Inspiration
When I plan a new book I like to give the heroine an interesting job because I believe it makes for a more fulfilling read. I very much like novels which combine a page-turning narrative with a deal of interesting information, and so this is what I have been trying to do in my own. So I made Tiffany an advertising copywriter, Minty a radio reporter, Faith a weather presenter, Rose an agony aunt and Miranda an animal behaviourist. The careers my heroines have also resonate throughout the book in an ironic or comic way. So Miranda is an animal behaviourist who has behaved very badly in her past; Rose is an agony aunt with a huge unresolved problem of her own; Faith is a weather presenter who can't predict the consequences of her own actions. Laura Quick, in 'A Question of Love', is the presenter of a TV quiz - but the tables are about to be turned on her as she now starts having to answer some tricky questions herself - notably about the fate of her husband, Nick, whose memory she has been trying to lay to rest.
I also chose the theme of quizzing because, like most of us, I adore quizzes - I like nothing better than to sit on the sofa on a Monday evening shouting out the answers to Mastermind and University Challenge. I sneak away from my work to do online quizzes at the wonderful quizzing website, Quizzing.co.uk. But before I began the book, I'd been thinking about the whole area of quiz culture - the enduring popularity of pub quizzes, the plethora of new quizzes on our screen, such as the excellent 'Perseverance'. I'd been thinking about the way the BBC had to bring back Mastermind due to popular demand, and I thought about the electrifying hold over us that Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? still has. With all this in mind, I formed the idea of a woman who had fantastic general knowledge, but who lacked self-knowledge. What I then had to to was to invent a fictional quiz for Laura to present in the book - a quiz which was not like any existing TV quiz, of course - and I hope you'll like the quiz I've come up with - Whadda Ya Know?!.
This is my first novel since having my daughter, Alice, eighteen months ago, and so inevitably the theme of parenthood has also found its way in. Laura, and her two sisters, Felicity and Hope, all have very different attitudes to motherhood, all of them equally problematic. Added to this is Laura's growing infatuation with an old flame, Luke, who comes with a airport trolley load of emotional baggage in the form of an adorable little girl, and a very neurotic ex-wife with a herd of pygmy goats. As Laura becomes more involved with Luke, she finds she's having to ask herselfsome difficult questions too. So 'A Question of Love' is really about questions and answers, and about memory - about what we easily remember, and the things we'd prefer to forget...
