Melanie Phillips is the author of the new novel The Legacy. Her other books include the memoir Guardian Angel. She is a columnist for The Times of London, and her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Guardian and The Observer.
Q: How did you come up with
the idea for The Legacy, and for your character Russell?
A: A number of things came
together in my mind to create the novel, and I can’t really recall which came
first. Certainly, my father’s death in 1998 had a lot to do with it. I was
bereft when he died, not least because there were unresolved issues which could
now never be explained and put to rest.
So an important part of the
novel was the exploration of this vortex of mourning and grief, anger and regret,
and the attempt to bring about some kind of resolution.
I think the character of
Russell sprang directly from this; he emerged in my mind and then drove the
story forward. Over the years, I’ve known a number of Russells – and they have
all been men – whose profound ambivalence towards their Jewish identity is
inextricably wrapped up with embarrassment or anger or other negative feelings
towards their families.
And Russell inhabits a world
I know very well – the world of the media, brittle and shallow and merciless
towards anyone who doesn’t fit its own ideological template.
Years ago, I knew someone who
had stumbled upon a medieval manuscript and that experience lodged in my mind.
I also read a book about a particularly dreadful event that occurred in
Holocaust Europe and which made an enormous impression on me.
Once I had written my own
“medieval manuscript” for the novel, the rest of the story, including the
mystery that it represents, gradually fell into place. And it became obvious to
me that the journey upon which Russell embarks despite himself would take him
into the territory I know so well: the deep ambivalence and discomfort of
British Jews with their identity, and the persistent antisemitism of British
society.
Q: What kind of research did you
need to do to write the novel, and did you learn anything that especially
surprised you?
A: I did a lot of research
for this novel. Although it is fiction, two incidents central to the plot
actually took place. So I was anxious to ensure that I represented these as
accurately and as fairly as I could. As I have already said, I had previously
read about one of these incidents; and I then read everything else I could find
on that topic.
On the daily life of Jews in
medieval Britain, though, I had to do a lot of digging because sources were few
and far between. There was more written about Jews in medieval Europe than in
Britain, but since at that time Jews had flowed from Europe into Britain the
European sources provided some useful detail.
Although I wasn’t surprised,
I was still shocked to discover the unspeakable barbarism with which Jews had
been treated in medieval Britain (as well as in Europe, of course, during the
Crusades).
It confirmed me in what is a
key theme of the novel: the ultimately unfathomable continuity of antisemitism
through the ages – the way in which it morphed from theological antisemitism
under medieval Christianity, through racial antisemitism under the Nazis to its
current manifestation as ideological antisemitism in left-wing dogma.
Q: Did you know how the novel
would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the
way?
A: When I started writing it,
I certainly didn’t know how it would end. Indeed, I changed various elements in
the narrative several times. The characters and plot started to develop in ways
I had not anticipated when I started but which seemed entirely appropriate as I
continued to write.
My first draft, though, ended
the narrative far too early: I realised I had left too many threads dangling in
the air, and so several further chapters then followed before I finally called
a halt. And now readers tell me they want to find out what happens next to
Russell and his daughter and will I please write a sequel!
Q: What are you working on
now?
A: Well, despite what I have
just said I am not writing a sequel. I have started work on a new novel, but it
will be very different from The Legacy. More than that I cannot divulge – but I
do hope I’ll be able to write it rather faster than The Legacy, which took forever!
Q: Anything else we should
know?
A: I’d like say a bit more
about what I was trying to do in The Legacy. I wanted to look at what motivates
people to behave in certain ways – to get under the skin of both the antisemite
and the Jew who despises the Jewish part of himself.
I wanted to show that life is
all about change and growth and that we are all capable of escaping from the
traps we create for ourselves, even though fate may have to give us a kicking
before we do so.
I wanted to show that we all
need to know what we are, to anchor ourselves in a cultural identity and to
feel we belong. And I wanted to show that things are often not what they seem
to be, that to avoid pain we sometimes create fantasies in which we hide,
including denying our identity; but history lays claim to us regardless, and in
one way or another we need to make our peace with it.
People who have read The
Legacy tell me how strongly they identified with it, how they laughed and cried
over it and how they couldn’t stop turning the pages. I didn’t believe I could
ever write a novel. I can’t tell you how much that reaction means to me.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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