Jason Hewitt: Interview

How long did The Dynamite Room take to write and research?

It took me about three and a half years to write. The first nine months of that was research, including trips to Suffolk, Berlin, and also up to the Norwegian town of Narvik, above the Arctic Circle. I was working in the marketing department of a large educational publisher and persuaded them to give me a sabbatical to write the first draft, which I did in three months. It then took another two years of re-crafting and fine-tuning. Writing is certainly not for the impatient.

What inspired you to write about World War 2 and a fictional invasion of England?

For storytellers of any type World War 2 is always a rich source of material. What interests me about it though is not the epic drama of it, but how it changed people. With The Dynamite Room I wanted to take the grand theatre of a global war and shrink it down to the smallest, most domestic story. By concentrating on just two characters I could really put them under the microscope and see how the cracks in them form.

The fictional invasion storyline came out of narrative necessity - the initial concept for the story was always about two individuals from opposing sides being trapped together and forced to somehow get along. It never crossed my mind to set it anywhere other than England. I toyed with turning it into a more standard alternative history (scenes of German troops marching through English market towns, etc.) but the story always seemed to be subtler than that. The drama doesn't come from outside the house; it comes from within.

Was it difficult to write parallel narratives from two very different perspectives?

I actually found the parallel narrative fairly easy to write. I was helped by the fact that Lydia and Heiden are very different. Lydia's voice and character came quickly - she's the sort of tomboy that is stronger than she looks and, in her regular life beyond the story, I imagine she’s a bit of a handful. Heiden was more complex because I wanted the reader to never be quite sure how much of a threat he is to Lydia. He does a lot of bad things but I still want the reader to empathise with him to a degree.

Are the characters based on people you know or are they products of the story?

I never base characters on people that I know. I’ve tried and for some reason I can’t do it. If anything they are all versions of me. In The Dynamite Room they grew out of the story and then started to form it in their own ways. Heiden came first. Then I thought, well, if he’s stuck in a house with another character, who is the most unlikely person it could be. From that Lydia was born.

This was your debut. Will there be any more?

I certainly hope so. At the moment I'm just tidying up a new novel that will be set during the closing days of the war on the continent.