This month the Chilbolton Ladies Group are putting the questions to our author of the month, Helen Dunmore.

Interview with the author

What is your connection to Finland and why did you base a book in this era in Finland? We all felt that it was written by someone who really knew the culture and setting and so on and are fascinated to hear a bit more about this.

My connection with Finland began when I went there to work after graduation. This was during the era of the Soviet Union, when relations between Finland and its Great Neighbour on the eastern border were complex and finely balanced.  Soviet tanks had rolled through Prague only a few years before. So many smaller countries on the borders  had been swallowed up by the Soviet empire at this time. Finland's balancing act was something quite new to me, since I came from a country which hadn't been invaded for nine hundred years.

I loved Finland. The landscape is exceptional, the culture rich and unique, the history extraordinary. I heard many stories from older Finnish men who had fought against the Soviet Union in the Winter War and the War of Continuation, and this increased my interest in the relationship between Finland and Russia/the Soviet Union.

The lakes, forests and solitudes of Finland made a deep impression on me, and so did the Finnish cities. I was struck by the resemblance between the architectural ensembles of Helsinki and the architecture of Leningrad (St Petersburg), and realised how strong the historical links were between these two cities. I also loved Finnish domestic architecture: the typical wooden houses, the country cottages, the saunas. Finns have a very deep, almost mystical attachment to the land and to nature, and I wanted to express this in my novel, particularly through Thomas and his journey with Eeva.

After I had completed my novel The Siege, I realised that I wanted to write about Russia's empire, and its impact on a neighbouring country, Finland. I set House of Orphans during the period of Finland's struggle for independence; those years were also the end of the Tsarist era. It's an intensely dramatic period - the end of an Empire, an intense and passionate debate over the  use of violence to overturn a hated political system, the struggles of young people to create what they think will be a new and better society; and the tragedy of individuals caught up in huge historical changes.

Despite the book being so focused on Eeva, the concluding chapter hardly mentions her at all and focus's on all the other characters.  We would have loved more about Eeva in the last chapter to pull together all the threads and wondered why it was done like this?

Eeva does not appear in the last chapter, because her last meeting with Sasha tells us so much about her decisions, her future path in life, and her relationship with Lauri.  Her rejection of Sasha and what he stands for shows that although she's much fierier than Thomas, in a way she is like him. She will choose individuals over ideology. Her loyalties lie with people, and not with systems. I hope that by the end of the novel readers will see the shape of  Eeva's  fight for her independence, and will also see her strength.  Eeva is often humorous and ironic but she's also extremely determined.

How long did it take you to write the book?

Hard to say. The writing itself, about a year. The research and thinking goes back thirty years. It seems to me that the formation of a novel takes place when the writer is not consciously thinking of it, as much as when she is.

Why was the book titled House of Orphans when the plot moved very quickly from the orphanage?

The orphanage is at the heart of the novel, not only because of its role in Eeva's life and the lives of the other girls held there, but also because the entire novel is about people cut off from their parents, and indeed about whole societies cut off from the parenting ideologies, culture and tradition. Sasha for example is an orphan who furiously rejects everything from the past, and most especially the ideology of Tsarism. (The Tsar is often called 'little father') The Romanovs believed they had an unshakable right to be fathers of the nation: they were mistaken.

Lauri is also orphaned and has to find his way to a sense of family and belonging. He almost finds it in revolutionary politics and the security of the activist cell, but he rejects these in the end.

Thomas' daughter Minna has exiled herself from her father and her roots - a deliberate self-orphaning. By the end of the novel, she is considering - very tentatively - that one day she may be able to have a child. Perhaps Thomas' family will re-establish itself.

These are just a few examples, but the theme of orphanhood runs throughout the novel on all levels. Finland itself is treated as the child of Russia, to be controlled and dominated. Russia tries to orphan Finland from her own heritage and even her language, just as the House of Orphans tries to turn Eeva into the ideal orphan. The ideal orphan has nothing of her own and is grateful for everything that she receives.

So for me, the title House of Orphans is literal, in that it refers to the orphanage itself, but also has a wider meaning within the novel.