Q&A with Natalie Jenner

 

 

Natalie Jenner is the author of the new novel Every Time We Say Goodbye. Her other novels include The Jane Austen Society. She lives in Oakville, Ontario.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Every Time We Say Goodbye, and why did you choose to focus on your character Vivien?

 

A: I remember the exact moment of inspiration: I was rewatching Day For Night, an old Francois Truffaut film about film, when I went on Wikipedia and learned, to my surprise, about Rome’s famous Cinecittà studios being used as refugee camps during and after WWII.

 

There is also some conjecture that refugees might have been extras during the 1949 filming of crowd scenes for the Hollywood epic Quo Vadis.

 

I decided right then and there to set my next book in Rome, my favourite city, and its movie industry, in part because I wanted to explore this strange dichotomy of some of the most deprived people in the world living inside a “dream factory.”

 

Vivien, the secretly aspiring writer and very angry “shopgirl” from Bloomsbury Girls, was a favorite character for me and many of my readers, so that was definitely a factor in writing about her again.

 

But Viv’s unexplored back story also happened to include a soldier fiance who went missing in action in North Africa in 1942, and in thinking about how to write about Viv again, I discovered that many of the Allied soldiers captured in Libya and elsewhere had been shipped to POW camps in Italy.

 

So, it felt serendipitous that Vivien’s story could continue, and also be emotionally excavated, with Italy as the background.

 

Finally, as a character, Vivien says and does all the things I wish I could—which of course makes her the most fun type of character to write!

Q: How did you research the novel, especially the aspects dealing with the Italian film industry in the 1950s?

 

A: I basically went back to school! I minored in film at university back in the 1980s, when cinema studies was still a burgeoning part of the curriculum. My favourite movies to watch have always been from Hollywood’s golden era, and my favorite non-fiction is a celebrity memoir or bio.

 

So I devoured a lengthy audiobook course in 20th-century Italian cinema, as well as books and academic journal articles on Italian film, particularly the history of its censorship.

 

With all the book-banning going on today, the latter research disturbed me greatly and led to a significant plotline involving Vatican oversight and interference (through its representation on the state censorship committee) in script and film production.

 

Q: The writer Kim Fay said of the book, “Every Time We Say Goodbye is the kind of historical fiction that transports readers into the past while being remarkably relevant to the world we live in today.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I don’t technically think of myself as a writer of historical fiction: I just write stories about people, set in the past. But I don’t think that’s accidental.

 

You see, I was a career coach for decades before getting published in my 50s, and my greatest satisfaction was in helping people find jobs that they love: it’s a step forward in life that requires taking ownership of the past and learning from it.

 

So, to go back to Kim’s lovely quote, I can’t see myself writing a book set in the past unless it has some relevance to the issues confronting us today.

 

I also prefer to write about the period of time after large-scale trauma that shakes our world, because I am most interested in discovering and showing the ways in which people who have suffered can find resilience and hope.

 

Historical fiction allows me to probe that emotionally difficult situation from the safety of knowing what is, or at least can be, ahead.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Natalie Jenner.