Amanda Brookfield

Revising a backlist novel for republication is an interesting and often unsettling exercise. The story holds true – a good story always does – but you encounter a greener version of your writing self, a version that sometimes strikes off-notes, or misses irresistible insights. To have had the opportunity to tighten and iron out such youthful mis-steps, making the narrative both stronger and more likely to resonate with a contemporary audience, has felt like a luxury indeed.

The biggest surprise about returning to ‘The Love Child’ was the reminder of how much the world has changed since its original publication in 2013. Eleven years! It doesn’t sound much. We were well into the digital revolution by then, after all, with laptops and iPhones and ‘political correctness’ in full swing. Social media, however, was still in its infancy, with no Instagram or WhatsApp; instead of Zoom we had clunky ‘skyping’, while doing anything on a phone overseas cost a bomb. I mention such details because, communications being integral to any plot, they pop up all the time in ‘The Love Child’ and I do not want readers to be baffled.

What never changes are the things for which we humans strive, no matter the decades or centuries that pass. Happiness. Love. Understanding. Forgiveness. Hope. Companionship. The trillion possible blocks to achieving such things never vanish or change in essence either. Each life is – to a greater or lesser degree – a tapestry of good and bad, as the characters in ‘The Love Child’ certainly bear out, some finding answers, while others struggle on.

Graham Greene liked to talk of writing being a good chance to ‘spy on people,’ but for me it is nothing like that. Observing the details of how we all behave feels more like an instinct, integral to my own quest to understand how life can be so precious – so glorious – and yet, at times, so painfully hard. I have no urge to judge my characters. I simply want to let them speak. We are each a unique alchemy of luck, circumstance and personality. Making mistakes is inevitable. It’s how we choose to respond to those mistakes that counts.