Liz Fenwick is an award-winning novelist and dreamer turned doer who made her first trip to Cornwall in 1989. She lost her heart to the Duchy and to the man who is now her husband. They live in Cornwall with two mad cats and she spends her time reading, plot walking and procrastinating on social media. We were delighted to have the opportunity to interview Liz Fenwick for The Narrative Q&A.
You’ve been described by the Guardian as the ‘Queen of the contemporary Cornish novel‘. What is it about Cornwall that appeals to you the most, and why do you think it makes such a fabulous setting?
For me the inspiration begins in the landscape. It holds stories. It holds them in old stone walls, in the small undulations in the land, in the crashing waves and in the wind shaped trees. There are stories embedded in the contrast of the landscape, natural and industrial, and in the towering seaside cliffs and the drowned river valleys. You can sense the history and the mythology whisper through the trees, telling their own stories. Cornwall’s landscape is raw and primeval, and it provides an evocative backdrop for human actions and so makes the ideal setting for a book and a character in and of itself.
Your titles have been brought to life by a range of narrators, including Pene Herman-Smith, Lucy Scott and Laura Kirman. How much involvement do you have in choosing a narrator, and what do you look for?
Up until The Secret Shore, my ninth novel, I’ve really had very little input on the choice of narrator, although I was asked about Lucy Scott for the River Between Us and I was thrilled with their choice. For The Secret Shore, which is written in first person, I felt finding the right narrator was absolutely crucial and my publisher agreed to send me some reading auditions from a number of actors. The protagonist Merry is exceptionally well educated and it was important that her voice matched her age in the novel. I listened to the different actors read an excerpt of the book to demonstrate the different voices and also the Cornish accent. Laura Kirman has done a really superb job. I was also asked if I wanted a second, male actor to read the dispatches written by my character, Jake Russell. When I heard Dominic Gruenewald read a dispatch, I had the chills! He sounded just like the voice of Jake in my head.
As I’m dyslexic, I listen to the computer read the text to me as an editing tool. These computer voices have no emotion, so it is a joy when an actor brings the words and world of the story to life. I once heard Joanne Harris read an excerpt of one of her Loki books and she mentioned that hearing someone else read it is like hearing it in translation. I love the translation from print to audio. With the right narrator a book comes alive.
Your latest novel The Secret Shore is set in wartime, and centres on a passionate romance between Merry, a British mapmaker and Jake, an American officer stationed in Cornwall. What was the inspiration behind this story?
Aside from the Helford River itself, the inspiration came from a snippet of the river’s history that isn’t that well known outside the immediate area – the secret flotillas that operated out of the Helford River and other locations in Cornwall and Devon. These boats made regular journeys through the war years to the coast of France under the cover of darkness, to transport people, arms and information. Needless to say, this was a risky operation which provided a vital link between England and Occupied France during World War 2. But it wasn’t until I found my protagonist, a female geographer and skilled cartographer, that the story really came together. I loved taking two little known aspects of the war, the ‘map girls’ and the secret flotillas, and creating a story of espionage, intrigue and passion in a time fraught with inbuilt tension.
Tell about your research process and the role of your #plotwalks in both inspiring and informing your stories.
With each book the research process is different. For The Secret Shore it involved reading over forty books (and listening to some), digesting countless academic papers (I needed to know about the study of geography in the 1930s), visiting the archives of the Imperial War Museum, kayaking the Helford River, and the constant #plotwalks. It is this, the plot walking and the repetitive nature of it, that allows all that information to mix in my mind while I gaze at the glorious scenery around me. Sometimes I see the landscape in front of me and other times I’m lost in places like 1940’s London or Cornwall. But with each plot walk I try to set out with a clear mind and allow the ideas to formulate, and they do. Of course, that means frequent stopping to make notes as different possibilities and ideas come together.
In writing The Secret Shore, I was writing about where I live, and it became something of a love letter to the area. Especially as this book from Merry’s point of view looks at the landscape in a very different way to mine! This was something of a challenge to begin with. Where I saw just fields and villages, she saw how those field structures had evolved, and how settlement patterns had changed. So I would try on some of my plot walks to think like Merry. And now I’m beginning to think like the characters in my next novel.
What can listeners expect from your next novel?
My next novel will be dual timeline. The current day story begins in an auction house and the historic timeline begins on the famous Orient Express. Mysteries will be uncovered, and love will be lost and found in Cornwall and Venice. I shan’t say more than that for now as I don’t want to give away too much, too soon!
What are you listening to at the moment?
I’m listening to Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon for pleasure, and also to Love in a Time of Hate by Florian Illies for research for my next novel.
A huge thank you to Liz Fenwick for taking part in our author Q&A for The Narrative. You can find The Secret Shores in our Top Picks right now, and don’t forget to check out all of her fabulous Cornwall based titles on the xigxag app.
