I was lucky enough to be offered the opportunity to interview debut author Emma Rous, author of The Au Pair. I was so excited as I adored the book and was so excited to see what Emma's answers would be. Have a look at our interview below.
Congratulations on the release of The Au Pair. Many people would look at the title and imagine that it’s a story about an au pair but it’s so much more than that. How would you describe The Au Pair to someone who hasn’t read it yet?
Thank you. Yes, The Au Pair is actually a story about two women – Laura, who works as an au pair at Summerbourne House for eleven months in 1991/92, and Seraphine, who is born at Summerbourne just hours before Laura packs her case and flees. Seraphine grows up as a twin, and she’s always toldthat her mother jumped from the cliffs behind the house on the day she and her twin brother were born. But when she’s twenty-five, after her father dies, she finds a photo from the day she was born that shows her parents and older brother posing formally with just one baby. Seraphine has always felt like an outsider in her own family, so she decides to track down Laura, desperate to find out which baby was missing that day, and why.
The Au Pair is certainly a unique story about finding out who you are and where you belong in the world. What inspired you to write it?
I wanted to write something with a mystery at its heart, and I’ve always been fascinated by stories of uncertain identities. But the characters of Seraphine and Laura felt very real to me from the start, so it’s only with hindsight that I’ve tried to analyse what inspired their creation.
In many ways, Seraphine’s life experiences are the opposite of mine. I grew up in a very stable family unit, but we moved house every couple of years and lived in several different countries during my childhood. In contrast, Seraphine has always felt like the odd-one-out in her family, but she has an extremely strong emotional attachment to the house she grew up in. I enjoyed exploring this side of her character.
And although I’ve never worked as an au pair, I did go off and live with farmers’ families for weeks at a time from the age of fifteen onwards, both when I was applying to get into vet school and then for work experience while I was at vet school. I felt all the emotions that Laura feels when she arrives at this rather intimidating house and has to try to fit in and earn her keep. I guess those feelings stayed in my subconscious until I finally sat down many years later to write a novel!
You have some truly amazing characters in The Au Pair. Who was your favourite to write and were any of the characters based on anyone?
Thank you, that’s a lovely thing to say. I have a soft spot for Danny’s laidback character, but I think my favourite to write was probably Ruth. We only really see Ruth through Laura’s eyes, but this is enough to give glimpses of both sides of her – the moody, mercurial, headache-claiming side, but also the incredibly strong woman who perseveres in trying to do the right thing for her little boy despite suffering a heart-breaking loss, and in the face of villagers gossiping that she doesn’t act like a ‘real mother’.
I suppose there’s an element of being influenced by everyone we meet, but I didn’t knowingly base any of my characters on anyone. They all felt like real people in their own right while I was writing them. I hope no-one thinks they recognise themselves!
I loved your writing in the Au Pair. Do you have any more book in the works that you can tell us about?
Thank you! Yes, I’m currently working on my second book. It tells the story of two sisters who go to live at an isolated artists’ colony in the middle of the bleak Cambridgeshire fens, and it follows the repercussions seventeen years later for the surviving sister and her teenage daughter.
Finally who are your go to authors and go to books when you want to read a good book?
I love anything by Maggie O’Farrell, Elizabeth Strout, Louise Candlish. I’m looking forward to reading the new offerings from Liane Moriarty and Jane Harper, and I’m keeping my eyes peeled for whatever it is Celeste Ng writes next. I also enjoy occasional dips into historical fiction (currently C J Sansom’s Tombland) and science fiction (most recently Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time). I frequently fantasise about taking half a year off, simply to sit and read all day!
Author: Emma Rous
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Release date: 11th December 2018
Pages: 384 pages
R.R.P: $29.99
Seraphine Mayes and her brother Danny are known as the summer-born Summerbournes: the first set of summer twins to be born at Summerborne House. But on the day they were born their mother threw herself to her death, their au pair fled, and the village thrilled with whispers of dark-cloaked figures and a stolen baby.
Now twenty-five, and mourning the recent death of her father, Seraphine uncovers a family photograph taken on the day the twins were born featuring both parents posing with just one baby. Seraphine soon becomes fixated with the notion that she and Danny might not be twins after all, that she wasn't the baby born that day and that there was more to her mother's death than she has ever been told...
Why did their beloved au pair flee that day?
Where is she now?
Does she hold the key to what really happened?
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