Booktime: Interview with Jessie Burton, author of Hidden Treasure

Hidden Treasure is a children's adventure story. How different is it writing adult and children's fiction?
This one felt a bit different because, although I have written for children before, The Restless Girls and Medusa, those were based on fairytales and myths, so this is my first original story. You have to take into consideration the readers' age in terms of themes and vocabulary and pace. But whether you’re writing a children's or adults' book, in the first instance you're writing for yourself. You've got something inside you that you've got to write, and you don't have too many thoughts in your mind when you're writing it if it’s going to be for children or adults. It comes from the same well, the same place, and I don't find my approach to be different. As I worked through more drafts, I worked with my editor on the sophistication and complexity of the book, but children are sophisticated, and I always like to write up to them, not down.

Why did you set the story in 1918?
I've always been interested in what it was like for normal people and families during the First World War. So many young men didn’t come home. The country was rigidly class structured at that point. One in three officers, middle class men and boys, didn’t come back and one in eight working class soldiers. You can imagine the impact of that in towns and villages and streets in London. It’s always captured my imagination, the knock-on effect. I wanted to explore what that might have felt like, without it being the heavy focal point of the book. I wouldn’t describe it as a First World War novel, but I wanted to look at it obliquely.

There are lots of strong women in the story. Was this because the men were away at war?
Yes. It was this really strange time in women’s lives, when they were driving trucks, working in munitions factories and teaching in classrooms because the men weren’t there to do it. Across the classes, women had more freedom, which was then curtailed when the men came back. I thought that was an interesting fact to explore – what it would mean for someone like Miss Cressant to be able to flex her muscles a bit. The phenomenon of the 'maiden aunt' spread through the century because there were fewer men.
The River Thames is central to the book.

Did you research the mythology of the river?
Not really, I just responded to my own feelings about the river, and the universal ideas of rivers in general, as a sources of life, a passage between life and death, a source of renewal, and of extraction. All the things we unconsciously associate with rivers and water, I think I also was associating. I was thinking of the River Thames as this endless, ancient pathway through the city of London, it being a working river, but also something that gives life and takes it away.

Do you also see it as a river of time?
Yes, absolutely. It does seem timeless when your down there, on the river. If you go past an old 17th or 18th century church spire that will ring out on a Sunday morning, it's very bizarre, you fell like it’s centuries ago.

How did you go about writing the ballad that appears in the book?
I made it up! I knew the idea of ballads, their vernacular and storytelling, but it was my invention. I wrote that ballad so many times. The ballad had to reflect the plot, but the plot kept changing, so it was a nightmare!

Have you set it to music?
No! I have musical friends who I'd hope would set it to music, but for me it was more the metre which I had to get right. It’s more of a poem than a song.

Grief is a theme in the story – do you think that grief is a process of letting go?
Yes. I think that Bo is at the beginning of understanding what she’ll have to go through regarding her grief. But in the ballad you see the pain of a mother who has lost a son, the difficulty of letting go. There is also a comfort than can maybe come from understanding that the experiences we have of loss enable us to remember those that are gone. The people we love don’t leave us because they live in our memories, unconsciously they are with us. It's a very difficult process, grief, everyone deals with it differently.

There are couple of big twists towards the end of the book – were they planned from the beginning?
No, they crept up on me. When you're writing your unconscious reveals itself for you in draft after draft. You're taking a leap of faith and hoping that something good comes out of it. At the end of the first draft, the storyline involving Billy revealed itself to me. I had to take a choice and I then knew where I was going.

Which other authors inspire you in your work?
Hilary Mantel inspired me greatly, both in her books and in the way she conducted herself in the world. I was lucky to meet her at a historical fiction conference in Pasadena and she was generous, supportive, funny and witty. And her actual writing and her work ethic inspire me always. I love Kate Atkinson's work, I love the way she writes. I very much enjoy the writing of Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett, I think that they are unbelievable writers. Whenever they publish a book, I know I’m going to read it.

What do independent bookshops mean to you?
They mean a great deal. I'm lucky in that we have quite a few near where I live in south-east London. You know when you walk into one that these people actually really like books. They read books and they curate their collection, and they hand-sell. I've been published now for ten years and my first book The Miniaturist was hand-sold by independent booksellers and that was a huge part of its word-of-mouth success. They are havens and I’ve always had a great love for them.