Salley Vickers: Angels' delight

An author's note at the back of Mr Golightly's Holiday reveals that its writing arose out of a period of turmoil. Salley Vickers, whose third novel this is, had been working on a different book when "events cut the threads of my concentration, so that book was set aside in the distractions of the personal drama I found myself acting in. At the lowest point, when things stood around my bed in the small hours looking worse and worse and I thought I may never write again, the idea of Mr Golightly's Holiday stole upon me and I am convinced that it was the wreck of my former plans which allowed its admission."

An author's note at the back of Mr Golightly's Holiday reveals that its writing arose out of a period of turmoil. Salley Vickers, whose third novel this is, had been working on a different book when "events cut the threads of my concentration, so that book was set aside in the distractions of the personal drama I found myself acting in. At the lowest point, when things stood around my bed in the small hours looking worse and worse and I thought I may never write again, the idea of Mr Golightly's Holiday stole upon me and I am convinced that it was the wreck of my former plans which allowed its admission."

Now with the turmoil and the creation of the book past, Salley Vickers is into the post-publication phase and has a new-found air of serenity. Unfazed by the recent heatwave, she decides to take a pavement table outside Julie's Wine Bar in Notting Hill, and orders a pot of Darjeeling tea. Slightly built, blonde, and with an unobtrusive air, she could just as easily be an academic (which she once was), though more recently she was also a Jungian psychoanalyst who practised until last year. She dealt with people suffering from eating disorders, and those who were creatively blocked.

So tell me about the period of turmoil, I suggest. What happened? It sounds as if it couldn't have been worse. She had nowhere to live; she had gone to stay with friends who live on Dartmoor; she was physically exhausted. Her mother fell ill with Alzheimer's and had to go into a home, her father had a series of strokes, and thus the book she had been working on was seriously interrupted. She couldn't find her way back to it - she had to let it unravel in her mind, and it came to a brutal halt. Then, a friend told her that her life was best understood as a TV soap opera, scripted by an inaccessible authority, and that's when a way forward into the new novel came to her.

She hasn't explained why her life was like a soap. I ask, "Was this the break-up with Frank Delaney?" Delaney, the Irish writer and broadcaster, author of many bestsellers, had moved to New York last year. Four years after he married Salley Vickers and moved from London to deepest Somerset with plans to create a wonderful garden, he ended their union, and almost immediately married an American lady, after which he and Wife No 4 disappeared to New York. A gossip columnist at the time commented that he should add "serial monogamy" to his listed hobbies in Who's Who.

She says wryly that she doesn't know much more than I do about Frank's disappearance, and that she would prefer to talk about her books. "I really dislike the cult of the personality of an author. All the interesting parts are the books." You have the sense of a psychoanalyst remaining in the shadows, deflecting the patient's attention. Indeed, she stresses that her novels are nothing to do with her life. She draws on "my own reading, my own love of literature, my work as an analyst".

A child of Communist, atheist parents, she grew up regarding religion as "a mysterious and slightly forbidden area, but now I think human beings are not the measure of all things". Her mind was expanded by studying English literature at Cambridge, after which there was an early and short-lived marriage by which she had two sons, now 30 and 31. She trained and worked as a psychoanalyst while bringing up her sons as a single parent. "The three of us were very close - we are genuinely very good friends," she says, and returns to the subject of writing.

As with Miss Garnet's Angel, and to a lesser extent Instances of the Number 3, Mr Golightly's Holiday (Fourth Estate, £16.99) draws on classical texts - in this case, the Bible above all. An elderly, nondescript man arrives in an ancient van to rent a cottage on Dartmoor. He claims to be a writer, revising what was once a bestseller, but which these days is out of date. If he could only re-write it as a soap opera ... perhaps it would be a hit again? It doesn't take long before the hints - at the office his assistant Mike is "an absolute angel" - reveal Mr Golightly as nothing less than God come down to earth. This is not the all-powerful God of tradition; more an uncertain one, unsure of his place, questioning and, surprisingly, able to learn from humans. And on Mr Golightly's conscience is the death of his son, a catastrophe which he feels he should have been able to prevent.

Salley Vickers sees this God as being of our age: a deity with whom we feel more comfortable and, in fact, can safely ignore. Golightly reflects on his new role: "In times past, when he had been quick to anger and quicker still to take vengeance, there was no doubt he commanded more respect. Nowadays, there's a tendency to treat him as a busted flush, a toothless tiger."

The lives of the inhabitants of Great Calne, the Dartmoor village where Golightly has come to rest, resemble the soap opera he is looking for. There's a female vicar suspected of dykeish tendencies, a failed film director, an ageing lothario, an adolescent truant, and several predatory women. The village is a tangled web of dysfunctional families and romantic crises.

Using soap opera ironically is a perilous game to play. Vickers says, yes, she recognises the danger, but although there are soap characters and situations, the theme of Golightly and his son, the serious stories of the widow Ellen Thomas's revelation, and of the adolescent misfit Johnny Spence, give the book a more solid substance. Echoes from the Bible intrude - Mr Golightly's handsome, leather-clad assistant, Bill, visits a simple village girl, Mary and she mysteriously falls pregnant. There is inevitably (bearing in mind the story of the New Testament) a death.

The theme that runs through the novel is the nature of love, which is relayed to Golightly by the characters according to their own nature - from love as a panacea for all ills, to love as a form of selfishness. In Miss Garnet's Angel, too, love is the thread that links the characters. Julia Garnet has never acknowledged the emotion until she finds its expression in her feelings for Carlo. When she realises he will never reciprocate them, her love is expressed in a wider way, towards everyone in her daily life in Venice.

Miss Garnet's Angel rose to fame on word of mouth and booksellers' enthusiasm, bolstered by praise from such as Penelope Fitzgerald, John Bayley and John Julius Norwich. It may have seemed a publishing fluke but one suspects that, having written the book, Vickers's analytical mind understood the need for synchronicity, so that every aspect complemented the whole.

With both Miss Garnet's Angel and Mr Golightly's Holiday, she had a hand in choosing the evocative pictures for the covers - a Carpaccio angel for the first, and a slumbering Samuel Palmer shepherd for the latter. The fantastical element in Golightly is reinforced by a glowing Philip Pullman endorsement. (His name appears in the book as one of Mr Golightly's favoured authors).

Salley Vickers also had a website set up, designed to appeal to reading groups. Although admitting herself to be a technophobe, she embarked on the site as a way of making contact with readers: "It gives me a sense of where the books are going, and what people think of them. It enables me to get to know my readers. I can't say how important it is for me."

There are notes about the author, about the books, extracts, reviews, profiles, an events diary of bookshop appearances, Salley Vickers's five favourite romantic novels, frequently asked questions, and space for readers to make their comments. One readers' group had a violent argument over the ending of Miss Garnet's Angel, protesting that Miss Garnet should not die: "She's got a few good years in her yet!"

The suggested questions for readers' groups are awe-inspiring. There are a large number, tailored for each of the books, and as you read them you feel as if sitting an exam. How does Salley Vickers's exactly observed environment for her novels contribute to her metaphysical, otherworldly themes? And how does Golightly's conversation with his business rival about comedy and tragedy fit in with the ideas already sown in the story about creation, recreation and free will?

It's an exacting life, being part of a Salley Vickers readers' group. The author herself may disparage the cult of personality, but she understands consummately the cult of writing.

Clare Colvin's third novel, 'The Mirror Makers', is published by Hutchinson. Visit www.salleyvickers.com

BIOGRAPHY

Salley Vickers was born in Liverpool in 1948. She grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, and in London. She studied English Literature at Cambridge, and went on to teach English at the Open University, Oxford and Stanford, specialising in Shakespeare. She then trained as an analytical psychologist and practised as a psychoanalyst until last year. Her first novel, Miss Garnet's Angel, published in 2000 by HarperCollins, was acclaimed by writers, critics and booksellers, including Anita Brookner, Joanna Trollope and Penelope Fitzgerald. It went on to be an international bestseller. Her second, Instances of the Number 3, was published by Fourth Estate in 2001. Mr Golightly's Holiday, her new novel, is published this week by Fourth Estate. Salley Vickers has been married twice: her second marriage, to the writer and broadcaster Frank Delaney, ended last year. From her first marriage, she has two grown-up sons.