Q&A with Jane Ward

  

Photo by Jason Grow

 

 

 

Jane Ward is the author of the new novel Should Have Told You Sooner. Her other books include In the Aftermath. She lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Should Have Told You Sooner, and how did you create your character Noel?

 

A: I began reading a book of Welsh folk tales while I was largely stuck in the house during the pandemic year of 2020. This child’s book – One Moonlit Night by T. Llew Jones – caught my eye the year before when I was browsing a used bookstore, and I bought it. I had loved folk tales and mythologies when I was a child, and there it was in my TBR pile when I needed some escapism!

 

The Welsh have a rich tradition of folklore, much of it centering around special places across the land where humans and otherworldly beings may meet and interact.

 

In one story, “The Lady of Llyn Y Fan Fach,” a young farmer named Gwyn visits such a place, the lake named in the title, and while he is there, a most beautiful fairy rises from the water and speaks to him. In that instant they fall in love with each other.

 

The fairy, Nelferch, agrees to marry Gwyn, although she seems to realize right from the start their union will end in disappointment and pain. And of course it does. 

 

Long after finishing the story, I kept thinking about Nelferch and Gwyn and all the ways we might harm those we profess to love. From there, on my early morning dog walks, I began imagining a more contemporary pair and how such a love might play out between them.

 

These two became Noel and Bryn. As I conceived them, I realized they both brought a lot of unresolved childhood pain to their early relationship.

 

When Noel was a child, Noel’s mother died. And because she never knew her father, she was left to be raised by her grandmother. She grew into someone who desperately wanted a family of her own, but she was haunted by the idea that she might be left again. All the assumptions and then mistakes she made as she navigated all her adult relationships had their seed in this fear.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between Noel and Bryn?

 

A: When they first come together in their 20s, they are two young people of similar backgrounds–Bryn, too, had suffered a lot of loss in childhood and was raised by a loving grandfather although deeply affected by being abandoned by his mother. I think these scars are what they recognize in each other early on.

 

They also share an idealized image of what life together will look like, as if they both crave family and stability to know they’re worthy of people sticking around for them. When it all falls apart, there’s a sense of that center disappearing and both lose their way as individuals. 

 

But the wonderful thing about growing up and growing older is the space we might give ourselves for self-reflection. When they find themselves in each other’s orbit 30 years after their first love story, they are trying to be profoundly different people together. The connection is still there, but it plays out much differently with courage, forgiveness, and a real willingness to do the work.

 

Q: What do you think the novel says about motherhood?

 

A: A few things, I think. There are many ways to make a family–adoption, stepparenting, mentoring among them–and the common denominators are love and intention.

 

Even then, with all that going for us, motherhood is hard and we all second guess ourselves. Sometimes, our relationships with our children are hampered by our own childhood experiences and it takes a great deal of self-awareness to overcome that.

 

Regarding the adoption that forms the central mothering experience in the book, every adoption story will play out differently, every reason for the adoption is different, but what can’t change is that every adoption begins with an abandonment of some kind.

 

Giving that space to be understood rather than ignoring it might be one of the biggest challenges facing adoptees, adoptive parents, and the parents who relinquished the child. 

 

Q: Why did you decide to focus on the art world in the novel?

 

A: I love to travel and I’m a dual US/UK citizen. I love walking in the outdoors when I’m in England and Wales, but I also love visiting London museums.

 

However, at the time I started writing during pandemic isolation, I wasn’t traveling anywhere. So I decided to travel in my imagination, replaying some pre-pandemic trips.

 

I had been in October 2019 and saw the wonderful William Blake show at Tate Britain, and I started thinking, What if I set this new book in the art world? 

 

That led me to imagining Noel and Bryn meeting in a London university in the 1990s. Their studies of art history and studio art would give them a common interest and a common world. They would “get” each other.

 

So, the setting took off from there, and I have to say, I really enjoyed letting myself write about a place I know and love so well while I was essentially housebound. Talk about armchair travel!

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am working on a sequel to Should Have Told You Sooner, and I’m about three-fourths through the first draft.

 

I am also taking notes on the book that follows that, which will be a contemporary Gothic-style novel set in French-speaking Switzerland. It’s a fish-out-of-water story, the kind that leaves the main character unsure of what’s going on around her, but also uniquely positioned to see that the strangeness she feels might actually be a product of something bigger and darker.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m not a visual artist, but I knew I had to understand how the pieces of art featured in the novel were made. I had a specific technique in mind for Henry’s work but I had no idea how to accomplish it.

 

By sheer luck, I met a Massachusetts artist, Sue Fontaine, who uses a similar technique in her work. She let me spend a day with her in her studio. I watched and asked questions to make sure I was getting all the details right.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Jane Ward.