Eva Holland « neverimitate

Photo © Jessica Alexander for Good Housekeeping UK

When I discover a new author whose work I admire, I try to find out a little bit about them. I check their social media output, search for interviews, and read their blog posts. I find myself warming to them when they express opinions rather than just promoting their book. It is pleasing when they come across as real.

I have picked out two Twitter posts on Eva Holland’s feed which made me smile. In the first she described herself as a huge Margaret Atwood fan (we have something in common!). In the second she posted this:

Sending a proof of The Daughter’s Secret off to my mother with a little reminder… pic.twitter.com/2Rv68TKTx0

— Eva Holland (@HollandEva) May 29, 2015

Having read her book (click here for my review) I can understand why she wished to make this clear.

I say in my review that this book made me angry. It truly did. I kept having to put it down and walk around the room to prevent myself from throwing it at walls as the mother failed her daughter yet again. All credit to Eva for writing a novel which provoked such emotion while keeping me hooked; I had to keep picking it back up to find out what happened next.

Today I am delighted to have the opportunity to learn a little more about this author whose work I will now be following with interest.

Please welcome to neverimitate, Eva Holland.

Where do you typically write?

I have a desk in my spare room where I write every morning. It overlooks a park which is full of dog walkers in the summer and crows in the winter. If I have a full day of writing I try to get out of the house in the afternoon and often spend a couple of hours with my laptop in a coffee shop or the café at my gym. Of course I also scribble things in notebooks and tap them into emails on my phone as I go about my day. My handbags and pockets are always full of scrawled notes to myself and I often have things written on the backs of my hands.

Tell us about your writing process.

I don’t have a structured writing process and I don’t make detailed plot plans or even lists of key scenes. I start with a handful of characters and a scenario into which I want to put them. By the time I start writing I also have an idea of the period of time over which the plot will unfold and what will happen at the end. My first drafts are incredibly rough and full of plot holes and unnecessary backstory. Once I have a first draft I go back to the beginning and pick it apart word by word, sentence by sentence. It is in the second draft that the story really starts to take shape.

Tell us about your publishing experience.

My publishing experience has been rather unusual. In 2014 I entered the first 5,000 words of my work in progress and a synopsis of the remainder of the novel into the Good Housekeeping magazine novel writing competition. I was stunned to win the competition and find myself with a publishing deal with Orion and an agent. It has been an intense but amazing experience.

In what ways do you promote your work?

The Daughter’s Secret is my first novel so I am very new to promoting my work. I am really pleased to be doing a blog tour to celebrate the publication of the trade paperback. Connecting with bloggers through Twitter over the past year has been a major perk of becoming more active on social media. Writing can be a lonely business and it is hugely motivating to know that there is such a passionate community of readers actively seeking new books to discover and love.

What are some of your current projects?

I’m currently working on a second novel. It is a psychological thriller with a dark mystery at its heart. I am really excited about the story and am spending every moment I can writing it.

Where can my readers find you?

Twitter: Eva Holland (@HollandEva)

Blog: www.Eva Holland.net

A lifelong lover of words and stories, Eva Holland was the winner of the 2014 Good Housekeeping novel writing competition. She grew up in Gloucestershire and studied in Leeds before moving to London. When not writing or reading fiction she works as a freelance PR consultant and copywriter.

The Daughter’s Secret is Eva’s first novel.

The Daughter’s Secret, by Eva Holland, made me angry. I was angry with the teacher for taking advantage of a vulnerable child in his care. I was angry with the father for being unable to see past his idea of what his children should be. Most of all I was angry with the mother; I was bloody livid with the mother. Well done to the author for creating such an emotive, plausible and compelling story. It kept me up into the wee small hours because I just had to find out what happened next.

When Stephanie was fifteen years old she ran away with Nate, her twenty-four year old Geography teacher. She was unhappy with her home life and had fallen in love. When Nate offered her the chance to start over with him in a far away land she was ready to comply.

Six years later Nate is due to be released from prison having served his time. He will never teach again but this is not enough for Stephanie’s mother, Rosalind. Rosalind wants him to suffer as she has been made to suffer. She imagines scenarios where he is beaten to a pulp, injected with drugs, suffers debilitating, life threatening, grotesque illnesses.

She is terrified that Stephanie, now living in London with her best friend Sarah, will want to see him again. In the six years since it happened they have never discussed why Stephanie ran away or what exactly went on in the days before they were found. As the story unfolds the reader begins to understand why.

Rosalind is paranoid and has been for many years. She allowed random dangers elsewhere to feed her imagination to the extent that she kept her children off school until her husband discovered what she is doing and, ashamed, she allowed them to return. She followed the school coach on an outing, taking her daughter in the car, because she worried that the coach could crash. She imagines objects falling out of the sky and crushing their skulls.

“I had caught a snippet of news coverage about a plane accidentally releasing its cargo of holidaymakers’ luggage into the sea off Spain and hadn’t been able to shake myself free of the fear that it could happen above St Albans. Could a suitcase […] smash through the roof if it fell from a thousand metres?”

Rosalind chews her lips until they bleed, cannot talk because her anxiety drains her mouth of saliva and makes her tongue feel dry and swollen in her mouth. She has panic attacks where she forgets to breath and comes close to passing out.

This is the mother her children have grown up with, in a house where voices are never raised and their father is rarely home from his demanding job in the city.

Occasionally Rosalind catches sight of her daughter in moments when Stephanie is unaware of Rosalind’s presence. There is laughter and chat with her brother, relaxed smiles and casual flirting with her peers. When the story opens Stephanie has been drinking heavily and is brought back to her parents’ house to recover. It soon becomes clear that the family home is no sanctuary. Her father wishes to outsource the problem, to send Stephanie away to rehab that she may be mended and returned as the little girl he wants rather than the runaway he is still unable to countenance. Her mother chews her lip and worries about Nate regaining access to her child.

The tale unfolds during the ten days leading up to Nate’s release from prison, with flashbacks to the abduction. Stephanie needs support yet Rosalind is unable to move beyond her own paranoia. She tries, but always there is a tipping point and she descends into her fears. Stephanie’s upbringing left her vulnerable to a predatory teacher; the guilt she carries for the punishment he suffered has never been assuaged.

I am always reluctant to blame parents for their children’s mistakes. It seems too easy an excuse for what is usually a much more complex set of circumstances. Rosalind undoubtedly loves Stephanie but cannot seem to see her as beyond the baby she breastfed, the toddler she slept beside to ward off bad dreams. When Stephanie bitterly points out that her forty year old mother is flirting with a twenty four year old fellow student at the art college she attends Rosalind is shocked that her daughter can draw comparisons with Nate. Stephanie needs the support of a loving parent but not one who has compartmentalised her as a child.

I enjoyed the penultimate scenes when Stephanie’s relationship with her boyfriend was further developed. The denouement was nicely done but just a tad too open ended to leave me satisfied. I wondered if the family would ever confront their problems or if they would always skirt around issues for fear of the lip chewing and irrationality of the mother. There was a tidying up of the plot, but left in abeyance were many interesting issues around the characters which I would like to discuss. This is the perfect read for a Book Group.

My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Orion Books.