Richmond author Anne Sebba has published a fascinating account of the lives of women in occupied Paris. This month she is taking questions at Kew
I love talking about my books. Unsurprising, you may think: surely every author likes discussing subjects close to their heart that they have spent years obsessing about?
No! In fact, many writers prefer the solitude of thinking and hate sharing with an audience their inner workings and revealing their true inspiration.
Not I!
For me, the talks are the reward for all those years spent alone researching in dark libraries and sitting at a desk trying to produce fluent prose. I feel that I have finally been freed from my cage; that giving a talk is just another form of communication with the power to complement the writing.
And then, at the end of every talk, there is question time. Some authors complain that this is always so predictable.
“I’m asked about my routine,” they moan. “Where I work, what hours I work, whether I write in longhand first.”
Until the publication of my latest book, about women in wartime Paris, I might even, just occasionally, have agreed.
But this time it is different. This time the questions are often about particular individuals. Did I come across a woman – let us call her Brigitte – who was in Paris until 1941 but then fled? Or have I written about, shall we say, ‘Jean-Francois Maquisard’ who, my questioner is convinced, sheltered a group of Jewish acrobats/dancers/lawyers?
Sadly, I probably cannot help them. But I love hearing the extraordinary, individual stories that come with the questions, including some from those who want proof that their parents did the right thing. Last week I had a letter from a man who told me that his father and uncle had been policemen in wartime Paris. While he understood perfectly well what they had to do, he hoped that they had not taken part in any round-ups of Jews. Could I perhaps confirm that?
Of course I could not.
People who stand up and make statements can be the bane of literary festivals – so much so that the organiser will often ask the audience in advance to limit themselves to questions. I have never understood the logic behind this and now, with my latest book, even less so. Some of the most interesting Q and As have been when people have come specifically to share their experiences.
Last month I was speaking in Devon and a woman was swiftly up on her feet the moment the roving mikes went a-roving. She began somewhat shakily – nervous, I assumed. But no, that wasn’t it. She wanted to tell me – and in so doing her voice went from a slight catch to a total choke – that after reading my book she had had a DNA test, as she was convinced that her grandmother was Jewish. The test proved positive. This woman now realised, she said tearfully, that her grandmother too would have shared the fate of so many of ‘my’ Parisiennes.
It was a deeply moving testimony which left the audience stunned. Luckily someone else picked up the baton and there followed a lively exchange about Nazi policy in Paris and the extent to which most French had, or had not, tried to resist.
With French speaking audiences, I am often asked what right I feel that I – an Englishwoman who did not endure any kind of occupation – have to tell the story of those who did. Or else they want to know how I myself would have reacted. It is not an easy one to answer: how on earth can one know with certainty?
Recently, while staying in a small French village near the Loire, I was given lots of stories about life under occupation in the countryside. Yes, they had had enough food, unlike many in Paris and other cities. But living in such proximity to the German masters meant that everyone knew what everyone else was up to. Even today, 70 years on from the end of the War, people still remember.
Interestingly, these villagers felt that my nationality was an advantage, not a handicap, in tackling this subject, as I could be seen as more neutral and objective. If a French woman had tried to ask the same questions, her interviewees would always have been thinking: ‘What is her back story? What did she really do during the war?’
All of this is unique to Les Parisiennes. But with all my books, this one included, there is one question I am always asked: where do I get my ideas for new subjects?
Well, some do come while I’m lying in the bath or walking the dog. Sometimes, however, they emerge from the questions people ask at festivals, when suddenly it seems that a particular subject is the one everybody is talking about.
So, the message is, please go on asking – however banal you think your questions are. Authors like me love nothing more than an excuse to talk and talk, and then go on talking, about our work!
Anne Sebba is the author of Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s (Orion, £9.99). She discusses the work on December 13 at 7.30pm at St Anne’s Church Hall, Kew Green. For tickets: kewi.org.uk/programme
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