Writing a Multi-Generational Story
Three Mothers – a multi-generational novel that deals sensitively with the infinitely complex and fascinating nature of mother-daughter bonds – releases today in ebook. To mark the occasion, Sonia Lambert discusses her experience of writing Three Mothers.
Hello. I’d like to tell you about how I came to write Three Mothers.
I started working on the book after my daughter was born.
The months just before and after the birth of a baby are such a strange time – wonderful and awful and emotional, all at once. I was surprised by how much the experience reminded me of two other big upheavals in my life – the death of a parent, and also the feeling of falling in love. It was exhilarating, frightening and unsettling. I lived from one moment to the next, and everything seemed turned upside-down. I had to reinvent who I was, and everything I thought I knew.
I began wondering about how this had been for my mother, and my grandmother. I started thinking about the big moments in their lives, and the amazing upheavals they’d survived. Through becoming a parent myself, I began to feel I had more in common with them. Perhaps they had hopes, and dreams, and secrets I’d never considered? I asked questions. I used some of their best stories – but the characters in my book evolved to become very different from my real-life family.
The book is about mother-daughter relationships – the way you rebel against your mother, but also keep her inside you. I was thinking about how we choose the things we’d like to pass on, and also about the way our decisions go on to affect our children.
I tried to be truthful, and to write, about how things felt to me. After Three Mothers was published, it was wonderful to hear back from readers, and to find that my story resonated with them.
I put everything I had into this, and it is very close to my heart. I really hope you like it too.
Three Mothers releases in ebook today and is available from all good retailers.
Interweaving the intimate lives of three women over three generations, Sonia Lambert takes the reader on a fascinating journey . . .
Fleeing Nazi occupation in Austria, Helene escapes to London, where she meets and marries Charles, a British Intelligence officer. When she is summoned to join him at a posting in India, she is miserably seasick on the crossing, but also pines desperately for the baby she's been forced to leave behind.
Twenty five years on, Helene's daughter, Vera, discovers she is expecting a child, and starts to suspect a downside to the swinging 60s . . . As motherhood takes her into uncharted waters she begins to question everything, especially her relationship with her radical, free-thinking husband.
Vera's daughter Susie, now a grown woman, has never been able to understand the animosity that exists between her mother and grandmother. With the terrible news that Vera has been diagnosed with a serious illness, Susie becomes determined to unravel their tangled family history before it is too late. As she delves into the past, she makes some surprising discoveries about the people she thought she knew best . . .
An evocative and unforgettable time-slip novel, this deeply satisfying debut is perfect for fans of Kate Morton, Rachel Hore and Susanna Kearsley
'An elegant three-generation weeper' - Publishers Weekly
'A wonderfully evocative talent' - Choice magazine