gardener
Thank you so much for the book which I have enjoyed reading ..bringing back memories of life in the sixties and seventies .
I've been looking at Joanna's website .. It's really interesting.
Even the photographs of the printing process !
It was good to hear Paula Wilcox doing the audio version. She is brilliant.
I too loved " Man about the House ".
Joanna ....you mention a presentation you did, so I would like to ask these questions.......
1. How did your experience in psychiatry inspire the novel ?
2. Why was writing this story so important to you ?
Looking forward to your next book !
Psychiatry definitely inspired me, because of the patients I meet who, like Walter, live on the edge of society and are only generally noticed when something goes wrong. Also, taking a history in psychiatry usually requires me to look at non-verbal clues – the patient may be too afraid or too ashamed to explain how they’re really feeling, so I have to search for other evidence to make a diagnosis. This is very much like introducing a character to a reader – psychiatry is all about showing not telling! To answer your second question, telling the story was important to me because I feel people like Walter (and the patients I meet), are very rarely heard. They all have a narrative, a story to tell about how they came to be in the place they are, and I wanted to explain that in a novel. I strongly believe we all have a little unbelonging in us, it’s just that some people are better at hiding it than others!