We chat with Alison Edwards about her book Two Daughters.
A&U: Hey Alison thanks so much for chatting with us. Can you tell us a little about your book?
AE: Two Daughters follows two women: Ava, an ambitious academic, and Laurie, an unmotivated writer. Ava comes from Australia and marries into a powerful family of the British establishment, while Laurie lives with her very anti-establishment father, a Marxist professor. When Ava inevitably buckles under her new circumstances and gets caught up in a scandal, Laurie begins investigating her. Needless to say, this puts them on a collision course!
A&U: What inspired the story?
AE: I was picturing the kind of book I like to read, or the kind of film I like to watch. Something that feels (to me) smart and funny and quirky. Diverse characters who are relatable but also kind of out there. I love tropes like country-to-city, working-class-to-elite, anything that sets up a clash. And I knew I wanted it to be partly set in Cambridge. I did my PhD at King’s College there and it was filled with wacky, larger-than-life characters: the girl who always wore full Victorian dress, the guy who carried around a pot plant called Mildred, the group that reenacted medieval battles in the meadows. Not to mention the students always up in arms with some protest or another.
A&U: You write from the perspective of two very different characters. Which one was your favourite to write?
AE: Yes, they’re basically polar opposites. Ava is desperate for security in life, whereas all Laurie wants is freedom and independence. Ava is trying to avoid having a baby; Laurie is determined to have one even if it means going it alone, without a partner. Both have oddball friends—Ava has this gregarious Thai coworker who becomes her best friend and her worst influence, and Laurie has her two best gay friends, one very flamboyant and one staid and reserved. Actually, I think I had the most fun writing the friends!
A&U: What are your favourite books of all time?
AE: I’ve no clue whether they’ve aged well, but as a teenager I buried myself in books like Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden and The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. I remember them being so rousing and transporting. And others got me through tough times or gave me some special insight. I remember reading Marian Keyes when I had just arrived in Germany for a study abroad program. I was alone in this bleak, bare room, with no money and terrible German. I started reading The Other Side of the Story and suddenly I felt like I had friends and the world made sense again. More recently, I got a lot out of Becoming by Michelle Obama, who I love. She wrote about dragging Barack to marriage counselling because she was always alone with the kids and not able to pursue her own career. And the therapist basically told her to take responsibility for herself. I’m not saying it’s the answer to every problem, but sometimes I ask myself, WWMD (what would Michelle do)?
A&U: What are 3 books you have read recently that you absolutely loved?
I’m on a run of spectacular books at the moment! The last one I read with my book club was Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad, which follows a British actress with Palestinian roots who joins a grassroots production of Hamlet in the West Bank—could you come up with a more intriguing premise? I’ve also just finished If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha, about five women in Seoul dealing with art, sex, money (lack thereof), plastic surgery and hellish mothers-in-law. And finally, I’m currently reading Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (what’s with all the brilliant British authors born in the nineties?!). It’s about a deep-sea researcher whose submarine gets stuck on the ocean floor. It’s described as horror meets science fiction, which is a bit of a departure for me, but so far I’m gripped!
Two Daughters
by Alison Edwards
A brilliant debut reaching from the picturesque South Coast of NSW to the cloisters of Cambridge, following two young women's lives as they become entwined in ways neither could have expected.