Letting You Go by Anouska Knight

Publisher:  MIRA
Release Date: September 10th 2015
Pages: 496
Received from publisher for review

Alex Foster is trying to forget. Trying to forget that night when she was seventeen. That night when her father dragged her younger brother out of The Old Girl river, his lips blue and his body stiff with cold. But it’s impossible to forget a tragedy like that, particularly when you blame yourself.

Then her sister Jaime calls. Their mother is sick, and Alex must return. Suddenly she’s plunged back into the past she’s been trying to escape.

Returning to her hometown, memories of the tragic accident that has haunted her and her family are impossible to ignore. Alex still blames herself for what happened to her brother and it’s soon clear that her father holds her responsible too. As Alex struggles to cope, can she ever escape the ghosts of the past? 

Letting You Go is the second book by Anouska Knight I've read, and so far it's not my favorite. I found it pretty difficult to finish this book and to write this review as the confusing story took 500 pages long.I really struggled to stay with this as I felt the story was not going anywhere. I think possibly the book would be a better read if the characters and the plot where more interesting and of the story was a little shorter. Truly wanted to like this book more than I actually did.

Q&A with Anouska Knight

In writing Letting You Go where did you start? Where did you find inspiration for the characters and the story?

The first spark of Letting You Go was an elusive bugger. I’d been trying to come up with something that felt right for ages, and then right before I was due to head down to London for lunch with my editor and agent (to, ahem, present all of my marvellous ideas) finally something bit. 

It came while I was trying to get some mid-pregnancy exercise one morning. I’d just dropped my two boys off at their primary school and had headed down to the local stretch of river for a crisp morning walk. Maybe it was being pregnant, or maybe just being a mum in general, but I suppose I felt a bit more wary than usual. It was cold and I was becoming more rotund and not at all streamlined enough to do a dive and rescue mission should the need arise. (I have a habit of over-thinking.)  

I remember feeling glad my two monsters were safely at school instead of down by the river with me. Little boys are particularly efficient at getting themselves into sticky situations, Dill and his sticky situation came to me that morning.

The real clincher for me though wasn’t about the awful conclusion of what happened to Dill at the river, but the fallout of his sister Alex’s role in what happened that day. Anyone could make the same mistake Alex did but she got caught out. To be responsible for the death of a loved one would be absolutely horrific, so guilt quickly became Alex’s main source of conflict. 

Once the initial bang of Dill’s fate was down on paper though, the other story threads all seemed to ripple out from there. The idea that a momentary lapse or misjudgement can go on to have such huge consequences is a running theme in Letting You Go, with secrets, misunderstandings and a lack of communication exacerbating the poor Foster family’s problems.   

What were the challenges (literary, research, psychological and logistical) in bringing the book to life?

My last book A Part Of Me involved a lot of research because the storyline dealt with the process of adoption, plus one of the main characters in there was also an amputee so it was important to get all of the details around those issues as accurate as possible. The only downside to that is it takes a reeeally long time! 

Without sounding like a lazy toad, I really wanted Letting You Go to be an emotionally-led novel so research wasn’t such a huge undertaking with this storyline. This was an absolute Godsend because I wrote the majority of the book around my newborn son. (Which was bloody hard work, by the way.)

Writing any book takes a lot of hard graft, but this one was quite a slog because after giving myself a couple of months off, Jesse was just eight weeks old when I slipped back into my writing routine. 

I say ‘routine’, but at the time it felt more like an endurance mission. I’d get a little writing done in the daytime but I always find it hard to concentrate then anyway. There are too many distractions with phones and people, and then an utterly mesmerising new baby arrived in the house and it all got a bit mental. 

I spent a lot of time just looking at him in the first few months. Then the school run would fly around and I’d want to spend time with my bigger two, Rad and Loch, until their bedtime. 

But you can’t put it off forever and despite my publishers being amazingly flexible, I had to knuckle down eventually. There were quite a few months of staying up writing into the early hours, getting up to breastfeed Jesse a few hours after I’d gone to sleep and then getting up for the school run a couple of hours later. You have to be pretty diehard to write books sometimes. 

The main literary hurdles I had to deal with in writing Letting You Go though were probably knitting together all of the misunderstandings and crossed wires that are integral to the story. This was the first time I’d really thought about keeping critical truths away from the reader, and then I also had several characters who all had their own misconceptions about the same key situations in the book too, so it was quite challenging at times to try and balance out what information to share with which characters without giving too much away to either them or the reader. Not easy with baby brain, I can tell you! But I think it was exactly those dynamics between the characters, the way they all read situations and saw each other so differently that (hopefully) brought their story to life.

   

What was the timeline from spark to publication, and what were the significant highlights along the way?

The spark came in February last year, I think… and the first draft went off a little later than planned twelve months later. We managed to have the manuscript chopped down (I’m a habitual waffler… there was a lot of chopping involved) tidied up and heading towards print-worthiness by around May time. I think the publishers needed the following four months to correct all of my spelling errors before Letting You Go’s publication on September 10th, woohoo! (I woohoo almost as much as I waffle, sorry.) 

Now I’m three books in, I can definitely say that for me the major highlights always seem to come in the same places. The first feeling that you’re onto something with your plot idea is nothing short of epic. It’s the thrill that makes you forget how strung out the last book had you and tricks you into wanting to do it all again. A bit like snogging and giving birth, if you catch my drift. Apparently we forget the pain of childbirth. Writing books is a lot like that. Hurts like hell but worth it in the end.

Then there’s also the first point in your writing when a character takes you off course and does something you hadn’t foreseen, and you realise that it’s a sort of phenomenon that can only come about once you’ve breathed enough heart and soul into them. Also pretty epic!

But it’s the last few miles that really bring the most reward. To get to the finish line - not the part where everything’s polished, just the first draft completed – and see the hundreds of pages you’ve written knowing the hours it’s all taken, the sleeplessness, and time missed with the kids. It’s a massively rewarding experience. It has to be!

But after all that, the ultimate is seeing the novel positively reviewed. Whether that’s flicking through Hello or Heat or stumbling across it as a recommended read in one of the national papers, it’s all beyond magic. It always floors me when a perfect stranger takes the time to tell me on my Facebook or Twitter feed that they took something good away from reading my characters’ stories. Those moments are all kinds of crazy-ace.    

What do you want readers to take away from reading Letting You Go?

Every one of the main characters in this book would have probably done things differently if they’d had their time again. It’s not a story where it all works out seamlessly in the end and everyone’s a better person for it, but they are more open and honest. Letting You Go is about a family dealing with the kinks in its past and the fight to find smoother ground the other side of all that, even after the landscape of that family has changed irrevocably. 

The people we love most can be really hard work at times, I know Knighty would tell you I’m a total nightmare to be married to, but there’s nothing more precious than the people around us. We should be kinder to each other while we have the chance, because life is short and none of us get it right all the time. 

What is your next project?

Well, my other job today if I can get Jesse to snooze for long enough is to finally get around to typing up all of my plot ideas and whizz them off for my agent to have a nosey at. I’m extremely grateful after Harlequin/Harper Collins recently offered me a book deal for two more titles! Which is amazing! Obviously I nearly yanked their arms off. 

I’m really excited about book four because I’m hoping to take a slightly darker direction with this one. There are a few unsavoury characters causing all sorts of unpleasantness with social media providing a pretty toxic platform for revenge and jealousy to play out in the lives of my three female leads. So I’m off! Junior’s still out cold so I should get started! 

Thanks so much for letting me gas on, hope you’re still awake!

Anouska x

Letting You Go by Anouska Knight is out now (Mira, £7.99)