Never Give Up by Miranda Miller
Diary of a London writer
Timothy Hyman R A, Painting the Family 2003, Collection of David Smith.
Hello Everybody,
Some of you were at the celebration of my brother Tim’s life at the Royal Academy on Jan 17. I found it a deeply moving occasion and it was wonderful to see so many old friends. For those who would like to watch it, there’s a video recording on YouTube.
When I first saw this painting of my family by my late beloved brother Tim, I’d just moved back to London, where I grew up, from Oxford. Three of the people in the painting were dead and I was living in a flat very close to the flat in St John’s Wood where I lived from the ages of seven to ten. Somehow, this combination of circumstances stirred up a tidal wave of memories and I started to write a novel about my childhood, abandoning the novel I had been working on, Nina in Utopia.
For over a year I feverishly wrote a novel about my life up to the age of seventeen I called (rather unoriginally) Family Portrait. After writing five novels with characters who were invented, I was trying to write autobiographically. Yet I found that I couldn’t write in the first person because as soon as I excavated behind my memories, I found other people there and had to attempt to try to see their points of view. It felt quite unlike my other novels: visceral, painful, embarrassing. I had to write it - yet I wondered if anybody would be interested in this unfashionably privileged family bumbling through the 1950s. When I sent it to my ex-agent he confirmed my doubts, writing “It’s a pity all the characters are so unsympathetic.” He didn’t like it enough to send it out to publishers, so I returned to my story about nineteenth century Nina who finds herself in 21st century London – a story, with a plot and characters with just a bit of sugar added to make them more likeable. Real people are so obnoxious!
The novel languished on my computer until lockdown, that strange period when we all had too much time on our hands. I reread it and decided that although it was far too long and one-sided, I might be able to rewrite it as a shorter, more balanced novel. Perhaps I’d mellowed in the years in between. I’d come to see that my parents did their best and long conversations with my brothers Tim and Nicky brought new dimensions to that lost world.
All this was in my head as I wroteWhen I Was, my ninth novel, which Barbican Press are publishing in March. At the end of the novel Viola, my alter ego, is ten. Many people have been surprised that I have enough memories of my early years to fill a book. Actually, I have many more but chose the ones that were most vivid. Perhaps novelists are people who have abnormally long emotional memories? Louise Gluck wonderfully wrote:”We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” One of the saddest things about getting older is watching dear friends lose their memories so that I can no longer have those precious conversations that begin: “Do you remember…” They don’t, but I do, and it becomes harder to be sure about what really did happen. A memory is altered as soon as you talk about it or write it down; it freezes, becoming a still photograph instead of a fluid chaotic movie, losing intensity rather as ancient Roman frescoes fade as soon as they are exposed to oxygen.
Martin and Mike at Barbican Press wanted to use an actual photograph of my childhood for the cover of this novel. My parents were inept photographers in the days of Kodak box cameras and the few family photos that have survived are tiny, faded and black and white. This one was taken by a professional photographer at a children’s party at the Hungaria restaurant in Lower Regent Street. My parents had been loyal customers since the war, when the restaurant advertised itself enticingly as being “Bomb-proof. Splinter-proof. Blast-proof Gas-proof and BOREDOM PROOF.”
I am the sulky, dark little girl sitting behind my friend Claire, who seems to be enjoying the party more than me. I didn’t start to enjoy parties until I was about thirty. We are six years old and live next door to each other in Aberdare Gardens, near Swiss Cottage. My parents and their four children retreated to a small flat there after trustees abruptly withdrew their financial support and forced us to move from an enormous house in Chelsea. I’m the only member of my family who has not been devastated by this sudden fall; I love playing with Claire and sharing a room with my parents and I’m delighted that my shell-shocked parents keep forgetting to send me to school.
I do hope you’ll be able to come to the launch ofWhen I Was on March 18th from 6.30 to 8.0. Here’s an invitation:
