Take Two Characters. Jane Cable Chooses Two of Her Favourite Fictional People.

This week I am delighted to welcome my friend Jane Cable to my blog. Jane's novels include an intriging element of mystery and suspense. The first book of hers that I read was Another You and it kept me thinking right to the end. 

Jane's first novel, The Cheesemaker's House, was a finalist in the Alan Titchmarsh Show's People's Novelist competition and won Words for the Wounded's independent book of the year award in 2015; and The Faerie Tree tells of a couple who meet twenty years after a brief affair only to discover that their memories of it are completely different.

Jane recently signed with Sapere Books, who will publish two titles next year.

Jane is here today to contribute to the Take Two Characters series, which Heidi Swain started off in the previous blog. By the way, thanks to all of you who said on Twitter how much you like the idea behind this series.

Let's see what Jane has to say.

TAKE TWO CHARACTERS

After thinking long and hard about my favourite characters, the answer suddenly came to me; my favourite character is actually in my favourite book. A book I have loved for so long that it’s almost part of me: Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers. And of course the character is Penelope Keeling.

When the book was first published in 1987 it was a brave choice to put an older woman at the centre of the story, with Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel dominating the best-seller list with their sexy young heroines. But there is an enduring quality about Penelope, and I suspect she resonated with readers of all ages – those who, like her, had come through World War Two as young women and those, like me, who found she reminded them just a little bit of their mothers.

There are two characteristics I love more than anything about Penelope – her wisdom and her energy. She isn’t prepared to moulder away in the country, she has an active and fulfilling life and is more than capable of making the most courageous decisions on her own. A proper heroine for the twentieth – and twenty-first – century.

Perhaps Penelope Keeling is also the reason there is a wise older person in all my books. Perhaps it was because I had such a strong relationship with my mother. But I always feel the need to create a wise council, a broader perspective – an alternative view of life from that of my other characters.

One in particular has a very different world view. Jennifer Dodd in The Faerie Tree is not a woman you’d expect to live in a rambling house in a smart Hampshire village, but nevertheless the community respects her. In every way she defies their narrow conventions; letting her young grandsons run wild in the woods, taking in a damaged stranger, and most of all by practising her gentle pagan beliefs.

The Faerie Tree is a book about what happens when Robin and Izzie meet again twenty years after their brief affair and discover their memories of it are completely different. I introduced Jennifer early in the book – during their first date, in fact – but she went on to play a huge part in Robin’s life. It is only through Jennifer’s wisdom that he even has a meaningful life, learning through her to deal with good and bad in the world around him by seeing nature as a source of strength and joy.

One thing I was always sorry about was that there no space in the narrative for Jennifer’s back story and perhaps, like Penelope Keeling, she deserves a novel of her own. Married young to a British soldier stationed in her native Iceland just after the war, she never realised that her new life in a foreign country would mean an outward denial of everything she held dear, but despite everything her independent spirit remained strong.

That’s the joy of the more mature character for me – not the wrinkles that may or may not be on their skin, but the invisible lines and scars that shape them down the years and give them so much depth.

Jane's Links:

Her Author Page on Amazon  

Chat with her on Twitter 

Her website  

Visit her author page on Facebook 

Here's a picture from a recent holiday - oops, sorry, I mean writing retreat in Bath.

Top to bottom:

Jane Cable and Cass Grafton

Kitty Wilson and Kirsten Hesketh

and yours truly.