India, Nov. 7 -- Tell us about the history that helped birth this novel.

The circumstances for this novel? I borrowed a lot from the young married lives of my parents, as far as I remembered and understood them. The view you have of your parents' lives when you're a young child is a peculiar one. And I wanted to write a particular kind of novel, something free, and with lots of good forward energy. Very much a novel of character.

And the more I read and researched, the more fascinated I became with the early Sixties - the egg from which the modern world is hatched. There were huge shifts, technological and attitudinal. Everything from the role and rights of women to sexuality, immigration, and just the kind of society we wanted to be, t...