Speaking of Love
is a novel about what happens when people who love each other don’t tell each other. It’s also about the healing power of stories and the fear (and hell) of madness. It’s set in London, East Anglia and at a storytelling festival that takes place in the magical grounds and gardens of St Donat’s Castle in south-west Wales. I began to write SPEAKING of LOVE after witnessing a breakdown that terrified me and kept me terrified long after the event. When a person you think you know becomes quite another person, all sense of trust in the predictability and reliability of things deserts you. I was afraid I would go mad myself and I wanted to unearth the roots of my fear. I couldn’t articulate that when I began writing SPEAKING of LOVE, it was quite unconscious. All I felt was a fascination with and terror of madness, but I also had a growing hunch that the old stories might help my protagonist re-assemble the threads of her life. And as I wrote I discovered what my protagonist’s daughter discovers in the novel which, naturally, I’ll leave you to discover for yourself.
Before SPEAKING of LOVE found a publisher I sent it to TLC (and I’d recommend any first-time novelist to do the same: they provide wonderfully objective and constructive advice). Subsequently TLC asked some of the writers they’d helped towards publication to write about the experience of working with TLC. If you’d like to read about my own TLC experience you can, here.
Sadly the publishers of SPEAKING of LOVE, Beautiful Books, have gone out of business, a victim of the difficult times we’re living through. So, if you’d like to buy a copy of the book you’ll need to use pre-amazon methods. Please send an old-fashioned cheque or postal order (£8.50 for the hardback; £4.75 for the paperback) made payable to Angela Mackworth-Young, and send it to me c/o hhb agency ltd, 6 Warwick Court, London WC1R 5DJ and include your name and address. Thank you so much.
