I am delighted to introduce my special guest on the blog
The author ~ Jane Davis
Hi Jane and a very warm welcome to Jaffareadstoo. It's lovely to have you as our guest today...
Why do you write?
Fiction provides the unique
opportunity to explore one or two points of view. In many ways, answers don’t
matter. It is the exploration that’s important. I think the idea of a single
truth is deeply flawed. I have a sister who’s only eleven months older than me,
but our memories of the same events differ substantially.
As my collection of books grows,
I’m beginning to see them as my legacy. As someone who doesn’t have children,
they’re the mark I will leave on the world. So another reason for writing – one
that I didn’t think about in my mid-thirties when I set out on this journey –
is to create a legacy that I can be proud of.
For readers who aren’t familiar with your writing, what can they expect?
I write about big subjects and
give my characters almost impossible moral dilemmas. I don’t allow them a shred
of privacy. I know what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, the lies they
tell, their secret fears. But I only meet them at a particular point on their
journeys, usually in a highly volatile situation – how people behave under
pressure reveals so much. Then I throw them to the lions.
Can you tell us about your new novel Smash all The Windows?
You can probably sense from the
title that the spark of the novel was outrage. I was infuriated by the press’s
reaction to the outcome of the second Hillsborough inquest. Microphones were
thrust at family members as they emerged from the courtroom. It was put them
that, now that it was all over, they could get on with their lives. ‘What
lives?’ I yelled at the television.
For those who don’t know about
Hillsborough, a crush occurred during the 1989 FA Cup semi-final, killing 96
fans. A single lie was told about the cause of the disaster: In that moment,
Liverpool fans became scapegoats. It would be twenty-seven years before the
record was set straight.
I didn’t want to be the one to
add to the pain I saw on their faces, so I created a fictional disaster. And because
writing should always take you outside your comfort-zone, I combined two of my
fears – travelling in rush hour by Tube, and escalators.
The cover is very striking. What
was the idea behind the image?
 |
| Rossdale Print Productions 12 April 2018 |
The starling is borrowed from one
of my city walks. I was taking the stairs up from the path that runs alongside
the Thames to London Bridge when I saw a starling sitting on a steel railing,
singing its heart out. Hearing birdsong when surrounded by the traffic roar and
the clang of building works is quite special, so I stood and watched. I used
this moment for my character Maggie, the mother of the young station supervisor
who was in charge when the disaster happened. She feels her daughter is sending
her a message. I chose an image of the starling breaking free and asked my
designer Andrew Candy to create a real sense of urgency and momentum, which he
did with contrast of the static shards of glass and the blurred images. And
even though we have the blurring, the distinctive shapes of the Gherkin means
that the city is recognisably London.
How does Smash all the Windows fit in with your other books and how does it differ?
It has many of the hallmarks of a
Jane Davis novel. We have multiple points of view and a non-linear story line.
But I think it’s safe to say that it’s my most contemporary offering to date. I
used the present tense because I wanted the parachute the reader right into the
scene of the disaster. I also have a far larger cast of characters than I’ve
worked with before. My disaster destroyed the lives of hundreds of people –
survivors, witnesses, families, friends, the police, doctors and nurses who had
to deal with the aftermath. There was the potential to add more, but I chose to
focus on five family members, their partners and the people they lost in the
disaster.
Tell us a little about your characters.
My character Jules Roche was the
unwitting poster boy for the disaster. He has a reputation as being something
of an enfant terrible, because he has a fiery temper and feeds journalists the
soundbites they’re so desperate for. He reluctantly found fame after
discovering that the only way to deal with grief was to translate all that negative
energy into art; in his case, sculptures. He has no formal training and there’s
no consensus on whether the work Jules creates is any good. But his intention
to honour the memory of his wife is pure, and integrity like that has enormous kerb
appeal. In celebration of the verdict, Tate Modern wants to stage an exhibition
of his work. Jules accepts - but only on his terms. He collaborates with the
families of the victims to create a series of new pieces from their mementos.
For some, it becomes part of the process of letting go.
We have mother and daughter, Gina
and her daughter Tamsin Wicker. It’s a complicated dynamic. Gina didn’t only
lose a son in the disaster, she lost her idea of who he was – basically he
shouldn’t have been anywhere near the scene of the disaster. But she also lost
her idea of who she was. She wasn’t, as she’d thought, a good mother, and this
knowledge led to a downward spiral of self-destruction.
As for Tamsin, she finds herself
at a crossroads. Almost twenty-seven years old, she’s living at home with her alcoholic
mother. Having lost so much of her teenage years, she’s beginning to think
she’s entitled to a life of her own, but she’s also afraid of moving on.
Then we have Maggie and Alan
Chappel. When Alan decides that the best chance he has of healing his hidden
wounds is by returning to his Northumberland hometown, Maggie comes under
mounting pressure to explain her reluctance to go along with his plans.
There’s Donovan. The disaster
wiped out two generations of his family. Not only his daughter and future
son-in-law, but his unborn grandson. He has another source of pain, less
obvious. One he can’t discuss. Ever since the funeral, his wife Helene has
turned her back on the world, refusing to leave the house. But surely, if he
can raise money to build a monument, she might be persuaded… That’s his
motivation.
When most injustices are
overturned, there’s usually an individual in the background who realised that
an injustice had been done and then worked tirelessly to construct a case. With
the St Botolph and Old Billingsgate disaster, that person was Eric, a law
student, still some way from qualifying as a solicitor. The outsider in the
story, his arrival proves to be a turning point for families, who’ve all but
given up in their search for justice. In the midst of all of the heartbreak and
human reaction, his conviction reminds the families that they still have a
little fight left in them.
I love the way you’ve shown how creating something helped each of the characters to begin the healing process. What does art mean to you?
I’d always assumed that I would
make a career in art. It was the thing I was good at. And then came a hard
lesson. The O-Level examiners didn’t like my work. But you can apply what you
know about the process of writing a novel to the creation of a work of art.
Both processes require vision and the creation of something out of nothing. I’ll
admit that most of what I know about modern art comes from the BBC series,
Imagine. I’ve been absolutely gripped by the stories about the artists, and
therefore behind the art.
One of the questions you ask in the book is ‘Who is a victim?’
That’s right. One of the results
of the second inquest is that an additional person is named as a victim. The group
who’ve been known as ‘The Fifty-eight’ for so long become ‘the Fifty-nine’. And
that’s not popular with everyone. But Jules challenges the court’s interpretation
further. He points out, “Not even those who spend months in hospital are given
a number; not even those who have their leg amputated. Excuse me for saying
this, but it seem to me that in court you only matter if you die. That is
bullshit! You know how many of the injured die since? There are not just
fifty-nine victims. You are a victim, I am a victim, my son is a victim. And if
your Rosie is a victim, then every other person who work at London Underground,
they are also a victim. The police, the paramedic, the ambulance men…”
You’ve included a character, Victim Thirty-four. Who is he?
He’s someone whose identity
hasn’t been established fourteen years after the disaster. In a city the size
of London, some people slip through the cracks. In 2017, the charity Shelter
estimated that one in every fifty-nine Londoners is homeless. That’s a shocking
statistic, especially given that it doesn’t include sofa surfers and what’s
known as the ‘hidden five per cent’ – those who don’t appear on any official
register, who perhaps arrived as part of the post 2001 surge fleeing war,
famine or persecution. If Victim Thirty-four was a recent arrivals, there will
be no medical or dental records to help identify him. Following New Zealand’s
Tangiwai disaster, twenty-one unidentified victims received a state funeral.
478 bodies remain unidentified after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The
truth is that some victims of large-scale disasters will simply never be
identified. I thought that this would be a small way to acknowledge that
somewhere, someone is missing those people.
Smash all the Windows will be
released on 12 April, but you can pre-order
it now for the special price of 99p/99c (Price increases to £1.99 on 12 March.
Price on publication will be £3.99). The Universal Link is books2read.com/u/49P21p
From 13 February to 10 March, US
readers can also enter a Goodreads
Giveaway for a chance to win one of 100 eBooks.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38447206-smash-all-the-windows
About the Author
Hailed by The Bookseller as ‘One
to Watch’, Jane Davis is the author of eight novels.
Jane spent her twenties and the
first part of her thirties chasing promotions at work, but when she achieved
what she’d set out to do, she discovered that it wasn’t what she wanted after
all. It was then that she turned to writing.
Her debut, Half-truths &
White Lies, won the Daily Mail First Novel Award 2008. Of her subsequent three
novels, Compulsion Reads wrote, ‘Davis is a phenomenal writer, whose ability to
create well-rounded characters that are easy to relate to feels effortless’.
Her 2015 novel, An Unknown Woman, was Writing Magazine’s Self-published Book of
the Year 2016 and has been shortlisted for two further awards.
Jane lives in Carshalton, Surrey
with her Formula 1 obsessed, star-gazing, beer-brewing partner, surrounded by
growing piles of paperbacks, CDs and general chaos. When she isn’t writing, you
may spot her disappearing up a mountain with a camera in hand. Her favourite
description of fiction is ‘made-up truth’.
Also by the Author
Contact
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/janeeleanordavi/boards/
Press enquiries janerossdale@btinternet.com
High resolution photos available
from https://jane-davis.co.uk/media-kit/
~****~
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