10 Questions: Vanessa Curtis

True. Harrowing. Epic.

 

I found out that my great-grandmother had been born in Riga, Latvia in the 1880s. She came over to the East End of London in about 1905, but I got to wondering what would have happened to the Jewish friends and relatives she left behind. I began to research the history of the Jews of Riga and realized their terrible fate. That’s how the novel was born.

 

The title The Earth is Singing came easily – it was taken from a scene later on in the book, a very harrowing scene. But I also wanted it to have double meaning and also to contain a message of hope – the earth, after all, is a nurturing substance and lasting things grow from it.

 

I don’t have a set routine – I fit my writing around my piano teaching and tend to write best during the school holidays when I have blocks of time to work with.

 

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, the story of one house through different periods of history. Anything by Lionel Shriver, who has the ability to get inside a reader’s head and turn their thoughts inside out.

 

I don’t have one! I am more a fan of the sentence. I rather like Blackadder’s "Fortune has vomited on my eiderdown yet again".

 

That’s easiest to answer if I think of the children’s books I used to enjoy – all those feisty female characters, like Katy in What Katy Did, Anne in Anne of Green Gables and Clara in Antonia White’s semi-autobiographical novel Frost in May.

 

I liked creepy stories when I was younger and had a particular fascination with Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock which is big on atmosphere and mystery. I also enjoyed the ghost stories of M.R. James very much although they frightened me to death. As a very little child I was obsessed by Ant and Bee, as much for the brilliant illustrations as the stories.

 

I’ve just read a fascinating life of Nica Rothschild by Hannah Rothschild (The Baroness) and I’d recommend that because the book is not only a great glimpse into the lives of the wealthy and privileged but also the story of what happened when Nica met the jazz musician Thelonius Monk. Two more different backgrounds it would have been hard to imagine, but they became devoted to one another. I’ve also just enjoyed Us by David Nicholls who I think one of our most accessible and human authors. 

 

Different things at different times. I have to be in the right frame of mind to truly enjoy a book. A novel has to be extremely immediate, vivid and often contemporary to keep my attention. I turn often to non-fiction, which I love. People’s lives, loves and letters are a continual source of fascination to me.