Raking the Ashes Read online

The best thing is having no colleagues. As far back as infant school I hated the words, ‘Now choose a partner’. I’m terrible at sharing. I like the feeling that it’s my book – mine alone. I’ll happily listen to advice, but in the end it’s my decision – every last word, every last comma – and no one can override me. I love that.

  On writing Raking the Ashes

  The germ of Raking the Ashes came from a quote from William Hazlitt (1778–1830). ‘Good nature is, nine times out of ten, the result of simple idleness of disposition.’

  This really shocked me, not least because the man with whom I’ve lived so happily for the last twenty years is famously good-natured. So should I more accurately have been thinking of him over that time as ‘notoriously’ good-natured? It was a striking and disturbing thought.

  Any author will tell you that, once the idea for a book has been born, it is as if the author grows invisible antennae that strain towards anything, however unlikely, that might feed into the novel. Suddenly all round me there seemed to be examples that proved Hazlitt right. The couple who, rather than face the unpleasantness of insisting their drunk guest went home in a taxi, end up halfway responsible for the predictable road death. The father who can’t be bothered to make sure his former wife’s partner installs proper car seats. The neighbour who won’t sign the petition to keep the primary school or the stand of ancient trees for fear of raising local hackles.

  As the American saying goes, ‘If you ain’t never stepped on anyone’s toes, then you ain’t never been for a walk.’

  The book deals, too, with the issue of being a stepparent. I've long been fascinated by the special problems of mix-and-match families, and tackled the topic more than once, most particularly in a book called Step by Wicked Step, written for children. To become a step-parent, it seems to me, is very often to accept responsibility without power. It’s all too easy to turn into a sort of living pleat in the new family economy – let out and taken in again at others’ convenience with the two other adults in the equation not even thinking twice about the fact that you might, for years, be driving their children to and from a school they let you have no part in choosing.

  Tilly is clear-thinking and tough. Geoffrey is kind and amiable and, above all, weak. (And, as an exasperated Tilly soon discovers, the only power of weak people lies in their secrets.) An engineer for an oil company with special responsibility for hundreds of workers’ safety, Tilly must live in the real world. Geoff can afford to prefer his comfortable and unthreatening cloud-cuckoo-land.

  For me, each character’s profession is of consummate importance. As in real life, as often as not there’s something about the work people do – or don’t do – that reflects at least one significant aspect of their character. The nature of the job has often fed a good deal back into their habits of thought.

  ‘Fudging’ and ‘hoping for the best’ are alien to Tilly. And she can’t see her stepchildren through the same softening veil of love as does their father. When parents argue about what’s best for a child, they do so from an equal footing. Step-parents may see what is going on even more clearly, and yet, if their conclusions prove inconvenient, their motives can so easily be impugned and their advice ignored. They’re still expected to stick around and help pick up the pieces.

  And this is why I so love writing about families. I find it totally absorbing to explore how they work, the ways in which the various relationships expand, warp, or fracture. There’s nothing special about the people I write about. You could meet them tomorrow. And yet, as in all families, the most powerful emotions reflect through ‘perfectly normal’ domestic scenes.

  A writer can’t be scared of conflict, and what I most enjoy about the work is the challenge of setting down on the page, as honestly and vividly as possible, the feelings other people recoil from admitting, often even to themselves. (No doubt a blessing, since, if everyone went round being as outspoken as some of my characters, the world would turn into a bear-garden.) But it’s so satisfying to set down the fictional confrontations between man and wife, brother and sister, parent and child, and have the reader say, as they so often do, ‘You must have been eavesdropping in our house! How could you ever have known?’

  I chose to tell the novel in Tilly’s voice. Her lack of cant about her own failings, as well as other people’s, means that, although she may play down her own sins, she does at least tell us enough about them for us to take them into account as we, the readers, take sides. I’m not much of a one for ‘unreliable narrators’. I tend to feel that if I can’t get pretty much the whole picture, then what’s the point in reading the book?

  I didn’t realise when I wrote Raking the Ashes how close to home the issues in it are for so many people. When I was doing the publicity for first publication, male interviewers admitted they found Tilly’s way of thinking ‘very scary indeed’. Women interviewers commented on how very ‘male’ some of her attitudes were.

  What does that tell us? As my half-Americanised daughter would say, ‘Go figure!’

  Other novels by Anne Fine that you may also like to try:

  TELLING LIDDY

  Well-meaning Bridie persuades Heather and Stella that their sister Liddy must be told the disquieting snippet of gossip about her husband-to-be before the wedding. As the grim consequences gather pace, a family falls apart.

  ‘A chilling, skilfully constructed novel of family tension and emotional revenge … a quiet, unsentimental novel that looks without blinking at the depths to which intelligent, law-abiding people can sink … It is uncomfortable to read, but it is full of illuminating insights into human behaviour’

  The Times Literary Supplement

  ALL BONES AND LIES

  Dutifully, Colin cares for his ungrateful and sharp-tongued old mother. But with the help of ‘the flying baby’, this shy man’s secret inner life bursts out, and changes everything around him.

  ‘Anne Fine finds a way of expressing, with both wit and unexpected tenderness, that strange emulsion of pity and fear experienced by the adult child when faced with an aged parent’s determined unloveability. Both merciless in its portrayal and kindly in its interpretations, All Bones and Lies is a recommended read for anyone trying to find a way through the frustrations of caring for an elderly relative, to a place where love can survive to the bitter end’ Daily Mail

  ‘Splendid … clever, cruel and funny … This is a heartwarming book’ Evening Standard

  IN COLD DOMAIN

  Mrs Collett (never first in line for medals in Easygoing Motherhood) is haunted by her four grown-up children, all of whom rebound constantly to the securities – and the idyllic garden – of Cold Domain. Is she going to have to uproot it to get rid of them?

  ‘A glorious tirade against the grind of motherhood’ Observer

  ‘A streamlined, ruthlessly stripped-down psychological family romance with enough plot twists and character revelations to fuel a book three times as long. Wicked and funny. Anne Fine is brilliant’ Time Out

  TAKING THE DEVIL’S ADVICE

  Ex-hubby Oliver has come home to see his children and sift through the papers in the attic. But the patterns of a long and tempestuous marriage can’t be eradicated by a simple divorce …

  ‘The venom lands smack in the ear. Anne Fine’s black comedy bounces along without flagging’ Observer

  ‘It is said to take two to make a quarrel, but the casus belli for Constance after sixteen years of marriage is her philosopher husband Oliver’s serene unawareness of ever having given grounds for one … clever and entertaining … a direly witty achievement’ Guardian

  THE KILLJOY

  Ian Laidlaw is hideously scarred on one side. Everyone he meets falls back on cast-iron, distant courtesy. Then Alicia, a cheerful and callow student, joins his political science classes and exposes the obsessive passions that lurk beneath his primly cordial manner.

  ‘Definitely not one for the faint-hearted. It’s compellingly written, sinister … and very, very fine’ Woman’s W
orld

  ‘A novel with an adder in the prose … observant and impressive’ Sunday Times

  A Critical Eye

  Anne Fine’s six adult novels cast a very beady eye over the whole trajectory of human life. She has taken on passion, marriage, children and divorce, step-parenting, relationships between middle-aged siblings and the strains of caring for old people. One thing all reviewers agree on is that she cuts to the bone. ‘Hugely enjoyable and disturbingly acute’ says the Mail on Sunday. The Observer agrees. ‘One of those books that make you wince with delight at, and horrified recognition of, Anne Fine’s talent at peeling away our carefully maintained ideas of ourselves.’

  The Financial Times said, ‘Her copious and often comical dialogue rings entirely true (a rare gift), while out of the ephemera of everyday life she constructs a tale of lasting power: Fine lives up to her name.’

  These aren’t just comedies, but forensic explorations of the human condition. ‘A steely purpose remains intact, and this gives her books an integrity which is rare,’ insists the Literary Review. The Scotsman refers to her ability to produce an ‘economical masterpiece of icy psychological acuity’ and Helen Dunmore in The Times is equally admiring. ‘Fine … has judged precisely what can be stripped away from her prose in order to leave it bare and effective.’

  In short, ‘always engrossing’ (Independent).

  ‘Accomplished … compelling’ claims the Sunday Times. It is perhaps Time Out that sums her work up best: ‘Anne Fine is brilliant.’

  Go on and read her – if you dare.

  Read on

  If You Liked This, Try …

  While I Was Gone

  Sue Miller

  We Need to Talk about Kevin

  Lionel Shriver

  Good Behaviour

  Molly Keane

  Time Will Darken It

  William Maxwell

  The Man Who Loved Children

  Christina Stead

  Before and After

  Rosellen Brown

  The Makioka Sisters

  Junichiro Tanizaki

  Every Day is Mother’s Day

  Hilary Mantel

  The Wrong Set, and other stories

  Angus Wilson

  Have the Men had Enough?

  Margaret Forster

  Behaving Badly

  Catherine Heath

  About the Author

  Raking the Ashes is Anne Fine’s sixth novel for adults. Her first was the critically acclaimed The Killjoy. Taking the Devil’s Advice and Telling Liddy have both been adapted for radio. She is also a distinguished writer for young people, and has won the Carnegie Medal twice, the Whitbread Children’s Award twice, the Guardian Children’s Literature Award and a Smarties Prize. An adaptation of her novel Goggle-Eyes has been shown by the BBC. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages. Between 2001 and 2003 she was the second Children’s Laureate. Anne Fine has two grown-up daughters and lives in County Durham.

  Also by Anne Fine

  THE KILLJOY

  TAKING THE DEVIL’S ADVICE

  IN COLD DOMAIN

  TELLING LIDDY

  ALL BONES AND LIES

  and published by Black Swan

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  A Random House Group Company

  www.transworldbooks.co.uk

  RAKING THE ASHES

  A BLACK SWAN BOOK : 9780552772853

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781409010074

  Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press a division of Transworld Publishers

  Bantam Press edition published 2005

  Black Swan edition published 2006

  Copyright © Anne Fine 2005

  Anne Fine has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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