One style of novels I truly appreciate finding are the Epistolary variety, as they knit out such a heap of connection between characters – either across time and generation or intermediary within one timescape. They can take-on a variety of expressions of thought – letters, correspondences or journalled artifacts either known or found after a loved one’s passing; therein, pulling you inside the novel’s heart straight-off because you want to know more about why one of the characters has left behind such a personal part of themselves in such an extraordinary way of communicating what they intend for someone to understand.
I have appreciated Indian story-telling for several years now, as it began with a pursuit of seeking out movies from Bollywood and has extended inside literature as I purposefully seek out stories set in India and/or are a cross-over of both contemporary or historical settings in India or anchoured to India through the character’s family. India has such a beautiful historical tapestry through their cultural heritage but also, on a personal note, I fancy their spices and palette of foods! I’m quite a Foodie in general, but when it comes to cuisine from India, if it’s vegetarian-based I’m the girl who cannot satisfy her thirst for trying new combinations of what you can expect to find available. If I can one day start to master cooking Indian foods, I will perpetually be full of smiles!
Contemporary literature about India fascinates me because I like reading cross-over stories from the ancestral past and/or the historical past (depending on the focus of the story) – they give you a brilliant bridge of where a writer can take you visually and internally inside their character’s journey. I love this dimension of space a character can embark on inside a bridge such as this, as your rooted to their present life whilst being involved with the threading of choice which takes you backwards inside a portion of their life or of a loved ones’ life you’ve yet to encounter. It’s emotionally centreing, in other words, and this is one reason when I read the premise of this novel, I felt immediately connected to Jaya! I wanted to know more about her and read through her eyes how this novel unravells itself around the life of her mother’s hidden from her view!
You will be delighted to find I rooted out questions pertaining to the story and a precursory glimpse into a story I look forward to reading one day!
To gain a bit of a back-story on how I came to host Bookouture authors,
please visit my first conversation I featured with this publisher with Teresa Driscoll!
What if you discovered that everything you knew about yourself was a lie?
When pregnant Jaya loses her mother, then her baby son Arun in a tragic cot death, her world crashes down. Overcome by grief and guilt, she begins to search for answers – to the enigma of her lonely, distant mother, and her mysterious past in India.
Looking through her mother’s belongings, she finds two diaries and old photographs, carrying the smoky aroma of fire. A young boy smiles out at Jaya from every photograph – and in one, a family stand proudly in front of a sprawling mansion. Who is this child? And why did her mother treasure this memento of a regal family lost to the past?
As Jaya starts to read the diaries, their secrets lead her back to India, to the ruin of a once grand house on a hill. There, Kali, a mad old lady, will unlock the story of a devastating lie and a fire that tore a family apart.
Nothing though will prepare Jaya for the house’s final revelation, which will change everything Jaya knew about herself.
How did you find inspiration to write a story out of the ashes of personal loss to become the anchor your lead character needed to re-connect to her past? How did one event precipitate the other to happen?
D’ Silva responds: The idea for A Mother’s Secret came in the form of a mad old lady living in a dilapidated house, set isolated and forbidding atop a hill and carrying traces of past grandeur. Why was the woman there? What had happened to her and the house to make them that way, both ravaged and decrepit? Then I pictured a young woman thousands of miles away, who, while dealing with grief and personal loss finds her mother’s diaries and in doing so, is led to this madwoman haunting a tumbledown house in a country her mother shunned. It intrigued me – I wanted to work out the connection. And thus, A Mother’s Secret was born.
Such an interesting jettison of discovery to focus on the secondary threading of plot ahead of the principal focus – I love how your mind noodled out this story from the two perspectives but also, how you wanted to know more about what caused the end effect of a life and house whilst grounding the story to encompass so much outside of that ‘ending’. To know what came ‘before’ is a very compelling reaction and you seem to have given this story a full grounding of ‘history’.
Was Jaya’s reconnection to her family at first meant to reconcile her own grief but evolved towards unearthing events she would need to understand in order to re-align her own self-identity through her family’s heritage?
D’ Silva responds: Yes, that’s exactly what I meant to happen. In A Mother’s Secret, each character is undertaking their own personal journey. And for Jaya, who is undone by grief, discovering her mother’s diaries comes at a critical point in her own journey towards understanding and accepting the losses she has sustained. It is also a way of connecting with her mother, who was always remote and finding more about this woman who she tried so hard to understand but never really knew.
Sometimes you have to walk backwards in order to move forwards and this is the epitome of that process by going through a journal of your mother’s and re-discovering her in a new light. I think you’ve set-up a lovely layer of ‘unknowns’ and reading Jaya’s story is definitely intriguing from the outside looking in!
Are the diaries used as a time slip tool to help transport readers from one generation of Jaya’s family to Jaya directly or are they read in tandem with Jaya in the present? How did you decide to incorporate the diaries into the story-line?
D’ Silva responds: I wanted Sudha to tell her own story, to give her a voice. Sudha had been such an enigma to her daughter and had kept herself so apart from everyone including the one person she loved most in the world, her daughter Jaya. She needed an outlet for the emotions she suppressed and, being an avid reader, she found comfort in the written word, by pouring everything she couldn’t say out loud onto paper. The diaries are discovered by Jaya and are read by her, so we contrast Jaya’s present with her mother’s past, thus bringing the two women who loved each other but had drifted apart, together.
As I mentioned, I love when journals are used to use as a bridge between two characters, and it sounds to me like you’ve interwoven their stories in such a way, as to allow us to get to know each of the women better than perhaps they even understood themselves; both together and individually. It’s quite sad when a mother and daughter lose their connection but how uplifting to find a story that celebrates their reunification.
What do you feel is the hardest part with Epistolary novels as they are relying on what is written but not always what is readily known?
D’ Silva responds: I love epistolary novels and each of my books has contained some form of epistolary narrative. I love how a story emerges through letters and how letters allow for the outpouring of feelings that wouldn’t necessarily be spoken out loud.
Definitely, true! Letters are writ to such a personal level of disclosure, the writers can be themselves without pretense and without worrying about someone dismissing their views. They give communication a hidden layer of insight simply because the two writers can talk about things that they might appreciate has a tangible approach rather than vocalised one. Letters can be a journal in of their own, as they are capsules of time.
As you were writing Jaya’s story, did you hesitate to let the truth run out as the story unfolded? Are all secrets which are sealed into the hands of time warranted to be revealed or are their exceptions for some to remain hidden?
D’ Silva responds: I wanted Jaya to heal in the process of reading her mother’s diaries and journeying into her mother’s past. Jaya had lost two of the three people who mattered most to her, her mother and her son. Grief had driven a wedge between her and her husband. As she reads her mother’s words, Jaya learns many truths about herself and about her mother and understands her mother in a way she never did while her mother was alive.
This is why I thought it was beautiful how Jaya and her mother could work towards reunification; perhaps not in life but in the wake of her mother’s death, Jaya was able to recapture something they each treasured but lost. Such a beautiful takeaway for a novel to have inside it. Sometimes part of healing is going through emotions and memories – to seek out things that were lost and to re-emerge stronger for the path you’ve taken to understand what was not yet known.
All of your stories deal with family and a sense of home – how have you enjoyed exploring the definition of family through each of the stories you’ve published thus far? Was one of them more challenging to write than the others? If so, why?
D’ Silva responds: I am riveted by the interactions, feuds, secrets, lies and intense bonds prevalent among families. The complex ties between family members seem rife with hurt, hate, so many seething emotions, so much love and angst and anger and grudges nurtured over the years. This is what I explore in my books. Each of them was a challenge to write as I tried to give voice to all of my disparate characters. But having said that, I enjoyed writing every one.
I think this is a champion idea of yours – to write a truthful impression of how complex families can become and how each member of a family has something to contribute to the story; even the parts which might be more challenging to write. It’s nice to know you’ve enjoyed each story and where each of their characters took you!
What do you love the most about writing under Women’s Fiction? Is it the emotional dramatic arc of exploring a women’s life from the inside-out or the expanse of how consuming a story can become defined by a women’s choices and experiences?
D’ Silva responds: Both, I think. I write about Indian women and explore how they face the constrictions of a restrictive culture while at the same time stretching their wings, how they define themselves in a world that tends to impose stifling limitations upon them, how they try and find themselves, constraints notwithstanding.
This is key not only for cultural differences, but for the different perceptions of a person’s life most families have on behalf of their children. Too oft parents try to change their children’s natural path without letting them decide where their passion lies and which niche of joy will sustain them best. I love finding empowering characters who stand up for themselves but also, find a way to break through an obstacle (even if it’s breaking the mould of their family or culture) and own their life’s choices for being right for them.
I love how you have listed your Top 10 Indian Fiction stories on your website for readers who are starting to discover the Literature of India for the first time. What do you feel are the classic inclusions which give Indian Fiction both its appeal and its dynamic diversity of stories? In other words, what did those 10 stories all share in common that drew your eye towards reading them?
D’ Silva responds: The complicated dynamics of relationships, whether within families or cultures or religions or states or countries – that is what all the stories I love share in common.
What do you love about the craft of writing stories? What re-inspires you each time you set time aside to create a new character and a new setting for where your story will blossom into life?
D’ Silva responds: What I love about writing is how a bud of an idea, a spark overheard from somewhere, a snippet of a news item on TV, will take root in my mind and over time germinate and grow into a story that wants to be told.
As you insert a lot of your personal memories into your stories (especially in relating to India) how do you approach writing the visual connections to places whilst owning the memories you love to use as inspiration?
D’ Silva responds: My stories are all fictitious as are the places I set them in – although the descriptions of these places are drawn from my own memories of India. Once I get into a story, the characters narrate their tales and I am lost in their lives, apart even from myself. When reading back what I have written, sometimes I do find an echo of a childhood memory, make the odd connection, but my characters’ stories are distinct from my own.
I love how your memories and your imagination have merged together and produced such a healthy variety of locales and an impression of India you can bestow on your readers. It’s a gift to be able to translate the India you recognise in your mind’s eye with a visual India inside your novels where a reader can feel like they’ve travelled there, even if they haven’t.
Your stories have a lyrical poetic prose about them, as evidenced whilst I was looking up your bibliography and finding a few lines of your passages. What do you love about how words have a way of conveying what you want to say set to this rhythm?
D’ Silva responds: I love words and the English language. I am constantly amazed by how twenty six letters can combine to produce stark and stunning prose that spellbinds a reader.
Regarding my own stories – they arrive as pictures in my head and when I am writing, I try to recreate these images for myself as much as the reader via the medium of words.
I, too am quite impressed by how powerfully evoking words can change a reader’s impression about what they are reading – as words in different combinations can not only enlighten a mind, but touch a heart and emotionally affect the reader as well. Crafting stories is a unique gift writers share for giving readers experiences so wholly true and authentic as if they lived every inch of the story for themselves. This is quite interesting – about how the story first arrives to you in pictures and then, as you write down what you see, the story unfolds itself and knits together through the words,… how lovely of a description of your writing process! Thank you for sharing!
Are your writing tools analog or digital? What do you use whilst you’re writing in other words: a vintage typewriter, notebooks and pens, a computer or portable gadget, a tape recorder or your own combination of materials which help you write down the bones?
D’ Silva responds: Digital, mostly, although I jot down notes and ideas for stories on any sheet of paper to hand.
How do you renew your spirit when you’re not researching and writing?
D’ Silva responds: I cook, read, and spend time with family and friends.
Thank you so much for hosting me on your wonderful blog.
It has been such a pleasure.
I’d like to thank Ms D’ Silva for sharing her personal approach to writing as images foretell the stories she’s creating and giving us a bit more insight into her latest release! It’s wicked brilliant to have such stimulating conversations with fellow writers and I must admit, I am enjoying this series of interviews I am hosting on behalf of the authors of #Bookouture!
Converse via: #WomensFiction
About Renita D' Silva
Renita grew up in a picturesque coastal village in the South of India, the oldest of three children. Her father got her first story books when she was six and she fell in love with the world of stories. Even now she prefers that world, by far, to this.
This author interview is courtesy of Bookouture!
Site | Blog | @bookouture
I have a full line-up of engaging conversations by this Indie Pub across the pond who is starting to make a bit of a splash stateside! It’s my honour and pleasure to bring these conversations to my readers, whilst helping to expand our knowledge of wicked awesome writers of Women’s Fiction or Historical Fiction whose stories are full of heart and soul; just the way I love the genres to be! They are focusing on guttingly brilliant dramatic story-lines, whose fusion of realism and the introspective focus on a woman’s journey is not only pro-positive but inspiring to find.
Be sure to return on 15th of April for my conversation with Debbie Rix!
My interviews run straight through til the end of April also featuring a bloke whose writing spell-binding Thrillers which sound as if they leave you breathless for the dramatic climaxes but eager to solve the mystery inside his stories whilst you root for his characters! I’m referring to British Thriller writer Tom Bale – look for his conversation mid-April!
The reason I chose the authors I have to interview is because if their books were readily at hand, I know I’d be lost inside them! I always interview authors (or offer guest posts) of whom I’d genuinely and earnestly want to read; it’s a precursor to the day when I can read their stories and a lovely interlude for my readers to find #newtomeauthors they might not have discovered either!
In case you’ve missed my previous interviews feat. #Bookouture authors:
Let’s celebrate bookish conversations & the stories behind them!
Kindly leave your comments, thoughts and musings about this interview for Ms D’ Silva in the comment threads below! I welcome your commentary! Esp if you are a regular reader of Women’s Fiction featuring strong characters & dynamic stories!
Love #Epistolary #fiction? You will enjoy #reading this interview w/@RenitaDSilva! Share on X
Similar to blog tours where I feature book reviews, as I choose to highlight an author via a Guest Post, Q&A, Interview, etc., I do not receive compensation for featuring supplemental content on my blog. I provide the questions for interviews and topics for the guest posts; wherein I receive the responses back from publicists and authors directly. I am naturally curious about the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of stories and the writers who pen them; I have a heap of joy bringing this content to my readers.
{SOURCES: Book Cover Art for “A Mother’s Secret”, author photograph of Renita D’ Silva, author biography and book synopsis were provided by the publisher Bookouture and used with permission. Conversations with the Bookish Banner created by Jorie in Canva. Rainbow Digital Clip Art Washi Tape made by The Paper Pegasus. Purchased on Etsy by Jorie and used with permission. Comment banner created by Jorie in Canva. Tweets are embedded due to codes via Twitter.}
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What a great interview! This book looks like it’s going to be an amazing read! I am already so curious as to what the secret is and how everything will unravel. Good post :)
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