I have come to believe that mine was the first generation that could actually choose when to have a family. The accident of conception was lessened by the advent of clever birth control and the growing independence of women meant that their careers and choices had to be accommodated by the once all-powerful men.
I became a father a year or so either side of forty. My wife was a prima gravida and her pregnancies were treated with great care. It was a risk for her to have waited so long. My children have been a life-long delight. I would stress that. The difficulty and torment that confronts Jessica in Like a Fat Gold Watch is a fictional creation entirely.
The novel began as the outline for a play called The Mother. It was to be a companion piece to Strindberg’s The Father. Later I turned some of the ideas into a novel and, after encouragement by more than one agent, I expanded the book into a trilogy called Song of the Mother. Later, when Crimes of Obedience was taken up by an agency, I worked for several years shedding 150,00 precious words to create Like a Fat Gold Watch. I know the characters so well, I think, because I have a secret, much more extensive knowledge of their fictional lives elsewhere.
I began my work, questioning the validity of the maternal instinct by studying psychological and anthropological texts, particularly The Mountain People by Colin Turnbull. Amongst the Ik people this fabled instinct had vanished, overwhelmed by the need to survive. Postnatal depression was another area of study. It is devastating and clearly, Jessica suffers from this debilitating disease.