Q&A with Rhys Bowen

 

 

Rhys Bowen is the author of the new novel Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure. Her many other books include The Paris Assignment. She lives in California and Arizona. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure, and how did you create your character Ellie?

 

A: The spark for this book came when I saw an abandoned villa on a lake shore in Italy. Weeds had grown up around it, ivy covered it, shutters hanging off.

 

And my thought was—who could have walked away from that and why? Why did nobody want it? And being me, the hopeless dreamer, I said to my husband that we should buy it and restore it. Practical husband pointed out that such a task would be beyond us.

 

But I’ve always thought about it so I decided to create a character who had the chance to restore a lovely villa. In Ellie I wanted to show emerging resilience, and a chance to grow into the person she was supposed to be. I suppose through her I was living vicariously in the south of France in a villa!

Q: What do you think Ellie’s experiences say about the impact of divorce on British women in the WWII era?

 

A: It was only the very rich for whom divorce came easily. Most wives were not trained in anything outside the home to support themselves so divorce meant living miserably and being socially ostracized in many cases. Ellie’s act of defiance in stealing the Bentley is the first step in becoming the woman she was supposed to be.

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

A: Obviously I know a lot about British middle class women of the ‘30s. That would have been my mother and aunts. I know how they spoke, behaved, etc.

 

For the book I went to Cassis, which is the town on which St Benet is based. It was heaven, sitting at a waterfront cafe, eating fresh fish, watching lights bobbing on the water. I can see why Ellie fell in love with it instantly.

 

We drove around the whole area and took photos of villas. And ate lots of local food. I made the town fictitious as I wanted it smaller and simpler, but it’s in the correct place. Also the monastery on the island? It is based on a real monastery off the coast at Cannes.

 

What surprised me? I had planned for Ellie to get involved in the smuggling out of Jewish men to the island. It was only as I did my research on Marseille during the war that I found there was a real resistance group who did just this!

 

What I didn’t have to research was the awful brutality of Nazi occupation. Whole villages massacred, handicapped people or gay men sent off for extermination. It was hard to write about.

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between Ellie, Dora, and Mavis?

A: This story is about the power of female bonding. Three women who would not have been friends at home, who have little in common, who have all been cast aside by society and never had their true chance at happiness. By rescuing them Ellie allows them to blossom but also they help her heal herself.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I am writing my next stand-alone novel, this one set on the Isle of Skye. A very famous mystery writer is suffering from dementia and can’t finish her final book. She hires a young writer to finish it for her. When the young woman goes to Skye to research, she finds the fictional story is based on a real one, and then realizes it is the writer’s own story. Working title is From Sea to Skye.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: How much I loved writing Mrs. Endicott. Those characters all became too real to me and spending all that time on the coast of France was such a treat.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Rhys Bowen.