Get to know our author of our book of the month for March, Lori Inglis Hall. Lori Inglis Hall was born and raised in Leicestershire, and now lives with her family in East Sussex. The Shock of the Light is her first novel. She holds an MA in History and currently works in the archives of World War II photographer Lee Miller.
- To begin, please tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I was born in Leicester, right in the middle of England, which perhaps explains why I am so obsessed with the sea. I grew up on the last street in the suburbs, with the city before me, and fields of green behind. It felt like quite a safe and sheltered place to be a child, though as a teenager I definitely made the most of living in a two-university town (excellent nightlife). Then I lived on the coast for university (the sea!) and in London for my postgrad and early career, which I enjoyed but also felt glad to leave when the time came. Now I’m back near the coast, in the countryside, which feels like my place.
2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
This is probably incredibly predictable, but the answer is the same for all three. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I will say that being a writer felt very possible at the ages of twelve and eighteen, and distinctly less so at the age of thirty. I’m very happy to be here now.
Telling stories, making them up, fleshing them out, is how I order my thoughts, understand my feelings, and work my way through problems. I guess I just find it easier to comprehend these things when I’m applying them to fictional characters in my head.
3. What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
This is a tricky question to answer! A book which had a profound effect on me as a teenager and now as a writer is Regeneration by Pat Parker, which is about British soldiers in the First World War suffering with shell shock, who were sent for treatment at a Scottish hospital. The novel is inspired by real life events (the book follows the war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and the psychiatrist W.H.R Rivers, who pioneered treatment of PTSD). It was a favourite of my parents and is quite possibly the first literary novel I ever read. I am, and always have been, a history obsessive, so the layering of actual events along with an excoriating exploration of class – and all in the most beautiful prose – hooked me in good and proper. I read it again recently and it is still wonderful.
I’m also hugely inspired by the work of the Second World War combat photographer Lee Miller, who reported for British Vogue in the latter stages of the conflict. I remember coming across her photographs of two shaven-headed girls taken in Rennes in 1942. Head-shaving was a common punishment in post-liberation France for women and girls who’d been accused of collaboration, an extremely gendered phenomena known as the femmes tondues, which I wrote about as an undergrad. My fascination with Miller’s work has endured, in particular the way her lens tracked not just ‘the action’ but normal people impacted by conflict – especially women and displaced people – and her extraordinary written accounts (which I think are deserving of much more attention). She has an incredible ability to make you feel as if you are standing there alongside her, witnessing it too.
I often attach a piece of music to my writing, and listen to it before settling down to work, as it helps get my thoughts into the right place. For The Shock of the Light, this was ‘Nantes’ by Beirut (‘It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you smile’) and ‘O soave fanciulla’ from La bohème, which is an incredibly evocative piece of music. I actually have my main characters listening to it in the novel. I guess that’s four – sorry!
4. Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM), The Shock of the Light.
Firstly, thank you so much for making it your BOTM! I am completely thrilled.
The novel is the story of twins Tessa and Theo, whose previously close relationship is being torn apart by secrets on both sides. Before they have a chance to resolve this, the twins are separated by the outbreak of war – Tessa is recruited as an agent of the secretive Special Operations Executive, and Theo into the RAF. Years later, Theo returns home to the news that his sister is missing behind enemy lines in France.
I wanted to explore events on the ground in occupied France and the chaos of the liberation through the lens of a close relationship. I can’t imagine a closer relationship than twins, who see themselves as almost the same person. When Theo discovers his sister is missing, he feels like he’s lost a limb. And even though it’s becoming clear to him that she has kept secrets from him, he knows that he knew her better than anyone else, and he cannot recognise his Tessa in the version presented to him after the war by the British authorities (who have their own agenda in creating a particular narrative). So, with the help of a student called Edie, he embarks on a search for the truth of what happened in France – the real truth – but also confirmation that everything he thought he knew about his sister hadn’t been a lie.
I’m fascinated by how we interpret the past, and how narratives form and take hold, and what we lose through this process. The details of the past that don’t stick.
5. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
We are not living in the easiest times, but I want people to feel a sense of hope after reading this novel. Hope that even when things feel bleak, the love we have for one another has a power that is not easily vanquished. And I hope people will care as I do about these characters, who mean a lot to me. I hope readers love them too.
6. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?
Kate Atkinson, who is so incredibly inventive in her storytelling, but always grounds her stories in a very recognisable past. Also, A.S Byatt, whose novel Possession is perhaps my favourite of all time. She creates an entire world in those pages, a history which feels so completely real but which she conjured entirely within her imagination. It’s an extraordinary achievement.
7. What advice do you give aspiring writers?
Write! And do it consistently, even if it’s just ten minutes a day. I plotted a lot of The Shock of the Light by sending emails to myself whenever a thought came upon me (this happened a lot when driving. I solved a lot of plot conundrums in British laybys). The most important thing is to get it down on the page and keep the story in your head. Give yourself time, which is easier to say than do, I know.
The Shock of the Light
A dazzling literary achievement that brings to life the shattering emotional impact of World War Two on ordinary people Cambridge, 1942.
Twins Tessa and Theo had always shared everything – until the summer Tessa spent studying in France. She hasn’t been the same since. But before Theo can find out why, he is recruited by the RAF and disappears into the skies.
Determined to carve her own path, Tessa joins the clandestine Special Operations Executive, slipping into the shadows of occupied France. It will be dangerous work, but France is the home of her greatest love – and her darkest secret. Tessa has many reasons for wanting to return.
Two years later, only one of them comes home.
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