Interview with Lily Graham - author of 'The Last Restaurant in Paris'
Interview with Lily Graham – Author of ‘The Last Restaurant in Paris’
Read my review of The Last Restaurant in Paris.
Release date: July 18th, 2022
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Welcome Lily! Your upcoming novel is a unique WWII story. Please tell us what inspired The Last Restaurant in Paris. Plus, a brief overview of its content.
Thank you so much. With The Last Restaurant in Paris, I wanted to explore the idea of inheritance, and how this can play out in a physical as well as an emotional sense. I think a lot of us would wish that a relative had left them something of value. But what if what you inherit isn’t wonderful? What if you inherit a dark part of history in the process?
This was the spark for the story, where in the 80s a young woman named Sabine Dupris discovers that she is now the owner of an old property, a former restaurant, that closed down forty years ago. Only this former restaurant has a dark legacy – one that many people still talk about today in horror as it was the site of several murders. Sabine finds out, to her dismay, not only does this old property belong to her, but that she is in fact related to the former owner, Marianne Blanchet, who poisoned all her customers, on purpose, one awful night.
But as is the case with life – nothing is ever truly black and white. Especially in times of war.
Sabine is left with so many questions, and as she begins to try to learn more, with the help of one of the restaurant’s former employees, everything everyone thought they knew about this notorious murderer’s story is wrong.
It was in many ways inspired by some of the darker true stories of occupied Europe.
When I read of two young Dutch sisters, Truus and Freddie Oversteegen and their friend, Hannie Schaft, in an article in the New York Post (https://nypost.com/2019/12/14/meet-the-dutch-girls-who-seduced-nazis-and-lured-them-to-their-deaths/) who took up arms against the Germans in the Netherlands, by luring Nazis away from bars and inviting them to go on walks where they would shoot them, the seed was planted for a more morally ambiguous story.
Why did you choose to tell your story through dual timeline? What advantages did this offer you?
I think it works for mysteries – creating the sort of distance between characters through space and time that setting everything in the present doesn’t always allow. I also wanted the restaurant to really marinate in its dark legacy, which has grown to mythic proportions over time. Forty years later, people still make the sign of the cross when they see it and some people swear they can smell phantom cooking scents which they believe is the ghost of Marianne trying to lure new victims. Also, as someone living in the present, the past can seem like a faraway place, until you start to peel back the layers.
Please provide four words each to describe the historical character Marianne Blanchet and current day granddaughter Sabine Duchelle.
For Marianne. Probity, formidable, determined, and volatile. For Sabine. Tenacious, kind, compulsive and and sometimes a bit flappable.
Who is your favourite character in The Last Restaurant in Paris and why? Do you identify with any of the characters in their personality traits, special interests/talents? How are you similar or different?
That’s tough! I do like them all. But my favourite is Gilbert, I loved him so much that I ended up giving him a much bigger role than he was originally going to have. Gilbert’s probably a bit of a mix of my father, and my husband and also some parts of myself, like my love of books and crepes and long walks. But I am easily flappable like Sabine, who arrives sometimes with different shoes or forgets to brush her hair because she was absorbed in something or she was stressed out. I wish I was as strong and courageous as Marianne. I tend to be a bit more of a people pleaser than I’d like but I do admire people who are unrelenting in their principles and display such strength. I always worry that I’m upsetting people if I’m too tough, lol!
Did you run into any difficulties researching for The Last Restaurant in Paris? Were there any surprising facts you learned that you included in the novel?
I think discovering the German Parisian newspaper full of flattery and praise for the French was a surprise – I never thought that this would be their approach, it’s easy to assume they’d be despotic, but instead they tried a more psychological one – trying to convince the French that they were on their side, ultimately it was doomed to failure but the idea that not only were you being occupied, but that the Germans wanted you to pretend that everything was great too, is awful on another level.
Home/restaurant cooking is a part of the story. Is it a passion of your own? Are there any great chefs/cooks in your family that you were able to draw upon for inspiration?
Yes, I come from a family of great home cooks, and I married into another. My husband’s family is Portuguese and the food is simply heavenly. I recently turned vegan (though I relapse often) and so the idea of simple, Provençal vegetable dishes was really appealing for the story. One of my favourite travel books is Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, it started my love for the region and its food – which is often simple, hearty and utterly delicious, relying on what’s in season.
Please share your publication journey. Have you always written historical fiction or crossed over from other genres?
Not many people might know this but Lily Graham is actually my pen name. My real name is Dominique Valente, which sounds like it should be the made up one. I write a series called Starfell under my own name. In the beginning though, I found it tricky to find an agent for my children’s fiction. Then when my mother got ill several years ago, I found that I wanted to write a different kind of story and I wrote the first few chapters of what would later become my first Lily Graham book, The Summer Escape – about a girl who loses her husband and escapes to an island. When my mother got better, I went back to writing my children’s books but received yet more rejections. My friend told me about Amazon Publishing – that you could directly self-publish your book online, she was so excited and suddenly I thought, ‘Well, why not?’ So I looked at the start of the book I’d written for grown-ups and decided to re-write it as it was actually pretty rubbish, and then gave myself a deadline of a year. I picked a name – Lily Graham – and called the idea the Lily Graham Project. I figured that at least with a different name, if it flopped, no one would know it was me! I thought that at least then I could finally finish a book and also, I would be able to publish it without waiting for other people’s say so. By the end of that year, I had finished that book and had written a novella, for Christmas, and I decided to first self-publish that one, which I did. I had a lot of help, as my friend has a degree in linguistics, so she’s a natural editor, and another friend is a graphic designer who did the cover. It was so exciting taking that step. To my shock it did pretty well. After a year or so, I saw that the publisher Bookouture accepted unsolicited manuscripts, even those that were previously self-published, and I decided to send them The Summer Escape. To my amazement my lovely publisher and editor Lydia, got back to me a few weeks later offering me a three-book deal.
I honestly never thought that ‘Lily Graham’ would turn into a full-blown career for me. A few years ago, I decided to take the plunge from lighter women’s fiction into historical fiction and they fully supported that move.
Once I’d written about four books for Lily Graham, I finally got an agent for my children’s fiction, and I got a publishing deal with HarperCollins, and so now I’m lucky (and mad enough, grin) to write under both names.
When did you first know you wanted to become a writer? What sparked your passion? A book, an author or something else?
At age nine – when for the first time I started paying attention to the author’s name on the books I was always reading, and realised: this is someone’s job? To make stories up for a living? It sounded like an absolute dream. Though the dream would have been to get paid to read, the next best thing would be to write them. I literally made a pact with myself that I’d try to make that happen.
What is your writing process like? Are you a pantser, plotter or mix of both?
Bit of both. I do a rough synopsis to get the gist of the story down for my publisher – this has evolved over time as I used to just be a straight up pantser. From this bones stage I do a ‘kitchen-sink draft’ as everything goes in but the kitchen sink, and aside from some broad sketch strokes I don’t really know any of the specifics of the story. After I’m about two thirds into the first draft, I start chipping away, and organising it into more of a plotted draft. Once I have a basic first draft I then start my more intensive research – as I find that if I do heavy research first I can struggle to know when to start or it can be too much of an info dump and I want the history to add to the story, like the right seasoning.
Do you have any favourite foods you like to eat while writing and/or special activities you like to do to get your creative juices flowing? Is there a favourite location where you like to write (at home or elsewhere)?
I write in a shed at the bottom of my garden, which is my happy place full of pictures and with views towards my plants. My elixir of choice is always coffee. Though I do use pastries to bribe myself when I’m nearing the pesky middle sections!
What is in your current book stack? Any good books you’d recommend?
I love the sort of books that you get lost in and wish you had ten more just like them, as you know you’ll be in a book hangover for ages. Those for me in recent months has been Jo Jo Moyes’ The Giver of Stars (utterly beautiful and unique historical fiction with such wonderful characters), The Hundred Years of Lenny and Margot (so funny, poignant and sad in the best feel-good sense), and non-fiction wise, I discovered the diaries of illustrator and cook, Susan Branch, which is balm for the soul. Each book is hand written and full of her gorgeous artwork and when I finished the last one I was a bit lost for a few days, but thankfully she has a blog, grin.
Are you working on a new project? If so, can you share a little of its content?
Yes, it’s set during the Blitz in London, and features one of my favourite characters to date, a young woman who has always longed to be on the stage, except that she’s been told she’s too short and her face is too round, but she’s not about to let that or the fact that there’s a little thing like a war on get in her way. I think it’ll be slightly more fun than some of my more serious historical novels, but typically, as I can’t help myself there is also a lot of drama and tear-jerking moments.
Many thanks Lily/Dominique for being my guest! I wish you much success on your new novel. Thanks, too, to Bookouture for releasing such excellent books!
