Q&A with Margot Livesey

From my Q&A with Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

For several of my novels I’ve had great difficulty finding a title: asking friends and strangers to vote on long lists of possible titles. The Boy in The Field was at first a working title – a good description of the opening chapter in which three siblings, walking home from school, find a boy in a field who’s been wounded. But as I kept writing, exploring how each of the siblings, in the aftermath of this event, embarks on a private quest, the title began to see more and more appropriate.

What's in a name?

I wanted the names of my three siblings – Matthew, Zoe and Duncan - to fit together and seem like they were chosen by the same parents. I wanted the boy to have a slightly more mysterious name. I called him Karel after...[read on]

Visit Margot Livesey's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: The Flight of Gemma Hardy.

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Q&A with Margot Livesey.

--Marshal Zeringue