The Last Summer

by Judith Kinghorn

  I’d wanted to write a first-person narrative for a while, and I wanted to write the sort of novel I like to read, set in a period I was particularly interested in, when there was change and conflict on a huge scale. I also knew it had to be a love story, because I believe all the best stories have that at their heart. And I wanted to create a strong sense of place from the start. I have a very visual mind, and the setting—Deyning—came to me before the characters. That was my starting point, a landscape, an English country house, and a family about to go to war.

  Q: In The Last Summer the cozy Edwardian world of Clarissa’s childhood is lost forever with the impact of the First World War. What do you find particularly fascinating about this period in history?

  A: For me, the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries are the most interesting period in history. It was a time of such extraordinary progress and advancement, and—with the advent of mobility—the birth of the modern world. It’s also an era that seems vaguely familiar, and accessible; recognizable from old newsreel and sepia-tinged photographs; the world my grandparents and great-grandparents inhabited. But I’m particularly drawn to those years during and subsequent to the First World War, not least because almost an entire generation of young men went off to fight—for King and Country—and didn’t return. I was fascinated by the impact of that war on individuals, families, and society as a whole; the speed of change, and collapse of an old order.

  Q: You have clearly put a great deal of research into creating the world of The Last Summer. Were you surprised by anything you discovered in the course of your research?

  A: Before I began my research I’d read only a few books—biographies and novels—set in the First World War. I don’t think I’d ever truly thought about or realized—allowed myself to realize—those numbers and statistics, so studying them and that time, I was horrified, appalled by the sheer magnitude and scale of loss. But almost everything about that war is shocking to read and imagine now. It was a cataclysmic, dark time, and yet the days immediately before the war, that long Indian summer we read about and see images of, appear so idyllic; and the years afterward—the Roaring Twenties—so decadent and glamorous. For me, that juxtaposition of heaven and hell, agony and ecstasy, light and darkness, is fascinating, and the perfect backdrop to a novel.

  Q: Clarissa’s voice is extremely distinctive and, as readers, we feel that we know her intimately by the end of the novel. Why did you decide to write the novel solely from her point of view? Did you find it easy to get inside her head?

  A: Sometime before starting the book I’d reread Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and afterward, I set myself a challenge: to write a novel in the first person. So that decision came before any actual story! But as soon as I decided to set the novel around the First World War I knew I wanted the voice to be female, a very particular female voice, giving a very particular female perspective. I never wavered in that decision, because I felt writing the novel in the first person offered me the scope to develop a character through a singular, distinctive yet evolving voice. Also, I think—I hope—it lends the narrative greater intimacy.

  Clarissa came to me quite slowly at first. And, after I’d written the first few chapters, I wasn’t sure if I liked her, which could have been a major problem. She seemed so childlike, almost too naive. But I realized I hadn’t gotten to know her, and, as her creator, I knew I had to test her, see what she was made of. So, as the story developed, so did she. And yes, it was very easy—after a while—to be inside her head, know her thoughts, and anticipate her actions and reactions.

  I wanted her to be fallible, and sometimes fragile, but not a victim. And she had to be naive at the start, a product of her time and background. Also, I wanted her voice to be authentic, convincing, but at the same time not alienate twenty-first-century readers.

  Q: Did your story ever take a direction that surprised you? If so, how?

  A: The morphia addiction was a surprise. I’d read about it in my research, but it had never been in the plan, as such. But by the time I’d reached the point where Clarissa had handed over her baby and returned to London, and knowing what was happening in certain circles at that time, I had to make a decision: would she, could she have?

  Q: Who is your favorite character in the novel? Is there a character you identify with more than any other?

  A: Well, I was definitely in love with Tom. And I had great fun with Mama, whom I think would have loved a much bigger part in the novel. And I grew very fond of some of the minor characters, Edina in particular. But my own favorite has to be Clarissa. Perhaps because I lived inside her head for so long, but also, considering the times and her background, she is in her own way brave, a survivor.

  Q: Do you think it would be accurate to say that there are three main characters in your novel: Clarissa, Tom—and Deyning? Is the house based on a real place? What makes it such an important player in The Last Summer?

  A: Deyning is central to the novel, possibly the most important character, but it doesn’t exist, nor is it based on anywhere. I think it’s an amalgamation of places, houses I’ve seen or visited or read about. And, in a way, it’s a figment of all of our imaginations—whatever we wish it to be; a sort of Shangri-La, a mirage of an idyllic world, and a way of life that was once there, for a few, for a while, and is gone.

  It represents home, of course, and an old order, but also continuity in a changing world. However, as a symbol of permanence it’s not entirely unaffected by the tumultuous events taking place around it. It sees its sons go off to fight, and for a while, at least, it bears its own physical scars. It witnesses changing times and fortunes, and, like Clarissa, endures years of loneliness and neglect. And, also like Clarissa, it is rescued by Tom.

  Q: Did you always want to be a writer? What inspired you to start writing?

  A: I learned to read and write before starting school, and was writing stories then. Whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be, I’d tell them, “A writer.” I grew up in Northumberland, in a village drenched in history, where the ruins of a medieval castle—a setting in Shakespeare’s Henry IV—were my playground, and the thrill of the week was going to the library with my book-obsessed father to select my new book. For a while I attended the same school the Brontë sisters once attended, the inspiration for the school in Jane Eyre. Though, I hasten to add, greatly changed by my time! So I suppose from a very young age I was immersed in history and literary influences. And I’ve written all my life, always kept a journal, and have endless notebooks filled with unfinished stories. But by my late teens it seemed a decidedly uncool thing to say, “I want to be a writer.” Other things took over, mainly boyfriends and parties and making enough money to pay my exorbitant London rent. It wasn’t until I moved to the country ten years ago that I decided the book in me was long overdue.

  Q: Who are the writers you most admire? Is there a book you wish you had written?

  A: I’m a voracious reader, of fiction, nonfiction, classics and contemporary. My favorite writers include Edith Wharton, Henry James, Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, E. M. Forster, Daphne du Maurier, Beryl Bainbridge, Jean Rhys, and probably every Virago author I bought as a student. And a book I wish I’d written: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. Because it’s a book I truly loved, and could read again and again.

  READERS GUIDE

  FROM BOOKS TO BOARDROOM TO BOOK DEAL

  by Judith Kinghorn

  When I was ten, twelve, or even fourteen, if anyone ever asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I replied that I wanted to be a writer. I’d learned to read and write long before starting school and words were my passion. But life’s full of distractions, and alternative roads, and by the time I reached thirty I’d acquired a rather glamorous albeit adrenaline-fueled career, culminating in my appointment as managing director of a long-established public relations and graduate recruitment company based in Covent Garden, London, and owned by the late Jo
sephine Hart. Shortly after that I became a director of a corporation.

  I’ve never been much good at pacing myself, tend to hit any deck running, and certainly—as far as my career was concerned—I’d peaked early. For a few years my buzz came from the boardroom, and, bizarrely (because I’d always hated math at school), from figures; namely a profit and loss statement. I drove to work each day, parking my convertible outside my office, lunched at the Ivy (always the fishcakes), and shopped at Prada and Armani. I was nominated for Woman of the Year, became a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and by thirty-three years old I seemed to have it all.

  But I didn’t. I had no time. No time for myself, and very little time for my young son. I spent an inordinate amount of my day in a traffic jam, usually on the phone to work, and always feeling guilty: either about the little boy waiting for me at home or the people I’d left back at the office. I was permanently exhausted and stressed. So, in 1997, pregnant with my second child, I traded in my seemingly glamorous career for the Teletubbies, Tumble Tots . . . and tantrums. I became a full-time mummy. It was a culture shock: a seismic shift in my life. And, though I loved spending time with my two young children, it took me a couple of years to stop drafting business plans and know how and where I wanted this new life to be.

  I suppose I could say I’d given up the corporate world for my children, for us—as a family—to have a simpler, healthier, less stressful life (in theory). But in truth, I’d also yearned for a sense of peace, and space; an environment I thought would unlock my long-dormant creativity. I wanted to paint again, wanted to write (though I wasn’t sure about what), and I began to realize that the lifestyle my husband and I both craved wasn’t possible in London. The dawn of a new millennium seemed like the perfect time to be brave and pioneering, and so in 2000 my family and I upped sticks, and moved from London to Hampshire, to a mid-Victorian, Arts and Crafts–style house.

  I’d never been particularly interested in the history of houses, hadn’t thought too much about any of the places I’d lived in growing up, or in London, but my house in Hampshire—its refurbishment—triggered something in me. Discovering solid slate windowsills, hidden under decades of chipped and bubbled gloss paint; tiled hearths, boarded over and long since abandoned as fireplaces; varnished Victorian wallpaper beneath decades of differing fashions and tastes, made me feel like an archaeologist, and I wanted to know more. I wanted to learn the story of the place we now called home. I found myself imagining the house as it had once been, as it had first been; and I wanted to know who’d lived here, who’d chosen that wallpaper. All old houses have secrets, each one has its own story, and I had a hunch that my new home had a tale it was longing to tell.

  I knew very little at that time, had no idea who had built the house or when, but I guessed it had been built by an architect. And I knew the army had been there during the Second World War. And yet, to me, completely inexplicably, the house felt predominantly female. I could only ever picture women having lived there. I’d also reasoned that with so much decorative detail the place must have been built for a woman.

  Over the course of two years I managed to piece together the story of my house and its former inhabitants. And I discovered a cast of vibrant, complex women, who’d led fascinating and sometimes scandalous lives. From Charlotte Vincent, an abstemious, God-fearing philanthropist, to Maud Calvert, a would-be writer; from the elderly Viscountess Trafalgar to the duplicitous Countess de Champs l’Anson (for whom the house was built): my home has been home to many interesting women.

  And I thought I was stuck for a story.

  The history of my home, my research, ended up as a book (published as local history, unedited, and full of typos). Then came a novel: loosely based on the countess’s life, and rewritten a dozen times. By the end of 2009, with the book still unfinished, and without any agent or publisher, I felt browbeaten by the countess, her story and my rewrites of it. I needed a break, but not from writing—from her. So I decided to write something else, something completely invented and fictitious, something for myself: the sort of book I’d like to read. . . .

  I knew I wanted to write a first-person narrative, and a love story, but perhaps with a dark edge to it. And I decided to set that narrative in the period I’d most recently spent time in (researching). In January 2010—without much planning, and with no idea of my narrative arc—I began writing The Last Summer. By July I’d more or less finished the first draft; by the end of summer I’d acquired an agent; a few months later—a publishing deal.

  It’s taken me almost half a century to get here, to be doing what I know I was born to do, but I think I’ve had an interesting journey.

  READERS GUIDE

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. The events of The Last Summer are seen from the perspective of its heroine, Clarissa. Did you enjoy seeing the story through her eyes?

  2. “. . . the end of a belle epoque” is how Clarissa describes that last summer before the outbreak of the First World War. Do you agree with her?

  3. How important is the world of Deyning Park to the novel?

  4. Which character do you feel undergoes the most dramatic transformation in the novel?

  5. Edina does not wish Clarissa to marry Tom because, to her, they are too far apart in social status for their relationship to work. How do you feel about this in light of the revelation of Tom’s parentage?

  6. The First World War changes society irrevocably. What is the impact on the characters in the novel? How is the class system portrayed?

  7. Clarissa and her friends’ use of morphine to “produce a pause long enough to obliterate reality, suspending thought and reason” shows a darker side to their Edwardian world than we are perhaps familiar with. What was your reaction to this?

  8. Are there parallels between Clarissa and Tom’s love affair and that of the anonymous letter writers’ in the novel? Did you guess who the correspondents were?

  9. Which of Clarissa’s relationships do you think has the greatest impact on her life—her relationship with Tom; her mother, Edina; or her baby, Emily?

  10. “Moments can and do come back to us.” Discuss this final statement in relation to The Last Summer.

  Contents

  Praise for The Last Summer

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  PART TWO

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  PART THREE

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  PART FOUR

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  RE
ADERS GUIDE

  A Conversation With Judith Kinghorn

  From Books to Boardroom to Book Deal

  Questions for Discussion

  * An Anglo-Indian dish, served at breakfast, consisting of rice, fish and eggs.

  * Knitted headgear worn by soldiers, named after the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War.

  * Old English term for valley.

  * Commonly used term for alarms during World War I.