Jaffareadstoo is thrilled to be hosting today's stop on the
Blog Tour
 |
| Twenty7 Part of the Bonnier Publishing Group |
Imagine waking up and being unable to move, unable to see, unable to communicate. Your past is a blank piece of paper and you don’t even know your own name. But you can hear. And the only way to piece together your life is to listen to the people around you…
Hi Deborah ~ thank you for inviting us to be part of your blog tour and for sharing your inspiration for
I think it all started with Betrayal,
by Harold Pinter that I saw in Covent Garden. The story is told backwards. The
play begins with a couple who are separating. They’ve been having an affair for
years. The next scene is earlier; they look younger and are still in the throes
of the relationship. Each scene goes backwards until in the final scene, we see
how they met. It’s a great twist at the end. Not what I was expecting at all.
My story starts with a coma
victim, Sarah, with Locked In syndrome. She is brought into hospital after an
apparent mugging. She has no memory. She can’t move, see, blink, breathe on her
own. But she can hear. So she is piecing her life together through what her
family and the medical team are saying. As she begins to remember her
childhood, the reader is taken back in time to discover who Sarah is and how
her experiences have shaped her personality and brought her to this point.
The other thing I love about Betrayal
is how Pinter plays with our sympathy. Each scene casts a different character
as the baddy and the victim. By the end of the play you’ve felt alternately
sorry for/angry with the couple having the affair, and their spouses. I tried
to bring some of that idea to The Last Thing I Remember. I wanted to misdirect
the readers through the unreliable evidence presented by Sarah, through lack of
memory or understanding and Kelly, her fourteen year old next door neighbour.
Nora Ephron’s Heartburn is always
by my bed for a quick dose of inspiration. The group therapy I stole from her.
In her version her heroine, Rachel, gets followed to her group by a thief who
steals the diamond ring that she had been given by her husband. When she gets
the ring back and takes it to the jewelers to get it mended, she discovers her
husband has bought a diamond necklace for someone else, the woman he is having
an affair with. It is so brilliantly funny while being heartbreakingly sad.
My heroine, Sarah, is in a
heartbreakingly sad situation. Her doctors are doubtful. Her family is
desperate. So I introduced an antidote to Sarah, Kelly – a second protagonist
who is loud and funny, foul-mouthed (very) and sassy. I alternated the
narration chapter by chapter. That dual narrative structure allowed Sarah to
reveal things about Kelly that Kelly would never say. And vice versa. And it
relieved the tension that Sarah’s situation created.
Gone Girl came at a good time for
me. I was really unsure of the dual narrative structure because everyone
advises against it. It was so successful in Gone Girl that I had the confidence
to keep going.
About the Author
Deborah Bee studied fashion journalism at Central St Martins. She has worked at various magazines and newspapers including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, The Times and the Guardian as a writer, a fashion editor and later an editor. Currently, she is a Creative Director in luxury retail.
Deborah Bee studied fashion journalism at Central St Martins. She has worked at various magazines and newspapers including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, The Times and the Guardian as a writer, a fashion editor and later an editor. Currently, she is a Creative Director in luxury retail.
Do visit the other stops on the blog tour which runs between February 25th and March 5th 2016.
Huge thanks to the author for sharing her inspiration for The Last Thing I Remember and also to Hannah at Midas PR for her invitation to join this blog tour.
~***~
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for taking the time to comment - Jaffareadstoo appreciates your interest.