The Very Thought Of You
Rosie Alison
Book notes
It is fitting that this irresistibly romantic novel begins on the eve of the Second World War, with the evacuation of eight-year-old Anna Sands from London to Ashton Park, a Palladian mansion on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. The story which follows has the passion and pain of those glorious 1940s melodramas which kept cinema audiences sniffling into their handkerchiefs during the conflict. The cast of characters assembled here leaves little doubt of what’s in store: there’s handsome estate owner Thomas Ashton, once the ‘finest young man in Yorkshire’, now confined to a wheelchair at a tragically early age; his beautiful but brittle wife, Elizabeth, trying to compensate for her childlessness by turning their house into a boarding school for evacuees; Ruth, an innocent young teacher who catches her breath when Thomas uses the word ‘erotic’; and Anna’s mother, Roberta, slipping happily into a bohemian lifestyle during the absence of her soldier husband. Add in a dark-haired Polish artist and the pieces are in place for highly-charged story of love, longing, betrayal and loss which has a wholly unexpected sequel long after Anna has grown up - and it is all written with such conviction that you can’t help but be swept along by its intensity.
About the author
Rosie Alison was born in 1964, the youngest of three children. Her childhood was divided between London, Yorkshire, and a couple of boarding schools, before she read English at Keble College, Oxford. Her first ambition was to make films, and after university she joined The South Bank Show as a researcher. She spent over ten years as a TV documentary director, making programmes ranging from The South Bank Show to Omnibus and Grand Designs. In 2001 she moved from television into film, joining Heyday Films, for whom she has recently co-produced two films: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, an adaptation of John Boyne’s fable, and Is Anybody There?, starring Michael Caine. She lives in London with her husband and two daughters. The Very Thought of You is her first novel, which she wrote over an eight-year period. It has been nominated for several awards and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010.
Discussion points
1. One of the author’s intentions is ‘to explore different kinds of love’. What different kinds of love are there in the novel?
2. Does the book have an optimistic view of relationships, or a rather bleak one?
3. At one point Thomas blames himself for what happens to Elizabeth and Ruth. Should he?
4. Thomas endures terrible loss in his life, but never gives up. How do you think he survives?
5. Do any of the main characters lead fulfilled and happy lives?
6. Do you think people would have acted differently today, with different outcomes?
7. Can you sympathise with Elizabeth’s behaviour?
8. Where does Roberta’s story fit in with the rest of the story? Are there any parallels between her behaviour and that of Elizabeth?
9. What do you learn about life during the Second World War?
10. Is Anna’s experience at Ashton Park ultimately a positive or negative influence on her life?
Author's view
Ten years ago I was trying to write a contemporary novel set it in London, where I’ve lived all my adult life. But something was holding me back. I kept finding myself diverted back to my childhood, and in particular to a haunting if somewhat rundown stately home on the North York Moors where I spent my formative years, aged 8-12, at boarding school. But I felt very resistant to converting my 1970s school experiences into a novel; that would have been too direct and personal.
Yet all that changed when I was researching a documentary about the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, and watched some footage of two nervous evacuees smiling for the camera on a London station platform. I remember feeling an instant pang about these small children leaving their parents behind – perhaps partly because I had two daughters exactly that age, but also because I remembered the ache of leaving my own home behind at eight. There was an extra resonance for me because I knew that my mother had been evacuated as a wartime child, and that the trauma of that separation from her parents had been a factor, strangely, in sending her own children away from home at a young age.
Not long after that, I visited a glorious stately home in Cornwall called Llanhydrock, where they have devoted a special archive to the evacuees who lived there during the war. Again, I found myself gripped by the photographs of these displaced children with their brave smiles. It struck me then that there was a way of writing about the hauntingly beautiful Yorkshire house which had dominated my childhood, but setting it during World War Two. Ashton Park began to form in my mind as a place in which a series of elective affinities play out during wartime, as witnessed by a visiting evacuee.
An evacuee is the quintessential displaced or lost child – I think that was why Anna Sands lodged herself in my mind. If ever there were children at crossroads, it was evacuees, who set off on their trains to unknown destinations, and found their lives changed for ever by the new families they joined. The emotional consequences still trickle down the years. But although my novel is set during World War Two, I wanted to write about that counterpoint which is always with us, between the front line and the home front – between the wider world of politics and the intimacy of personal relationships. Ashton Park is a becalmed place where private lives exist at a remove from the world of war and devastation which is always raging somewhere outside our daily existence.
Quite apart from the wartime setting, my guiding instinct was that I wanted to write a story about love. The impulse to find intimacy with somebody else is surely one of the most universal preoccupations, and I wanted to explore different kinds of love. This is a book in which most of the characters are holding the thought of somebody in their heads and hearts – but whilst some of them find reciprocation, others remain as emotional witnesses only, stranded on the sidelines of their own lives. I have tried to tease out that invisible thread which runs between potential lovers – delving into how love takes root and evolves, all those elusive staging posts. The heart of the novel is an adult love affair, and much of the time I was trying to get inside these two lovers as they feel this unspoken connection between them, but don’t know whether it’s their delusion or not. This affair is framed by the more unusual story of the young evacuee, Anna, who develops her own complicated attachment to one of her hosts, which endures through her life in unexpected ways.
When friends ask me what kind of book I’ve written, I describe it as a torch-song – perhaps that’s why I chose a song title. I’ve noticed that it appeals more to those who are romantically inclined than to those who are pragmatists about love.