LIFE BEGINS...
Revisiting my novel, ‘Life Begins’ was a shock. Originally published sixteen years ago by Penguin, I thought I remembered my protagonist, Charlotte Turner, pretty well: newly single, about to turn 40, with a sensitive young son and antipathy towards her ex, full of regrets about a life that had veered off course. Cue mid-life crisis…
The shock, a pleasurable one, was how much more there was both to the story and to my heroine. Charlotte faces a turning point that for many is all too familiar, and yet her choices and reasoning do not follow the paths one might expect. She remains her own person, a uniquely complex character, forged by childhood events over which she had no control and zero understanding. She thinks she is trapped in the present, but it is really her past that is holding her back. Only when she has grasped this can her eyes really open as to how to move on.
The many years since publication granted me the ability – impossible in the nose-up-against-it intensity of original composition – to read ‘Life Begins’ more as a reader than as an author. There were a few things that the beady-eyed editor in me couldn’t resist tweaking, but mostly, I found myself really rooting for my own character. She doesn’t choose an easy road. She cares about truth and friendship. She would die a million deaths for her twelve-year-old son. She likes Mah-jong. She has so much to work out about the world and her place in it – mostly on her own – and she manages it, eventually finding the fresh start for which she yearns, but not from the direction she imagined.
Life, at some point, throws each of us off-course. It is how we pick ourselves up which counts. Go Charlotte!