Rose Tremain: ‘Sex scenes are like arias in opera. They have to move the story forwards’ | Rose Tremain
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Rose Tremain, 80, published her first novel in 1976 and has become one of the most admired talents of her generation, winning numerous literary accolades along with the title in 2020. Her 17th novel, Absolutely and Forever, is a slender yet profound coming-of-age story whose heroine, Marian, grows up in the Home Counties in the 1950s. When she meets the artsy Simon with his hair down, fateful consequences are set to accompany a powerful sexual awakening. Trimaine lives in Norfolk with her husband, the biographer Richard Holmes.
How Absolutely and Forever starts for you?
For years I was haunted by the life and fate of a close, very beautiful school friend who fell in love at 15 and thought she saw the map of her future, almost older than Shakespeare’s Juliet. And then that future was up for grabs. The idea that an entire life can be defined by a catastrophe that occurs in early youth is both fascinating and tragic. The history of Absolutely and Forever it changes the shape of the original and Marian looks more like me than my beautiful friend, but it has its roots in her story.
There is a sublimely compressed quality to the novel’s prose. Did it go through many drafts?
Because so much of this book was lived experience, I followed my own rule for telling my own life: I tell it in clear, anecdotal form; don’t make a saga out of it. The human mind rarely remembers things in their entirety, but in bright, sometimes fiery flashes. If these glimpses are strong enough and the text is compressed to suit this way of telling the story, then the novel may not need much reworking. Two drafts nailed it here.
London in the 1960s is recalled with such intensity. What do those of us who weren’t there get wrong about the era?
I don’t think you’re misunderstanding it at all. A lot of us were selfish and wild and promiscuous and dangerously ambitious, but what interested me in this story was creating a main character who wasn’t really part of this self-absorbed culture. Marian, devoid of self-love, is kind where we have sometimes been cruel, patient where we have often been hot-tempered and contemptuous.
What makes “good” sex on the page?
I’ve said elsewhere that sex scenes in novels are like arias in an opera: they’re supposed to move the story forward or they probably shouldn’t be there. The sex scene in the Morris Minor between Simon and Marian is rather brief and non-graphic, but it is the moment when Marian knows that she will love Simon absolutely and forever. It drives the whole thing; it’s a big aria.
It is also a novel about friendship. Tell me about Marian’s friend, Petronella.
With a very uncaring mother, I longed for such a wise, guiding hand because my head was in turmoil trying to imagine a different future for myself than what was mapped out for me. I never had a girlfriend like Petronella, but that “guiding hand” came to me when I married my first husband, John Tremaine. He – from a harsh working-class background – saw in me a spoiled brashness, but also a drive for imagination. He believed in me.
Like Marian, you worked on the agony aunt page of a women’s magazine. Did you like it?
I found pleasure in the way I found the job. I went around to all the magazines on or near Fleet Street with a small portfolio of stories and poems and begged all the editors to give me work – any work. It was only occasionally interesting, but like Marianne, I loved my association with my huge office typewriter and the proximity of the Fleet Street presses, almost at arm’s length. I finally felt a little appreciated.
Has your approach to mining your own life for material changed over time?
I guess as an author without a traumatic, impoverished or abusive past to warrant its inclusion in my work, I’ve always felt that nothing very interesting could be written about it. But I think I could be wrong. A brief autobiography of my childhood [Rosie, 2018] caused quite a lot of interest. It was this book that gave me the courage to write Absolutely and Forever. As the end of my life approaches , I feel like I want to hold on to the past—all messy and full of conflicting emotions that it was—and not just let it fade away like it never happened.
Of your many books, do you have a favorite?
My current favorite is Absolutely and Forever, because it is still so present in my mind. But I keep flirting with almost everyone else. I would say the ones I flirt with the most are RecoveryMusic and silence and Gustave’s sonata.
All these novels are historical. What draws you to the past and do you mind being thought of as a historical writer?
One great advantage of writing stories set in historical time is that the past is relatively stable compared to the present, which is constantly changing. Novels that try to capture a specific “now” can actually be strangely historical by the time they appear. I mind being labeled that way because so many historical novels are just empty stories and don’t explore anything, so I feel like my work is considered shallow, which I really don’t think it is.
You taught for many years on the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. Was there any advice you regularly gave to your students?
I often told them to imagine they were writing a movie – to bring color and light to the scene. I also told them that to carry the story they must make the reader long for certain things and fear others; reader indifference is fatal.
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in 1992you wrote a novel A sacred country, with a transgender character. Do you think this is a view you would be allowed to take today?
This is a huge topic. It is based on two questionable judgments. First, that the assertive self is paramount, and, second, that the imagination no longer has value. If they continue to dominate, then the novel will cease to exist; there will only be memoir masquerading as fiction. And yes, what happened to empathy?
You were with Richard Holmes for over 30 years. what is your secret
Living with a writer is hard: we all need massive amounts of alone time or our whole project will fail. From the beginning, Richard and I completely respected that about each other. And then there’s humor. Richard and I laugh at the same things. Sometimes it’s tongue-in-cheek fun and sometimes uncontrollable giggles.
Is there a book you come back to again and again?
To Joyce Carol Oates Russian, her superb study of Marilyn Monroe’s life perfectly demonstrates how fiction can make reality more real and give the past a lasting relevance. I read it about seven times.
What is the best book you have read recently?
To Salman Rushdie Knife is shockingly good.
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