Finding Connections into Imaginary Worlds
Finding Connections into Imaginary Worlds
by Ella Carey
They say that one of the great pleasures behind reading, and writing, is the chance to escape into another world. But I have been contemplating this lately, and I often find that the magic lies in the connection between our lives, the real world we live in, and the story. For me, finding this relatability is what deepens my appreciation and love of a story. It helps me become deeply and emotionally involved. The connection between our lives and the fictional world acts like a gateway that allows us to experience and feel the story at a deeper level as it unfolds, turning the story into a metaphorical version of life.
Perhaps it is a matter of looking at a novel, and asking what it is really about? What is at its heart, what is it that we can’t see, and what feels both ethereal and profoundly strong in the story at the same time? I am reading Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and The Six now, and while this novel is set in the wild landscape of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1970s, with wonderful, nuanced characters, the emotion behind all of this is a seemingly hopeless love triangle and this is where the emotion of the story lies. No matter where the story is set, or how wildly different the characters’ lives might be to our own, this is the relatability of the story, the gateway, the human aspect, and the element that drives the emotion that is underpinning the characters’ lives.
The emotional gateway that leads me into writing my novels is often an old, abandoned house or building. I remember the first time I felt a tangible connection to the past in an old house in New Zealand when I was about nine years old and was travelling with my parents. Here was all at once this wonderful setting, resonant, rich with possibilities — elaborate golden clocks that ticked in the otherwise silent old rooms, intricate lacework draped over heavy velvet furniture, huge picture windows with sashes that opened out to a magnificent spreading lawn, and sepia photographs of people enjoying picnics in the gardens in silver frames on an old grand piano. The life that was imbued in the old house felt at once impossibly distant, and yet close at the same time. What were the stories behind the people who once lived here? And how different were their lives to mine?
Perhaps in finding the emotional connection that readers might discover in our books, we could look at the very first idea, theme, place, character, or situation that inspired us to write the story. My novels have been set in an apartment in Paris that was abandoned and shuttered for seventy years, a magnificent old Schloss in the former East Germany that overlooks a mirrorlike lake, but which now stands empty, still pockmarked with bullets from the Soviet invasion, and a merino sheep stud farm in Australia, whose haunting stillness and dark green paddocks clad with ghostly white gum trees once rang with the sounds of a whole village of shearers and stable hands and a fascinating family with a tragic past who owned a steamship on which they sailed to Europe regularly.
It was a no-brainer when my editor suggested setting a book in Tuscany. I have long been enchanted by Tuscany’s soft green landscape, her tall cypresses that stand like sentinels on gentle hilltops, and the honey coloured villages that tumble down into beguiling valleys below.
My emotional gateway to the world of An Italian Secret was the fictional Villa Rosa, just out of Cortona, but abandoned and empty now, a still life that had not been touched for decades when my contemporary character Annie arrives there with a pair of brass keys and a letter from her late father telling her she has inherited this piece of impossible magic, but she has no idea why.
For me, the book is about restoration at its heart, with the Villa Rosa being the metaphor for the characters, as slowly, things stir back to life. But it was the old house that was the gateway not only to Tuscany for this Australian writer, but also to the past, and to learning about the shocking events that happened in Italy during World War II.
I grew up in a country that has benefited hugely from waves of migration from Italy. We are surrounded here in Melbourne by wonderful Italian food, festivals and culture.
But I wonder how many of us think about the history behind this great migration out of Italy after the war. And it was that old Villa that opened the door not only to writing the story, but to developing a deep respect for the brave people who endured some of the most horrific situations in the Second World War. The Villa Rosa gently helped me unfold an entire cast of characters, set in a time when people made decisions that seem unthinkable to us now.
I find it interesting to consider what is at the heart of our books, and to discover the link from the familiar world we know, that draws us into a story, because often, this connection is a most powerful thing.
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Ella Carey is the international bestselling author of The Things We Don’t Say, Secret Shores, From a Paris Balcony, The House by the Lake, and Paris Time Capsule. Her books have been published in over fourteen languages, in twelve countries, and have been shortlisted for ARRA awards. A Francophile who has long been fascinated by secret histories set in Europe’s entrancing past, Ella has degrees in music, nineteenth-century women’s fiction, and modern European history. She lives in Melbourne with her two children and two Italian greyhounds who are constantly mistaken for whippets.
Ella loves to connect with her readers regularly through her facebook page and on her website.
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AN ITALIAN SECRET
Tuscany, 1944. Did she fight for the resistance or betray her people?
When the Nazis storm into northern Italy, Contessa Evelina Messina, the owner of the beautiful Villa Rosa, welcomes the Germans to her valley. In a dazzling rose silk dress, she entertains soldiers with priceless wine from her ancient cellars. Privately, she tells the townspeople this will keep the enemy at bay, but her disguise is so good, it is impossible to tell on which side her heart truly belongs…
Years later, American Annie Reynolds gazes up at the peach-coloured walls of the magnificent, empty house. Grieving deeply for her beloved father, Annie remembers his last words before he slipped away—he told her she was adopted and that the Villa Rosa was her birthright. Desperate for answers, Annie’s heart breaks when the locals tell her the Contessa had a child with a Nazi. She is devastated and ready to turn away from her dark past.
But everything changes when Annie uncovers a musty old diary from 1944 amongst the Contessa’s belongings. Pages have been meticulously cut out and Annie is sure these missing entries hold the clue to her past. As she frantically searches old papers, Annie sees how hard the Contessa worked to keep her people safe and wonders if the locals’ stories are wrong. Can Annie find the Contessa’s missing child, born at the end of the war? And will discovering the truth about what happened alter the course of her own life for good?
An utterly gripping, sweeping page-turner that will transport you to the olive groves of Tuscany. With a truly heartbreaking family secret from World War Two at its heart, fans of Kathryn Hughes, Fiona Valpy and Victoria Hislop will be enchanted.
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Category: On Writing
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