Interview with Kate Forsyth, author of 'The Wild Girl'

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This week I read and loved Kate Forsyth's new book 'The Wild Girl'. A beautiful, epic love story about the power of stories and dreams. Forsyth takes the tales we've all grown up knowing by heart, and shows us how little we actually understand of their origins and meaning - to show us that sometimes, stories are more about the telling than the tale. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. 

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Q: Are you a ‘plotter’ or a ‘pantser’ - that is, do you meticulously plot your novel before writing, or do you ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ and let the story evolve naturally?

I use both methods, to be honest. In the early stages, as I'm daydreaming about the book and beginning to see my way clear, I very much trust the story to evolve naturally in my imagination. I do a lot of research and jot down lots of thoughts, images and ideas, and try to get a sense of my characters and so forth. I then begin to plan my story, but again in a very natural and intuitive way. I cannot start writing until I have the novel's title and my first line, and a clear sense of where the story is going. I also like to know how its going to end, and a number of important scenes along the way. As I begin to write, I will discover more about the story and its shape will become clear to me. Then I usually write very swiftly, holding it all together in my mind. New ideas will come, earlier ideas will be abandoned, the story will knit itself together ... and I really love that process.

Q: How long did it take you to write ‘The Wild Girl’, from first idea to final manuscript?

It took quite a few years, but that's mainly because I was working on my novel BITTER GREENS during those years too. The idea came to me because of research I was doing for that novel, and so I had to wait till it was done and I had the space and time clear to really begin to work on THE WILD GIRL.  The research was intensive, so that took absolute ages. Once that was all done, the actual writing took me about nine months to a year. 

 Q: Where do story ideas generally start for you? Do you first think of the character, theme, ending? Or is it just a free-fall?

I always begins with the story, and it grows from there. Usually the idea comes to me in a flash, and then I get all excited . I get more ideas than I can ever write, though, and it can be quite hard to put the idea away and keep focusing on the job in hand. I tend to write the idea down in a notebook, put it away in my bottom drawer, and then go back to the novel I'm meant to be writing. 

Q: You had me from the Foreword with this book, when you point out that the Brothers Grimm were men in their 20s, living during the time of Napoleon and Jane Austen. I had never thought of them that way, and I wonder if you can remember when you first had the light bulb moment about the Grimms? And I wonder if that realization was also the moment that you decided to dig deeper and make a story out of them?

When I was researching the origin of 'Rapunzel' in the early stages of working on BITTER GREENS, I read a book called 'Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm's Fairy Tales'. That was my lightbulb moment - it was when I first discovered  the romance between Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild, the girl who lived next door, and the first time I realised so much about the Grimms, and their background, and the sources of their stories. I knew at once I had to write a novel about them. 

 Q: You touch on your research in this book, in the Afterword when you talk about reading personal letters, memoirs and diary entries of the key players but also psychologist studies and writings from fairy tale scholars (not to mention your research on the Napoleonic wars!). How much research did you accumulate in the writing of this exquisitely detailed book – and was there any factoid or interesting insight that you had to leave out, but would like to share with us?

The research took me a long time, because I knew nothing whatsoever about the Napoleonic Wars, or Germany in the early 19th century, and almost nothing about the Grimm Brothers. 'Clever Maids' only mentions Dortchen briefly and I had to do a whole lot of digging up to discover anything more about her. I loved the research, though - it was fascinating. And of course there were many things I could not use, because they did not touch upon my narrative. I'd have loved to have had Napoleon as a character, for example, but he never came to Hessen-Cassel, the small town where Wilhelm and Dortchen  lived, and so I had to leave him out. 

 

Q: There’s something rather feminist about the Brothers Grimm, looking back on it. As you say in your Afterword “more than half of the tales were actually contributed by educated, middle-class young ladies of their acquaintance.” To think that all those infamous stories were passed down and recited by women, it’s a rather nice thought (even if most people attribute them entirely to the Brothers). You’ve certainly written Dortchen Wild as this strong, female character who triumphs over adversity just as the heroines in the stories she tells Wilhelm. Did you think it’s rather sad that the role women played in shaping the Brothers Grimm is fairly unknown? And is that partly what inspired you to write this book?

Oh yes, that was definitely one of my purposes in writing the novel. I'm drawn to the stories of amazing women who have been forgotten by history.  

 

Q: What is your favourite Grimm’s Fairytale?

I'll pick three! 'Rapunzel', 'Six Swans', and 'The Leaping, Lilting Lark', which is a variant of 'Beauty and the Beast' that Dortchen tells Wilhelm. I'd never heard it before and its very beautiful.

Q: What are you working on right now, and when can we expect it to hit shelves?

I'm working on a 5-book fantasy adventures series for kids aged 9-12.  It comes out in late 2014. Then I'll write another adult historical novel, set in Nazi Germany, that retells 'The Leaping, Lilting Lark'. 

Q: Favourite author(s) of all time?

Georgette Heyer, Mary Stewart, Tracey Chevalier, Joanne Harris, Philippa Gregory, Robin McKinlay, Sarah Dunant, Juliet Marillier, Kim Wilkins, Kate Morton, Karen Maitland, C.J. Sansom, Marina Fiorato, oh, too many to name!

 

Q: Favourite book(s)?

Anything written by the above authors .

Q: What advice do you have for budding young writers?

Be brave, have faith in yourself, trust in the story. 

'The Wild Girl' by Kate Forsyth

Received from the Author

From the BLURB:

One of the great untold love stories - how the Grimm brothers discovered their famous fairy tales - filled with drama and passion, and taking place during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Wild Girl tells the story of Dortchen Wild. Growing up next door to the Grimm brothers in Hesse-Cassel, a small German kingdom, Dortchen told Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in the famous fairytale collection. 

Dortchen first met the Grimm brothers in 1805, when she was twelve. One of six sisters, Dortchen lived in the medieval quarter of Cassel, a town famous for its grand royal palace, its colossal statue of Herkules, and a fairytale castle of turrets and spires built as a love nest for the Prince-Elector's mistress. Dortchen was the same age as Lotte Grimm, the only girl in the Grimm family, and the two became best friends.

In 1806, Hesse-Cassel was invaded by the French. Napoleon created a new Kingdom of Westphalia, under the rule of his dissolute young brother Jérôme. The Grimm brothers began collecting fairytales that year, wanting to save the old stories told in spinning-circles and by the fire from the domination of French culture. Dortchen was the source of many of the tales in the Grimm brother's first collection of fairy tales, which was published in 1812, the year of Napoleon's disastrous march on Russia. 

Dortchen's own father was cruel and autocratic, and he beat and abused her. He frowned on the friendship between his daughters and the poverty-stricken Grimm Brothers. Dortchen had to meet Wilhelm in secret to tell him her stories. All the other sisters married and moved away, but Dortchen had to stay home and care for her sick parents. Even after the death of her father, Dortchen and Wilhelm could not marry – the Grimm brothers were so poor they were surviving on a single meal a day. 

After the overthrow of Napoleon and the eventual success of the fairytale collection, Dortchen and Wilhelm were at last able to marry. They lived happily ever after with Wilhelm's elder brother Jakob for the rest of their lives.

A margins note appears in the personal copy of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm’s ‘Hänsel und Grethel’ – which reveals that in 1813 Henriette Dorothea (Dortchen) Wild contributed the children's verse answer to the witch, "The wind, the wind,/ The heavenly child," which rhymes in German: "Der Wind, der Wind,/ Das himmlische Kind." It is likely that the Grimms heard the entire story in the Wild household. 

Wilhelm Grimm went on to marry Dortchen Wild, in 1825.

In ‘The Wild Girl’, Kate Forsyth delivers a breathtakingly epic historic romance that imagines the relationship between Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild – set against the Napoleonic Wars and during a time of great hardship and uncertainty for the German people. 

In her Foreword, Forsyth asks readers to put the Brothers Grimm into correct historical context; 

Most people imagine the brothers as elderly men in medieval costume, travelling around the countryside asking for tales from old women bent over their spinning wheels, or wizened shepherds tending their flocks. The truth is that they were young men in their twenties, living at the same time as Jane Austen and Lord Byron.

This was the moment Forsyth hooked me. Because I was one of those people who must have had too many heavy doses of Hollywood, and was thinking of the Brothers Grimm as hobbled old men, something like Merlin-figures rather than real people. To think that they were young men, living during war-time completely reshaped my perception of them – and was a fantastic leaping-off point to begin ‘The Wild Girl’. Forsyth has created a mesmerizingly detailed historical reimagining of the Grimm’s and their journey to storytelling, not unlike Philippa Gregory or, dare I say, Hilary Mantel (if she ever turned away from tales of the monarchy.) 

This is a very long book (coming in at 533-pages) but that’s because Forsyth is covering the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) as well as Wilhelm and Dortchen’s rocky road to happily-ever-after (the book begins in 1805, but they weren’t married until 1825). And Forsyth has not skimped on any details concerning the war or in building Jakob and Wilhelm’s characters – she explores Wilhelm as a life-long asthma sufferer, and covers the death of Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar (news of which is reported second-hand to the German citizens, who are desperate for news of Napoleon’s movements and their impending invasion). All of which leads to creating a storm around the Grimm’s hometown of Hesse-Kassel in Hanau, which was invaded by France in 1807. Forsyth really highlights how the Napoleonic Wars went a long way to informing the Brother’s path in life – when a new French Government makes Jakob and Wilhelm’s law studies null and void, the brothers start taking their collection of stories seriously for alternate income, and because of a sense of Germanic patriotism. 

History geek that I am, I loved Forsyth’s attention to historic detail and her own imaginings and interpretations on how circumstance shaped two of the most famous storytellers in history. The most I knew of the Brother Grimm and their tales was how they were anglicized versions of fables that had roots in many different countries and cultures. Like ‘Cinderella’ having threads of a Chinese Duan Chengshi story, or being somewhat similar to a Philippine tale called ‘Mariang Alimango’. But reading ‘The Wild Girl’ puts a very interesting spin on this idea that the Brothers Grimm pillaged and plundered exotic tales and made them their own – it’s remarkable to think that while modern naysayers would have us believe the brothers tried an ‘Anglicisation’, in actual fact by collecting stories they were merely trying to preserve their own Germanic culture against Napoleon’s French empire. 

But ‘The Wild Girl’ is far from a history lesson. No, the real heart of this book is in Wilhelm and Dortchen’s romance, which begins when Dortchen is twelve-years-old and develops a small crush on the handsome Grimm brother;

. . .  but love has never been something that can be constrained by age. It happened in the way of old tales, in an instant, changing everything forever. It was a fork in the path, the turn of a key, the kindling of a lantern.

Dortchen is one of six Wild sisters, just as the Grimm family have six children (five boys and one girl, Lotte, who is Dortchen’s best friend). Dortchen’s father is the local apothecary, and a tyrannical man incapable of expressing love but quick with a beating for minor disobedience - he can easily be believed as the archetype of every witch/Bluebeard villain. As Napoleon closes in, times become harder and harder in Hesse-Kassel and both the Wild and Grimm families suffer. And as Dortchen and Wilhelm get older and realize their love for one another, the more it seems these are not the times for happy endings. 

She sighed and tried once more to draw away. He gripped her forearms and said, in a low, intense voice, ‘I've been reading Novalis. Do you remember? He said the most beautiful thing about love. It’s given me new faith, Dortchen.’ 

‘What did he say?’ she asked, waning to believe, if only for a minute. 

‘Love works magic,’ Wilhelm said. ‘It is the final purpose of the world story, the “Amen” of the universe.’ 

She caught her breath in a sob and reached up to kiss him. For a long moment, the world stilled around them. 

But Forsyth has looked beyond impoverished times and political upheaval as the reason for Dortchen and Wilhelm’s prolonged courtship. Just as every good Grimm tale contains a truly heinous villain, so too does ‘The Wild Girl’ – and this, I’m afraid, is a tale as old as time. Forsyth handles Dortchen’s story of abuse with tender care, and though there is no factual evidence to support Forsyth’s imaginings, her Afterword certainly lays down strong reasoning in the disturbing stories Dortchen told the Brothers Grimm. 

Kate Forsyth’s ‘The Wild Girl’ is a remarkable tale that beautifully blends fact and fiction. It is a sweeping historical romance that will appeal to both adults and young adults, as it reminds us the power of storytelling and loving, even in the hardest of times. 

5/5