BLOG TOUR - CATRIONA McPHERSON - THE CHILD GARDEN

Scottish author Catriona McPherson's on the blog today, talking a bit about her book The Child Garden! 

First a bit about the book itself, then Catriona's thoughts......   

When the children of Eden were sent out into the world they took a secret with them. And someone is making sure they take it to the grave... 

‘If you like your thrillers twisty and twisted, then you will love The Child Garden' VAL MCDERMID 

‘A deliciously disturbing tale of deception and self-deception’ ALEX MARWOOD

 ‘Quite simply, McPherson is a terrific story teller’ ANN CLEEVES

 'A delight . . . just the right mixture of spookiness and mystery' JAMES OSWALD

 ‘Deeply resonant, utterly original, compelling and satisfying, Catriona McPherson's The Child Garden is the work of a master - of character, tone, setting and plot - writing at the thriller-most top of her form’ JOHN LESCROART

Eden was its name. "An alternative school for happy children," said the brochure. "A load

of hippies running wild in the woods," said the locals. After a suicide it closed its doors and

the children scattered.

Thirty years later, it's a care home; its grounds neglected and overgrown, it’s only neighbour

Gloria Harkness, who acts as tenant-caretaker in a rundown farmhouse to be close to her

son. Nicky lives in the home, lighting up Gloria's life and breaking her heart every day.

Nicky and a ragbag of animals aren't enough to keep loneliness at bay, and when Gloria's

childhood friend and secret sweetheart, Stephen "Stig" Tarrant, turns up at her door one night, all she can see is the boy she knew. She lets him in.

Stig's being stalked by an Eden girl, he says. She has goaded him into meeting her at the site of the suicide. Except that suddenly, after all these years, the dead are beginning to speak and suicide is not what they say. 

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Catriona explains more about the inspiration for The Child Garden below.....

The Book Behind the Book.

It’s not a hard code to crack, so there’s no great revelation when I say The Child Garden was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.

When I was a wee girl, I got An Illustrated Treasury of Children’s Literature for Christmas from my granny. It went from nursery rhymes all the way to Dickens – little snippets, mostly with the original illustrations – and it was treasure indeed. I loved it.

I especially loved two little poems by RLS that were in there. They were sweet: one about a swing (“The Swing”) and one about playing toy soldiers on your bedclothes (“The Land of Counterpane”). So, on one visit to the library with my family, I decided to find the book these two poems had been extracted from and read the whole thing. (I was a bit of a Hermione as a child. And as an adult.)

But here’s the thing: the library we went to was the Carnegie Library in Dunfermline, a seriously gothic pile, and the reference department had the most soaring ceilings, the darkest carving, the loneliest corners of all. (Think Jane Eyre in that bedroom that time – that was me in this hushed and gloomy cathedral of books.)

Anyway, I persevered, found A Child’s Garden of Verse and settled at one of the dark wooden desks to read it.

Well. Turns out those two sweet poems that had been chosen for my Illustrated Treasury were not typical. More typical were: “Good and Bad Children” – children you are very little and your bones are brittle; a terrifying one about the wind blowing outside your window at night not really being the wind at all, but rather a horseman (headless, in my opinion) galloping past over and over again – here he comes at a gallop and then back he goes at a gallop again; and worst of all, a truly chilling series of poems called “North-west Passage” all about going to bed alone in a creepy house with nameless dangers lurking – Must we to bed indeed? Well then, let us arise and go like men. And face with an undaunted tread, That long black passage up to bed.

I slammed the book shut and scuttled off to find my mummy and daddy and my three big sisters who might – just possibly – be able to protect me. Brrrrrrr.

Anyway, decades passed, and one day I happened to see a copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses in a bookshop. “Oh,” I said to myself, “there’s that book I thought was scary when I was wee.”

Well. Turns out I thought it was pretty much just as scary now I’m big. I sat in the bookshop and read it with my jaw hanging open. “Who,” I asked myself “would read this to a child?” – The shadows of the balusters, the shadows of the lamp, The shadow of the child that goes to bed. All the wicked shadows coming tramp, tramp, tramp, With the black night overhead.

I mean seriously, who the frilly hat reads this to a child? What kind of-? Why would-? Wh-? I couldn’t get that question out of my head, kept circling back to it. Who, what kind of mother, does read this to a child? And why?

The answer is Gloria Harkness, the heroine of The Child Garden. She reads it to her child.

As to why? It’s all in the book . . .

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Thanks to Catriona for appearing on the blog today and for Helen Upton at Little Brown for setting this up.

The Child Garden went on sale yesterday. I've not read anything by the lady myself yet, but will hopefully address that soon with this one.

Catriona's website is here. Catch her on Twitter - @CatrionaMcP