The necklace which appears on page 135 of the novel
Hannah Vincent
My friend is a jeweller and I asked him to make me the necklace which Nikki wears – she’s the kind of stylish, well-groomed woman I aspire to be so I’m starting with her jewellery! I bought some old typewriter arms off etsy and my jeweller friend snipped the letters off the end and welded them onto arms he made from silver to spell out the name of my book. Of course, there are two ‘e’s and two ‘n’s in The Weaning so I had to go back to etsy and order another set of typewriter keys.
The doorknocker which opens the book
… is my friend Anna Mai’s. She used to live around the corner from me in Brighton and had a really pretty hand shaped doorknocker, which she took with her when she moved to Stroud. Writing a book is a writer inviting the reader into their home and it’s polite to knock first, eh, so that’s why I begin my novel with a lovely doorknocker.
The children I looked after when I was working as a childminder
There are ethical considerations involved in writing about real people so I changed loads of details about my experiences as a childminder and this is fiction not autobiography. I kept a memory of the first time I saw some darling twin babies I looked after, though – they had very dark hair and they were lying on white sheepskin rugs and it’s those little twins I was thinking of when I describe Marcel as a ‘raven chick in snow’ on page 15 of the novel.
My client’s keyring, which appears on page 18 of the book
The keys a childminder client gave me to let myself in and out of their house had an image of a man taking a rooster for a walk on it, and the words ‘this man has a giant c*ck’. TMI?
The ‘love interest’ in the novel is a neighbour of mine…
… We are good friends and I bump into him and his wife in our street and at the corner shop, which is the model for Sameer’s shop in my book. My sons sometimes babysit for him and I feed his cat when he’s away – the kind of thing most neighbours do for one another. I spoke about my first novel Alarm Girl, at his bookclub - if he invites me to talk about The Weaning that will be an interesting conversation… I don’t spy on him ironing but I can see into another house from my bedroom and sometimes I see a different neighbour ironing his shirts.
My partner
The narrator calls her boyfriend Fox, which is my nickname for my partner. My kids think it’s a bit icky and I guess it is but it comes from a time when they were young, things were precarious financially and he was working away a lot. In Roald Dahl’s book Fantastic Mr Fox, Mr Fox saves the day (spoiler alert) by bringing home a feast and Mrs Fox declares ‘my husband is a fantastic fox!’
My mother-in-law’s book brooch, which appears on page 67
In my book I give this brooch to the narrator’s mother but it belonged to my mother-in-law, who is dead now.
My nan’s tin, which appears on page 25
My nan was a re-user and recycler – she fastened everything with elastic bands made from cut up strips of rubber gloves and parcelled things away in old ice cream and margarine tubs. When she died I inherited a biscuit tin of hers, which I keep recipes in.
An illustration from a favourite childhood book
I wanted to create a certain atmosphere for the climactic sequence in my book and as I was writing, I realised what I was aiming for was the atmosphere of a favourite book from childhood. The book is called No Kiss For Mother by Tomi Ungerer.
My children
My sons are sixteen and twenty now and they are beautiful young men but I miss their baby selves. A child’s growing independence can be painful for the parent so I re-live those early days in my writing.
You can see photographs of the items I mention on twitter and insta – find me at @hannahvincent22
