Katie Ward

Thursday 10 May 2025

This was our first event at Eastern Angles and the theatre setting certainly led to a different experience from the one we are used to, with a bigger audience and our guest speaker reclining on a comfy looking sofa. 

Katie was in conversation with Dr Amanda Hodgkinson from the University of Suffolk. They have worked together on the MA in Creative and Critical Writing at the university and clearly admire each other’s work a great deal. Amanda described the book as telling a ‘simple, delicate story’. Katie readily agreed. We learned that it is a love story that brings together two women, having them separate and then come back together. Cara is a ‘sort of’ stepmother to Heather, and they couldn’t be more different. Their separation occurs when Heather moves to Las Vegas, a literal and metaphorical world away from Cambridge, where Cara works as a neuroscientist and researcher. The reasons for their separation and reunion were not revealed and I shall certainly be starting this book as soon as I can to learn more about their complex and loving relationship.

The story is driven by character we learned. Katie is clearly fascinated by people, their relationships and what makes us tick. This novel is about a blended family, with Heather’s mother in a nursing home after an accident. It is a love story which offers philosophical reflection on the nature of the mind/ body connection and also on what we really want from relationships. Cara is looking for true intimacy, but it is from Heather that she truly seeks it, not from her partner Paul. 

A beautiful metaphor of goldfish swims through the novel and Katie references philosopher Mary Midgley's fascinating idea of consciousness being like an aquarium, we need to see from every side to get a true picture. 

If this sounds heavy, we were left in no doubt that humour runs through the book, with Katie’s sense of humour given full rein. She also made it clear that this is the book that she always wanted to write, and she is satisfied that it is written in her voice. She has not compromised, she told us, and she looked visibly proud of and happy with her book. 

Katie told us about the care and support that she received from her mentor, Hilary Mantel. We also learned some of the reasons for the 13 year gap between her first published novel and this one, her love of her work with Wolsey Writers, a group that she set up 10 years ago, and her other work with writers on the MA course and with the Ink Festival. 

Questions from the audience were generously and openly answered and she clearly values her relationship with her readers as highly as she does other relationships in her writing life. A beautiful and engaging evening about a novel that I cannot wait to read. 

Alison Caldow