Back in 2021, when I was still writing the novel that would be published as The Lessons, my publisher at HarperCollins, who had only seen snippets, asked why I was writing what I was writing. A difficult question to answer. If you try to answer it, you'll most likely be wrong and right at the same time.
Why the hell did I write The Lessons? This was my answer:
My novel, The Lessons, is about youth.
In late 2020, my nineteen year old step-daughter and her boyfriend joined us in the UK for Christmas. They were in love and they were so sure of themselves, they seemed invincible and were indefatigably optimistic about everything, and yet when they went across to see Europe they floundered about, returning early in confusion, having been overwhelmed by it all.
This run in with their youthful comings and goings got me thinking.
Youth lasts a lifetime, or so it feels at the time. Every decision is a momentous one. Every thought, new and surprising. Love, therefore, is the most overwhelming experience in youth. There is no protection against love at that age. It feels like a revelation, like a secret known only to the lovers. Add good sex to the mix and all is lost.
First love usually runs its course, eventually extinguished by harsh realities. Youth emerges blinking into the day and looks back - where once stood a lover now stands a stranger. But the feeling of that first love never leaves the lovers, and each and every new love is consciously or unconsciously measured against the force of that first love.
I wanted to explore youth and first love from a few angles. I wanted to throw in class and prejudice. I wanted my lovers to be brave and I wanted them to be cowards. I wanted temptation to be strewn over their paths. I wanted barricades. I also wanted youth to be represented not just in age but in outlook. Which is why I set it in the sixties, that youthful decade.
In The Lessons youth runs from sixteen year old Daisy, to her thirty plus mother. From seventeen year old Harry, to the fifty year old Sebastian. Because some of us never mature. The blind will often lead the blind.
Somewhere in the back of my mind was Jane Austen’s Persuasion. To have one of my lovers persuaded to give up the other. To have Daisy live an alternative life, with an alternative love, in an alternative world. To see how far I could test her love for Harry. To have her question that first love, to doubt it, to deny it.
Youth is also the body. So I explore sexual passion. The purity of Harry and Daisy’s experiences, through the disconnect of Jane and Simon’s desires, to the violence of Beckett. I wanted to celebrate sexual chemistry as part of love. And for sex to speak with a clarity it is often denied. To drag the body back into frame.
In youth the idea of fate is seductive. That we are fated to be together. That our destinies are somehow entwined. I wanted to hint at this, too. To reach back and reassert that old fashioned notion. In love and in life. With Daisy and Harry finding each other again, and with Simon becoming his father and Jane ending up alone.
The Lessons is about youth.
Why the hell did I write The Lessons? This was my answer:
My novel, The Lessons, is about youth.
In late 2020, my nineteen year old step-daughter and her boyfriend joined us in the UK for Christmas. They were in love and they were so sure of themselves, they seemed invincible and were indefatigably optimistic about everything, and yet when they went across to see Europe they floundered about, returning early in confusion, having been overwhelmed by it all.
This run in with their youthful comings and goings got me thinking.
Youth lasts a lifetime, or so it feels at the time. Every decision is a momentous one. Every thought, new and surprising. Love, therefore, is the most overwhelming experience in youth. There is no protection against love at that age. It feels like a revelation, like a secret known only to the lovers. Add good sex to the mix and all is lost.
First love usually runs its course, eventually extinguished by harsh realities. Youth emerges blinking into the day and looks back - where once stood a lover now stands a stranger. But the feeling of that first love never leaves the lovers, and each and every new love is consciously or unconsciously measured against the force of that first love.
I wanted to explore youth and first love from a few angles. I wanted to throw in class and prejudice. I wanted my lovers to be brave and I wanted them to be cowards. I wanted temptation to be strewn over their paths. I wanted barricades. I also wanted youth to be represented not just in age but in outlook. Which is why I set it in the sixties, that youthful decade.
In The Lessons youth runs from sixteen year old Daisy, to her thirty plus mother. From seventeen year old Harry, to the fifty year old Sebastian. Because some of us never mature. The blind will often lead the blind.
Somewhere in the back of my mind was Jane Austen’s Persuasion. To have one of my lovers persuaded to give up the other. To have Daisy live an alternative life, with an alternative love, in an alternative world. To see how far I could test her love for Harry. To have her question that first love, to doubt it, to deny it.
Youth is also the body. So I explore sexual passion. The purity of Harry and Daisy’s experiences, through the disconnect of Jane and Simon’s desires, to the violence of Beckett. I wanted to celebrate sexual chemistry as part of love. And for sex to speak with a clarity it is often denied. To drag the body back into frame.
In youth the idea of fate is seductive. That we are fated to be together. That our destinies are somehow entwined. I wanted to hint at this, too. To reach back and reassert that old fashioned notion. In love and in life. With Daisy and Harry finding each other again, and with Simon becoming his father and Jane ending up alone.
The Lessons is about youth.
About the author
John Purcell is a book industry professional with over twenty years experience and the author of five published works of fiction. The Secret Lives of Emma trilogy published by Penguin Random House and The Lessons and The Girl on the Page published by 4th Estate.
John Purcell is a book industry professional with over twenty years experience and the author of five published works of fiction. The Secret Lives of Emma trilogy published by Penguin Random House and The Lessons and The Girl on the Page published by 4th Estate.
