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While she demurs at using that description now, she clearly has a deep attachment to Martha. \u201cShe has a palpable presence outside myself, which is strange,\u201d she says. \u201cI can conjure her up in this conversation now, as I\u2019m recounting the way she used to be. I can feel her again but [now the book is finished], my natural inclination is to move away. I don\u2019t want her hearing that; I feel guilty saying that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martha was originally conceived to serve a purpose: Laguna was writing about a different character, a man, and needed a woman to encounter him.<\/p>\n
She discovered her while she was watching her son in a basketball training session in a high-school gym. She started writing a monologue from the perspective of that female character.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe voice came out with incredible energy, as if keeping up with the balls that were being slammed. And she poured out the story of childhood and education and scholarship and academia and betrayal and from the point of view of an adult voice. It was furious, funny, very clever, all during skills and drills. I was writing it down as fast as I could go,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then the whistle blew, balls were put down, pen was put down. I knew something had happened. I knew that was a rare writing experience, but it had been intensified by the nature of my surroundings.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she got home, she realised that her original character \u2013 he\u2019d been picked up and put down many times over the past 20 years \u2013 had to make way again, this time for Martha.<\/p>\n
Loading<\/p>\n
\u201cThis had come from a place in me that had a lot to say, and I hadn\u2019t worked with this part before. I couldn\u2019t turn away from it. And when you begin a new work, you have to decide, at what point in their life do I begin? What is the story I need to tell in which we know their life?\u201d<\/p>\n
She has been described as a writer for young adults, but says that is incorrect. She has written in voices that are young but never really explored the coming of that crucial transitional time. \u201cI really didn\u2019t think I was interested in it, and I discovered that through Martha, there\u2019s a lot to say, to think, to feel and express.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Underworld was, she says, more difficult to write than her previous books, perhaps because the world of Martha is not that different from her own school days \u2013 boarding school, lonely until she found a group of firm friends, studying Latin, in particular. \u201cIt was very establishment and my family was unconventional, and so I was an outsider who did find her way eventually, and when I did, it was a home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her earlier main characters came from more hardscrabble circumstances but with those novels, she found within three months she was off and running with the story; with The Underworld, she was plagued by doubts and vulnerabilities. For the first time, she says, she didn\u2019t have a bird\u2019s-eye view of what she was writing that allowed her to master the narrative.<\/p>\n
As she wrote, the significance that Latin had served for her at school resurfaced from her own unconscious. She hadn\u2019t realised how important it had been, the private relationship she had with it, in much the same way as Martha does.<\/p>\n
There was plenty of research during the writing, which she loves, and plenty of Latin poetry dropped into the novel … \u201cI\u2019ve always been a dag for Latin quotes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Late on, after a traumatic encounter with a visiting lecturer, Martha turns her attention to the work of the Latin poet Sulpicia, whose six extant poems have been credited to a male poet, Albius Tibullus.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis is the wonderful thing about research. How neat and wonderful to discover there was this beautiful young woman, Sulpicia, who was completely dismissed and still is. And students in various universities, because I read their theses, are still writing to defend her. That served my story so perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n
How much have things changed, she asks rhetorically.<\/p>\n
When I mention Sulpicia, she corrects my pronunciation. At school, her classics teacher was strict about it \u2013 \u201cwe were all very careful about it\u201d \u2013 and she recently did a refresher course so she could record the audiobook. \u201cThe first I have done.\u201d All those Laguna lives \u2013 school, acting, writing \u2013 coming together in one.<\/p>\n
The Underworld (Penguin) is published on October 28.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While she demurs at using that description now, she clearly has a deep attachment to Martha. \u201cShe has…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":325330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-325329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115421050723502706","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}