Erich, who has betrayed Emilie by having an affair with the wife of a friend and colleague, dies suddenly, and Gustav is left with a bereaved and bitter mother. Their second son, also named Gustav, is an unloved replacement. Reported by a supposed friend for this act of compassion, he loses his job and quarrels violently with Emilie for her lack of understanding.Įmilie, then advanced in pregnancy, holds Erich responsible for the loss of their first child, who was to have been called Gustav. As a police officer, deputising for his chief, he falsifies some papers to help a young family stay in Switzerland. Erich can't close his mind to their plight. Emilie doesn't want to think about these people she wants peace, babies, a quiet life. Gustav's parents, Erich and Emilie, quarrel about Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany. 'You must hold yourself together, be courageous, stay separate and strong.'īetrayal is at the heart of the novel. Five-year-old Gustav is told by his mother that he must be like Switzerland.

Tremain's latest novel, The Gustav Sonata, takes us to Switzerland just before the Second World War. It shows a refugee from eastern Europe, struggling to survive on casual jobs, hungry, lost, homesick. A recent novel, The Road Home, is set in today's London. All Tremain's novels are primarily about character her empathy and imagination are stirred by people adrift or isolated by circumstance.

Tremain's first big success, Restoration, revisited a much-explored costume drama site but was never weighed down by wigs and diamonds in the time of England's Charles II.

That's a long way from the gritty realism of her New Zealand gold rush novel, The Colour. Ranging daringly in time and place, her novels include Music and Silence, set in Denmark at the eccentric court of Christian IV. What she writes about is quite different. Her own world is quintessentially English.Īs chancellor of the University of East Anglia, author of 15 highly praised novels, partner of the celebrated biographer Richard Holmes, Tremain knows about success and privilege at the centre of British cultural life. It sounds like dangerous advice but it has worked well for Tremain herself. 'Write about what you don't know,' Rose Tremain once told a group of aspiring writers.

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