Exclusive interview with author Polly Sampson and a review of her new novel about love risked, lost and forgiven
Rating: 2 stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I was clearing out a trunk of notebooks and diaries and was astonished to find an outline plot that I had written almost thirty years ago,” says The Kindness author Polly Sampson. “I knew I had been ruminating on writing this story of paternity for a long time, but had no idea of for how long. The original idea comes from the life of my great uncle Henry Elkan who was a photographer living in Paris.”
Samson’s portrait of a family torn apart by secrets is a story of romance sprinkled with explicit sex. An exploration of human relationships, a cautionary tale whether to leave yourself open to being hurt by others. The Kindness is a journey through love, betrayal and forgiveness. However, no matter how much you may try to like the characters, they’re just too flawed to connect with. As the story jumps back and forth in time, it’s not always clear where you are chronologically.
Julian is a 20-year-old university student. Julia a twenty-eight-year old wife unhappy in her marriage. The two fall in love. Julia leaves her marriage and an abusive husband. Julian gives up school. The two are happy. They feel the only thing missing is a child. Eight years later they have a daughter, Mira. When she becomes terrifyingly ill, a secret that Julia’s been keeping will come out.
The story was inspired by an incident in the life of Sampson’s great uncle Henry Elkan. “When I was eleven he committed suicide,” says Sampson.
Sampson says one of her favorite bits of research was to do a falconry course. “Although like Julia in the book I had feelings that moved between pleasure and disgust. I also researched at Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London, getting to know a family whose child had survived being treated for leukemia. They were incredibly generous with their recollections of an extremely anxious time.”
Sampson has written two collections of short stories, Lying in Bed and Perfect Lives. She wrote the novel Out of the Picture. Some of her stories and her first novel have been optioned for film or TV. She has written an introduction to a collection of Daphne du Maurier’s stories The Doll. Her works have been shortlisted a couple of times.
In the 1990s, Sampson wrote a column in The Sunday Times and worked as a feature writer and reviewer for many newspapers and magazines. She has written lyrics for four albums: Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell, Floyd’s The Endless River, David Gilmour’s solo work On An Island and a forthcoming new one.
In the 1980s, Sampson worked in publishing at Jonathan Cape, run by publisher Tom Maschler in London. “He was the man who discovered, among others, the enfant lit-triangle of Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes,” says Sampson. “He published Doris Lessing, Marquez, Roth, Gordimer, the list of the great and the good could go on forever. He invented the Booker Prize and was the most irascible man to work for but always forgiven because he had such incredible taste. We have remained friends.”
Alexandra Pringle at Bloomsbury is Sampson’s editor. “The most challenging part is that having worked in publishing myself, I know too much about the process,” says Sampson. “Which creates all sorts of neurotic, and often unfounded, reactions to things.”
Sampson lives in Brighton, England. Sampson says it’s “the gay capital of Britain” and has the only Green MP in UK parliament. Sampson was born in London but had moved to Cornwall by the time she was eight.
The Kindness by Polly Samson. Hardcover: 304 pages, Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (July 21, 2015), Language: English, ISBN: 9781632860675 $ 26.00
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