Exploring the Emmy Lake Chronicles: A Conversation with AJ Pearce

25 May

‘One day, I thought to myself, the idea of talking about borrowing a pair of shoes in the same breath as saying people had been bombed will seem very very strange.’

Congratulations, AJ, as book three of the Emmy Lake Chronicles, Mrs Porter Calling, is just about to be released, but can you take us back to the start and tell us a bit about the origins of Emmy Lake and the inspiration for Dear Mrs Bird?

Of course! The idea for writing about a young agony aunt in WW2 came when I bought a 1939 copy of a weekly women’s magazine on eBay. I had been writing as a hobby for a little while, but as soon as I opened this old magazine, I realised I wanted to write a novel about it. It was all so familiar – fashion, beauty, cooking and the problem page – but at the same time, a window into another era. I started to collect old magazines and the more problem pages I read, the more I realised that many of the concerns people had were very similar to ours today – relationships, families, worries about jobs and money. And then layered on top of that were the very specific challenges of living during a world war, which of course often meant great sacrifice and loss. So, it was something very compelling as an inspiration.

Yours Cheerfully continued Emmy’s story and we often hear of the idea of a difficult second book, how was your experience with book two?

Writing a second books is definitely a big change from a debut, mainly because if you’re lucky enough to have a book deal with a publisher, writing the novel changes from being something you hope will be good enough to be published, to absolutely having to be good enough! There’s also a time pressure as well, but if you’re lucky enough to be in that position then you just have to get on with it! I did feel the pressure, but it was lovely to go back to the setting I had loved writing about previously, and I had been researching women war workers and had tons of ideas. I was really pleased with Yours Cheerfully in the end. It had been nerve wracking, but worth it.

That brings us to the present and Mrs Porter Calling. I understand initially two books were planned, but here we are at book three, which follows on beautifully. Did you always have an idea in mind for how this book would continue the story?

Thank you! I’ve always had in my mind how Emmy’s story will unfold throughout the war, but the main thing is that I write each book so that it is a story in itself and so that readers don’t have to have read any of the others. I think that’s really important. I want to make sure that if someone picks up a book at a station or somewhere, they can enjoy it on its own. Hopefully then they may be interested in the other books(!) but the main thing is that I hope readers will enjoy reading them at any stage.

Mrs Porter Calling gives Emmy her biggest challenge yet. Without giving too much away, she is forced to fight for something she believes in passionately. Really, the heart of this novel, as well as my others, is friendship. It doesn’t always sound the most dynamic of relationships, but I think it’s incredibly interesting: almost everyone has a best friend or two, so I’m told that a lot of people relate to what I write about. They are as important as our family in many ways. I get lots of readers at events who have come with their best friends, some of whom they’ve known for decades. It’s really special and I love writing about it.

Readers will be thrilled that they get to meet up once more with Emmy, Bunty, and all of the other characters but, of course, the new book also introduces new characters, including, as the title suggests, the eponymous Mrs Porter – how much fun is to both develop existing characters but also to create new ones?

Do you know, I think it’s the best of both worlds for a writer! It’s lovely to go back to characters you’ve been writing for ten years because you know exactly how they feel about things and how they are likely to respond to new challenges and life changes. And then at the same time, new characters add the unexpected and you can have so much fun with them. Mrs Porter was great fun to write – she starts out as a total delight, but then things change… I won’t give anything away, but Emmy and the others have a real fight on their hands.

The settings/context of Emmy’s world, specifically with regard to her employment at Woman’s Friend, allows for a different experience and point of view when it comes to World War Two fiction, how important was it that the books looked at this period through a different, lesser-explored lens?

When I first started writing about these characters, I wasn’t really thinking about the fact I was approaching the era from a very specific viewpoint – that is, the lives and challenges of young women. However, the more magazines from the period that I read (I now have a collection running into the hundreds) the more I realised just how much women were coping with – stepping up and playing crucial roles in the war effort while having to keep their families going and facing huge difficulties while their loved ones were away. The more I write, the more respect I have for the women of the time.

I’m always curious about how an author goes about understanding and recreating a world so removed historically from their own, especially one as unique as WW2, and you bring the period alive wonderfully. Can you tell us a bit about how you’ve managed to recreate this period so successfully and any challenges in doing so?

Thank you, that’s lovely of you to say so. Part of it is doing as much research as I can so that I can write confidently and authentically – and that includes speaking to and interviewing women who remember the war and are kind enough to share their experiences with me. I’ve also learned from them that actually, women then were just the same as you or me – trying to live normal lives, work, love, enjoy themselves – do all the things we all still want, but in the most challenging and sometimes desperate of times. I can’t possibly understand how hard it must have been, but that’s the job of a novelist – you have to do all you possibly can to imagine it and try to do the people who lived through the war justice.

‘One day, I thought to myself, the idea of talking about borrowing a pair of shoes in the same breath as saying people had been bombed will seem very very strange.’

I really felt this quote sums up the world of this book, of everyday lives caught up in the most surreal of times. How important was it for you to focus on the everyday within the context of such a global moment in history?

For me, it’s the everyday things that connect us to the past. You know, when you see news about a Roman excavation for example, and they’ve found a plate or part of a shoe? That’s what we all relate to – that make us realise we have great similarities, it’s just the circumstances that divide us.

Central to the books are letters and correspondence and this was a time very much of both. Living in a digital age, how was it to engage with a pre-digital era and to return to a world of letter writing?

As a writer, it’s actually quite helpful as there was so much more waiting and hoping and wondering if letters got to their destination, or if they might be lost. The stakes were so very high. Also, I’m old enough to remember the pre-digital world really well! I used to love getting letters, and I love collecting letters from the world war two era. There’s something very moving about the fact they have been carefully saved for so long. In eighty years’ time, texts and Whatsapp messages that may mean so much to someone right now, just won’t exist. So, keep writing letters and cards, and send them to people you love!

Children are at the heart of Mrs Porter Calling, how important was to share their experiences and reflect on their war?

Whenever I speak to people who were children during the war, I am always struck by how much they had to live through and how little choice they had in it all. That’s one of the tragedies of all wars though, isn’t it? The grown-ups in charge make decisions – good or bad – and the last people with any say are the children. In Mrs Porter Calling, the children are both a fun part of the novel and also the ones who bring out the best in the adult characters I think. I always enjoy writing children because they often say what the adults would like to but feel they shouldn’t!

I’m not reluctant to admit that I laughed and cried reading Mrs Porter Calling, so our readers may want to be wary about reading it in public! But, in all seriousness, it is a book that triggers the emotions, but levity is as important, if not more so, than gravity despite the context of WW2. Was it a conscious decision to ensure that the novel balanced the tragedy and horror so woven into this era with these lighter moments?

Yes, it’s extremely important to have that balance. While my books do have humour (I hope!) and there are funny scenes and funny characters – Mrs Porter is a good example – they have to reflect the era in which they are set. You can’t write a novel set in the war without having it almost as a character itself, always in the background, always a threat to everyone’s happiness.

We’ve spoken of this being the third book in the Emmy Lake Chronicles, but it concludes in early 1944, with still plenty of threads to explore, can you tell us if there are plans for the series to continue and if so, what readers can expect?

Well, I am sworn to secrecy about the plot lines, but I can promise that the series will go through to the end of the war. I’m not saying anything more!

Can you tell us a bit about the process of writing a series, in terms of how you go about developing a narrative, not only across a book but then across the wider series? What are the specific challenges?

The main challenge is to ensure the characters keep growing and developing, while ensuring each book is a satisfying read and has a story or a big challenge of its own. Actually, it’s more an opportunity than a challenge because it means you always keep fresh and interested in what you’re writing. The other joy is that you can put little seeds in the books or bring in characters that you plan to have far bigger roles in future books. That’s great fun.

I imagine that when you write a standalone book, the characters live with you for the duration of the book, but then you move on to the next book and a new set of characters, but having lived with Emmy and her friends for three books and five years now, are they ever-present for you?

Absolutely! They all live in my head and feel very real. I first thought of the main characters about ten years ago. If I don’t write for a while I can see them hammering on windows, yelling at me to give them something to do!

Your writing journey has been all about the Emmy Lake Chronicles, but do you ever think about writing a different book or genre?

Yes, definitely. I have loads of ideas for novels set in other eras. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to write lots of different ones, but I think I’ll always be tempted to return to some of the characters in Mrs Porter Calling and write some more for them. They’re like family to me!

And, finally, Emmy is a very progressive, enterprising woman, whose work revolves around the letters she receives on Woman’s Friend, but I wonder what would she make of the modern world of emails and social media, do you think?

That’s such a great question! The answer is I don’t really know, and that’s because I have to absolutely plant her in the 1940s and make sure she is relevant and authentic to that time. I focus on how she might think and feel and act eighty years ago and try not to let go of that. The one thing I do know however, is that she would care as passionately as ever about her readers and would be sticking up for them and for what she believes in right to the end!

Mrs Porter Calling by AJ Pearce is published by Picador on 25th May, price £16.99 in hardback.

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