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about the author
Caro Fraser read law at King's College, London. She has written nine other novels, five of which are part of the highly successful, critically acclaimed Caper Court series. She is married to a solicitor and has four children.
interview
You worked as a laywer and then later became a writer. What prompted the change from law to writing?
If it hadn't been for the advent of my children, I suppose I might never have given up law. I had always wanted to write, but as a full-time lawyer I never had the time. It was only after I gave up work to look after them when they were little that I had the idea for a novel, although I'd already written the first chapter in my spare time at work. So we hired a nanny, and I finished my first book in just three months. Nowadays I fit in my writing around the children's school hours. I'm very lucky - it's the perfect way to combine motherhood with a career.
Familiar Rooms In Darkness is a somewhat philosophical title for your new novel. What inspired it?
Nothing, really. The title just occurred to me, and I liked it. I think it's something we've all experienced at some time - groping one's way in the dark around a room which one thought one knew pretty well, but which seems, without the lights on, to be uncharted territory. To be honest, the title came before the book. In my novel, Adam sets out to write a biography of someone who is well-known, whose life seems to have been pretty much explored, and along the way he discovers that nothing is as it seemed at first. He's working in the dark in what he thought was familiar territory.
Adam gets the amazing opportunity to write a high profile authorised biography. Whose biography would you be most interested in writing?
I think biographers have to possess certain forensic skills, and maintain a detachment from their subject, and I'm not sure I possess those abilities. I suppose that someone in whom I have a great interest is the late Auberon Waugh. I met him a couple of times, and was an immense admirer of his acerbic wit and intelligence. His family background would be fascinating to investigate, and of course, writing his biography would involve reading most of what he wrote, I imagine, which would be a pleasure in itself.
Have you ever had to make a similarly tough decision, such as the one Adam faces, between career ambition and love?
No. I don't believe that, outside the pages of fiction, people are often faced with such stark choices. Changes in most people's lives usually come about much more subtly. Often it's the smallest decisions which can be most crucial, and people don't realise how momentously they've been affected until much later.
Sexuality is a theme that crosses your novels, with 'sexual skeletons' playing a big part - what appeals to you about this sort of storyline?
It seems to me that sex - or love, if you prefer - is the great driving force in life. It's not the explicit aspect of sexuality which fascinates me so much as the emotional undercurrents, the delicate tensions that exist between people. It's interesting to deal with all varieties of sexuality and romantic love - I don't think the emotions of men and women are so very different, so I don't find a problem in writing from either point of view. The hero of my Caper Court series of novels, Leo Davies, is bisexual because, as Woody Allen once said of bisexuality, it doubles your chances of a date on Saturday night - and for me it also doubles the plot possibilities.
Do you have a personal interest in or love of the South of France?
Yes. We have close friends who own a house near Cahors, in South West France, which is a particularly beautiful region with a strangely medieval quality to it. We have gone to stay there as a family on several occasions, and love it greatly.
What have you enjoyed reading recently?
I'm presently reading 'Which Lie Did I Tell? More Adventures In The Screen Trade', by William Goldman, and I recently finished 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls', by Peter Biskind, which is about Hollywood in the '70's. When I'm not watching movies, I like to read about they way they're made and the people who make them. If I weren't a novelist, I would love to be a screenwriter.
Could you recommend two paperback novels for reading groups?
On holiday - which is when I manage to find time to read a piece of fiction from start to finish - I read a lovely book called The Priory, by Dorothy Whipple. It's a reprint, and is set in pre-war England. Reading it was rather like watching an old black-and-white movie. It was a joy, and gives fascinating insights into family life and class structures in the period just before the Second World War. I would also recommend The Peppered Moth, by Margaret Drabble. She is such a luminous writer, and this book deals beautifully with relationships between families and between generations.
And finally, what are you working on at the moment, and will Leo Davies (of the Caper Court series) soon be making another appearance?
I'm presently working on a stand-alone novel, but as I'm only three chapters into it, I won't say much about it, except that involves a man in a mid-life crisis who answers an advertisement in a magazine, with unexpected consequences. Recently I completed the latest in the Caper Court series - the sixth, in fact - called A Calculating Heart. And yes, the lovely Leo Davies QC is there, leaving his customary trail of broken hearts in his wake.
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Author interviews
