Time travel and Jane Austen. It sounds
like the perfect match for an intriguing story. How did you come to write The
Jane Austen Project?
Thanks for your kind words, Maria Grazia! I hope people will
find it so. Although it took a long time
to write this book, the idea came to me in a flash. One night lying awake I started
thinking about Jane Austen: how sad it was that she died so comparatively
young, and how unfortunate for scholars that the majority of her letters were
destroyed. What a genius she was, stuck
in a time and place with little use for intelligent women, and how frustrating that
must have been for her. But what was she
really like? I found mself wondering. If
only we could build a time machine, and go back and get some answers!
One piece of advice I’ve taken to heart is that you should
write the sort of book you want to read, and I’ve always been happiest with books with fantastical elements, yet grounded
in reality, whether historical, mythological or emotional. I am thinking of
novels like “The Doomsday Book,” or “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” or “The
Golem and the Jinni.” Time travel is a crazy idea, but it seemed like a powerful
metaphor about being human. We are all time travelers, but usually it’s a
one-way trip.
Before we focus on Jane Austen as a
character in your book, could you tell us something more about Liam and Rachel,
your time travellers who are lucky enough to meet her?
I’ve always seen Rachel and Liam like characters in one of
those screwball comedies from the 1930s – mismatched and sparring, yet with
complementary strengths, eventually finding their way to respect and affection.
Rachel is a physician, with a love of adventure and of Jane Austen. She’s competent
and feisty, not quite prepared for how limiting
it is to be a woman in 1815. Because the story is told in Rachel’s
first-person, we see Liam only as Rachel does, and he’s not someone who likes
to talk about himself. So part of the story is the unfolding of Liam’s
character to Rachel and to the reader. He is an academic who used to be an
actor, and despite his reserved nature he’s good at assuming a part. It’s useful
in the mission, but it starts to drive Rachel crazy – she wants to know who he
“really” is. But how do we ever know that? What does it mean, to know another
person, when it is hard even to know ourselves?
