Tesco Book Club

The Scandal of the Season
by Sophie Gee

a brilliant, witty modern love-story - set in 1711

August Book

Did you find it difficult to write about real historical figures? How much research did you do for the book?

Well, it was exciting for me to write about real figures, because the people I was writing about – Pope and Swift – are such celebrated writers, whose writing I love so much. It was quite scary to try to ‘be’ them – because they were some of the cleverest and most talented men of their day. I’d already done a lot of research because I wrote my doctoral thesis about Pope and Swift, so I knew them very well – but of course I only knew about their work. I had to do a whole lot more research to find out what they wore, what they would eat for breakfast, what they did in their spare time!

Who is your favourite character in The Scandal of the Season?

I have two favourites, Arabella, the sexy, glamourous heroine, and Martha, who’s a shy and pretty younger sister of one of the other characters. Martha is based on my own younger sister, my best friend, and I created Martha’s character with so much happiness and love. I like Arabella because she’s not a sympathetic character at first – she’s just too gorgeous and rich and confident – but as the book goes on we come to understand her very differently. I got to know her as I wrote the book, too, which was the first time I’d had that experience, which writers so often describe.

If you could choose between living now or in the eighteenth-century, the period that The Scandal of the Season is set in, which would you choose and why?

Of course I wouldn’t really want to live in the eighteenth-century because there were no hospitals or sewage systems or showers – and yet the beauty and glamour of the eighteenth-century world is irresistible. I love the dresses and the houses and the society. And I love other things as well: I love the dirt and the busyness of London, and the energy. It’s a fascinating period historically – the world is really becoming modern for the first time. Scientific breakthroughs are beginning, political and historical revolutions are playing out. It was a very exciting, dangerous, new time, and it would certainly be the historical time period that I could live in if I could choose.

The Scandal of the Season is your first novel. Have you enjoyed having your novel published? Do you have anything else coming in the future?

I loved having the book published. I wrote it in isolation, living by myself in LA of all places, not knowing anything about publishing or the book world – I just thought it was a very exciting story and I loved turning my academic research into fiction. Having the novel come out into the world and face the critics and the booksellers and the public has been both terrifying and thrilling, and I’ve learned all sorts of lessons and generally ‘wised up’. I’ll never be so much a newcomer again, but I’m glad I wrote this book when I was very inexperienced, because it’s a book about a young, inexperienced writer coming into the world for the first time.

My new novel, which I’m writing at the moment, is set in the eighteenth century again. It about a scientist who falls in love with a ghost.

Which fictional character would you most like to meet?

Oh, that’s a wonderful question. I think it would have to be Emma Woodhouse or Elizabeth Bennet (from Emma and Pride and Prejudice) – but I hope they don’t know how famous they are destined to become.