Blog Tour: The Separation by Dinah Jefferies - Interview

Dinah Jefferies

I am so delighted to welcome Dinah Jefferies, author of The Separation (a book set in Malaya in the 1950s) and I am so excited to read it! I've been given the chance to interview her and here is what we talked about.

1. Can you describe The Separation in 5 words? 

Betrayal, danger, coming-of-age, loss, love.

2. What inspired you to write The Separation? 

Firstly it was my mother’s wonderful black and white photograph albums which so brilliantly evoked our time in Malaya during the 1950s. Secondly, the loss of my fourteen year old son inspired me to write about children who are missing. I’m also shocked by the British Empire and what that meant to people’s lives, and my dad’s stories of life in Malaya kept going round in my mind and wouldn’t let me go. By the way, I call it Malaya because that’s what it was known as then.

3. Was The Separation extensively researched? Could you tell us more about the writing process? 

Dinah with her "Amah"

The research was mainly a matter of reading up on The Emergency which began in 1948 two months before I was born, and was fought between the Chinese Communists hidden in the Jungle and the British Administration. It was clear Malaya was headed for independence which was a good thing, but the Chinese Communists wanted to turn Malaya in to a communist state. So while the Brits were preparing for a handover in the mid-fifties they were also fighting this war. It was only called an Emergency so that the owners of the tin mines and rubber plantations could still claim on their insurance when they suffered heavy losses.

4. What can readers expect in The Separation? 

Well people say it’s a gripping and emotionally taut novel, so I’d expect readers to be transported to a very different time and place. It’s dual narrative with alternating chapters between the mother, Lydia, and her daughter, Emma. Lydia comes home, after being away, to find the house empty and her husband and children gone. She’s given false information and then sets out to search for her family through war-torn Malaya. Communications have been destroyed, firstly during the Japanese occupancy and, secondly, at the hands of the Chinese Communists during the Emergency, so it’s a tough and sometimes dangerous task.

The novel is about a search, but it’s a metaphorical as well as a physical search. Both main characters have to grow and change. Lydia, a typical 1950s colonial housewife, has to learn to stand on her own feet and start again without her husband. Don’t forget women in the 1950s were not expected to have minds of their own, and it was even worse for colonial women who simply did not have enough to do; many turned to drink, though not Lydia. In fact Emma has actually been abducted by her father and has been taken to England against her wishes. Her story is very much a coming of age, and that happens while she is in the process of uncovering the truth about her mother’s past. Oh and by the way, there’s also a powerful love story in there too!

5. How is your average writing day?

Dinah when she was in Malaya in the 1950s

ODD. That stands for obsessive, determined and desperate to reach the end. Seriously, I am totally committed to the book I’m working on, and I regard writing as a daily job. So I do whatever it takes, including endless revisions. I plan a bit, write a bit and so it goes on. Mostly I just love what I’m doing, even though sometimes it drives me mad.

6. What are you working on now? Could you sneak us a peek?

My second novel, The Tea Planter’s Wife, set in Ceylon in 1925 is being published by Penguin in May 2015 and I’ve just seen the cover. It’s seriously gorgeous but, sadly, I can’t show you yet. The Tea Planter’s Wife is nineteen year old, Gwendolyn Hooper, and she has come to Ceylon to embark on a new life, never imagining that she will be faced with a choice no mother should have to make. It’s a love story with mystery and I think you will cry. Although it’s set all the way back then, the theme is still relevant. I’m researching my third right now, also set in the East.

7. The Separation is your debut novel. Why did you choose to set it in Malaya (Malaysia)?

I set it in Malaya (that was) because I lived there as a child, and my father had talked a lot about the bad old days, but also because I am fascinated by the end of Empire generally. I’m interested in times where everything is falling apart or is about to, and when society crumbles, there is always massive social change. And then I focus on how those changes affect women and children, whose stories are often forgotten.

8. Did you have some fond memories when you were here?

My memories are all fond, despite seeing my dad go to work every day with two armed policemen, and our car coming under fire more than once. But we used to have wonderful holidays on an isolated island with another family. The launch would drop us and leave us for a week or so, and we’d just sleep under tents and spend all day in the sea. I could swim long before I could walk. I loved my childhood in Malaya and didn’t get on with England at all. In fact for many years I felt like a complete outsider. I had tanned skin, massively curly sun bleached hair and I spoke Chinese and Malay. Sadly not now though! Like my character Emma, the scents and sounds of my childhood have never left me and I’ll always be glad it is the country where I was born.

The Separation is out on May 22nd. Click here to get it now!