East of the Sun and Le Prince Maurice Prize for Literary Love stories

There was a moment when I was writing East of the Sun when I nearly threw it in the stream. I can’t remember why exactly now, but it was one of those moments when you are a writer when you suddenly feel that this thing that has so thrilled and excited and kept you up at nights is about to be revealed as a cringey failure. Most writers I know have these crashes of confidence. Now I think they are simply part of the journey and you have to man up when they appear.

Anyway, I am so happy that this book is not at the bottom of the Wye. It’s taken me on an incredible journey: first, the excitement of getting the thing published at all – absolutely nothing is for sure in today’s precarious publishing world - then being chosen for the Richard and Judy Book Club last year. In February of 2009, it was chosen as the U.K.‘s Romantic novel of the year, and last week, I heard that I am on a short list of three for Le Prince Maurice Prize for Literary Love stories. Here’s what the organizers say about the prize.

This prize, now in it’s eighth year, aims to discover love stories of the highest literary quality that engage the heart as well as the head. The prize is awarded to an English-speaking writer every second year (alternating with a French-speaking winner), and the novels submitted cover love in one of its myriad forms. The authors must do more than just impress the judges with the quality of their writing - they must also have the capacity to move them.

The other authors on the short list are Sadie Jones, for ‘Small Wars,’ which was also on the Orange Prize short list this year, and William Sutcliffe, for ‘Whatever Makes you Happy.’ I’ve just ordered it on Amazon. Sadie’s I’ve read and thought was terrific.

When Kate Mills, my editor at Orion, phoned me in January to tell me I was on the long list, I thought she was having a cruel joke with me. I was sitting- long johns track suit, two sweaters –in our draughty farmhouse in what was then Sub-Artic Wales. She asked whether I would be available to go and stay, this June, for one week at the incredibly beautiful Constance Prince Maurice Hotel a five star hotel in Mauritius. This hotel is, I’m told, so wonderful that the likes of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta hang out there. Someone told me they have people around the pool to relieve you of the irksome business of polishing your own sunglasses. (Note to self, buy new sunglasses - I’ve never owned a pair for longer than about ten minutes. Also wardrobe? I don’t think my vintage summer wardrobe is going to cut it.)

Thank God Sadie will be there to have a laugh with. By strange and wonderful coincidence, I’ve known her since she was about 16. Up until a couple of years ago both of us were two distinct species of struggling writer. We’re still struggling writers - part of the addiction is knowing there is always so much more to learn.

Sadie served a long seventeen year apprenticeship writing screenplays in a cupboard in London. My apprenticeship was even longer, I was, for twenty five years,a jobbing writer, writing short stories, articles, (for everyone from Sandwich Monthly to The Sydney Morning Herald, Rolling Stone. I had an unpublished novel in my bottom drawer called ‘The Water Horse,’ which my husband persuaded me to take out. Another story. Anyway, the moral is, cast not thy novel upon the waters, you never know what might come thudding back.