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BIO
"I was born and grew up in Washington, DC. After getting a BA in English from
Oberlin College (Ohio), I moved to London, England in 1984. I intended to stay 6 months;
I'm still here.
"As a kid I'd often said I wanted to be a writer because I loved books and
wanted to be associated with them. I wrote the odd story in high school, but it was only
in my twenties that I started writing 'real' stories, at night and on weekends.
Sometimes I wrote a story in a couple evenings; other times it took me a whole year to
complete one.
"Once I took a night class in creative writing, and a story I'd written for it
was published in a London-based magazine called Fiction. I was thrilled, even though the
magazine folded 4 months later.
I worked as a reference book editor for several years until 1993 when I left my job and
did a year-long MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich
(England). My tutors were the English novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain. For the
first time in my life I was expected to write every day, and I found liked it. I also
finally had an idea I considered 'big' enough to fill a novel. I began THE
VIRGIN BLUE during that year, and continued it once the course was over, juggling
writing with freelance editing.
"An agent is essential to getting published. I found my agent Jonny Geller through
dumb luck and good timing. A friend from the MA course had just signed on with him and I
sent my manuscript of THE VIRGIN BLUE mentioning my friend's name. Jonny was
just starting as an agent and needed me as much as I needed him. Since then he's
become a highly respected agent in the UK and I've gone along for the
ride."
PAST INTERVIEW
October 19, 2001
Tracy Chevalier's debut novel, GIRL WITH PEARL EARRING, caused a literary sensation
and topped bestseller lists. Not one to fear the sophomore slump, Chevalier is back with
FALLEN ANGELS, a novel set in Edwardian England. Bookreporter.com's Jennifer Abbots
chatted with Chevalier about her penchant for historical fiction, multiple narrators and
the Victorian death fetish.
TBR: In GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, you explore the world of 17th century Holland. In
your latest book, FALLING ANGELS, you write about Edwardian England. Why do you choose to
set your novels in the past? Is there something about the genre of historical fiction that
appeals to you? Are those two eras particularly interesting to you?
TC: I prefer to write about the past because I feel I have more perspective on it
than I do on the present. Frankly I do not understand these times we live in, and would
feel peculiar trying to write about my world when I'm in the middle of it.
TBR: There are several distinct narrative voices in FALLING ANGELS. The novel seems to
be an amalgam of the journals kept by the main characters. How did you decide to write the
novel in that style, rather than as a straight story with one narrator? Do you find that
one of the voices is truer to your own?
TC: In the first draft I tried writing primarily in third person looking over the
shoulder of the young girl Maude Coleman. But that went down like a lead balloon, and I
decided that it was a story that needed many perspectives. There are children, adults,
servants, all with very different understandings of the world, and by allowing them their
voices a more complex picture emerges. I suppose Maude's voice is truer to my own than any
of the others.
TBR: Griet, the heroine of GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, was very much an
"outsider" character. In FALLING ANGELS both Kitty Coleman, an
upper-middle-class wife and mother, and Simon Field, a poor gravedigger's son, are
"outsiders." Do you feel drawn to marginal characters? Do you see being an
"outsider" as more of a mental state than a political or class state?
TC: I am drawn to outsiders, perhaps because I have chosen to be one myself --- I
am an American living in England. I think an "outsider" is almost always a
mental state, often going hand in hand with a political or class state.
TBR: FALLING ANGELS is filled with arcane references and minutiae about Edwardian
England. How did you do your research? Do you think the novel will be of interest to
people who know nothing about the era?
TC: I read a lot, but most importantly I spent a lot of time in Highgate
Cemetery, a famous Victorian cemetery in London (Karl Marx is buried there). I knew when I
took a tour of it that I wanted to set a novel there, so I started doing volunteer work,
gardening and giving tours. I pestered the gravediggers and manager there, and looked at
old records. Plus I found a great book from 1843 all about how a cemetery works. I think
my book will be of interest to anyone who likes looking around old cemeteries, or who has
looked at photos of people from the early 20th century and thought, "There's
something in their eyes that is like me."
TBR: At the center of the story is Kitty Coleman and her unhappy marriage. Why would a
woman as smart as she get married in the first place? And what about Richard Coleman? As a
character he is given short shrift --- at first readers are lead to believe he is a kind,
smart, gentle man and then he is presented as a villain. Why?
TC: Marriage was really the only option for someone like Kitty. We forget all too
easily how few choices women had until very recently. It wasn't like she could go out and
get a job --- that was just not what went on for someone of her class. As for Richard, I
didn't intend him to be viewed either as kind and gentle or a villain, and am surprised
you felt that way about him. He has a dissatisfied wife whom he doesn't understand. He's
frustrated and also narrow-minded; that does not mean he's a villain.
TBR: Why choose to tell the story through the eyes of Maude, Lavinia and Simon, three
young children? Did you find it hard to write in children's voices? Their words and
actions come off as stilted and inappropriate for their age to modern ears. Did you
specifically study Edwardian texts to find how to represent children of that time? Do you
really believe it would have been possible for three children from such different families
and class aspirations to have become close friends?
TC: Writing in children's voices is always hard. If you write the way kids really
think and sound you'd get pretty boring gobbledygook. So you have to pull off a little
trick --- you give them a little more voice and consciousness than they'd normally have,
and work on getting the reader to suspend disbelief, for the sake of the story. (Clearly I
didn't successfully suspend yours!)
We tend to baby our children these days. Victorian and Edwardian children did sound more
grown-up than kids now. Check out Daisy Ashford's book THE YOUNG VISITERS [sic], which she
wrote when she was just nine --- you will be amazed at how mature she sounds! I think in
reality Maude and Lavinia could have become good friends, but not so much with the
gravedigger Simon. In fact, I didn't quite intend that the girls are friends with him
exactly; it's more like they have a mutual fascination.
TBR: Why make death and graveyards central to the story? What do those themes reflect
about Edwardian society? How is death mixed up with other issues about the body and
sexuality for the characters in FALLING ANGELS? How is this different from the society you
portray in GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING?
TC: In this book I wanted to explore the change from Victorian to modern values,
gauged through the changing attitudes to death and mourning. I think the way societies
treat their dead says a lot about their social values. It thus made sense to set the book
primarily in the cemetery. The thing about cemeteries, though, is that they are more about
the living than about the dead. A lot of life goes on there, including sex!
TBR: What are you working on right now? How does your amazing success with GIRL WITH A
PEARL EARRING affect your current work and work habits?
TC: I'm working on a novel about some medieval tapestries that are in the Cluny Museum
in Paris, called the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. The success of GIRL has been great
but also eats into my work time. I have to block out time to get some work done; otherwise
I'd be flitting around doing this and that. I feel a little flitted out right now.
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