BOOK CLUB
“I do like to do things differently each time”
the game was located very near to the new house of a friend who she hadn’t seen for about ten years. “We hadn’t fallen out at all, we just hadn’t seen each other – so I thought I’d go and have a look at their new home – I’m obsessed with houses,” Sophie says. “While I was there I thought that they might come home, and I might catch a glimpse of them – and I realised that as I was imagining that possibility, I was thinking about the children as they had been when I’d last seen them. I realised that they wouldn’t look like that anymore and then thought – but what if they did? That would be sinister… and it all went from there.” This all took place several years before Sophie sat down to begin writing Haven’t They Grown – as with all her books, Sophie works with ideas that first occurred to her three or four years earlier. “That’s not to say it’ll always be the case: I do like to do things differently each time, perhaps using a totally different method – but in the past, the idea has normally been knocking around in my brain for a while before I write it.” As you’d expect with a mystery, this book is concerned with hidden truths – but Haven’t They Grown takes it one step further by prodding our very human reluctance to disbelieve those we love or know well, as the extract at the start of this piece alludes – we’d almost prefer to believe supernatural explanations than suspect our friends of misdemeanours, which would upset the social norms that keep civilised society ticking along. “This isn’t a spoiler of any kind, but both Beth and Dom are good guys, and the point at which Dom says to Beth: ‘Maybe let’s withdraw from this, and not get involved any more’ – that’s not because he doesn’t believe her, it’s because he does believe her,” Sophie explains. “When he realises things are plainly more dysfunctional than he wants to encounter, then he says to Beth, ‘You’re right, something weird is going on – but let’s have nothing to do with it. If we forget about the Braids, we could just get on with our life, which is absolutely fine.’ Dom thinks Beth has a duty to protect her kids; whereas Beth
thinks she has a moral duty to find out what’s wrong.” Every book that Sophie writes has a plot hook that she can get excited about – in this case, Flora’s children and the question of why they hadn’t grown – and a meatier thematic or psychological obsession that drives the heart of each book. “The obsession in this book is: when is it morally right, and when is it morally wrong, to interfere in another family’s business?” Sophie says. “Minding our own business is an important part of civilised British life – we don’t go round to our friends’ houses and say, ‘Now look: you’re bringing up your children terribly badly’ – even if we do think that. But there are occasions where you notice something that’s so dysfunctional that you think, ‘Actually, it would be wrong now not to stick my oar in’ and that’s the dilemma, that’s what Beth and Dom ultimately disagree about. Is this a case where there’s a duty to intervene, or is it not?” Sophie creates detailed plots for her books, preferring to know exactly where the book’s going before starting out. “I do
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