Book Stop Corner

Welcome,

In an all new session of Author Q&A Session, we have today, Louisa Treger, whose debut book, The Lodger: A Novel was a huge hit among the readers from all over the world following it's release in the month of October, 2014. Treger's novel is based on life and times of  Dorothy Richardson- a forgotten 20th century writer. Learn more about this promising newbie author in this interview session.

Read the review of The Lodger: A Novel

Me: Hello and welcome to my blog, Louisa. Congratulations on your debut book, The Lodger: A Novel. Can you please tell us briefly about the story behind The Lodger: A Novel?

Louisa: Thank you very much for having me, Aditi! The Lodger is a biographical novel about a little-known fascinating writer called Dorothy Richardson. She was a peer of Virginia Woolf, a lover of H.G. Wells, and a central figure in the emergence of modernist fiction. The novel explores a brief but dramatic period in Dorothy’s life, during which she falls in love with H.G. Wells, explores her sexuality and independence, rejecting the conventions and restrictions of the age, and finds her voice as a writer.

Me: What or who inspired you to write The Lodger: A Novel? Were you always fascinated with the life and times of Dorothy Richardson?

Louisa: I stumbled on Dorothy Richardson by accident, through a love of Virginia Woolf’s work. I came across a review by Virginia about a writer whose name I did not recognize. It said:

There is no one word, such as romance or realism, to cover, even roughly, the works of Miss Dorothy Richardson … She has invented … a sentence which we might call the psychological sentence of the feminine gender. It is of a more elastic fiber than the old, capable of stretching to the extreme, of suspending the frailest particles, of enveloping the vaguest shapes …

I was riveted. Who was Dorothy Richardson? How had she come to re-invent the English language, in order to record the experience of being uniquely female? It was the beginning of an enduring fascination with her. Dorothy’s literary achievements were remarkable – she forged a new style of fiction that became known as stream of consciousness. Her life was as interesting as her writing, for she was deeply unconventional in both, smashing just about every boundary and taboo going. The more I learnt about her, the more I became convinced that her story should be unearthed and retold. It seemed a terrible waste that this extraordinary woman died unrecognized, and her work has largely been forgotten.

Me: We time-traveled to the 20th century while reading your book. How did you set up the whole twentieth century period in your story with such vividness?

Louisa: Thank you for saying that! Actually, I wrote a PhD about Dorothy before I wrote a novel about her. I did a huge amount of research about London at the beginning of the twentieth century during my PhD. And I live in London, so I am familiar with the atmosphere of the city. In some ways it hasn’t changed that much – there are still parts that feel like they belong in one of Charles Dickens’ novels!

Me: Please tell us one single trait of Dorothy Richardson that intrigues you the most.

Louisa: She was an extremely complex woman and full of conflicts: torn between being bohemian and being respectable, exulting in her independence yet frightened by it, attracted to men and women, wanting close relationships yet repudiating them.

Me: How did you put up your first-step in the world of writing a novel?

Louisa: There was no other way except sitting down and not letting myself get up until I had written something. I started with character sketches and short scenes, and gradually built them up and stitched them together.

Me: How many days or years it took to finish this novel, because by the sound of the book, it seems that you had to research extensively for the plot?

Louisa: The Lodger took four years to complete, partly because of the research, but also because I’m the mother of three children, and I fit my writing around their schedules.

Me: What's next up on your writing sleeves? Please do tell us about it briefly.

  

Louisa: My second novel is well under way. It’s about a girl who was part of the Kinderstransport – the rescue mission that brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to England from Nazi occupied Europe. They left their families to go to the care of strangers, in a foreign country whose language they only had the barest grasp of. They didn’t know what would happen to them, or if they would see their parents again. The novel charts how the girl and her descendants adjust to English life.

Me: Thank you so much Louisa for being here and sparing time to have this interview. I can only wish you luck in all your future endeavors.