SYNOPSIS (Story Development)

Songs from the Violet Café

Songs from the Violet Café is my new novel, October 2003. When I was a young woman I was deeply influenced by the French writer Marguerite Duras, who believed that the direction of peoples' lives were essentially formed by the time they were in their late teens. Their value systems, she said, would be in place.
On the whole, I believe that too, which is probably why I write so much about the lives of young women. It doesn't mean, of course, that people can't change and grow, but I think we have defined our view of good and evil, right and wrong, by the time we enter our twenties. I'm really interested in the influences which shape these beginnings, and where lives will go from there on. I am also very interested in food and café culture, so I decided to place this new novel in a café in the 1960s, and follow the lives of the staff up until the present.