Review and author interview of The Separation by Dinah Jefferies

Publisher: Penguin Viking (UK)
Publication Date:  May 1st 2014
Pages: 400
Source: Publisher for review/Netgalley

Malaya 1955; Lydia Cartwright returns to her home and find her husband Alecand her two daughters Emma and Fleur missing. She has no clue of the fact that Alec has left all of a sudden with them on a ship to back to England. In panic, she tries to find out what happened, but is lost without any trace, and this is the start for her of a dangerous journey through the jungle of Malaya, in the middle of the Malayan Emergency period, a time of political unrest. On the ship and once in England, Emma and Fleur don't understand why they left and why their father isn't answering any of their questions. Later on, he is the one that tells them their mother is missing and is presumed dead.

She finds some kind of help in the person of Jack, who was her secret ''lover'' during her marriage with Alec, which wasn't the most happy marriages of all. Back in England, things go worse for Emma. She is sexuallly abused by an uncle and in blind panic and fear she almost kills him. When her father and his new girlfriend learn about this, she is scared to tell the truth and is send to a horrible strict boarding school. Both Lydia and the children are searching for eachother, wondering both if they see each other back again, altough both are told the other is dead. The question is ofcourse if this will happend in the end..

Wow, it doesn't happen many times that a book almost moves me so much But The Separation certainly did! The plot is full of twist and turns and has a thrilling ending, as a reader you have no clue at all what is going to happen next. The story is alternating in chapters between Lydia's and Emma's point of view. In the start, I felt for Lydia because it seems that Alec is ''the bad guy'' at first, but it really made me second guess Lydia at the point where she met again with her secret lover Jack. That really made me think that many bad things must have happened in her marriage with Alec. Emma is maybe the biggest ''victim'' of the whole situation. As a child, Emma and Fleur are powerless to change what is happening when Alec takes them back to England. Emma leaves a letter for Lydia, but even that Alec secretly takes away. This is a story of a marriage gone terribly wrong, resulting in a a multiple fight-separation that is fought out in a scary silence between the two parents, while the children are separated from their mother and don't even know if their father is telling them the truth about her, not knowing if they will ever see her again. Dinah Jefferies also portrayed very well the backdrop of the story. The story is set against The Emergency, a time of political uproar in Malaya, and you can feel the unrest in the country and feel the tropical heat between the lines. I highly recommend this gripping book!

I am very pleased to welcome author Dinah Jefferies on Marjolein Reads for a conversation about her book The Separation. Welcome Dinah!

In writing The Separation, where did you start? Where did you find inspiration for the characters and the story?
It’s not always clear what came first and what came after. I think the start came from an afternoon spent pouring over my mum’s photograph albums from Malaya in the 1950s. Those photos gave me a sense of the location and the period. I knew I wanted to write about loss, though not my own experience of losing my son, and so I came up with the idea of children who are missing and a mother’s desperate journey as she tries to find them. At that point it became crystal clear that the central theme would be about the unbreakable bond between a mother and her children.

You were born in Malaya, how many of your own experiences are in the story of The Separation?
I think my love for the country and the first (almost) nine years of my life threads through the novel. The waxwork museum that Emma goes in to is straight out of my own experience, as is the journey home on the ship. But it’s less about specific experiences and more about the feeling of being over there, and then the shock of coming to England in midwinter and the experience of not belonging. Setting the book in Malaya, when all the systems of communication had been destroyed, first by the Japanese in World War Two, but also during the Emergency, meant that a search for missing children would be incredibly difficult.

What were the challenges (literary, research, psychological and logistical) in bringing the book to life?
The biggest challenge was deciding on the time frame and the structure of the novel – both important elements to have firmly in place. My original idea changed considerably as I wrote, and I was faced with rethinking my plan half way through. The research was  easy, but I had to work on making the two main characters sound different. It is dual narrative and Lydia, the mother, is written in the third person and Emma, the daughter, in the first person. I had to get across the idea of Lydia’s desperate search, but also show how she learns about herself and becomes a more independent person. For Emma it was all about creating a storyline that explored her loss of innocence so that it became something of a coming-of-age story.

What was the timeline from spark to publication, and what were the significant highlights along the way?
It was extensive. With a first novel you have so much time compared to subsequent novels, because once you have a publisher you’re working to deadlines. Also I read up on the Malayan Emergency ages before I wrote the book, but from the point I started writing it to publication took about three and a half years. Penguin bought The Separation in September 2012, so the wait has been long, which is why I was able to get on with Book two and finish it quickly. The biggest highlights include the day I got my agent - fabulous moment - and of course the day I heard that Penguin had bought it along with four other countries. Heady stuff!

What do you want people to take away from reading The Separation? 
I hope people will have enjoyed a fast-paced rollercoaster of a novel with plenty of heart-stopping moments and intense emotion. The book is about love, all kinds of love, and it is about loss. I’d also like people to have a picture of what it was like for women in the 1950s. For example your husband had to give his permission if you wanted a bank account in your own name. Everything has changed so much and women didn’t have the choices they do now. I also hope people enjoy the sense of being back in 1950s and that they enjoy being transported to the heat, sounds and smells of the tropics. 

What is your next project?
Well my second book The Tea Planter’s Wife will be published By Penguin and internationally in May 2015. It’s set in Ceylon between 1925 and 1934 on a misty tea plantation beside a lake in the hill country. Once again there is a central heart-twisting dilemma for the main character, Gwendolyn Hooper, who arrives in Ceylon as a fresh faced nineteen year old bride. She thinks her life will be idyllic, but is confronted with a mystery, and then her perfect life is further threatened when she is faced with a choice no mother should have to make. Book number three is still in the planning stage, but I am fascinated by periods where the social structure is changing and the impact that has on women and children. So the end of life being one way and all about to shift will also be an element of my third novel which will be about sibling jealousy and betrayal. So far all have been set in the East and that’s not about to change yet.