Novelist Beezy Marsh On The Art Of ‘Faction’
When Beezy Marsh began researching her family history she had no idea of the secrets she was about to uncover, in particular about her grandmother Annie Austin, and Annie’s mother Emma.
She was already the author of three books, including last year’s international bestseller Keeping My Sisters’ Secrets. This time though she decided to use her own family’s story as the basis for a book, filling in any blanks with her imagination…
Congratulations on your latest book. Can you tell us a bit about the storyline?
Thank you so much for inviting me on to Belle About Town! All My Mother’s Secrets is a gritty, true-life story set between the wars in London. It follows the life of slum laundry maid Annie Austin and her search for the truth about her father, believed killed in World War One. What she discovers threatens to destroy her family and causes a huge rift with her mother, who has tried to keep secret the choices she has made in the face of tragedy, because they are too shocking for the next generation to bear.
It is described as ‘faction’. Can you explain what that means?
It’s a story about real people and – as closely as possible – real events, but told in a narrative style, so it reads like fiction. Hopefully the way I do it creates a real page turner!
You build a brilliant picture of London through the first half of the 20th century. Did you take any steps to ensure the authenticity and accuracy of all your descriptions?
That is very kind of you to say so. Before I wrote books, I was a national newspaper journalist for many years specialising in investigative reporting, so I hope I bring some of those skills to bear in my research. I do heaps of it. I devour as many sources as I can about the time period I am working in. I watch film footage and look at a lot of images too, to help bring things to life. Local libraries are a great place for serious history buffs as they have brilliant resources for any particular location and I also read a lot of social history about the political events of the time. Newspaper reports are great because they really do describe what was happening in the community and the details you can get are amazing. In this book, of course, I also relied on my family stories about living and working in the laundries. I grew up with Annie Austin, the heroine, as she was the grandmother who helped to raise me.
The washer women who are central to the book, live such an incredibly different life to us, even though it was just a century ago. Do you think we can learn anything from them?
I think it’s crucial, from a social history point of view, to realise just how far women have come in such a short time. Many of the life choices we take for granted today were just not available to those women and I like to think that they worked hard to make life better for the coming generations. It’s hard not to feel gratitude for the sacrifices that women made to keep families together and also to feel inspired by their resilience.
We can see from your website you are a mother yourself. Do you have any secrets you are keeping from your children?!
Oh, so many, but I cannot share them all here in case they read this! The top secrets are probably things such as where I hide the Playstation controller and the chocolate. Yes, boys, they are mine, all mine. Mwahahaha! (wicked cackle).
You are also a journalist. What kind of articles do you write, and which came first – the desire to hunt out the story (including that of your family) – or the job?
Great question!
Yes, I was a journalist before I wrote books and my training was traditional, in that I started out as a cub reporter covering the village show on a local newspaper. I have written just about everything you can think of from court reports and councils to golden weddings and the front page of national newspapers including The Daily Mail, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday. I also write features about issues around motherhood but the main area I specialise in is health.
So to answer you, I think the desire to tell people’s stories and to hunt out the truth was with me from when I was a teenager, probably because of a range of circumstances around secrecy in my family. That came before the job but I knew from the age of 15 that I was going to be a journalist. It just sort of felt right and I never wavered, although I also knew, deep down, I was going to write books – but I didn’t know how or when that was going to happen.
Was there more pressure on you with this book because your last one, Keeping My Sisters’ Secrets, was a bestseller?
Now you are scaring me. Yikes, there probably was pressure but I didn’t think about it until you mentioned it. Thank goodness I have written the book already. I guess the real pressure is hoping that people will like it enough to pick it up and buy it. I really hope they do!
What can we expect next from Beezy Marsh?
Well, the secrets in my family certainly did not stop with Annie and the laundresses. I am already working on a sequel which will look at the shocking past – yes, there really are some big skeletons in the closet! – of Annie’s husband’s family. That book is due to be published by Pan Macmillan in summer 2019 and it is the book I think I have wanted to write most, my whole life. I can’t wait to see what you think of it…
- All My Mother’s Secrets by Beezy Marsh is out August 9th through Pan, £7.99. Read more from Beezy at www.beezy-marsh.com, and on twitter: @beezymarsh
