Authorpreneur Dashboard – John Edward Needham
The One Of Us
Literature & Fiction
A poignant tale of identical twins separated at birth and adopted and brought up in very different families and environments: Yorkshire and Wales in the UK. This absorbing, compelling tale chronicling the boys' growth into manhood explores nature versus nurture theory as they are finally reunited in an unusual, shocking and heart-rending manner that will wring your emotions dry.
Book Bubbles from The One Of Us
What if?
What might happen if unwanted identical twins are adopted separately into very different families and social situations, in different countries of Britain? Would ‘nature’, their genetic sameness, prevail so that they grew up largely unaffected by their surroundings; essentially two copies of the same person? Or would ‘nurture’ be the dominating influence, causing them to diverge and become very different kinds of individuals? I explore these two possible polar-opposite scenarios, and the intermediate permutations, in my novel. To create as great a contrast between the family environments of my twin protagonists as possible, I have one child being brought up in North Yorkshire, near a military barracks, and the other in Welsh-speaking west Wales. During their childhoods and early teens they grow up entirely separate, leading their quite different lives, innocently unaware of the other’s existence, until one day fate reunites them in a dramatic and emotionally searing way. This excerpt describes the adoption of one of them . . .
Beautiful portrayal
A reviewer recently left this generous review. Thank you! From awful beginnings, identical twins grow and flourish in separate surroundings; each loved and nurtured in different ways. The One of Us is, again, an addictive read by John Needham. The central characters and families are beautifully portrayed, as are differing social views and attitudes of two different upbringings. I thought this an adventurous topic for an author to tackle and do justice to... which John does very successfully with the most poignant ending. Perfect!
Touching emotions
A recent reviewer thought this (thank you!): This is a gentle and moving story about a very unusual subject: that of twins separated at birth. I enjoyed this immensely and was genuinely touched by the author's beautiful prose style. This thoughtful story provided a welcome antidote to stories of sex, vampires and zombies that seem to litter bookshelves these days. A genuine literary book from an author who knows how to guide a reader through a story.
Making an issue of it
When all is said and done, it’s a matter of reader taste. Some people regard reading as simply entertainment; of escapism provided by genres such as romance, fantasy or thriller. And that’s absolutely fine. It’s horses for courses, after all. Others though prefer to read literature possessing some depth, with plausible characters caught up in real social issues and dilemmas. Possibly even with sadness or tragedy involved (many of us enjoy being moved by a good weepy!) Books with some grit in the oyster, depicting life as it actually is, sometimes, rather than how we might wish it always to be. That’s my personal reading taste, anyway. When I read I like to be made to feel; to have some sort of emotional response. To laugh or cry. And so, going on the basis that I prefer to write the sorts of things I like to read about, I tend to write about ‘issues’. I’ll leave escapist writing to others who could certainly make a far better job of it than me. So in The One of Us there are issues of adoption, nature/nurture theory (because separately-adopted identical twins are involved) and attitudes to war. There’s another major issue too, which emerges towards the end of the book, but I won’t reveal it and spoil!
Hooking the reader
It’s a well-worn tenet of writing and storytelling of course: involve the reader from the start. Whet their appetite. Make them immediately hungry to learn more. The worst thing is to start a story flatly. It’s fine doing that if you are an established author whose normal style is to begin in slow-burn mode and gradually build tension or involvement. Readers will know from past, pleasurable experience that there’ll be wonders to come, and stay with you. But if you are anything less than a top-rank author of high and reliable reputation, it’s important to grab your reader from the beginning otherwise they might rapidly lose interest and metaphorically walk away. And you really don’t want that. First impressions, as they say, do matter. In my book The One of Us, a poignant tale of unfortunately conceived twin boys who as foundling babies are separated to be adopted and raised in very different family and social environments, I try to hook the reader in this way. Whether or not I succeed is for you, Dear Reader, to decide, of course! Here is a scene-setting extract from early in the book. The twins have just been found in decidedly non-salubrious surroundings, having been abandoned by their hapless mother . . .
Love to like or love to hate?
Do you like to read sympathetic characters, which you can readily empathise with, become involved in their trials and tribulations and root for? Or antipathetic ones: nasty dark people who you eagerly wait to see get their comeuppance? It’s all a matter of taste, I suppose. Whichever turns on the pleasures centres in your particular brain. Most fiction contains a mixture of and good and bad guys of course; there’s usually more of the former in escapist literature such as romance, but often more of the second in the ’edgy,’ social-realistic kind. And with a grey-scale of more complex characters between the two extremes. I think I tend to have more of the sympathetic sort in my books. It’s just a function of my personality, for better or worse. These are the sort of characters I prefer to create, write about and have inhabiting my stories. That’s certainly the case with my latest novel, an emotional story of separately-adopted twins, The One of Us. An exception though is the less-likeable, hapless, inadequate, unable-to-cope, teenage Julie Flanagan, whose careless, drunken, lustful action one Friday night in Liverpool is responsible for the coming into being of the protagonists, Tomos and Wayne. Here is a sample of Julie’s sorry stage-setting tale . . .
Realistically speaking
It goes without saying that fiction reading is a matter of taste, of personal preference. Some like to read pure escapism, be it thriller, mystery, fantasy in all its forms, comedy or romance. Others prefer quite the opposite: total, unflinchingly portrayed realism – what used to be called back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in Britain, Kitchen Sink Drama. The term was usually applied to cinema: films with themes seen through the unsentimental, brutally honest lens of social realism, tackling thorny and (then) uncomfortable issues such as poverty, interracial sex, homelessness, single motherhood and so on This social awareness (although not new; Dickens did it very well) wasn’t confined to cinema of course. A proud tradition evolved throughout the twentieth century of social realism portrayed in literature too – in the British context, think D H Lawrence or George Orwell with his scathingly critical The Road to Wigan Pier, for example. Of course it’s not an either/or thing. There’s a spectrum, a greyscale, between the two extremes. I probably position myself quite close to the Complete Realism end though. I like to write about solid, believable characters and get inside their psyches. I try to provoke empathy with them. To use (advance apologies!) a pretentious phrase, I endeavour to explore the human condition.
Identical in every way?
What happens when identical twins, born to a teenage mother who’s unable to cope and abandons them, are separately adopted after their less-than-ideal start in life and brought up in decidedly disparate family circumstances? Would the two little individuals really be perfect genetic carbon copies of each other in every way? Or would they, under the influence of differing family environments and social conditions, diverge? There have been many well-documented cases of separately raised identical twins displaying quite remarkable similarities of character, outlook, aptitude and so on – even life choices. But it isn’t clear-cut. The nature (genetic inheritance) versus nurture (influences of upbringing) debate continues to rumble on. In my novel The One of Us I set up this situation and pose that question. My answer to myself is that it’s a mixture of the two. The protagonists Tomos and Wayne aspire to very different courses for their lives, although deep down their motivations are quite similar. They’re both altruists. They both want to Do the Right Thing. But they express it, because of their disparate upbringings, in very different ways. Meeting for the first time as teenagers, they don’t get on well. In the end though, they do achieve a coming together, although in an astonishingly unusual and highly emotionally-charged way. Which I couldn’t possibly divulge, of course!
Connections
To write a sequel (or, for that matter, a prequel) or not to; that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to repeat a literary success by extracting maximum mileage from your brilliant plot and cast of wonderful characters by carrying the story on, doing a this-is-what-happened-next (or a this-is-what-happened-before) . . . or to make everything you write entirely self-contained; a one-off? I tend towards the latter. Trotting out a series, for me anyway, seems creatively a bit lazy. Although I can see the temptation of it if you’ve struck a rich vein of success. I appreciate the commercial value of linking books. A reader who has become emotionally involved with sympathetic characters will want to repeat the acquaintance and I don’t blame authors who exploit this at all. What I do is a compromise. My books are essentially stand-alones – there’s no cliff-hanger ending to make readers crave knowledge of what happened next – but I build in a link, of a character or two, so that readers can enjoy them again. The One of Us features as a secondary character the rather feisty, outspoken Helen, and she also plays a less prominent role in the previous book, Forebears. Neither book is a spoiler for its ‘paraquel’ stable-mate, but either (hopefully) might pique interest in the other.
Making differences
For a small island, Britain has a wealth of diversity. I’m not talking here of the endless variegation of landscape (as wonderful as that is). Or the cultural diversity brought by immigrants, either. Today, spoken English is the homogenising factor for the indigenous British peoples. And yet it’s not entirely the only language spoken. Scots Gaelic clings on in the remote island fringes of Scotland, and the Welsh form of that Celtic tongue is still spoken by a significant minority in Wales. And long may it do so. In my book The One of Us I wanted to create the situation of identical twins being separated at birth by adoption into very different families, and to explore nature/nurture theory: how much of personality and aspiration in life is innate, genetic, or how much informed by the environment of upbringing. So to create as great a contrast as possible between the family situations of my twin protagonists, I had one child being brought up in Yorkshire and the other in a Welsh-speaking part of Wales. And I also, quite simply, wanted to write about my beautiful adoptive country. In the prologue to the book Helen, the fiancée of one of the twins, visits Tomos, the other, Welsh one, in the small pretty town of Lampeter. I hope you enjoy this little taste.
