The Ghost Woods

"No, I didn’t know the ending from the beginning. I remember planning this book: I went away for a little weekend to an Airbnb, and set out my index cards, which is what I do; and I had this idea for the book, but I couldn’t settle on an ending. So I had to say, “Fine, I’ll just go with it and see where we go.” And then I wrote a draft, and something wasn’t sitting right… I just felt it was a bit pedestrian. And there was an idea that I had buzzing at the back of my head about another element of the book, and I decided to go with that – I’m being vague because I don’t want to give anything away – and I was worried that this new theme was going to feel a bit bolted on to the first draft. But actually I found I had left a little forest trail through the book, where this additional thread fitted perfectly, and gave me my ending. Sometimes, when you write a project, you can approach it as if you’re building a house, and then the thing will kick back and remind you that it has its own sense of what it wants to be. I dare say anyone building a house would be freaked out if the house said, “No, I’m sorry, I’m not going to be a semi-detached, I’m going to be terraced” – but that’s what happens. The process of writing a novel is about listening: you’re tuning into something. I really believe that – I don’t care how woo it sounds. The Ghost Woods is a story set in 1956 and 1964, the mid-20th century, in Lichen Hall, a mother and baby home in a forest in Scotland. It follows the relationship between two young women who are staying at the home to have their babies conceived out of wedlock, as many women did. It’s about what they discover when they’re at the home, the secrets of Lichen Hall, and the relationships that they develop between themselves and their children. I’m really interested in women’s history and in the erasure of women from history. My mom had me very young, in 1978, and she had a job in the civil service. She has always talked about how she regretted giving that job up, and I never understood why she gave it up. But then I heard that in Ireland, it was illegal for a married woman to work, with a few exceptions, until 1974 – and we know that even when legislation changes, there’s a continued social stigma. So that made a lot of sense to me: if there was still a huge stigma around a married woman working, and she got married when she was pregnant with me, then of course she felt a pressure to give it up. And that’s just crazy, how recent that legislation was. I also learned that the last mother and baby home in the UK was open until 1990. I went into this deep dive on mother and baby homes, and I learned so many horrendous facts about the life of a woman back then. And this was recent, not the medieval era. In fact, in some ways, women had more rights before the Norman Conquest than they did in the 20th century. So I had this idea of writing about a mother and baby home, the Hall. Places like this did exist, as well as institutions. People would open their own residences for women who fell pregnant, which was very likely because contraception was not widely available, even to married couples. Pregnant women had very few options, and the pressure really was on you to go to a mother and baby home, have the kid, and pass it over to a married heterosexual couple. I just felt compelled to write about this."