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Emma Chaplin interviews the
Lewes author shortly after
her atmospheric book about
the mysterio<strong>us</strong> disappearance
of a young girl, A Kind of
Vanishing, is announced
inaugural winner of The
People’s Book Prize for Fiction.
Congratulations on the award, what
a terrific achievement. How’s it been
since you won? It’s psychologically
good for any writer to win a prize. It has
changed a lot: it’s raised my profile, and
led to an American company expressing
interested in making a film of A Kind
of Vanishing. And of course everyone
wants to k<strong>now</strong> when the next novel will
be coming out (the answer to which is –
next year sometime!).
The People’s Awards were the
brainchild of Beryl Bainbridge,
weren’t they? Yes, and sadly she died
three weeks before the ceremony. Her
absence was felt keenly. I would love to
have met her. However I am proud to
be the first winner of her prize.
I’d categorize your book as a ‘literary
crime novel’, in a similar vein to
Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie
series. You’re not the first to make that
comparison, and I’m flattered. I love
Kate Atkinson’s writing, but I’ve not
read her crime novels yet.
The novel is set around here, in
Newhaven and Tide Mills and
Charbury. Charbury? It’s Firle. When
I was writing A Kind of Vanishing I
w w w. V I VA l E w E s . C o M
Photo by Alex leith
l I t E r At U r E
was working with the Charleston Festival and was offered the
chance to rent an annexe in Firle from Anne Olivier Bell, editor
of the Virginia Woolf Diaries. I walked around the village rarely
seeing any one. The atmosphere was right. The same thing
happened with Tide Mills. Someone suggested it as a good place
for dog walking, I went there and knew immediately it’s where
the character Alice vanished.
Is a sense of place important to you? Yes, very. If I’m reading
a novel that mentions a real location I’ll <strong>us</strong>e Google Street View
to look at it. I did a lot of research into Tide Mills, spending
time in the fascinating m<strong>us</strong>eum at Paradise Park. An old man
came over to find out what I was doing; he told me he’d lived
in Tide Mills before it was abandoned. He brought the ghost
village to life.
But you’ve reinvented a different sort of Tide Mills, with
buildings you can go into? Perhaps rebuilt it would be another
way of putting it. It is a place where the past is very present - I
hope A Kind of Vanishing captures this.
You spent some childhood holidays in Brighton and
mention visiting Saltdean Lido. I learnt to swim there and
have many happy memories of family picnics on the grassy
slope. I hope the campaign to keep it safe succeeds –it’s a
treasure for this area.
What’s it like to be a writer in Lewes? It’s an inspiring
place. I love exploring the streets and alleys, or going further
afield and taking the train back here. I like the buildings, the
brickwork–and that you can see the edges of the town with the
Downs rising beyond.
A Kind of Vanishing, published by Myriad Editions, £6.99, stocked
by Sky-Lark in the Needlemakers.
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