CalmMoment.com 83book club
CalmMoment.com 83Q This book starts with you finding a shoebox of
documents in your grandmother’s apartment after
she died. How did it feel to lay hands on those?
A It felt very sneaky. I wasn’t actually sure what I’d
found to be honest. I had been thinking about doing
this book for like, five years, it was quite deep into the
process. The way I put it is, I researched the book for
18 years, and I wrote it in 18 months. What I saw first
were the photos, and then I saw the Picasso drawing,
and I just immediately shoved it into my bag and I had
to get to the airport so I didn’t really look at it till I got
back to London. It was this realisation that there is
a real story here, and I can actually find stuff out now,
which is what I doubted before.
Q Did writing House of Glass help you to see your
grandmother as whole person?
A For sure. There’s a part of me that feels like, God, is
this really self-indulgent? Like I’m getting to know my
grandmother, but my grandmother’s dead, what good
is this to her? There’s a bit of guilt there that I didn’t
get to know her in life, so I’m trying desperately to get
to know her in death. Of course it makes you look at
your own life and realise how much your life was
shaped by her. She gave up so much to give me a life.
And it also feels treacherous. Because you know that
she didn’t really want me to know, and here I am
forcibly undressing her in a sense.
Q How exceptional do you think the siblings were?
A I think Alex was exceptional, and Henri had
exceptional elements to him, but really not that much.
I mean, my grandmother’s story is definitely not
exceptional. It’s bonkers how she met my grandfather,
but the idea of a Jewish woman giving up everything
and marrying a stranger to get out of her country isn’t
that exceptional. And certainly Jacques’ story is not
that exceptional, except for the fact that he was let out
for the day.
But that’s what I like about it. I wanted to give
a human face to these very typical stories. I guess
what is exceptional is that they all had such different
stories, so I got to represent each of the four options
that were open to them in the thirties in Paris. I think
it’s both ordinary and exceptional. That’s kind of most
people’s lives. Ordinary and exceptional. And what’s
nice with Alex’s story is that it allows me to bring
some glamour – there’s a bit of Dior and Picasso and
Edith Piaf if you like that type of thing. I didn’t want it
to be unremittingly depressing. It’s not like everyone
died, you know, some of us are still around.Q Before writing this book, did you know quite how
extraordinary Alex was?
A We used to go to Paris for lunches with him, and my
dad would take me to his apartment, and you go in and
there’s Monet’s Water Lilies, Van Goghs, incredible
sculpture all around. So many Chagalls, because he
was friends with Chagall, so many Picassos. So even I,
an idiotic 2 1-year-old, knew that there was thisHadley's grandmother,
Sara, was devastated when
she was forced to leave
Paris, the family's adopted
home, after the Nazis
occupied the city in 1 940.