Pieces of Me: A Guest Post by Alice Feeney
Imagine coming home from a run and being replaced. This is what happens to Eden … or does it? The author of Rock Paper Scissors returns with another crafty domestic thriller. Read on for an exclusive essay from Alice Feeney on writing My Husband’s Wife.
Hardcover $28.99
My Husband's Wife: A Novel
My Husband's Wife: A Novel
By Alice Feeney
In Stock Online
Hardcover $28.99
The New York Times bestselling Queen of Twists is back with a psychological masterpiece that will leave you questioning everything you know about love, identity, and revenge.
The New York Times bestselling Queen of Twists is back with a psychological masterpiece that will leave you questioning everything you know about love, identity, and revenge.
Books are like children for authors, we’re not really allowed to have a favourite, but My Husband’s Wife is mine. I fell in love with a character called Birdy, and she lived inside my head until the right story came for her to move into. That day happened a couple of years ago when I was renovating a very old (16th century) thatched cottage in in Devon. The builders said the work would take three months. I think some builders struggle with reality the way authors sometimes do, because the work took almost a year. I got in the habit of going for a run at sunrise, before the builders would arrive, and one morning when I got back there was a stranger inside my house. I had no idea who they were, how they got in, or what they were doing there, and it sparked the idea for the opening of this book.
I had a difficult year the year this book was born. It involved regular visits to hospital, a great deal of grief, a lot of anxiety, a lot of waiting (patience is not one of my virtues) and I didn’t tell anyone (except my husband) what was happening. I have always been a deeply private person, and writing saved me that year. When the real world gets too loud it is always safest to hide inside a book.
I met Eden (or at least a woman called Eden with long blonde hair) in a hospital waiting room. A doctor called her name and I fear I may have gawped at the poor woman, because meeting a character in real life is always quite surreal. It’s a bit like discovering an imaginary friend is real. I wrote Birdy’s opening chapter in my head while inside an MRI machine. She is far braver than me, funnier too, I could hear what she was thinking and it helped pass the time. Thanatos came about because of my own thoughts and fears while writing the story. I became a bit obsessed with wondering whether I would want to know when my last day would be, and what I would do if I did. I guess when you go through something like that it makes you really think about what is important. Over time, I got well, and the story of my real life changed the ending of this book.
Hope Falls where the book is set is very real inside my head, but is really a lot of Cornish and Scottish fishing villages blended into one place inside my dark imagination. Part of it is like a miniature version of Mevagissey (in Cornwall), with a dash of Portree (Isle of Skye), a sprinkling of St Ives (Cornwall again), a chunk of Chagford (a town in Dartmoor), and a smidgen of Tobermory (Isle of Mull). Birdy’s flat is above a real Alice in Wonderland bookshop in London, on a real street filled with bookshops called Cecil Court.
Every book I write is at least a year of my life, sometimes more. I write fiction, but inevitably there will always be tiny pieces of me tucked between the pages. I love these characters, I love the twist, and I love this story with all of my dark heart. This book saved me. I wrote it worrying it might be my last, and I am very glad, and very grateful, that it isn’t. I hope readers enjoy My Husband’s Wife.
