Authors Interviewing Characters: Robin Farrar Maass

Authors Interviewing Characters: Robin Farrar Maass

The Walled Garden is an academic mystery novel about an American grad student who comes to England to finish her doctoral dissertation about an English garden writer and soon finds herself on the trail of a decades-old mystery, in a fight to save the writer’s historic gardens, and in danger of falling for a hot Scot. Along the way, she discovers that her true home—and inheritance—are more incredible than anything she could ever have imagined.

Robin Farrar Maass interviews her character, Lucy Silver, at the Starbucks on Cornmarket Street in Oxford, about a month after her arrival in England.

RFM: Hi Lucy. Thanks so much for making time to talk to me.

LS: (looks slightly nervous) Sure.

RFM: I wanted to ask you about your growing up years.

LS: (looks defensive) Yes? Why are you so interested in my childhood?

RFM: I just wondered what it was like to grow up with your grandmother. She sounds like a lovely person. My grandmother died when I was eleven, and I still miss her. 

LS: (seems to relax a bit) She was the best. Despite everything, she gave me the most wonderful childhood. She had this amazing garden—I spent hours out there. There was a hedge of these delicate little apricot-pink roses that she called the Butterfly Border—she cleared a space in the middle for me and we called it my nest. (She smiles for the first time.) Sometimes she would make tiny scones and pink cakes so I could have tea parties with my dolls. I felt so safe there. It was . . . magical. 

RFM: Was she your mother’s mother or your father’s?

LS: (her smile disappears) My father’s. He was kind of a . . . difficult person, and I think she felt sort of responsible for me, because he wasn’t a very hands-on kind of dad.

RFM: Why not?

LS: (looks unhappy) Well, after my mother died—she had cancer—I guess he decided he couldn’t handle the responsibility of raising a daughter on his own. I remember him telling me when I was around nine that I’d be better off without him.

RFM: So . . . do you think you were?

LS: (bristles) No, of course not! I’d just lost my mother and I needed him . . . (She trails off.) But he left anyway. I’ve always wondered if it was because I reminded him too much of my mother.

RFM: That must have been very hard.

LS: It was. (She drops her voice.) For a long time, I thought it was my fault.

RFM: But you were just a child! 

LS: (shrugs her shoulders) Yeah, but you know how it is—when you’re a kid, you think that you caused it somehow and that means you have to make it better. Even though of course you can’t. 

RFM: I can see how you might think that. But then your grandmother stepped in . . .

LS: (looks up) I was so grateful. My grandmother and I liked a lot of the same things—reading, drawing, thinking. She taught me that it was okay to take my time over things. And then I went to Stanford, where there’s tons of pressure and everything is a gigantic rush all the time, and I forgot that for a while. But there’s something about being here [in England] that kind of brings it back to me. Grammy’s been gone three years now, which seems like a really long time and just yesterday, both at the same time.

RFM: I can understand that. What were the hardest times for you?

LS: Oh, dumb things, like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, because they reminded me that I wasn’t like other people. Sometimes—I feel bad saying this—but sometimes I even resented Grammy because I wished that she was young and beautiful like all the other moms. At the same time, I really did not want anyone feeling sorry for me—you know, poor little Lucy and all that. I know Grammy worried about me because I got a bit wild in high school with boys and stuff. But I always kept my grades up because I had this idea I wanted to go somewhere no one knew me or anything about my family, and start over.

RFM: So, how did you feel when your grandmother gave you this commission to right a wrong that was more than fifty years old?

LS: Well, she was so sick by then—she was dying, though of course I wouldn’t admit it to myself. Later, after she was . . . gone, I started to worry about this whole secret thing. (She stares out the window.) I feel bad saying it, but I even wondered if Grammy was completely . . . with it. And I have to admit I don’t know how I’m supposed to make something right that happened years before I was even born—especially when I don’t know what it is!

RFM: But you have letters from the writer, Elizabeth Blackspear, to your grandmother, right?

LS: (brightens slightly) Yes. I’m searching the archives for my grandmother’s letters to Elizabeth, but this annoying guy who’s the director there doesn’t like me for some reason and keeps trying to shut me down. (She lifts her chin.) But I’m a really good researcher, and if there’s anything there that will solve this mystery, I will find it. I doubt it’ll do anyone any good, but I made a promise to my grandmother, and I have to try. 

RFM: I’m sure your grandmother would be very proud of you. Thanks for talking with me—and good luck!

—

Robin Farrar Maass is a lifelong reader and writer who fell in love with England when she was twenty-two. She enjoys tending her messy wants-to-be-English garden, painting watercolors, and traveling. She lives in Redmond, Washington, with her husband and two highly opinionated Siamese cats. The Walled Garden is her first novel, and she’s already at work on her next novel set in England. Learn more at www.robinfmaass.com

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing