Authors: Margaret Leroy

The Perfect Mother (37 page)

I write in bed—which, I’m convinced, is good for creativity, because you’re so much more relaxed than when you sit at a desk. Typically I’ll be surrounded by a sprawl of paper. I don’t mind a bit of untidiness around me—if things look too neat, it means there’s nothing going on. My filing system is a pot of coloured paper-clips.

“…I write in bed – which, I’m convinced, is good for creativity…”

What form the writing takes will depend on the stage of the book that I’ve reached. I start with lots of brainstorming, then I’ll put together quite a detailed plot: I can’t just head off into my story without knowing where I’m going. Once I’ve sketched out the plot, I try to get the whole story down very quickly, scarcely looking back at all. Then I’ll go through it lots of times, rewriting and developing. This is much the longest stage of writing a book for me and the part I really love. How well I work varies hugely and I try to have simpler tasks like research or typing lined up for those days when the writing doesn’t flow. But if it’s going well, I’m completely happy.

Lunch is fried rice and vegetables. I always cook the same thing: I’m hopeless at cooking, but my husband, thank goodness, is a brilliant cook, so we don’t starve. While I eat, I read, something I
can just dip into, maybe poetry; at the moment it might be Lavinia Greenlaw or Alice Oswald. Any work done after lunch is a bonus, and – perhaps because it’s marked the end of my working day for so long – I tend to switch off around the time that school ends, even when no-one needs picking up.

At the end of the afternoon, I see to the practical stuff-shopping, e-mails, housework. Fortunately I’m short-sighted so I don’t notice cobwebs. My inspiration for the practical side of life comes from J.K. Rowling, who was once asked how she managed to write while bringing up her daughter single-handed and said she just didn’t do any housework for four years. My husband makes our evening meal and afterwards I’ll probably watch television: after all that writing, I’m hungry for images. I love television and there have been so many marvellously addictive series in the past few years –
Prison Break, Invasion, The Wire.
Recently Izzie and I have had a blissful time watching all seven seasons of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“…My inspiration for the practical side of life comes from J.K. Rowling…”

MY TOP TEN BOOKS

A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula Le Guin

I always go back to the Earthsea books when life gets difficult, there’s something so healing about the slow, intricate rhythms of Ursula Le Guin’s prose.

The Siege
by Helen Dunmore

The siege of Leningrad, told from a female, domestic perspective. You really live this story when you read it – you feel the hunger and the cold.

The Mabinogion

Dream-like Welsh stories, written down in the Middle Ages, and full of strange transformations. I love the story of Blodeuedd, a beautiful girl who is conjured up from the flowers of the oak and the broom and the meadowsweet.

The English Patient
by Michael Ondaatje

It’s about a small group of people thrown together by war, worn down, somehow surviving. Ondaatje writes so lyrically about the desert and Renaissance angels and Tuscan gardens under rain.

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon

Musings and jottings and lots of lists from a court lady in tenth-century Japan. Her writing is intimate, sensuous and somehow very contemporary.

Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier

An iconic psychological thriller. I’ve read it lots of times, but at certain twists in the plot, my heart still goes racing off.

Housekeeping
by Marilynne Robinson

It’s the simplest story, about two girls and their elusive aunt, who reluctantly abandons her life as a drifter to bring them up. Perhaps the most wonderfully written book I’ve ever read.

The Bloody Chamber
by Angela Carter

Adult fairy tales –
sexy,
savage and gorgeous.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

This story of two wizards during the Napoleonic Wars is my favourite new book of recent years. When I got to the end – p. 782 – I went straight back to the beginning and read it all again.

The Mahabharata
by Jean-Claude Carrière

The script of the film directed by Peter Brook, based on stories from the Indian epic. It’s bloody but very beautiful. As one of the characters says as he starts to tell the story, “If you listen carefully, at the end you’ll be someone else.”

WE RECOMMEND

The Drowning Girl

If you enjoyed
The Perfect Mother,
we know you’ll love…

The No. 1 Bestseller

“She’s my daughter, but in some weird way
I feel she isn’t really my child.”

Young single mum Grace is drowning. Her little girl Sylvie is distant, troubled and prone to violent tantrums which the child psychiatrists blame on Grace. But Grace knows there’s something more to what’s happening to Sylvie. There has to be.

“This is a really special book. Sylvie’s
vulnerability is so powerfully drawn, so flesh-and-blood
real, that you want to reach into the
pages and protect her yourself.”

—Louise Candlish

“One of those rare books you’ll sit with
till your bones ache.”

—
Oprah Magazine

If you enjoyed
The Perfect Mother,
we know you’ll love…

Coming in April 2010, the
New York Times
Top Five bestseller

The Weight of Silence
by Heather Gudenkauf

Callie is a gentle little girl who suffers from selective mutism, brought on by a tragedy she experienced as a toddler. Petra is Calli’s best friend, her soul mate and her voice. When Calli and Petra disappear their families are bound by the mystery of what happened to their children. As support turns to suspicion, could the answers lie trapped in the silence of unspoken secrets?

The Bay at Midnight
by Diane Chamberlain

Her family’s cottage was a place of innocence for Julie Bauer—until her sister was murdered. It’s been many years since that August night, but Julie’s memories of Izzy’s death still haunt her. Now someone from her past is asking questions about what really happened. About Julie’s own complicity. About a devastating secret her mother kept from them all. About the person who went to prison for Izzy’s murder—and the person who didn’t.

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

MIRA is a registered trademark of Harlequin Enterprises Limited, used under licence.

Published in Great Britain 2010

MIRA Books, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,

Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1SR

THE PERFECT MOTHER © Margaret Leroy 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4089-1503-5

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