Precious Things (38 page)

It's been a sadness and frustration to me my whole adult life that my grandmother died when I was young. I never got the chance to ask her about what she went through, and how she continued to live and make a life for herself in Australia after everything she had experienced.

One thing I do know is that she travelled to Leicester Square in London directly after being released from the camp to see if she could identify her only child, a son, on the film reels they were showing there of orphaned and lost children. He was taken from her when he was three and, of course, a long time passed before they were reunited again – almost four years. When I was growing up, it was an off-limits subject I only really heard about in snatches.

This sense of loss and identity has always slightly disturbed and intrigued me, and I really wanted to explore it in
Precious Things.

Anna May Wong in the 1930s: an inspiration for the Zephyr chapter (image
courtesy of mptvimages.com)

The other story that is based on truth is the one of the twin sisters, Zephyr and Vera. A friend of mine had two great aunts who travelled to Malaya in the 1930s as dancers. Much of what I've written about the twins did happen to my friend's aunts, although their story had a sadder ending ... The similarities stop there, though – the twins in my novel are French-Vietnamese, and I have only imagined the detailed trauma of the events that passed between them.

I won't explain exactly what happens to the women in the novel … you'll have to read the story to find out!

Discovering the story

I first set out to write a novel that would explore the lives of women in different eras and the ways in which their circumstances depended so dramatically upon the times or culture they lived in. The twentieth century saw the emancipation of women and emergence of feminism, but not everything changed. Even in 2016, it's still difficult to have it all – children, a happy marriage, a successful career and an active social life – at least, not without jeopardising the other things we hold dear.

It didn't occur to me until I was nearing the end of the first draft that I had written a book that was very much about mothers and daughters, and the delicate relationship between them. I found myself writing myriad sorts of connections between mothers and daughters, playing out the tension and drawing on this theme. As a mother myself, it's a subject close to my own heart.

Another thing that didn't become apparent until a friend commented upon it was how many of my characters are outsiders – I think that emerged as a strong motif because it made it possible for some of my characters to have sharp observations about the world around them, and see things from a different perspective to those on the inside.

Yet more seeds of ideas for the novel came from conversations with friends, snippets of dialogue overheard in cafes, or a look between two people I witnessed and wondered about. They all fed into some of the broader ideas I've been mulling over for decades, mostly on a subconscious level, about how to behave and treat people, how families work or don't work, and knotty issues such as narcissism, sibling rivalry and infidelity. These are all larger themes within
Precious Things,
and the action is played out within full view of the coronet, always. It's seen a lot – more than a lifetime's worth of romances, betrayals and journeys – without being able to share its secrets.

Coming up with a title

Getting the title right is so important – it sets expectations for what the novel is about and has to encapsulate the story perfectly. For a long while the working title of
Precious Things
was
The Diamond Coronet
, but it felt too much like an old murder mystery by Agatha Christie – not that that would have been terrible, I love Agatha Christie!

One day I was brainstorming ideas with my friend Catherine, and I said, ‘It could even be something as simple as
Precious Things
, that's what it's about …' I think we both looked at each other then and knew it was right.

To me the ‘precious things' of the title are reiterated all throughout the book. Primarily it refers to the people in Maggie's life – her husband Tim, daughter Pearl and stepdaughter Stella – but also the idea of working out what those things really are. It's also about all the beautiful objects Maggie sells and collects as an auctioneer.

On the drawings in
Precious Things

An early artist's impression of the coronet, drawn by my friend Jessica Guthrie

I love using a variety of mediums, and after years of working in illustrated books it seemed hard to imagine publishing a book that wouldn't allow me to use at least some visual cues to get my message across.

Even in an age of digital publishing and e-readers, I still believe the book is a beautiful object people want to have and to hold. The publishers and I cooked up some ways we could incorporate images into the novel format, and I think it works a treat. When my dear friend Jessica Guthrie agreed to draw the beautiful illustrations which open some of the chapters (and the one shown here), everything seemed to come together perfectly.

With a novel there is traditionally a jacket image – either illustrated or photographic like the finished cover for
Precious Things
– and maybe even something extra inside, but it's unusual for it to also have illustrations. My book's a far cry from a graphic novel, but I think the marriage of words and pictures is a magical combination.
A Life in Frocks
, my memoir of fashion stories about my enduring love for clothes, did something similar.

Spreads from
A Life in Frocks: A memoir
, published by Murdoch Books in 2010 and designed by Zoe Sadokierski

Designing the cover image

Some cover inspirations

Six months or so before publication, my publisher asked me to send through a series of images and book covers I liked, along with the reasons why I thought they could apply to
Precious Things
. I sent through about fifteen covers in all, some with heavily stylised photographs and others with illustrations. She also asked me to put together a mood board about Maggie, so that the designer could draw influence from her and come up with an image we all felt comfortable with (the publisher, me, the sales and marketing teams, and the publicist).

For the mood board I used images I'd torn out of fashion magazines that I thought represented Maggie in her different guises: at work, at home, out with friends or on a night out with her husband. These tear sheets weren't meant to be taken literally. Maggie's not a model, she's more of an everywoman, but she is gorgeous in her way and the images were meant to give a sense of how I saw her. I then overlaid the mood board with some of the beaded, richly embroidered and quirky vintage pieces Maggie would collect (these were actually mine) and a postcard of a circus scene, which reflects her fascination with costumes and unusual or special pieces.

I loved doing this – it's quite fun and an unusual privilege to be asked to contribute to the design of your book. I realised I already had all the images I needed, collected in a folder which had accompanied me throughout the writing process. Whenever I had seen something that struck a chord, I'd put it in there for reference, along with articles that seemed to evoke the mood or setting I was looking for.

The funny part about the cover process is that you can provide all sorts of background ideas and images to designers, but it often happens that inspiration strikes them independently, and their final design is completely different to what you had envisaged – but so unexpected, extraordinary and right. That is the magic of what they do.

I'm absolutely thrilled with what the designers came up with. The moment I opened the file on my phone, I was certain – I loved it.

The journey's end

I think my most favourite element of
Precious Things
is that it does manage to traverse many different eras and experiences. Most historical fiction novels tend to focus on one or two time periods, but I simply knew that the coronet had to have a bigger story than that, and a much broader look at the history of women and their role in life.

At its core,
Precious Things
is about family, desire, and being compelled by history and love – themes that unite us all.

Overall, writing the novel was such an exciting process. At times I felt extraordinarily fortunate, with some of the chapters coming so easily it felt like complete wish fulfilment. Others were more like mining for and polishing up raw, hardened gems. Then came the tricky process of making it all fit together. Finding out what happened to some of my characters was a surprise to me too at times, as I let myself write without planning the narrative much at all.

I'm working on a second novel now – not a sequel, but one with many similar themes: families; women looking for love, direction and purpose; and history and fashion. I think I'll always weave my books around these themes to a lesser or greater degree because that's what I love, and because the question of ‘what am I going to wear today?' is such an enduring, constant preoccupation for many of us. But I'm writing the next novel in a much more planned, plotted way. It will be interesting to see which process worked better at the end of it!

Book two is also a mystery, but this time it's about why a rambling old mansion set in the English countryside has fallen into disrepair. The women of the household over time are its sparkling characters, and their stories will be woven together by a collection of fabulous vintage frocks and accessories which are stashed away up in the attic. The idea came to me from a combination of sources, as ideas often do – a BBC series on crumbling old manors and the poor aristocrats who can't manage to keep them afloat; strong female narratives with many generations of women like those in Isabel Allende's
The House of the Spirits
; and a
Vogue
article about what one woman wore at significant times of her life.

I know that I will always love fossicking about in market stalls and second-hand clothing stores; it's part of my makeup now, and the very fabric of my identity. And I'll always wonder about where my finds have come from.