A Book-of-the-Month in Canada!

Chatelaine, one of Canada's biggest circulation women's magazines, has named The Housemaid's Daughter as its Book-of-the-Month for November. This is wonderful news! If you go to their website Chatelaine.com or follow the link below, you will be able to read an interview we did, and also see an online discussion among readers about the book.
http://www.chatelaine.com/en/blog/chatelaine_book_club/tag/book+review

I have to confess that this is still a strange feeling for me, seeing my words and plots debated like this. But I am hugely grateful because it means that readers care enough about the story to be putting forward their views. Hopefully the book will have enlightened, maybe captivated, or perhaps horrified - but in the end rewarded the reader for spending time with it. For me, it is fascinating to pick up insights from readers' comments, sometimes about aspects that I didn't expect or hadn't intended to arouse interest. Each of us - even the author - brings our own experience to a book and so we each get something different out of it.

With Housemaid, I chose to leave some parts of the story to the reader's imagination, and it is these deliberate omissions that have given rise to lively debate, like that shown in the Chatelaine discussion above. Phil's death, Dawn's life in Johannesburg, what might have happened to Jake, have all proved to be strong discussion points. What did you wonder about?

My Canadian adventure is soon to take a further turn.
Coming up shortly in the National Post newspaper will be a series of blogs that I have written about the book and its background. They will run from Monday to Friday in the paper. Watch this space...