Natasha Solomons: Author of Mr Rosenblum’s List

Natasha Solomons is the author of Mr Rosenblum’s List, which was published in Australia in April. It is her first novel and is based partly on her grandparents’ story of leaving Germany and settling in England before WWII.

The novel has been very well received and is already published in 9 languages. Natasha is currently working on the screen adaptation with her husband, fellow screenwriter David Solomons. She is also working on a PhD on 18th Century poetry.

Click play to listen. Running time: 25.38

Transcript

* Please note these transcripts have been edited for readability

Valerie
Thanks for joining us today, Natasha.

Natasha
Thank you, it’s a pleasure.

Valerie
Tell us when did you first decide that you wanted to become a writer?

Natasha
I think I’ve always wanted to write. I’m just obsessed with stories, whatever those stories are whether it’s just an anecdote over dinner, reading a story, listening to a story on tape during a car journey. And, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Valerie
You’ve had great success with your first effort, well, your first published effort, Mr. Rosenblum’s List, which is now published in nine languages I understand. Has that been a surprise?

Natasha
Totally. Completely overwhelming. I mean for the longest time I was just- I live in the country side and I’m married to another writer, and it’s just trudging through the fields going, “Would anyone other than my husband and my mom like what I’ve written?” So, it’s just completely amazing.

Valerie
Did you set aside time to do this? Did you have a day job? How did you actually get the book out?

Natasha
I’m trying to finish a PhD in 18th century poetry. I was working on my PhD, and I’ve always just wanted to write a fiction, so in between chapters to the PhD I was writing bits of my novel, sort of here and there, whenever I could. Also just co-writing screenplays with my husband. So, sort of juggling different forms of writing.

Valerie
Poetry is very different to writing a novel.

Natasha
Yes, well, I don’t write poetry. My PhD is- I read sort of 18th century poetry.

Valerie
Right.

Natasha
I sort of unpack it. I actually find it really, really useful for writing. It’s just, to read other writers who are better than you, I find that just best training and really helpful.

Valerie
Have you always been attracted to historical fiction?

Natasha
The fiction that I study is 18th century, so at the time it was contemporary. But, then I sort of spend so much of my time just with the PhD living in the past. Yes, I think that most things I’m drawn to are historical, whether it’s just recent history, or further back. I’ve never actually wanted to write sort of 18th century, or fiction centered in the 18th and 19th century, I think, because I spend so much time there. I think I’d get completely distracted by amnesia.

Valerie
I understand that you’ve drawn a lot from your grandparents’ experiences. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And, as a bit of a backdrop for those listeners who haven’t read your book yet, tell us a little bit more about Mr. Rosenblum’s List.

Natasha
The story is broadly inspired by my grandparents who were refugees from Berlin. In the 1930s to escape Hitler they came across to the UK. After the war my grandparents used restitution money actually from Germany to buy a cottage in rural Dorset, because they wanted their children and grandchildren to grow up knowing big fields, and big sky, not just the city life.

I was always quite intrigued by that journey from the bohemian Berlin to the quiet, rural country side of Dorset. Especially as it must have been after the war, it must really have been another world. That’s just formed an inspiration for the novel.

The other fact that also inspired the book is that when refugees newly arrived in Britain in the ‘30s they were given a list, a pamphlet called Helpful Advice and Friendly Guidance for the Refugee, explaining to them how to seem English. So, everything from spend your time immediately in learning the correct pronunciation to the English language, to never speak German in public, or in public conveyances. There’s just several items on this list.

In my novel Jack Rosenblum becomes obsessed with these items. He thinks that if only he could fulfill them all he will become a perfect Englishman and he’ll finally belong. He’ll be home despite being an exile. But, when a few items on the list aren’t enough he starts to expand to further gargantuan proportions, and includes other items such as an Englishman must get marmalade from Portland in Masson. And the final item on his list is every Englishman must be a member of a golf club, and his proves to be trickier than he’d imagined and leads to a quick adventures to the heart of the English countryside.

Valerie
Do you know if your grandfather- did he do such a list?

Natasha
He would have been given the list, because all refugees were, when he arrived. And, I think he must have told me about it, but I never saw his copy of the list. My mother wondered if perhaps she had, but we don’t know. But, he certainly would have been given one.

Valerie
You’re already working on the screenplay for Mr. Rosenblum’s List.

Natasha
Yes.

Valerie
Now has that been optioned by a film company? Or, have you decided to write a screenplay because that’s what you do with your husband?

Natasha
Yes, yes. No, it has been optioned by a Film4, he made Slumdog Millionare and Cowboy. He made Last King of Scotland. And they optioned the novel and they’ve commissioned David and I to write a screenplay of the book. So, I think when we get back to the UK we will be starting that almost straightaway, which is really exciting.

Valerie
You mentioned that you do write screenplays with your husband.

Natasha
Yeah.

Valerie
It must be a very different writing process. Do you have to sort of change your mindset to be able to write in a certain way with that then to writing a novel?

Natasha
It’s different. I really enjoy both. I think that our view of adaptation it’s really a creative work of art in its own right. And, it’s not like- certainly this is different because it is adapting my own novel, but still I think the important thing is not to feel too precious about it. It’s not like kind of, “If the movie gets made they’ll be recalling all the books and pulping them.” The books are still going to be there.

I just need to allow the screen play to be what it needs to be. Some scenes work really well in a novel, because the pleasure is just being inside a character’s mind. On screen you’re not sure what you’re looking at. So, you’ve got to find a way of externalizing those, or sometimes even coming up with a new scene that hopefully does a similar sort of thing, but you’re seeing more on-screen rather than it’s just being described.

Valerie
What’s it like with your husband? How do you resolve creative differences? I mean I know I would find it very difficult.

Natasha
We just really enjoy working together, and it’s certainly- it’s lively. Usually we start the process it’s often very polite and we work together at the same laptop writing every word together. We take it turns to type. And at first it, “Darling, you type first.” “You type first.” “No, darling, please.” And, by the end it’s all sharp elbows.

But, I think it’s really useful because we interrogate everything. There’s these moments that we first started talking about called killing your darlings, but the darlings don’t survive until lunch when there’s the two of you.

Valerie
Right.

Natasha
Because we’re absolutely brutal.

So, in some ways I think it’s really a vigorous process. It’s really satisfying. Whenever you write you get so obsessed with what you’re working on. It’s just really to be exclusion of everything else, but when you can work on that with your partner it’s amazing, because it’s really like our brains are networked and it’s just so much fun.

Valerie
Tell us how long did it take? What was sort of the gestation period when you thought, “I might write this story about this list,” and when you finally finished? Obviously, you had your PhD in the middle of that. How long was that period?

Natasha
I find it really hard to say, because I don’t think I wrote Mr. Rosenblum for more than six weeks at anytime. I find that when I write it it’s so intense, and it’s all-consuming that I can really only write sort of in bursts, because I don’t speak very much when I’m writing. I’m really interested in nothing else. And, I enjoy the kind of self-absorption, but then I need to come out of it afterwards.

So, I think I probably worked on it on and off for a couple of years, but I probably only wrote it for, I don’t know, maybe ten months.

The second novel, because I’ve been exclusively working on that. The first draft I worked on really intensely and it took me six months.

Valerie
Right. Tell us about the road to publication for the first novel. You wrote it, and then what did you do?

Natasha
Well, the lucky thing for me is because I’m married to another writer I did various drafts, showing each of them to him. He, much like an editor would, would sort of give me notes telling me things that he liked, things that he thought could be better, suggestions of how I might consider making them better. So I think I probably did at least three or four drafts before we decided that, yes, maybe it was a good time now to go and start looking for an agent.

Then I wrote letters to few agents. Then it took a while, I think it took eight to nine months, maybe a little longer until an agent came back saying, “Yes. I’ve read it. I really like it I want to represent you.” And, then as soon as one agent said that there were lots interested.

Valerie
Right.

Natasha
It was exciting. I met the two I liked the best and then decided who I thought I could really work with.

Valerie
Right. What was it like in that eight or nine months not knowing whether it was going to happen or not?

Natasha
You just don’t know. People are coming back to you in the meantime. I have to say everyone was really lovely, and really encouraging.

Obviously they’re incredibly busy. The agent that I actually signed with, I think he had 2,000 manuscript submissions that year. So, they are so swamped. I mean it’s really difficult.

But, I was just getting letters back from people saying, “I just love your writing. I really love your style, but you’ve written a really quirky story about a middle-aged man and you’re a young woman. We can’t sell this to a publisher. No woman is going to read this.”

Valerie
What?

Natasha
So, I had a few- and you didn’t know a thing. So, you think, “Well, OK, maybe they’re right. Maybe I’ve made a mistake.”

I had a couple of agents saying to me, “Can you write something else with a woman in the lead?” And, I thought, “Well, I probably could, but I’d like to see what happens with this first.”

Valerie
Tell us a little a bit about your second novel.

Natasha
Well, it’s also set in Dorset, but this time by the sea. It’s a novel really, it’s set in the last days of the English country house. And, my heroine is Elise Lundow who’s just the least talented member of this rather glittering family.

The novel starts in Sienna. She’s Austrian, and the Germans have invaded Austria. Her family has to get out. Her mother is an opera singer, and her father is a novelist, and her sister’s a viola player. They all have rather wonderful opportunities in America. But, Elise has no special talents, and the only way she can escape is as a domestic servant in a English country house. So, she swaps this life of opera balls and champagne for being an under-house maid in this rather dilapidated manor on the coast of England.

Valerie
And how did this come into your head?

Natasha
I think this was inspired in a way by a family story that I have just grown up knowing about my grandmother and her sisters, that my grandmother Margaret and her sisters came to Britain in the late ‘30s, before the war. But, only two of them stayed in the UK. One of them then went to American and sailed before the war for New York. And, while the sisters were really close they didn’t meet again during the course of thirty years.

And then finally after all that time they began writing again, talking on the phone every week, and got the boat back to the UK, and the other two went to meet her at the dock and they couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t on the boat. They couldn’t believe after all this time she’d missed it.

And, then they realized that actually she was there, but they had been looking for a girl, and of course she was a woman with white hair. The sadness of that, that sort of family story I’ve just grown up hearing since forever just intrigued me. I wanted to unpack that a bit. And, see what was behind it.

Valerie
When you are writing tell us do you have a writing routine, or do you have to do your research first into that era and then write? Or do you just write and then fill in the gaps later? What’s the process for you?

Natasha
My process is sort of chaos really. I do it all at once. I have to feel confident enough that I know where to start, and I can see a few of the way-points, and I’ve got a really basic skeleton.

So, before I writing the second novel, for instance, I did quite a lot of reading of accounts of women who had been domestic servants in Britain, Jewish woman who had been servants during the war. I tried to read non-fiction at that point rather than fiction, because I think- I find it easier I think. I worry about getting distracted by another writer’s voice. And, also some memoirs.

So, I start with that, and then I start to write. But, then I’m reading continually as I go, so mainly non-fiction, but then for the second novel it also has a lot of themes to do with a ’30s novel. So, I’ve been reading lots of ‘30s novels whilst I’ve been writing. It really helps me to keep me tune my ear into the right dialogue.

Valerie
What about the day to day, do you set a target of a certain number of words? Or, what happens?

Natasha
Yeah. I do. I tend to write- I mean when I’m in a writing phrase rather than- sometimes I’m reading or researching for a few weeks in the middle rather than writing, but if I’m writing I try and- I really hate mornings. I’m not a morning person, but I try to be at my desk sort of 10-ish, and then I do- I have a word count.

I find that if I go much above the word count, so say in a day I write 3,000 words, usually I find I’m so exhausted the next day I get very little done. So, it all averages out. But, I find that if I’m writing fewer than 7,000 or 8,000 words a week, I feel that the novels not moving forward and I can’t quite see it. I like to feel that the words are building up, even if I know I’ve got to go back and do lots of rewriting. I like to feel that I can see that the story’s got forward motion and I’m still progressing.

Valerie
Do you plot it out first? Or, do you just see what happens?

Natasha
I plot it out with sort of in that I’ve got way-points. There’s just key moments that I can see, and scenes that sometimes I sketched really roughly that I’m working towards, but I also need room to get excited. I don’t like to have it so rigorously planned that I don’t have room to be surprised, because I think then there’s a risk of getting bored, because the novel is a marathon. And, I need room to be, really, just surprised and excited, and enjoy the adventure along the way.

Valerie
Are you surprised by the ending, or do you know the ending?

Natasha
I usually know the ending, but then it always needs just changing and shaping. There’s always another few elements that come into it. So, whilst I do know, and I usually know some of the climaxes along the way, or the very certain, there’s just big sections that I know, but I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get there.

Valerie
Now you spoke at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. In your session you mentioned that you’re dyslexic. Is that difficult to overcome when you’re writing? Did it ever make you doubt whether you wanted to become a writer at a younger age?

Natasha
It never made me doubt that it was what I wanted to do, but I think it certainly made it seem at times- I mean it’s always hard, but whether it was going to be impossible. There are certain things that I really struggle with. I still really struggle with spelling and grammar. I just have to work really, really hard.

It was funny, I think there was point where I had done a couple of drafts of Mr. Rosenblum, and just realized that actually it was error-strewn that really no one could read it. The manuscript wasn’t in a form that an agent or an editor could look at. So, I went online and did an online grammar course.

Valerie
Wow.

Natasha
And, just quite obsessively learnt how to use a comma. I think it was just sheerest of bloody-minded determination, that I just didn’t want anything to stop me.

Valerie
So, what are your next projects? Tell us what’s coming up.

Natasha
Well, I’m working on the screenplay with David with Rosenblum. Also I’ve finished the first draft of the second novel. And, when I get back to the UK I’ll be working on the edits for that as well.

Valerie
Is there a third one in your head?

Natasha
No, at the moment I’m really focusing on the second. You really need to pour everything.

I usually find the ideas for the next projects- I start to think about those as the one that I’m working on is approaching completion, but I’m not quite there yet. I need still to pour all my energy into the things I’m working on at that moment.

Valerie
Now the version of your book that is in Australia, anyway, is just beautiful, the actual cover. It’s a work of art.

Natasha
It’s lovely isn’t it?

Valerie
It’s just gorgeous. It’s something that you want to have just to have. How much input do you have into that sort of thing?

Natasha
I mean I didn’t really. I was kept very involved in the process, but my editor, she’s wonderful. She had a vision of what it was that she wanted. She just knew straightway and she sent me various drawings and sketches saying, “Here’s what we’re thinking about. Do you like it?” But, they’ve created a wonderful package, and really knew what they were doing. So, I’m just- I’m not very good at that stuff so I left it to them.

Valerie
It’s perfect. It’s beautiful.

Natasha
It’s lovely isn’t it?

Valerie
What would your advice be to people who are listening and they want to get their first novel out as well, what’s your advice for budding writers?

Natasha
I think the only advice you can give if anything else in the world can make you happy you should do that, because it’s really, really hard. If there’s anything that you could possibly do, then it’s a much more sensible career option.

But, if you’re listening to this and you think, “I don’t care, all I want to do is write. There’s nothing else in the world,” then you should do it, but the chances are then you’re a writer. And, then you should write.

Valerie
What then do you find the most challenging thing is about writing for you?

Natasha
I enjoy it so much. I just find it one of the greatest, greatest desires I just- I really enjoy it. Sometimes I quite enjoy the loneliness.

I think the thing that can be hard is probably to be around writers when writing, because the other worlds get so real that one can kind of neglect the everyday world.

Valerie
Right.

Natasha
I find sometimes getting the balance between sort of living in this kind of dual existence, I think it can be quite irritating for one’s friends.

Valerie
What is the most rewarding thing for you personally?

Natasha
I mean part of it is I just enjoy writing. I just enjoy the act of sitting there and that buzz of when you’ve come up with an idea, or there was a sticky part of the plot, or bit of the character that you needed something else and you’ve come up with something. And, that just exhilarated rush of, “This is right. This is it.” Then going back, sitting down, and just that feeling of kind of, “I’ve got my music on and I’m typing,” and that just excitement.

So those are the pure pleasures of the act of writing. And then the feel when someone comes up to you or writes you a letter saying they’ve just loved what you’ve done, just readers really is just the most incredible feeling. And I still feel quite bewildered by it, like “Gosh yes, you’ve just read my book”. Feels really odd.

Valerie
Well I think you need to get use to that feeling because I have no doubt that many people are waiting for the second one.

So on that note, thank you very much for your time today Natasha. Really appreciate it.

Natasha
Thanks, it’s been a pleasure.