The Version Of Us blog tour!

The Version Of Us by Laura Barnett

What if you had said yes . . . ?

Eva and Jim are nineteen, and students at Cambridge, when their paths first cross in 1958. Jim is walking along a lane when a woman approaching him on a bicycle swerves to avoid a dog.

What happens next will determine the rest of their lives.

We follow three different versions of their future - together, and apart - as their love story takes on different incarnations and twists and turns to the conclusion in the present day.

The Versions of Us is an outstanding debut novel about the choices we make and the different paths that our lives might follow.

What if one small decision could change the rest of your life?

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                                                            Check out my review here!

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Interview

1. Where did the idea for The Version Of Us come from?
 
It came to me quite suddenly, a couple of years ago. I’d written two novels before, but neither of them had quite taken flight. I was spending a while thinking about what to write next, and woke up one day with the idea of telling the story of a relationship, from beginning to end, in three different ways. I immediately felt excited about its potential; about exploring the impact of the decisions we all make - some small, some significant - on the course of our lives. I was nervous, too: it seemed like a scarily ambitious idea to take on. But I do believe that the things that scare you tend to be the things that are really worth doing. So I set my nerves aside, rolled up my sleeves, and got on with it.
 
2. Who inspires you?
 
People who work hard to express their own unique viewpoint on the world, rather than just replicating others’ art, thoughts or ideas. My husband Andy, an actor and musician, has a quote from Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters hanging above his desk: “Don’t follow in the footsteps of the masters - seek what they sought.” Well said, I think.
 
3. Who are some of your favourite authors?
 
Anne Tyler has been my number-one favourite author since I first read her novel A Slipping-Down Life as a teenager. All her novels are set in and around Baltimore - a city I now know well, as Andy has family there - and she manages to paint such fascinating, colourful lives on the smallest of canvases. I also love Elizabeth Strout - Olive Kitteridge is another of my favourite books  - and I hugely admire Esther Freud’s precise, expertly tooled writing style.
 
4. Who would you love to play Eva and Jim in a live action version of your book?
 
Well, the TV rights for The Versions of Us have been optioned by Trademark Films - the production company behind some gorgeous literary adaptations, including I Capture The Castle and Parade’s End… so I’m afraid it would be impolite of me, at this stage, to say who I’d like to play Eva and Jim! But I did have some faces in my mind when I was writing, so it will be interesting to see whether they match up…
 
5. Do you have any advice for getting past writers block?

I’m not sure I believe in writers’ block - I think it might be one of those myths that gets passed around to make writing sound more mysterious than it actually is (though I hope I won’t one day eat my words!). Writing, for me anyway, is a job like any other - yes, one that requires a degree of inspiration and (hopefully) good ideas, but a whole lot of hard work too. I have days when I can barely string a sentence together and everything seems bleak and pointless, and others when it all seems to flow and I remember why I love writing so much. My advice to anyone stuck in the former situation is that, like all things, it will pass. Just keep going, keep sitting down at your desk, keep putting one word after the other, and eventually, you will remember why you want to tell this story, and find your own unique way of telling it. Hold onto that, because it is all any of us have.