Carol Thatcher.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner. 2008.
Carol Thatcher, 55, strides into the lounge in Dublin’s Westbury Hotel full of purpose. Ordering a glass of white wine, she flops onto the sofa. Once thought of as the Thatcher who shunned the limelight, Carol seems set to get noticed. Wearing an oversized necklace, and colourful earrings, her hair is bright blond, and her voice loud.
Her plane was late, and time is short. So we get down to discussing her book, ‘A Swim- On Part in the Goldfish Bowl’ with little preamble. Telling of her life from childhood to the present, there is not much about her personal life.
“It’s not a biography,” snaps Carol. “It’s about living with a famous name. And no, I didn’t mind going to boarding school at nine. I think I rather liked it. I was jolly hockey sticks and I played rounder’s.”
Carol includes some fascinating letters from her mum; written during her time as PM, when Carol was abroad. Along with the political details of the day are domestic trivia; like comments about some earrings they were hoping to buy Carol for Christmas.
“I was thrilled with those letters. How lucky was I to have a political pen pal like that?”
There are some poignant sentiments, like her comment that Mark, who is now famous for all the wrong reasons, was always the star twin. But she swears she was never jealous. And her account of her late golf loving, gin swigging father Dennis, is tender and enlightening. So was she a daddy’s girl?
“No I wasn’t,” she says. “Because he was a mad keen rugby footballer and used to disappear every Saturday to do that. I was his biographer, so I got to know him fairly well doing that.”
I am determined to find the person beneath the bluster, but Carol has other ideas. Talking of Sarah Palin, and the undoubted troubles ahead for her children, she tellingly refers to every ‘speech’ she had made on her publicity tour.
She bats away my questions with glib remarks, and reverts, mid sentence, to saying how proud Ireland must be of Padraig Harrington; or how she is not going to fall into the middle aged trap of whingeing about her life.
Carol has been stung by the criticism in the English press, who suggested that her mention, in the book about her mother’s Alzheimer’s was crass. I’d been warned this was now a ‘taboo’ subject, but Carol brings it up.
“Look it, I wrote about it reasonably and with help from a friend of mine. And it was not a revelation. It was out there. And I talked about it when I came out of the Jungle in 2005. I won’t use the word, ‘unfair,’ but one of the Sunday papers hinted that I had dementia for not realising I’d said it before.” She sighs. “It was a no win situation, because if I’d left it out that would have been wrong.”
Has Carol had moments of closeness with her mother?
“I think, well it’s difficult now,” she says. “I’ve had to learn to be patient. She didn’t just have a good memory, she did Chemistry at Oxford, then Law and both of those are quite useful for training the mind. She could leap off the front bench, quote the rate of inflation and throw in a quote by Gladstone without looking at a note. All this, (her illness,) has taken a bit of getting used to.”
Carol, too studied law.
“My mother said both of us, me and Mark should have a qualification. By the time I’d done it I realised it was not for me. I was a solicitor then went to Australia to do journalism. If I had my time over again I would have the guts to have become a barrister, but I didn’t because she had.”
We don’t read of Carol’s relationships or friends. Was her personal life difficult in her goldfish bowl?
“No No!” she booms. “Half the people wanted to get to know me in expectation of being invited to Number 10 or Chequers.”
What of Thatcher’s detractors?
“Oh yes, people had a real go at me from taxi drivers to polarised parties. But it was 11 1.2 years, not my whole life. If someone got aggressive I would say, ‘I am a member of the Prime Minister’s family, not part of the cabinet. How would you feel if I slagged one of your parents on how they did their job?’
“That diffused the situation, but if they really hated one of her policies it didn’t stop them. I was the nearest they would get to have a real go at her. It gave them a feeling of, ‘I have just snookered the bitch.’”
Carol claims that her best ever achievement was being crowned queen of the jungle in the 2005 edition of I’m A Celebrity, get me out of here. ..But she’s written three books; made some TV documentaries and been a long term travel journalist.
When her mum was Prime Minster she never used her position to get good copy. In fact she often learned things from the papers that she had never known. How did it feel to read, for example, that her Dad had been married before?
“I can’t remember. I don’t think that shocked me,” she says. “I’ve learned quite a lot from the newspapers. Much more recently I was going to Miami on a Saturday morning and I turned on the telly really early and my mother had been carted off to hospital the night before. I didn’t know. I thought, ‘gawd, is this an obituary? Did she die?’
“And Mark as well.” She sighs. “It was ‘can we have your reaction to his being arrested? And it’s ‘what?’ But you know, you are in it, you are in it.”
Carol was away for the IRA’s Brighton Hotel bomb in 1984, that narrowly missed killing her parents.
“I was in Korea. By the time I got to know about it, when I rang to wish her a happy birthday and one of her staff said, ‘I hate to tell you this over the phone,’ I knew they were safe. Then I read in the paper that it was a Thatcher inspired assassination attempt, and I did think, ‘oh gawd, was in that bad.’
“Then I went home to Chequers and it was a lovely sunny day and she said, ‘this was a day I wasn’t meant to see.”
Could it be, I wonder, that Carol Thatcher has enjoyed her life in the goldfish bowl? Certainly it was useful for her victory in the jungle.
“My vicarious political upbringing was useful,” she says. “I did a lot of preparation. I wrote myself some emergency lines, because we were expected to be entertaining , and that is hard when you have cockroaches climbing up your leg.”
Was being in limelight as herself gratifying?
“Yes it was,” she says. “People were stopping me in the streets and on the tube. And ‘how is your mother’ was the second question. Not the first.”
A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl is published by Headline Review at 22.99 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
By Mary Ann Shaffer.
Published by Bloomsbury at 18.05 euro.
Reviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published by The Irish Examiner. 11th October 2008.
We’ve had books about book clubs; we’ve had books written in letter form. But never have I read a story that combines both so successfully as The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society.
It all starts in London in 1946. Juliet Ashton is on a book publicity tour. Clearly spirited, she chucks a teapot at a journalist who probes her love life too deeply. Her humorous book about wartime is selling well, but she can’t think of a follow up.
Then she gets a letter from a Dawsey Adams; a Guernsey farmer who bought a book by Charles Lamb that was once owned by Juliet. He read the book at The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society; a society formed one night after the islanders had enjoyed an illegal pig roast.
Soon Juliet starts hearing from other islanders, and she begins to build up a picture of life there under the Germans. There was death; hunger and deprivation, but one of the hardest things was not being allowed contact with the outside world. The Islanders did smuggle wirelesses; but had to feign ignorance. And it was very hard to pretend not to know that D Day had happened.
We meet the kindly though gawky Isolda; Eben, a fisherman who discovered a love of Shakespeare; Will Thrisbee an ironmonger, and creator of the potato peel pie; and the shy Dawsey.
All of them talk of Elizabeth; founder of the club, who was sent to Germany. They clearly all adored the brave young woman, and now share the care of the child she left behind.
Juliet also exchanges letters with her publisher, the irascible Sidney; with Sophie, her best friend and Sidney’s sister; and she exchanges notes with Mark; a glamorous American publisher who is doing his best to sweep her off her feet.
Mark is appalled when Juliet sets off for Guernsey. Why won’t she accept his offer of marriage? Could she be falling for someone who shares her love of Lamb?
This is a sumptuous tale that book lovers will surely adore. It’s a light read, yet informative; it’s charming yet meaningful. It’s sad, but it’s also vividly alive, and funny.
The author, an American whose own literary club inspired her writing, died earlier this year. Thankfully, she knew her only book would be published.
Copyright. Sue Leonard. 2008.
By Mary Ann Shaffer.
Published by Bloomsbury at 18.05 euro.
Reviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published by The Irish Examiner. 11th October 2008.
We’ve had books about book clubs; we’ve had books written in letter form. But never have I read a story that combines both so successfully as The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society.
It all starts in London in 1946. Juliet Ashton is on a book publicity tour. Clearly spirited, she chucks a teapot at a journalist who probes her love life too deeply. Her humorous book about wartime is selling well, but she can’t think of a follow up.
Then she gets a letter from a Dawsey Adams; a Guernsey farmer who bought a book by Charles Lamb that was once owned by Juliet. He read the book at The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society; a society formed one night after the islanders had enjoyed an illegal pig roast.
Soon Juliet starts hearing from other islanders, and she begins to build up a picture of life there under the Germans. There was death; hunger and deprivation, but one of the hardest things was not being allowed contact with the outside world. The Islanders did smuggle wirelesses; but had to feign ignorance. And it was very hard to pretend not to know that D Day had happened.
We meet the kindly though gawky Isolda; Eben, a fisherman who discovered a love of Shakespeare; Will Thrisbee an ironmonger, and creator of the potato peel pie; and the shy Dawsey.
All of them talk of Elizabeth; founder of the club, who was sent to Germany. They clearly all adored the brave young woman, and now share the care of the child she left behind.
Juliet also exchanges letters with her publisher, the irascible Sidney; with Sophie, her best friend and Sidney’s sister; and she exchanges notes with Mark; a glamorous American publisher who is doing his best to sweep her off her feet.
Mark is appalled when Juliet sets off for Guernsey. Why won’t she accept his offer of marriage? Could she be falling for someone who shares her love of Lamb?
This is a sumptuous tale that book lovers will surely adore. It’s a light read, yet informative; it’s charming yet meaningful. It’s sad, but it’s also vividly alive, and funny.
The author, an American whose own literary club inspired her writing, died earlier this year. Thankfully, she knew her only book would be published.
Copyright. Sue Leonard. 2008.
Zoe Heller.
Zoë Heller.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published by The Irish Examiner. 18th October 2008.
Zoë Heller has reviews on her mind. They’re coming in at the rate of one or two a day, and they have been, mostly, excellent. But it niggles her that many reviewers haven’t understood the message of her third novel, The Believers. Many have said that the novel is a satire on 1960’s idealism.
“I never intended it as that,” she says, feigning horror.
It bugs her too, that the theme of her new reviews, is that Zoë now specialises in unlikeable characters.
“Critics have complained that there is no one to love in this book. I’m torn between wanting to defend my characters, by saying, ‘well, they have crosses to bear;’ and asking them when they started going into fiction with the expectation of finding likeable people.”
When Zoë has quoted a few more reviews, using them to illustrate her answers to every single question; I ask her, does she mind terribly what they say?
“Certainly not as much as I used to. I am less likely to be felled by a bad one; but I am very aware now of people reading the book in ways that I didn’t intend.”
A former journalist Zoë wrote a high profile girl about town column for years. It was racy, and highly personal. So when she tells me that fiction is more exposing than journalism, I am somewhat sceptical.
“The columns were, obviously, saying things about my real life,” she concedes, “but the truth is that was a persona. That ‘naughty knickers Heller’ moniker was not really me, and it was a while before I caught on that it was regarded that way. And of course it is bad form and boring to say, ‘no I am much more serious than that.’
Zoë punctuates her talk with laughter. It’s a rich, husky sound. She’s appalled when I tell her it’s a smoker’s laugh, and admits she has a pretty heavy habit.
Her first novel, Everything You Know, was well reviewed in America; but was slated by some English critics. So being Booker shortlisted for her second, Notes on a Scandal, came as a relief. The movie version of the book detailing an affair between a married teacher and her teenage pupil, won Zoë further acclaim and fame. Was such success difficult to follow?
“Not in the writing of it,” she says. “Because in order to write you have to shut out the world and other people’s expectations. And if I was trying to write a super successful follow up, I would not have taken on the particular set of subjects that I did. Those are not guaranteed best seller.”
The Believers is a wonderful novel with huge scope. Set in New York, it’s about a dysfunctional family on the cusp of change. Joel Litvinoff, a high profile radical lawyer suffers a stroke and falls into a coma. His English wife of 40 years, Audrey, struggling to cope, learns a secret that sends her beliefs in Joel into freefall.
Her children have problems of their own. Rosa is exploring Orthodox Judaism, and though she’s appalled by its subjugation of women, she’s considering practising a Torah- observant life. Karla’s marriage becomes increasingly strained, and as for Lenny; Audrey’s adopted son; he’s back on drugs.
What was the spark?
“I wanted to write a larger book about a family, and I wanted to write about lefties,” she says. “I read once about scientists who were trying to locate the belief gene. A gene that would predispose you to being a believer into something, be it Catholicism or Communism. I have often observed in life people who seem hardwired. They take on a belief and they stick to their conviction at all costs; in spite of any contradictorily evidence.
“The classic example is communists who went ‘la la la’ with their fingers in their ears when Uncle Joe turned out to be not too savoury a character, but it can apply to beliefs you might have about yourself too. Take Karla. She has always been the dutiful daughter, and had been told from a young age what defined her limits.”
Such ‘type casting’ gave Karla an abysmal sense of self. This is in stark contrast to Lenny’s girlfriend Tanya, who has the hyper-inflated self esteem too often seen in today’s children. Zoë now 43, has two young daughters. Does she worry, ever, about striking the right balance with them?
“That’s a great question,” she says, playing for time. “And yes, I do struggle with that. My mother had tough standards and expected us to do well academically. In the last 25 years parents are much more inclined to tell their children they are special in their own way, and can make all their dreams come true. And it is all a bit soppy and less exacting. My husband,” (the screenwriter Larry Konner,) “is more likely to tell them they’re fabulous; and I am more likely to say, ‘that is all right, but I know you can do better.”
Audrey, in the book, is strident, opinionated, and a terrible mother.
“She’s funny too,” says Zoë. “If not, exactly, representative of her generation, she has some of their problems. She grew up as feminism was dawning. Those women had a tough time because their expectations were much higher, but the means to achieve them was stuck in the 1950’s.
“One of the reviews said ‘it is a shame that the lovely charismatic Joel leaves the picture so soon and we are left with the old bag Audrey.’ That is ironic, because that is precisely the response Audrey has dealt with all her life. She was seen as the unsung handmaiden to the great man.”
I compliment Zoë on the opening to the book; where, back in the 1960’s in London, we see Audrey as an outsider at a party. As she stands at the window, observing Joel, we get an insightful look at how she ticks.
“I can’t tell you how many times I wrote and rewrote that paragraph,” she says. “People have said it was a strange place to start a novel, when I then leap to 2002, but I felt it was important to present how their relationship started; and how they got each other wrong from the start.”
Born and brought up in London, Zoë lived in new York for years. But last year she and Larry decided to rent out their house there, to escape the harsh winters.
“It suddenly occurred to us, that as writers, we can live wherever we like. We’ve been living on a very small island in the Caribbean, and will do so for another year. And it’s a cheap choice,” she says.
As for the domestic life, that, she says, has freed her.
“When I was leading a single rather rackety life I got to bed at all sort of odd hours and never had a routine. When you have only the hours that your children are at school, it concentrates the mind. And I don’t spend all that physical energy thinking about my love life and who I will end up with anymore.”
Larry is 16 years older, but that, she says, is all positive.
“It works for any number of reasons. For one thing it gives you a false sense of youth,” she says, with a burst of that smoker’s laugh. “Even as you descend into grim and wrinkly old age you are still the young cutie.”
The Believers by Zoë Heller is published by Fig Tree at 14.99 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published by The Irish Examiner. 18th October 2008.
Zoë Heller has reviews on her mind. They’re coming in at the rate of one or two a day, and they have been, mostly, excellent. But it niggles her that many reviewers haven’t understood the message of her third novel, The Believers. Many have said that the novel is a satire on 1960’s idealism.
“I never intended it as that,” she says, feigning horror.
It bugs her too, that the theme of her new reviews, is that Zoë now specialises in unlikeable characters.
“Critics have complained that there is no one to love in this book. I’m torn between wanting to defend my characters, by saying, ‘well, they have crosses to bear;’ and asking them when they started going into fiction with the expectation of finding likeable people.”
When Zoë has quoted a few more reviews, using them to illustrate her answers to every single question; I ask her, does she mind terribly what they say?
“Certainly not as much as I used to. I am less likely to be felled by a bad one; but I am very aware now of people reading the book in ways that I didn’t intend.”
A former journalist Zoë wrote a high profile girl about town column for years. It was racy, and highly personal. So when she tells me that fiction is more exposing than journalism, I am somewhat sceptical.
“The columns were, obviously, saying things about my real life,” she concedes, “but the truth is that was a persona. That ‘naughty knickers Heller’ moniker was not really me, and it was a while before I caught on that it was regarded that way. And of course it is bad form and boring to say, ‘no I am much more serious than that.’
Zoë punctuates her talk with laughter. It’s a rich, husky sound. She’s appalled when I tell her it’s a smoker’s laugh, and admits she has a pretty heavy habit.
Her first novel, Everything You Know, was well reviewed in America; but was slated by some English critics. So being Booker shortlisted for her second, Notes on a Scandal, came as a relief. The movie version of the book detailing an affair between a married teacher and her teenage pupil, won Zoë further acclaim and fame. Was such success difficult to follow?
“Not in the writing of it,” she says. “Because in order to write you have to shut out the world and other people’s expectations. And if I was trying to write a super successful follow up, I would not have taken on the particular set of subjects that I did. Those are not guaranteed best seller.”
The Believers is a wonderful novel with huge scope. Set in New York, it’s about a dysfunctional family on the cusp of change. Joel Litvinoff, a high profile radical lawyer suffers a stroke and falls into a coma. His English wife of 40 years, Audrey, struggling to cope, learns a secret that sends her beliefs in Joel into freefall.
Her children have problems of their own. Rosa is exploring Orthodox Judaism, and though she’s appalled by its subjugation of women, she’s considering practising a Torah- observant life. Karla’s marriage becomes increasingly strained, and as for Lenny; Audrey’s adopted son; he’s back on drugs.
What was the spark?
“I wanted to write a larger book about a family, and I wanted to write about lefties,” she says. “I read once about scientists who were trying to locate the belief gene. A gene that would predispose you to being a believer into something, be it Catholicism or Communism. I have often observed in life people who seem hardwired. They take on a belief and they stick to their conviction at all costs; in spite of any contradictorily evidence.
“The classic example is communists who went ‘la la la’ with their fingers in their ears when Uncle Joe turned out to be not too savoury a character, but it can apply to beliefs you might have about yourself too. Take Karla. She has always been the dutiful daughter, and had been told from a young age what defined her limits.”
Such ‘type casting’ gave Karla an abysmal sense of self. This is in stark contrast to Lenny’s girlfriend Tanya, who has the hyper-inflated self esteem too often seen in today’s children. Zoë now 43, has two young daughters. Does she worry, ever, about striking the right balance with them?
“That’s a great question,” she says, playing for time. “And yes, I do struggle with that. My mother had tough standards and expected us to do well academically. In the last 25 years parents are much more inclined to tell their children they are special in their own way, and can make all their dreams come true. And it is all a bit soppy and less exacting. My husband,” (the screenwriter Larry Konner,) “is more likely to tell them they’re fabulous; and I am more likely to say, ‘that is all right, but I know you can do better.”
Audrey, in the book, is strident, opinionated, and a terrible mother.
“She’s funny too,” says Zoë. “If not, exactly, representative of her generation, she has some of their problems. She grew up as feminism was dawning. Those women had a tough time because their expectations were much higher, but the means to achieve them was stuck in the 1950’s.
“One of the reviews said ‘it is a shame that the lovely charismatic Joel leaves the picture so soon and we are left with the old bag Audrey.’ That is ironic, because that is precisely the response Audrey has dealt with all her life. She was seen as the unsung handmaiden to the great man.”
I compliment Zoë on the opening to the book; where, back in the 1960’s in London, we see Audrey as an outsider at a party. As she stands at the window, observing Joel, we get an insightful look at how she ticks.
“I can’t tell you how many times I wrote and rewrote that paragraph,” she says. “People have said it was a strange place to start a novel, when I then leap to 2002, but I felt it was important to present how their relationship started; and how they got each other wrong from the start.”
Born and brought up in London, Zoë lived in new York for years. But last year she and Larry decided to rent out their house there, to escape the harsh winters.
“It suddenly occurred to us, that as writers, we can live wherever we like. We’ve been living on a very small island in the Caribbean, and will do so for another year. And it’s a cheap choice,” she says.
As for the domestic life, that, she says, has freed her.
“When I was leading a single rather rackety life I got to bed at all sort of odd hours and never had a routine. When you have only the hours that your children are at school, it concentrates the mind. And I don’t spend all that physical energy thinking about my love life and who I will end up with anymore.”
Larry is 16 years older, but that, she says, is all positive.
“It works for any number of reasons. For one thing it gives you a false sense of youth,” she says, with a burst of that smoker’s laugh. “Even as you descend into grim and wrinkly old age you are still the young cutie.”
The Believers by Zoë Heller is published by Fig Tree at 14.99 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
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