Raking the Ashes (23 page)

For me, each character’s profession is of consummate importance. As in real life, as often as not there’s something about the work people do – or don’t do – that reflects at least one significant aspect of their character. The nature of the job has often fed a good deal back into their habits of thought.

‘Fudging’ and ‘hoping for the best’ are alien to Tilly. And she can’t see her stepchildren through the same softening veil of love as does their father. When parents argue about what’s best for a child, they do so from an equal footing. Step-parents may see what is going on even more clearly, and yet, if their conclusions prove inconvenient, their motives can
so
easily be impugned and their advice ignored. They’re still expected to stick around and help pick up the pieces.

And this is why I so love writing about families. I find it totally absorbing to explore how they work, the ways in which the various relationships expand, warp, or fracture. There’s nothing special about the people I write about. You could meet them tomorrow. And yet, as in all families, the most powerful emotions reflect through ‘perfectly normal’ domestic scenes.

A writer can’t be scared of conflict, and what I most enjoy about the work is the challenge of setting down on the page, as honestly and vividly as possible, the feelings other people recoil from admitting, often even to themselves. (No doubt a blessing, since, if everyone went round being as outspoken as some of my characters, the world would turn into a bear-garden.) But it’s so satisfying to set down the fictional confrontations between man and wife, brother and sister, parent and child, and have the reader say, as they so often do, ‘You must have been eavesdropping in our house! How could you ever have
known
?’

I chose to tell the novel in Tilly’s voice. Her lack of cant about her own failings, as well as other people’s, means that, although she may play down her own sins, she does at least tell us enough about them for us to take them into account as we, the
readers
, take sides. I’m not much of a one for ‘unreliable narrators’. I tend to feel that if I can’t get pretty much the whole picture, then what’s the point in reading the book?

I didn’t realise when I wrote
Raking the Ashes
how close to home the issues in it are for so many people. When I was doing the publicity for first publication, male interviewers admitted they found Tilly’s way of thinking ‘very scary indeed’. Women interviewers commented on how very ‘male’ some of her attitudes were.

What does that tell us? As my half-Americanised daughter would say, ‘Go figure!’

Other novels by Anne Fine that you may also like to try:

TELLING LIDDY

Well-meaning Bridie persuades Heather and Stella that their sister Liddy must be told the disquieting snippet of gossip about her husband-to-be before the wedding. As the grim consequences gather pace, a family falls apart.

‘A chilling, skilfully constructed novel of family tension and emotional revenge … a quiet, unsentimental novel that looks without blinking at the depths to which
intelligent
, law-abiding people can sink … It is uncomfortable to read, but it is full of illuminating insights into human behaviour’

The Times Literary Supplement

ALL BONES AND LIES

Dutifully, Colin cares for his ungrateful and sharp-tongued old mother. But with the help of ‘the flying baby’, this shy man’s secret inner life bursts out, and changes everything around him.

‘Anne Fine finds a way of expressing, with both wit and unexpected tenderness, that strange emulsion of pity and fear experienced by the adult child when faced with an aged parent’s determined unloveability. Both merciless in its portrayal and kindly in its interpretations,
All Bones and Lies
is a recommended read for anyone trying to find a way through the frustrations of caring for an elderly relative, to a place where love can survive to the bitter end’
Daily Mail

‘Splendid … clever, cruel and funny … This is a heartwarming book’
Evening Standard

IN COLD DOMAIN

Mrs Collett (never first in line for medals in Easygoing Motherhood) is haunted by her four grown-up children, all of whom rebound constantly to the securities – and
the
idyllic garden – of Cold Domain. Is she going to have to uproot it to get rid of them?

‘A glorious tirade against the grind of motherhood’
Observer

‘A streamlined, ruthlessly stripped-down psychological family romance with enough plot twists and character revelations to fuel a book three times as long. Wicked and funny. Anne Fine is brilliant’
Time Out

TAKING THE DEVIL’S ADVICE

Ex-hubby Oliver has come home to see his children and sift through the papers in the attic. But the patterns of a long and tempestuous marriage can’t be eradicated by a simple divorce …

‘The venom lands smack in the ear. Anne Fine’s black comedy bounces along without flagging’
Observer

‘It is said to take two to make a quarrel, but the
casus belli
for Constance after sixteen years of marriage is her philosopher husband Oliver’s serene unawareness of ever having given grounds for one … clever and entertaining … a direly witty achievement’
Guardian

THE KILLJOY

Ian Laidlaw is hideously scarred on one side. Everyone he meets falls back on cast-iron, distant courtesy. Then
Alicia
, a cheerful and callow student, joins his political science classes and exposes the obsessive passions that lurk beneath his primly cordial manner.

‘Definitely not one for the faint-hearted. It’s compellingly written, sinister … and very, very fine’
Woman’s World

‘A novel with an adder in the prose … observant and impressive’
Sunday Times

A Critical Eye

Anne Fine’s six adult novels cast a very beady eye over the whole trajectory of human life. She has taken on passion, marriage, children and divorce, step-parenting, relationships between middle-aged siblings and the strains of caring for old people. One thing all reviewers agree on is that she cuts to the bone. ‘Hugely enjoyable and disturbingly acute’ says the
Mail on Sunday
. The
Observer
agrees. ‘One of those books that make you wince with delight at, and horrified recognition of, Anne Fine’s talent at peeling away our carefully maintained ideas of ourselves.’

The
Financial Times
said, ‘Her copious and often comical dialogue rings entirely true (a rare gift), while
out
of the ephemera of everyday life she constructs a tale of lasting power: Fine lives up to her name.’

These aren’t just comedies, but forensic explorations of the human condition. ‘A steely purpose remains intact, and this gives her books an integrity which is rare,’ insists the
Literary Review
.
The Scotsman
refers to her ability to produce an ‘economical masterpiece of icy psychological acuity’ and Helen Dunmore in
The Times
is equally admiring. ‘Fine … has judged precisely what can be stripped away from her prose in order to leave it bare and effective.’

In short, ‘always engrossing’ (
Independent
).

‘Accomplished … compelling’ claims the
Sunday Times
. It is perhaps
Time Out
that sums her work up best:
‘Anne Fine is brilliant.’

Go on and read her – if you dare.

Read on

If You Liked This, Try …

While I Was Gone

Sue Miller

We Need to Talk about Kevin

Lionel Shriver

Good Behaviour

Molly Keane

Time Will Darken It

William Maxwell

The Man Who Loved Children

Christina Stead

Before and After

Rosellen Brown

The Makioka Sisters

Junichiro Tanizaki

Every Day is Mother’s Day

Hilary Mantel

The Wrong Set, and other stories

Angus Wilson

Have the Men had Enough?

Margaret Forster

Behaving Badly

Catherine Heath

Raking the Ashes
is Anne Fine’s sixth novel for adults. Her first was the critically acclaimed
The Killjoy
.
Taking the Devil’s Advice
and
Telling Liddy
have both been adapted for radio. She is also a distinguished writer for young people, and has won the Carnegie Medal twice, the Whitbread Children’s Award twice, the
Guardian
Children’s Literature Award and a Smarties Prize. An adaptation of her novel
Goggle-Eyes
has been shown by the BBC. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages. Between 2001 and 2003 she was the second Children’s Laureate. Anne Fine has two grown-up daughters and lives in County Durham.

Also by Anne Fine

THE KILLJOY

TAKING THE DEVIL’S ADVICE

IN COLD DOMAIN

TELLING LIDDY

ALL BONES AND LIES

and published by Black Swan

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
A Random House Group Company
www.transworldbooks.co.uk

RAKING THE ASHES
A BLACK SWAN BOOK : 9780552772853
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781409010074

Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press a division of Transworld Publishers

Bantam Press edition published 2005
Black Swan edition published 2006

Copyright © Anne Fine 2005

Anne Fine has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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