Book Tour – The Summer House By The Sea By Jenny Oliver

Today on the book tour for Jenny Oliver’s new book, ‘The Summer House By The Sea’, Jenny talks about the relationships in the book.

One of the themes in the book I found the most interesting was Ava’s relationship with her brother. Have you any experience on how relationships change over time? How did you explore this in the book?

I have two older sisters and the way our relationships have changed over time has always been really interesting to me. I remember when I was very young my eldest sister comforting me when I was sobbing that Christmas Day was over (I know!!), I remember lounging in front of the TV with my middle sister eating packets of Maryland Cookies while glued to ‘Home and Away’, I remember holidays with all of us crammed in the back of the car for the five-hour drive to Cornwall – fighting and fidgeting and one of us being sick outside the Little Chef. We knew everything about each other. And then we got older and gradually each one of us left home – and I’m pleased to say I got over the trauma of Boxing Day – and suddenly we were catching up for a lunch or meeting for a drink and dinner, working out logistics with in-laws for Christmas and Easter and no longer simply stretching out on the sofa together to while away hours in front of daytime TV. And, as so often also happens with friendships over time, rather than know everything about each other we knew the bits that were shared in phone calls or catch-ups, we squeezed each other in among dots on our phone calendars, partners, children, work, Twitter scrolling. And of course, that’s just life.

But when I had my baby I suddenly realised that I needed more than that. I needed a sofa that I could sit on, eyes glazed, and be fed chocolate biscuits and watch crap TV (hopefully while someone else cooed over my child) and I found that it was those very same relationships that I could call on again. The muscle memory was still there – this time the tears weren’t because Christmas Day was over but the simple fact I’d only had an hour and half sleep. And as a result of that time, I understood more clearly the ebb and flow of friendships and relationships – that it’s hard to hold onto that intense, know-everything closeness that you get from living together or growing up together. Relationships change as we change, but the best ones, when you need them, can be summoned back up in an instant. And this is the essence of what I wanted to explore with Ava and Rory in ‘The Summerhouse by the Sea’.

You can buy [amazon_link id=”0008217947″ target=”_blank” ]The Summer House by the Sea from Amazon [/amazon_link] and is available to buy from good bookshops.