Bill Clegg “My brother had been in heating and plumbing school doing an apprenticeship and was talking about homes – vacation homes especially – that had propane leaks, which would blow up. I am distracted and restless, so I sort of imagined myself as the person who might leave the gas on.”
[in an interview with ‘The Bookseller’ magazine, June 19, 2015]
For inspiration, Clegg drew on his own life. The setting – Wells, Connecticut – is straight from his childhood town of Sharon, Connecticut, with class tension between the residents, the townies, and the wealthy second-homers. “Celebrities and the wealthy would blow into town with this unknowable glamour, leading lives we couldn’t begin to understand. I worked for them – landscaping, gardening, raking leaves – during the week when they weren’t there. I would be on these beautiful properties, just imagining the lives of the people who owned them – they were so different from ours. There was a longing and a lot of resentment.”
Previous to this, Clegg wrote two memoirs about his life as a literary agent, and his drug addiction. For more about this, visit his website Portrait of An Addict.
See how these other novelists write:-
Robin Stevens
Hanya Yanagihara
Paula Hawkins
‘Did You Ever Have a Family’ by Bill Clegg [UK: Jonathan Cape] Buy now
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Why #author Bill Clegg imagined leaving the gas on http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1GA via @SandraDanby #amwriting