Provence had been simmering in my mind as the setting for a book ever since my travels there, a sandwich stop between career changes. Over time that simmering turned into a certitude. I’d seen beauty aplenty in Provence. I’d been seduced by the blinding blue skies the lush lavender fields, the colourful markets, the lingering ways of life. I came to understand why the mere mention of Provence almost always evokes a dreamy smile and sighs of “what a paradise”. But my Provence, I decided, would convey an entirely different side, a deep dive into darker waters, born witness to and drawn from witness accounts. Plenty, it appears, has been written about the (more liberated) sexual mores of the French – nothing wrong with that, on the contrary. But what about the carnal appetites and goings-on in Provence? Could all be rosy and peachy down south, a collage of pure sensuality? Or was there a murkier underbelly? Well…readers be warned: There’s hell in paradise, muck in the midst of the mellifluous.
As multi-themed women’s fiction, X in Provence was also sparked by large and often angst-provoking questions that I’m still searching for answers to: Why are we attracted to certain partners? Why do some of us have trouble extricating ourselves from unhealthy relationships? I’ve always been curious and a questioner and I’d like to think a critical thinker, partly from the influence of iconoclastic role models and also because I’m a voracious reader.
What graces the pages of X in Provence is fiction based on snippets of my own struggles and the experiences of the many women I’ve talked to who have been down the deeply potholed road of falling in love with narcissistic types, some multiple times, finally learning the lessons they needed to absorb in order to change their ways. I hope in turn the book will inspire others to reflect about their own lives and relationships. I believe the story will resonate with a large number of women (and perhaps men), particularly those who have found or find themselves in similar predicaments. It may also be eye-opening for those who have never experienced the pitfalls described in depth and are incredulous as to how strong, intelligent, career-driven, worldly women can so quickly lose their voice and all sense of themselves.
What also inspired me to write X in Provence was another hefty theme: the dynamics between siblings whose roles are cast and shaped from very early on. For as well as lovers, this is a story about brothers and sisters and their layered relationships. At times, the sibling motivations are easy to decipher, at other times unfathomable – part of a mystery wrapped in an enigma, steeped in secrecy.
Travel junkie that I’ve been, a sense of wanderlust crept into this book, bringing with it the phenomena of cultural shock and awe. I evidently love dualities, the yin and yang of things, which found their way onto the page; and so the portrayal of the protagonist’s move from one end of the world to another, from a bustling Asian city to a rural hideaway in Provence, is another favourite theme that I have much more to say about.