Meera Syal is an British comedian, writer, playwright, singer, journalist, producer and actress. Her latest novel is The House of Hidden Mothers. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:Q: You have several female protagonists in your new novel. How did you come up with these characters?--Marshal Zeringue
A: All my novels have focused on the lives of South Asian women, whether in Britain or in India, quite simply because we are ripe and bursting with untold stories, why would I need to look further than my own front step for inspiration?
And of course much of the inspiration comes from the lives of women around me, Priya and Lydia encapsulate any of the women I know in their complex life choices about relationships, children, ageing.
I wanted to try and create a snapshot of women in their late 40s/early 50s, an age where many of us are judged to be invisible by society but ironically it is the period where we are as women full of life experience, know and like ourselves, have suffered the highs and lows of life and gained wisdom from this journey, and yet because we are passing from fertile women into what used to be the wise old witch phase, suddenly we are...[read on]