Welcome to BookView Interview, a conversation series where BookView talks to authors.
Recently, we interviewed Judy King about her writing and her recently released book, Agnes’s Broken Dreams, a compulsively readable meditation on trauma, grief, survival, and self-discovery. (Read the review here.)
I grew up in Sydney Australia and after a troubled beginning, emerged in twenties to establish a successful Real Estate and property development business – reforming old Edwardian houses in Paddington, Sydney. I sold the business and set off with my husband, a week after Neil Armstrong´s first stepped on the moon in July 1969, to travel through South East Asia, Japan, San Francisco, Driving the Big sur to California, Mexico, New Orleans, New York and across the Atlantic to London, where we settled for a year. My husband got a job as an architect and I divided my time between selling antique scientific instruments in an exclusive shop in King´s Road, Chelsea and attending an art school in Lambeth. On a Christmas trip to the mountain village of Deia on the Island of Mallorca, we established a friendship with the poet, Robert Graves. Falling in love with the beauty of the village, with his help, we purchased an old stone house there, which established a permanent connection with
the now-famous artists’ colony. Back in Sydney, on the strength of my London art work, I was accepted into a two year ceramics course at the Sydney College of the Arts. On completion of the course, my husband and I, set up painting and ceramic studios on a hundred acres of rain forest land, south of Sydney.
Our marriage ended soon after the birth of our son in March 1976 and, for several months following the separation, I lived with friends in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, before moving to Sri Lanka, where I established a home with my small son and two servants in a jungle house above the town of Kandy and developed an interest in Buddhism. The need to leave the country to renew my visa every six months, stimulated several trips to India and a magical stay on a beautiful houseboat on Lake Nagin Indian Kashmir. I returned to Deia Mallorca, when I was suddenly forced to leave Sri Lanka because of the outbreak of civil war. I replaced the joint house, I lost in the divorce there, with the purchase of a rambling, old stone house in the heart of the village. Once resettled, I set up a studio and made large clay sculptures, that I fired in the kiln of a tile factory in Palma. Conveniently situated in front of the village school, my son walked the few steps across the road to class each morning and grew up speaking Spanish and Catalan. Later to earn the money to send him to boarding school in England, I bought, reformed and sold old houses and managed renovation and rentals for overseas owners.
My first real interest in writing came when I met the Irish writer, Edna O´Brien In the late nineteen eighties. By chance we collided in a narrow lane, the morning after she arrived in the village to find the house she had rented was a building site. We walked back to my house and I invited her to stay. Later she rented the self-contained apartment I created on the top floor of my house, before moving to the Residencia hotel. We developed a close friendship and I ended up working for her as a researcher on a book she wrote while living there, called -The High Road. I would go on to study English literature at Birkbeck college in London and attend regular summer, creative writing courses at Oxford university.
I remarried and went to live in London in 1994. This marriage ending in 2000. Drawn to spend a period of reflective time back in Sydney revisiting old haunts and rekindling lost memories, I explored the idea of returning to settle in Sydney, but finally opted to return to Mallorca. Selling up in Deia, I purchased and renovated an old house in the town of Soller, where I currently live and continue to write.
A walker all life. My greatest joy is to follow the donkey paths up into the mountains that surround the valley I live in below.
Website-www.judykingauthor.com
Twitter- @judykingauthorInstagram and Facebook- judy king
What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
When anxiety caused by abuse in my early teenager years interfered with my concentration so profoundly, that I lost the ability to read and write fluently. Devested of the power of language indelibly undermined my life. Unable to understand what was happening to me, I had no defence against the teacher´s judgement that I was consequently not very bright. Yet, like Agnes in my story, it didn´t dampen my ability to recognize the absurd, often blinkered behaviour of many of those, so called, erudite individuals around me. Given my early deprivation, regaining concentration ,with the help of therapy, and with it the ability to develop as a writer has been the most miraculous gift of my life.
What were your favourite childhood books?
Hans Christian Andersons´s fairy tales captured, my young imagination. I was drawn to the tale of the Little Match girl, who, after freezing to death on earth, finds a warm fire in heaven.
A loveless childhood intensified my faith in the Catholic church. From as early as I can remember, I traded good deeds with God to stay alive: “ I´ll do this for you, God, if you keep me alive long enough to go to Saturday´s party.” Unable to take complaints of my home life to another human being, I focused pleading eyes upon those of the painted statue of the Virgin Mary in our local Parish church. My only security was the belief that I was watched over by God and the Virgin, and in the worst event, they would carry me up to live with them heaven.
Earthly adventures replaced those in the clouds, when a little older, I joined two personified gumnuts in The Adventures of Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie – an Australian classic by May Gibbs. Anne Frank´s Diary was a treasured gift that helped me maintain courage in the confusion of my early teenage years.
What authors do you like to read? What book or books have had a strong influence on you or your writing?
My first profound literary experience was the discovery at School of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, His compassion for the viscerally described poor, struggling with oppression and injustice, influenced my thinking and shaped a lifetime belief that truth and goodness was worth fighting for. I hoped my parents would have the same epiphany about me, as Pip has in Great Expectations: the realization that he has betrayed Joe Gargery´s love. As an adult I studied, Bleak House, at Birkbeck University in London and would forever be in awe, of not only Dicken´s values, but his extraordinary descriptive powers, which have so profoundly influenced the way I write.
I can´t remember how I came upon it, but I have always been in love with Rebecca, a 1938 Gothic novel written by English author Daphne du Maurier, which taught me so much about plot, back story and mood. The novel depicts an unnamed young woman who impetuously marries a wealthy widower, before discovering that both he and his household are haunted by the memory of his late first wife, the title character. Love, paranoia and obsession weave poignantly through the narrative compelling the reader to delve beneath the surface glamour that skilfully veils the truth. The narrator is imprisoned, as I myself was, in the gender roles of her time.
Favourite books as an adult.
During a brief, relaxing break by the sea in Port Dickson, Malaysia after the birth of my son, I discovered the journals of Anais Nin, DH Lawrence´s Women in love and J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. While embracing the barrier broken down by Nin and Lawrence regarding female desires and behaviour, Salinger sweetly articulated for me the struggles of young adults with the existential questions of morality, identity, meaning and connection.
The two author´s that have had the greatest influence on the way I approached writing are Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: a masterful, compassionate, heart-breaking story to which I am regularly drawn back. Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture has burrowed into my soul.
What books have most influenced you in recent times?
The book that has recently most impressed me is a masterpieces by Hanya Yanagihara called, A Little Life. It is a stand-out character-driven novel, both touching and unpredictable, and whose sizeable length is dwarfed by its profound content and power to absorb. Also, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine about the importance of friendship and human connection is a standout novel, both beautifully written and incredibly funny.
What inspired the premise of your book?
The inspiration to find words to express the dark shadows that had haunted me from early childhood came from my gifted psychiatrist in Palma de Mallorca. The initial resistance to uncover long buried, horrific childhood events and feel, for the first time, the pain hidden beneath them was the greatest struggle of my life – washing, ironing, mopping the floor – any trivial household chore felt like a treat by comparison. Miraculously, the breakthroughs gradually came, as I gave weight to my quest to uncover the past, and find a writing style that felt right for the story.
Tell us a little about how this story first came to be. Did it start with an image, a voice, a concept, a dilemma or something else?
The story starts with a conflicted Agnes on a flight back to Sydney, to where she was born and grew up, in search of what lies behind her childhood amnesia. It was originally written and endlessly rewritten in the first person. At the beginning of the Covid lock down, on the advice of a friend, I sent the manuscript to the Literary Consultancy in London for an assessment, where it was picked up by an enthusiastic editor who requested permission to work with me directly. Thrilled to have a reader for my manuscript, especially one who´s assessment was so favourable, I instantly accepted and we embarked on a fulfilling editorial relationship together. Originally fully written in the first person, I recognized the benefits in converting the manuscript into a fictional narrative in the third person. Thus, saving the first person, for the sudden emergence of lost childhood memories as the journey into the past progressed.
What do you hope readers will take away from Agnes´s Broken Dreams?
I hope it helps many people realize that they are no alone. That finding the courage to break silence and understand how trauma has negatively shaped their life, is the way to empower it to heal.
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