The Stolen Child and the Black and Ethnic Minority Book Club
Behind the Scenes #10 And how there is always a deeper truth and inspiration behind every book
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I love talking to readers so I was delighted when a Book Club asked if I’d go and visit them over the summer to talk about my thriller, The Stolen Child. Not only were they based in Bradford, where I first lived when we moved to Yorkshire, but they’re a stone’s throw from Ilkley, the setting for The Stolen Child and where I attended sixth form - AND, they were The Black and Ethnic Minority Book Club!!
I have literally spent my life - and definitely most of my writing life - being the only non-white person in the room. So I said yes. And I have to say, it was absolutely delightful to be surrounded by a group of ethnically diverse people, who were warm, welcoming, funny and loved my books (plus they’d bought Prosecco).
‘Seven years ago you stole my child. Now I want her back.’
The Stolen Child
The Stolen Child is about a couple who long for children but are struggling to conceive so they adopt a little girl called Evie. When Evie turns seven, she receives a secret card from her father, who tells her she’s been stolen from him and he’s coming to get her back…
I’ve done a lot of book events and I kind of know what people want to hear - what the book is about, what inspired me, where it’s set, and then I read a couple of short extracts.
But what happens when everyone has already read the book? What then?
I thought I’d tell the Book Club what inspired me to write The Stolen Child - the story I am happy telling anyone who wants to know.
And I also thought I’d be brutally honest and talk about the deep inspiration behind the book.
Because every author writes books that are unique to them as a person, that have some resonance with their psychology and their upbringing, no matter how much of their novel is made-up or based on imagination.
The story I tell everyone
So the story I tell everyone is that when I was living in Bristol, I heard about a vulnerable woman whose baby was being taken from her at birth. She was in the care of social services and more than one of her children had been taken from her and adopted. The baby - not yet born at this stage - already had adoptive parents lined up. It sounded sad, but I hoped it would work out well for the child.
But, I thought, what happens if the father turns up? And he does’t agree to his child being taken away? That was the germ of the idea that became The Stolen Child.
The story I tell no one
My own story, which I’m writing in my nature memoir, Wilderness: In Search of Belonging, is that my mother (Irish Protestant) and my father (Bangladeshi-Muslim) divorced when I was two. I was brought up by my step-father (Irish Catholic) in many places, but mainly parts of rural Britain.
Like the couple in The Stolen Child, who go on to have their own son, my parents had more children. I love my parents and siblings; I know they love me. But I don’t look much like them and I have always felt that I did not really belong anywhere.
Incidentally, one of the ladies at the Book Club misunderstood me and thought I meant that I was Evie, and sympathised with me (as Evie) in a scene where Evie, in a bid for attention, behaves rather badly at her little brother’s party (actually, this was inspired by an incident from my childhood, when a foster child, in 20 minutes, wreaked the most terrible and creative damage to my bedroom. Every pair of my tights stapled to every one of my postcards, for instance).
To be clear, I’m not Evie or any of the characters in any of my books. Like most authors, I borrow bits of myself, bits from other people, fragments of stories and scraps I’ve read or overhead, all combined with imagination to create something new.
What I meant was that, my deep inspiration, the emotional truth of my own story, has led to the authentic heart of The Stolen Child.
‘Evie opens her eyes for the first time since we saw her. They’re too far apart and a colour I can barely describe. But they’re definitely not blue. A shock of black hair just out from beneath her hat. Her skin is pale brown. She doesn’t look like our child.’
The Stolen Child
My deep inspiration
My story is what inspired me to write about a child, a dark-haired girl in a white, blond family, who, as she turns seven, starts to notice that she is different, who knows that she’s adopted and who welcomes the attention of a person who claims to be her father…with, of course - it’s a thriller! - disastrous consequences.
The trailer for The Stolen Child
What do you think? Are you writing a work of fiction at the moment? What’s your truth? Do you have a deep inspiration behind the book, a story only you can tell in your own unique way?
And let me know what you think about diversity in fiction. Does it matter what the ethnic background of an author is?
If you’d like to buy a copy of The Stolen Child, it’s available in my bookshop.
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