Book Of The Month January, 2008
In A Good LightClare Chambers
Without even noticing, thirty-four-year-old Esther Fairchild has become a prisoner of routine. Living with her adored brother, Christian, she divides her time between illustrating children’s books, nightly shifts as a waitress, weekly visits to her father and fortnightly meetings with her married lover. Then one day she encounters a face in the crowd which jolts her out of her mundane existence and makes her question both her life and the past that has helped to shape it. Memories she had long chosen to forget begin to resurface. Memories of an eccentric childhood in a large and shabby house, where the children were very much left to fend for themselves within the loose boundaries of their parents’ unorthodox values. A chaotic existence peopled by a rich collection of feckless ‘guests’. And into this shambolic world came Donovan – regularly deposited by his unreliable mother – and Penny, Christian’s girlfriend and Esther’s idol and mentor. Until tragedy struck and shattered all their lives. But now, it seems, their lives are about to become intertwined once more . . .
What We Think
Clare Chambers on her book In a Good Light:
The inspiration for a book often starts with a single idea – which you roll around your mind for a while like a ball of plasticine to see what bits of fluff and grit it picks up. In this case it was the hero worship of a younger sister for her older, ‘perfect’ brother. I remember quite clearly from my own childhood, looking up to my much older siblings with a sense of yearning admiration, in the knowledge that they would always be ahead, cleverer, faster, better at everything, and impossible to impress. I suppose there are elements of my own brother in Christian – he always seemed to excel at things without exerting himself overmuch – but real people will never quite do. You always end up distorting, tweaking, until only a few little details of the original remain.
I started near the end of the story, with the balance of power slightly skewed: the brother and sister are in their thirties, and living together. He is now a paraplegic; she is his carer, and yet emotionally she is still the dependent one and the announcement that he is planning to marry throws her orderly life into disarray. I hoped that the mystery of his accident – the whiff of tragedy – would be the lure that would pull the reader into the story, and that, once in, the characters would grip. The other mystery, the real ‘twist’, that ties the whole book together, only came to me when I was well over half-way through, and it was one of those all too rare moments of inspiration. It just seemed to drift down and settle on my shoulder. It’s never happened since.
A friend of mine is a prison chaplain and would often have stories to tell about life ‘on the in’. I started to imagine the father of my characters in this role: there seemed to be so much comic and tragic potential in that clash between someone with huge faith in human nature, determined to put his Christian belief into practice, and people intent on abusing that hospitality. Once I had my ‘family’ I spent quite a lot of thinking time just trying to place them. One day when I was out in the car not far from home I saw a house that I could imagine them having grown up in – one of those large, slightly shabby Victorian houses, like an old rectory or schoolhouse. The setting was important – when you are a child and too poor to travel, your local area is your whole universe, so most of the book was going to be set within walking distance of the house. It had to be somewhere I knew well – unlike most writers I’ve got a terrible memory for places. I forget them the instant I leave, and even revisiting old haunts only rings the faintest of bells. Very awkward. I think it’s a form of cheating to plonk your characters in a deliberately dramatic or picturesque location. I chose that nowhere-land where I live, just inside the M25 where the suburbs start to drizzle out into not-quite countryside. It’s not obvious territory for fiction – imagine the opening line: Last night I dreamt I went to Caterham again… but there is a rich seam of eccentricity in the suburbs, which is there for the taking.
I always enjoy writing about childhood – especially those self-conscious teenage years, trying to fit in, then trying to stand out, kicking around, waiting for life to begin. And parents, seen through a teenager’s eyes, are such bizarre, alien creatures.
My characters are often underdogs or innocents – both species I relate to – but it is quite a challenge to make goodness interesting. The selfish, feckless, pilfering Aunty Barbara was much easier to write than the good-hearted father, who throws his doors open to the Less Fortunate with increasingly disastrous results.
I wanted the book to have some of the qualities of a fairy tale – but an ultra-realistic one, so the plot had to feel driven by the characters, rather than the controlling hand of the author. I only allowed myself one coincidence – a meeting on a train – the other apparent ‘coincidences’ are in fact down to Swiss-style precision plotting – or your money back!
My hero and heroine had to be people you would fall in love with and not want to close the book on. I’ve tried to make them less than perfect – charming people are often flawed – but by the end of the book they have been forced to acknowledge their weaknesses, and that makes them the more likeable.