Sisterly Conflict Against A Great War Backdrop In 'Daughters Of Mars'
On whether war reveals character
"It does, tragically, reveal character in some of the combatants, and horror, atrocity and soul-damaging failure on the part of many of the participants — but this was a tale in which that female capacity to deal with horror on a process-line basis was something I wanted to write about. So in the case of these young women, Sally, Naomi, their friends, their character is amply and richly revealed, and their capacity to deal with this ennobled them. Whereas the trenches were ignoble, there were scenes of huge heroism and huge folly and huge fear on the part of individual soldiers, but these women, I think were ennobled."
On the effect of Schindler's List
"Well, it gave a new visibility to my work, and I think it helped, the fact that publishers can have that as a banner ... to put on the cover of my books is a great help. When people used to thank me for writing Schindler's List, I would be abashed, because I'd say to them, but I did it for the normal novelistic reasons, the normal professional writer reasons: I wanted to make a living. Above all, of course, when you fall in love with a story, you don't write it for reward, but you sometimes, irrationally, get rewards. And I used to say to them, look, I've been rewarded for writing this, and I'm therefore astonished that, coming from such venal origins, my endeavors could produce in your family this or that effect."
Read an excerpt of The Daughters of Mars