Five Fast Questions . . . with Helen Simonson
Submitted by Michael on Mon, 02/29/2016 - 2:35pm
Five Fast Questions is Rakestraw’s irregular interview series. This week, we talk with Helen Simonson, a bestselling novelist. The author of the beloved bestseller Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, she has a new novel, The Summer Before the War, publishing in March 2016. Born in England, Simonson now lives in Brooklyn. Helen Simonson visits Rakestraw Books on Tuesday, 29 March 2016 at Noon.
1. What inspired you to write The Summer Before the War?
The Edwardian period was such a glamorous time, filled with elegance and the stirrings of social progress - and amazing technological advances including the telephone, the motor car, electric light, the flying machine. It also ended in the crushing horror of World War One. For a writer this sense of a brief idyll doomed to destruction would be an irresistible draw, but I always start with character and it was Agatha Kent and her nephews, walking into my head, that inspired this story
2. Setting plays an important part in this new novel. Do you have a particular connection to this part of England?