acclaimed earlier book The Model Occupation details the history of the Channel Islands between 1940 and 1945. As she was conducting the extensive research required for this non-fiction book, she found herself on a very long car journey – which is when the idea for Island Song first came to her. “There were stories that I was catching a glimpse of in the research, and I couldn’t quite get the people who could tell those stories – they had either died, or they didn’t want to talk, or were well hidden and didn’t want to make themselves public,” Madeleine says. “With non-fiction work you’re always grounding everything meticulously in your research and the evidence. That’s where the idea for the fiction came from: me imagining myself into a story, a composite that included lots of details from the research I was doing.” It’s not giving too much away to say that one of the secrets Roz uncovers is her mother’s apparent relationship with Heinrich, a German officer. Though this could easily have been told as a simple

u she reveals. “In 1994, as I was working out the plot, I was pregnant with my first child – so inevitably I didn’t get down to writing any of it until after I’d had my second child – so 1997 or 1998. I found whereas in the past there was a kind of complacency,” Madeleine says. “With Helene I thought: what choice did she have? And with Heinrich: he’s really careless, there’s an arrogance with which he imposes himself, which I think is deeply sinister – he took advantage of his position in several different ways – and that doesn’t mean that he didn’t genuinely fall in love with her, but whether she loved him, I think, is open to question.” This ambiguity has been picked up by some readers of Island Song , whereas other accounts gloss over the power imbalance and take it as a great love affair – you’ll have to read the book to draw your own conclusions. Another hidden side of Island Song is the lengthy story of the novel’s construction, which Madeleine agrees could almost sit alongside the book itself. “It’s had such a long history, this novel,”

romance, a love affair across enemy lines, Madeleine was more interested in the power imbalance between the two characters. “I think there’s a lot of ambiguity about the relationship between Helene and Heinrich,” she says. “The power is such that I think it compromises the possibility of a relationship in all kinds of ways. I came across a story which I incorporated into my non- fiction – a very touching love story between a Guernsey girl and her German sweetheart, who married after the war... I interviewed them in Plymouth in the early 1990s, surrounded by grandchildren and great grandchildren, and still touchingly devoted to each other – they were a very sweet couple – but what interested me was something much more ambiguous and unclear.” Though Madeleine finished this novel well before #MeToo and Weinstein’s crimes coming to light, Island Song ’s treatment and examination of the relationship between these pivotal characters does feel contemporary. “A lot of people are [nowadays] thinking very carefully about power and sexuality,

35

C A M B S E D I T I O N . C O . U K

J U N E 2 0 1 9

Powered by