Masha & Vova

I am good at remembering the moment of conception.

The Persistence of Memory was born seventeen years ago, when I was thirteen and writing down a daydream. It evolved from there over the next fifteen years, but the seed came from a June night and a Broadway fantasy. My muse was Michael Crawford.

The Death Clock began four years ago, when I said to my husband, 'What do you think our lives would be like if we knew when we were going to die?' It was an interesting concept, but it took a while to come up with a plot and characters for it. So I started at the beginning: a suicide dinner party, based on a striking scene from Quo Vadis. My muse was Benedict Cumberbatch.

Those are the two novels I've finished that I'm really proud of. Now I'm working on a third - working title, Masha & Vova. It's about a Romeo & Juliet type myth that has evolved around two eighteenth-century Russian lovers. This one was born in St Petersburg's Hermitage museum, and the central plot sprang fully armed out of my head like Athena. The two characters - their names, their faces, their village - are based on a young married couple I met in Siberia. They were sweet, passionate, friendly, and seemed much in love.

I came home from Russia and started writing the book - formulating scenes, a structure, over the course of a year and a half (yes, a slow burner). I decided to change Vova's name to something easier on English ears - my husband has had a number of incidents of mispronouncing it with disastrous results.

Early this year, a mutual friend told us that Vova, the real Vova, had beaten cancer a few years ago, and it had now come back.

This fall, Vova died. He was twenty-eight.

Masha is devastated, angry. She is only in her early twenties. She doesn't understand.

The character has always remained Vova in my own mind, and now I can't countenance the idea of calling him anything else. The writing is still in the early stages, but I hope one day I'll be able to send Masha a copy of a novel about two immortal lovers who bear their names.

Saying Goodbye

Even a year ago, I never would have believed I could fall out of love with Patrick.

We met on a summer night when I was only 13 and waiting for something to happen, already longing to get up in the middle of the night and just turn the doorknob and start walking: disappear one night and show up a few years later under a different name and a Broadway marquee.

Patrick was the perfect man, or what at 13 I expected the perfect man to be like: handsome, melancholy, sensitive, gifted, passionate. We grew together. We shared the same friends. I can't say I knew everything about him, but I knew him so well that there were things I knew about him that he didn't know about himself.

We were together for 16 years and even until last year I was as much in love with him as ever.

I had a vacation in Phoenix with my parents over the New Year, and when I got back, it just wasn't the same.

There was no reason. He did nothing wrong. Perhaps I'd just come to know him too well; perhaps  I couldn't think of any more secrets of his that I wanted to discover.  Perhaps I'd outgrown his melancholy. I started to stay away and when I did try to spend time with him, I found myself slack, unmotivated, even faintly repulsed. I could never stay long.

Clearly I was the one who grew away. Patrick has not changed. I know now that he never will. He will always be glad to see me - and in truth, when he crosses my mind, it's with a sweetness and a true affection.  I can imagine that someday, in months or years, I'll have a sudden urge and meet him again and find myself amazed to think I let things drift so long. I could fall in love with Patrick again. After all, he's handsome, melancholy, sensitive, gifted and passionate.

But for now, I have  Jonathan, who has eyes like lightning, and Asher, who's so unpredictable, and Vova, who's no good but is a genius, and Michael, who's beautiful but weak. None of them will stay forever; none will be the love of my writing life. That will always be Patrick - no matter how long we're apart.

Introducing Asher

   ASHER LEVINE believes in the Messiah. Not an idealistic impostor who was born of a virgin 2000 years ago, but a great politician who could come at any time. And Asher believes his job is to make the path smooth, the crooked places straight. He will be the Messiah’s mentor, guide and discoverer. He is Britain’s secular prophet. For years he sees Jonathan as his Messiah, with his weak-minded younger cousin Zachariah as his herald, but when Jonathan dies he wants to create a replacement.

   Asher’s creative in bed and at work – and that’s about it. He doesn’t waste imagination on anything else, like conversation or events or leisure. He pours all his energy into his legacy, and views love as a distraction. Asher is completely decorous in public life, but he is an epicure – he loves exquisite food and exquisite women, but only if they belong to him. He has a horror of fathering a bastard, which he would see as weakening his line.

   After the tragedy of his first wife’s and unborn child’s death in his late 20s, Asher is determined to be in control of every situation and person in his life, and this resolution will prove his downfall.

Introducing Jonathan

JONATHAN LEVINE loves women, fashion, the intricacies of politics, and anything retro. He successfully combines street-wise confidence with idealism and a natty pencil moustache. Jonathan is dyslexic but makes up for it with a remarkable memory and a quick tongue. He is a believer with nothing to believe in. His posh political family is his blessing and his curse: Uncle Asher, the Home Secretary, made a good job of his education, training and style, but Jonathan can’t give him the unquestioning loyalty he demands.

   Louche, generous and elegant, Jonathan is irresistible to women – and they are irresistible to him. Borderline promiscuous, Jonathan’s relationships never last long. Why let anyone in when she’d only get hurt?

   Because Jonathan is going to die young. He’ll be 34 when his number is up. Pity he meets the love of his life when he is 33.