CULTURE CLUB
4 Apr
ALL IN THE PEN Secrets and Lies Described as a ‘deliciously unsettling read’, we delve into the latest work from renowned author Suzannah Dunn Cambridge Edition: Where did you find inspiration for the book? This was because – despite everything – so much of what ten- and 11-year-old girls think and say is funny.
Suzannah Dunn: Mainly from my own life! That’s not to say the events of the novel happened to me, nor the characters existed in my real life. But somehow, the feel of it for me is oddly truer than the reality. Perhaps as with some dreams. My focus as a writer has always been on what’s not being said or seen, but what is going on underneath. Nobody in this novel quite understands what’s going on under their noses, and the narrator – 50 years on – is only just beginning to grasp it. CE: How did you find the process of writing it? Has it been in the works for a long time? SD: It took me two years to write; I started in the week before the first Covid-19 lockdown, but realised I was re- working the territory of my first-ever book. I was physically in the same place – it’s set in the same village – but also, in many other ways, on other levels. I don’t know why, but I was compelled to go back, 35 years on, and tread the same ground but with more insight and better writerly skills! CE: Can you give us a flavour of what to expect from the book? SD: In the summer of Deborah’s 11th year, a new girl bursts onto the scene at school,
CE: Most characters in the novel are in their adolescence – is a particularly interesting or significant age range to explore in your work? SD: Definitely! For me, it’s as if adolescent girls are under a spell of enchantment: everything fervid, heightened and blazing. But at the same time, much of them still unknown to themselves and unknowable to those around them. CE: Finally, what drew you to staging the story within the 70s? SD: The 70s championed modernity. Nascent mass consumerism looked like enfranchisement – as if everyone had a stake in the bright future. But as the narrator reminds us: “Vietnam, Pinochet, Watergate, Bloody Sunday, the IRA and ETA and the Baader–Meinhof and Black September and the Red Brigade and the Angry Brigade.” On the domestic level too, this was a turbulent time – an era of radical societal change but still the old world. What went on behind closed doors stayed there. For all its blinding shininess, this was a dark and dangerous time. Levitation for Beginners will be published in hardback on 4 April. You can hear the author talk about this latest work at An Evening with Susannah Dunn at Waterstone’s Cambridge on 10 April. Book your tickets at waterstones.com
and in the same week a young man turns up on her doorstep to speak with her mum. I had intended the story to be unsettling but when reading it back, I saw I often had something quite different on my hands. WANDERING THOUGHTS Suzannah infuses a blend of reality and imagination, exploring the depths beneath the surface of her characters and events
Somehow, the feel of it is oddly truer than the reality
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