http://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk December 2019 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | 151
When I arrive at Salley Vickers’ cosy west-London flat, I find the
shelves lined with books, and stuffed toys in every corner, looking
ready to eavesdrop on our conversation. If the arrangement
appears strangely familiar to me, it’s because I’ve encountered it
in Grandmothers, Vickers’ marvellous new novel. Minna, one of
the three central characters, guards the toys that her honorary
granddaughter Rose fears her mother will discard. Their relation-
ship is portrayed with touching sensitivity; Minna, writes Vickers,
‘knew Rose: without being told, she felt how Rose was feeling,
what she did or did not mind, how her mind and her heart worked’.
Becoming a grandmother was the inspiration for Vickers’ 10th
book, which she has dedicated to her own grandchildren, Rowan,
Sam and Martha. ‘That, next to being a mother, has been the
greatest education of my life.’ The experience has, she adds, given
her a new-found sense of freedom. ‘As a mother, it’s impossible not
to be fearful; I’m still anxious for my children and they’re middle-
aged! I’m careful of my grandchildren’s safety, but I don’t think
I’m going to do them mischief. They know that, and they trust me.’
Trust is at the heart of Grandmothers, which interlaces the
stories of three women who might never have met, were it not for
their grandchildren. There’s Nan, who leads a secret life as an
award-winning poet while helping her grandson Billy negotiate a
tricky relationship with his father; elegant Blanche, who has been
separated from her granddaughter Kitty because of a run-in with
her daughter-in-law; and Minna, who lives in a shepherd’s hut and
shares a passion for reading with young Rose. Vickers, it turns out,
had a Minna of her own. ‘My parents’ marriage was complicated,’
she says. ‘I was protected by my godmother, who did not have
children. And that’s something I learnt as a psychoanalyst – that
the deficits in our lives can be made up by other people.’
Vickers was 52 when her first novel, Miss Garnet’s Angel, whose
heroine is a retired history teacher, was published in 2000; it was,
and remains, a bestseller. Throughout her writing career, this
author has put older female characters at the centre of her fiction.
‘ Wo m e n r e i n v e n t t h e m s e l v e s a s t h e y a g e – t h e y h a v e a n e n o r m o u s
amount of creative energy and accumulated wisdom,’ she says
now. ‘It’s extremely important that we have artistic representa-
tions of people at this age, particularly at a time when there seems
to be a kind of angry ageism in the air.’
Having carried out stints as a cleaner, a dancer, an artist’s model,
a teacher of children with special needs and a university lecturer
on literature, Vickers knows a thing or two about reinvention, but
it’s as a novelist that she has found her calling. ‘I really knew what
I was talking about in my heart,’ she says of writing Grandmothers- a passion that resonates on every single page of the book.
‘Grandmothers’ by Salley Vickers (£16.99, Viking) is published on
7 November.
BOOKS
Salley Vickers’ latest novel arose from the
liberation of becoming a grandmotherBy ERICA WAGNER
GOLDEN
YEARS
Above: Ivon Hitchens.
Left: his ‘Spring
Light Over Foliage’
(1945). Below:
‘Reclining Figures’
(1952) by Barbara
Hepworth. Bottom:
Ben Nicholson’s
‘December 15’ (1949).
All artworks, price on
request at Sotheby’s