How Lockdown Life in 2020 inspired The Bad Neighbour 

How Lockdown Life in 2020 inspired The Bad Neighbour 

As awful and unsettling as it was at the time, my experience of living through the Covid-induced lockdowns had one positive outcome, as far as I’m concerned: it inspired my fifth book. Set in an English village in 2020 from the start of the first lockdown in England, The Bad Neighbour is centred on the relationships between three women who are neighbours. 

Along with the role of female friendship in overcoming adversity, I was interested in exploring the impact of the pandemic and the powerful forces for both good and bad that it seemed to unleash from within our psyches. 

Soon after the pandemic began – in parts of the United Kingdom at least – a surge in community-mindedness and aspirations to be a ‘good neighbor’ vied with underlying destructive traits such as envy and intolerance. Envy was expressed towards those with access to gardens from those who didn’t; there were disgruntled remarks towards people who didn’t leave a two-metre-gap when queueing from those who did. 

In those anxiety-riddled months of 2020, communities faced tensions and deep division over mask wearing, lockdown rule breaking and the Black Lives Matter movement. Exacerbated by the death of a teenager bullied on Instagram, concerns over negative consequences of social media became widespread. Meanwhile, many of us became dependent on Zoom meetings (such as the conflict-filled and very entertaining town council meeting featuring Jackie Weaver, which went viral). 

The Bad Neighbour was inspired by all of this, along with my experiences during the first lockdown while trapped (as it sometimes felt like!) at home for months on end with only my husband and dog for company, making do with disembodied, technologically-fraught sessions on Zoom instead of face-to-face interactions. 

Back then, struck by the surrealness of life, I wrote a poem, Lost Connection, about our newly fragmented world, referring to my unreliable wifi and the unease invoked at constantly seeing one’s face within a shifting square on a computer screen. (To my surprise, it received a second place in the Fish Lockdown Prize of that year). 

However, my own sense of isolation seemed minor compared with that described by friends who lived alone and had to ‘shield’, some of whom struggled with hearing loss or had even less technological ability than me. 

Although the Prime Minister encouraged people to support those of their neighbours who needed it, doing so in practice wasn’t always so straightforward. 

At the start of the national lockdown, resolving to help the vulnerable who had been advised to stay in their homes, I signed up to the national effort to deliver food and medicine only to find my intention stymied due to a local oversupply of helpers. 

While taking part in my local “Covid community group”, mainly via Whatsapp, alongside many kind deeds I witnessed conflicts over issues such as whether it would be within lockdown rules to have a (distanced) singing or exercise session in a quiet area within our set of streets. I had thought that this would be a good opportunity to help morale, given that the inhabitants of a street in central England had recently been shown on TV exercising to music outside their front gates. But others clearly didn’t!

Other events of that year had a big impact on me, such as discovering the very different views held about the world to my own ones (generally scientific, tolerant and left-leaning) held by some family members and friends regarding political views, how to deal with Covid, etc. There were instances of writers and others being held to account – or condemned, depending on one’s point of view – on social media. Witnessing the impact of collective action against an individual, often largely via Facebook, Twitter and the like, set me thinking about the repercussions of social transgression within a small, tightly knit community. 

At some point during the lockdowns, the idea came of a novel about two women effectively trapped due to lockdown by their mutual next-door neighbour, a woman they suspect of hiding horrific secrets. A hypocrite and social climber, she sets up a community support group to, on the face of it, help the vulnerable. But the endeavour goes horribly wrong… 

I kept the occasional surreal moments and an undercurrent of humour which emerged during the writing, partly to lighten the darker themes in the book but also to reflect that strange time we were all faced with, when our lives veered off into utterly expected directions. 

—

A Londoner with Irish heritage, Jennie Ensor writes daring, emotionally-charged psychological suspense and crime fiction. She lives with her husband and an Airedale terrier in London and the French Pyrenees; her other loves are reading, singing, sky watching, wild swimming, mountain cycling and hiking. Ms Ensor began her writing career as a freelance investigative journalist, often writing about people who do bad things. This theme has continued in her books. Her latest book The Bad Neighbour is set in an English village in 2020 at the start of lockdown. Two women suspect that their mutual neighbour has killed off her family and may be about to target them, too…

Social media links:

Website & blog: http://www.jennieensor.com
Crime Writers Association profile: https://thecwa.co.uk/find-an-author/ensor-jennie
Amazon: Amazon.co.uk: Jennie Ensor: Books, Biography, Blogs, Audiobooks, Kindle
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JennieEnsorAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jennie_Ensor @jennie_ensor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennieensor/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15511227.Jennie_Ensor

THE BAD NEIGHBOUR

In March 2020, the Covid pandemic hits the sleepy English village of Brampton. At the start of lockdown, local busybody Tara Sanderson sets up a community group to help vulnerable residents through the crisis. Elderly Elspeth Chambers, her longstanding neighbour and friend, accepts Tara’s offer to buy food and collect medicine for her.

But it isn’t long before neighbourliness and community spirit turn sour. Tensions arise when Tara becomes jealous of Elspeth’s emerging friendship with Ashley Kahn, a recent arrival in Wilton Close. Suspecting there is more to Tara’s hostility toward them than meets the eye, Ashley and Elspeth start to uncover their neighbour’s long-buried secrets…

BUY HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing