Output details

The Stepmother's Diary

In 2007 a trip to Copenhagen interested me in the Danish policy of equal parenting and the general questions the policy raised. Couples split easily and parents ‘share’ the children –-adults and their new partners staying put while children do the travelling to new homes. What difference is made by the diluting of the genetic tie? Any or none? And how about the archetype of the wicked stepmother – more likely today to be a wicked stepdaughter, as girls may be tempted to destroy a father’s new relationship? Where Denmark goes in matters of social justice and gender issues the UK tends to follow. It would not be easy to write a novel that challenged everyday assumptions without alienating readers. But a strong plot, engaging characters, a light, matter-of fact tone might enable the reader to entertain the idea that following the path of true love can wreak a lot of social mayhem. Diary of a Stepmother is a fictional exploration of the theme, an inventive process in which I teased out the various emotional and social strands which are changing the nature of today’s family. Making the reader of the diary a Freudian psychoanalyst currently in a difficult relationship with a Jungian therapist was a device which determined the structure of the novel. It was the only way I could find of carving something precise out of a mass of information without being tedious: plot plus commentary, plot plus commentary would work okay if the commentary was prudently disguised as sub-plot, not otherwise. The Stepmother’s Diary proved to be an original ‘literary novel’ not true to the genre, deadly serious with laughs.