Interview with Joanna Nell! Release Day of 'The Tea Ladies of St Jude’s Hospital'
Interview with Joanna Nell of The Tea Ladies of St. Jude’s Hospital
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Welcome and congrats, Joanna, on the release of your new novel! Please provide a brief overview of The Tea Ladies of St Jude’s Hospital?
The novel is set in the fictional St Jude’s Hospital and follows the lives of three very different volunteers in the hospital’s fund-raising teashop, The Marjorie Marshall Memorial Cafeteria. Stalwart Hilary has worked her way up through the ranks to Manageress and runs a tight ship. Joy has been late every day since she started but with her colourful outfits and sunny smile is a favourite with the customers. Teenager Chloe, the daughter of two surgeons and set to enter medical school next year, is volunteering during the school holidays. When a chain of wholefood cafes opens an outlet at the hospital, the future of the fifty-year old Marjorie Marshall Memorial Cafeteria is in jeopardy. As the three volunteers band together to save the beloved teashop, they discover they have more in common than they realised, not least that each is hiding a shameful secret.
Is there a special meaning behind the book’s title that you would like to share?
St Jude was the patron saint of lost causes giving poignancy to the title in the context of the battle to save the cafeteria in the face of progress and also to the painful circumstances that each woman is trying to conceal.
Tell us a bit about The Tea Ladies of St. Jude’s Hospital cover design? Did you have any input?
Unfortunately I can’t claim any creative credit for the cover design. As with my previous books, the lettering is done in the playful P22 Garamouche font, and I love the colours with the checked tablecloth background that I hope will help the book stand out on the shelf.
You have added a character viewpoint from a younger age bracket. Why did you decide to do this, as your stories are mostly focused on seniors?
I wanted to include a teenage character in this book as an opportunity to explore intergenerational relationships. Society is more segregated by age than by any other determinant and I believe that one of the vital keys to addressing ageism is to break down these age-defined boundaries and challenge the stereotypes that the young and the old hold about each other.
Can you provide some interesting qualities that you liked in Hilary and Joy?
When we first meet Hilary her marriage has broken down and she is technically homeless. I want the reader to understand how she came to be in these circumstances and decide whether this excuses her need for control and over-reliance on procedure that at times verges on bullying. She’s a complex character but I love her resilience and her attempts to maintain appearances when her life is falling apart around her. Merely putting up with her manipulative older sister, Nancy also makes her a saint in my eyes.
On the other hand Joy is stoical in a different way. She hides her pain behind her colourful clothes and accessories, much to Hilary’s annoyance. Joy’s hair is a shade called Classic Copper and she wears blue sparkly false eyelashes that often go astray. I love her perpetual cheerfulness as she weathers Hilary’s moods, and her nurturing of the teenage volunteers or the ‘young Duke of Edinburghs’ as she refers to them.
Provide one example of team effort that the ladies try in their attempts to save the Cafeteria.
The tea ladies have to be quite inventive when it comes to their efforts to save the cafeteria from closure, especially as they have a non-existent budget. One way they try to garner support for their cause is by giving away Joy’s signature scones. With hospitals staffed by perpetually tired and hungry doctors and nurses, they find many willing recipients for their cream and jam-laden offerings, proving that a teaspoon of sugar or two goes a long way in medicine!
Which character would you say you are most like and/or different from in The Tea Ladies of St Jude’s Hospital and how?
I must confess that my husband and I share Joy and Len’s early evening gin and tonic/newsreader routine. Unlike Joy and her Classic Copper however, I stopped dyeing my hair last year during lockdown and have let my natural silver grow through. Hilary was a harder character to write since I’ve never been a ‘lady who lunches’ and luckily I’ve never been the victim of such a humiliating fall from grace. It was interesting to explore that experience through her eyes however, and I’d like to think that I’d have the fortitude to pick myself up and carry on like Hilary.
You have ramped up the humour in this novel. Was this a conscious progression on your part or just the way the story unfurled naturally?
I always aim to let the humour develop naturally from the interactions between the characters rather than making a conscious decision to manipulate a scene for comic purposes. However I wrote this book during lockdown and can’t deny I wanted to counter the pervading mood of depression and hopelessness by writing a fun and uplifting story with a playful narrative.
What are some key themes that you hope your readers see in The Tea Ladies of the St. Jude’s Hospital?
I find it fascinating as a writer to see how themes develop in a manuscript. It’s often not until the second or third draft that I recognise what a book is ‘about’. In this novel, the themes include loyalty and sacrifice, sibling resentment and rivalry, the power of unresolved grief, parental expectation vs yearning, bullying, resilience and as in my previous books, unexpected friendship.
What risks have you taken with your writing that have paid off?
Apart from the obvious risk of writing about older characters in a society that remains extremely youth-obsessed, I once wrote a story told from the point of view of a heart (titled ‘Heart Murmurs’) that was short-listed for the Newcastle Short Story Prize. Who knew human organs made such great narrators?
What was the most recent book you read that brought tears of joy or sorrow to your eyes?
When Things are Alive They Hum is the debut novel by Hannah Bent (published by Ultimo Press), a story about two sisters, one of whom is living with Down Syndrome. It was such a brave, tender and moving story that I sobbed through the last third of the book.
What is your favourite snack or drink while you are writing?
I drink way too much coffee and tea whether I’m writing or not. I try not to snack while I’m writing but if the words are flowing well I will sometimes make an exception and eat lunch at my keyboard, usually cheese and biscuits or veggie sticks and hummus.
How do you celebrate when you finish a book?
After I press send on the manuscript I celebrate with a spoonful of peanut butter (my guilty pleasure) and put a bottle of bubbles (my second guilty pleasure) into the fridge for later. I also like to take a few days off writing and catch up on housework, which has usually been neglected during those final edits.
Are you working on anything new? If so, can you share a little about it?
I’m in the very early stages of a new manuscript about a retired GP who faces an ethical dilemma. Watch this space!
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Thanks so much, Joanna, for doing the interview. Congrats on the release day (Sept. 29th 2021) of your wonderful new novel! Drop by Joanna’s website for more information on her writing activities.
Many thanks to publisher Hachette Australia (and fiction editor Rebecca Saunders) for the ARC.
