Reese’s Book Club Pick! Zibby chats with Clare Leslie Hall about BROKEN COUNTRY, a completely immersive and unforgettable love story that is simmering with passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences. Clare shares the inspiration behind her book, which blends a love triangle, a murder trial, and a deep sense of place in the English countryside. They discuss Clare’s journey from journalist to novelist, the challenges of weaving suspense into love stories, the novel's themes of grief and loss, and how she immersed herself in farm life to bring authenticity to her setting.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Clare. Thank you so much for coming on to discuss Broken Country, a novel, which, as I've posted about, I am obsessed with.

It was so good. Oh my gosh. So thank you. 

Clare: Oh, thank you so much for saying that. And also, um, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to chat to you today. 

Zibby: Aww. And I saw just yesterday it came out that this is the Barnes Noble pick for the month. So congratulations. 

Clare: Thank you. I'm over the moon. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh, I'm sure it will be the first of many, including mine, a tiny club compared to, you know, Barnes Noble or whatever, but whatever I can do to get people to read it.

I was so immersed and covering my eyes and I don't know, it was like the greatest read. Tell everybody what the book is about, please. 

Clare: Yeah, so Broken Country is about a very passionate love triangle that takes place, um, during the 1960s in a small English village, and it culminates with a big murder trial in London.

It's really the story of a young woman, Beth, who's completely torn between two very different men and two very different lifestyles and what happens when her first love Gabriel unexpectedly returns to the village and turns her life upside down. And there's a courtroom drama going right the way through it and a mystery, so it's kind of like three genres rolled into one because it's primarily also a novel about love.

Zibby: Wow. Okay, how did this whole novel come about? And take me back through your life and how we got here, just the quick version of. 

Clare: Yeah, oh, uh, quick version, obsessive bookworm, book nerd, book reader from the moment I could read, which is like, I don't know, five and always writing stories. But my family were the same.

Same. We just used to, they were both teachers, but a little bit like best parents. And we would go to two libraries, like we were sort of almost gaming the system and get out our full quota of books and read, read, read, read, read. That's what we did. And then I was a journalist when I first, after a university, I became a journalist and I did that for like 15 or 20 years.

And I was kind of always wanting to be a novelist. And I probably started writing creatively in my. I'm in my thirties, I'm in my fifties now, and it was just a long, old, hard road trying to get published. But eventually, I got there, um, because I actually published two novels before this one that didn't come out in the US, um, so this is my third published novel.

Zibby: And you used a different name, right? Or did I make that up? 

Clare: Yeah, my married name, and this is my maiden name. It's actually, um, it's quite nice because both my parents have passed away, but Leslie was my mother's maiden name, and Hall was my dad's surname. So they're kind of on the front of the book, I like to think.

Zibby: Oh, I'm sorry that they're not here to revel in your success. 

Clare: Thank you. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. The books, the, the previous books did, was it also, were they also lots of genres sort of mixed in one or? Yes. 

Clare: You know, yes, I really think they were. So the first novel, um, which was called Him, it's changed, it's being republished excitingly in America, and it's gonna be called Pictures of Him.

And I remember, I've actually got a new agent now, but I remember that the agent I had at the time, and this was 2017, I remember her saying, it's a very hard book to pitch because it's a love story and it's a sort of thriller and it's a suspense. And I think maybe you know, as authors you were sort of expected to stay in your lane, particularly then, but I don't know if the market has changed, but when um, my new agent put this book out on submission, I saw that what she put in the headline was love story with the pulse of a thriller, so it's like she was making a virtue of it, um, and I think I just love stories that combine suspense and love stories and mystery.

You know, I think I love things like my all time favorite, maybe The Great Gatsby. When you think about it, there's a love story, there's a murder, or something like The Secret History, same, you know, love stories, dramas, murder. I love to read those books and I, and I just, and I don't seem to be able to write any other way.

I don't think I can write to fit a genre for some reason. 

Zibby: That's fine. You don't need to fit a genre. I think it's fine. Of course it's fine. Obviously it works. It works. I am excited to go back and read your other books now that I've read this one. One of the neat things that you do is you don't even know who is on trial in the book at first, right? We have to learn, we have to uncover so much and why they're on trial, and you just give us these little things. And I remember at one point someone said, for writing advice, you know, you have to trust that the reader is smart enough to follow, even if you don't give them Everything they need to know, they will get it and they will be able to stay with it.

Tell me a little bit about how you unveiled, you know, the pacing of that and interweaving it. And just like from a technical standpoint, even how you decided to do it or if it just happened that way. 

Clare: Yeah, well, I would say so the book from start to finish, the idea came. very, very quickly to me. And I couldn't wait to write it.

But the actual writing of the story, I'm going to say probably 20 drafts and four years. And it changed in layers. So it was always a love story. There was always a man who died. I always knew who died and how, but it was only around two years in, for example, that I decided I wanted to write a murder trial.

And I'd never written any courtroom drama before. So I wasn't sure if I could do it and I went to, there's a very famous old courthouse in London called the Old Bailey, and you can actually sit in the public gallery and watch a murder trial. So I watched a murder trial for a week and it was so colourful and so inspiring.

And then I came back and wrote my own version of it. And I think putting that, breaking it up and putting it through the novel really helped with the suspense. Plus, I think some of the twists without giving any spoilers. There's one particular twist at the end. And I had that idea right at the start. I thought, no way.

That's way too difficult to pull off. And then I I've got it because I posted on Insta when the, when a twist drops out of the sky, it was literally two and a half. years into writing the book or three years and I went but of course you have to do it. So then there was a lot of going back and the timeline making it all stack up well you know what that's like it's so difficult and so I I guess it came what I would say is those sort of breadcrumbs and twists they came instead in stages in layers I didn't start out with all of them although the love triangle at the heart of it.

The man who dies, all of that I had from day one. 

Zibby: Wow, so exciting. So, you have a lot of farm life. You have all these different lives, right? You have the, you know, the posh sort of more castle y type life, and then you have the farm life, and you have the Oxford dorm room, and you take us all over, right?

Tell me a little more about the farm life, because the farm itself becomes a type of character, and I now honestly think of, you know, animals on farms, like, very differently from how you describe them and, you know, giving birth, the animals giving birth and the, I mean, all of it felt so incredibly real.

Tell us about that part of it. 

Clare: Thrilled. Thank you so much. I'm so thrilled you feel like that because that's kind of the experience that I had too. We live in a farmhouse surrounded by fields and you know the idea came because um, a farmer threatened to shoot our very young dog when he strayed into a field of lambs and that didn't happen but I did get the love triangle pop into my head and I could just see them so clearly in their field of sheep.

Frank and Beth and, you know, Leo running towards them and his father behind. And once I decided I wanted it to be a farm, a story about a farming couple, I realized I didn't know that much about farming, even though I'm surrounded by farmland. And so I spent probably a year. Going out with farmers on and off, you know, I went lambing.

I learned how to milk cows, which was really hard and I was not very good at it. And I went harvesting and I, and I stayed with a couple who were quite inspiring for me, actually a couple on a very small. farm who were just obsessed, you know, it was not, I could see that it was a life that, you know, didn't have a lot of financial reward, but they were both, they would never have considered anything else.

And she took me out and she took, showed me this hide that her husband, who was also called Frank, had, um, built for her and how she used to just watch these nesting birds and I, and it was just, she was obsessed, she knew every plant, she knew every bird and it kind of, a lot of that went into my heart and I think it, it really also opened my own eyes and I realized that, you know, I, I walk in these beautiful fields every day with my dog.

But I wasn't looking, and I wasn't listening, and I wasn't noticing. So now I think it's made me really appreciate the seasons, and the different birds, and the wildlife, and the landscape in a way that I just didn't before. I think I just sort of existed within it without properly noticing it. So I hope that's something that comes across in the book, because I wanted the farm setting to really be its own character.

Because I could see it like a movie in my head because it's my landscape. I can just sort of almost scene by scene. I know where they are. I can see them. 

Zibby: Well, I, I honestly have such a newfound respect for the farming life and not that I didn't have respect. I just didn't like you. I just didn't know enough.

And now I feel like I've gotten such a glimpse and they're such stewards of our world, really. I mean. 

Clare: That, that's exactly it. You know, and, and every single time with each of these farmers, there would be a moment, like, I remember I spent quite a lot of time with a farmer called Al and we went combine harvesting and for a day, and he was just talking and then he'd say, look at that, and it would be a red kite just sort of soaring up in front of us.

And I just thought that they noticed. They were noticing beauty in the midst of all the toil and I thought that was amazing. I thought how they are stewards and they, that, that, you know, they're caring for the land for generations and the land is so important to them. And I think we take it for granted.

I know I did anyway. So yeah, that was, that was a really big sort of, probably the thing that. that's changed my life the most in the writing of the book. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, there is so much loss in the book and you write so beautifully about child loss, which I don't think is giving anything away. It's sort of from the very beginning, you know, that this is Beth's lot in life.

And how did you tap into that? Like it felt so incredibly real, so sad, so poignant. 

Clare: Yeah, I mean, you know, I have three children. I'm very grateful that I can say they're all alive and well. And as an author, I, I probably would have swayed away from something, imagining something quite so painful and devastating as, um, losing a child.

But the story arrived, and Beth arrived. Almost fully formed, I knew who she was and I knew that she was this woman who was grieving and I knew that her husband, Frank, was so, sort of, had so much guilt, he couldn't give her the space to grieve or even to remember him, so I just imagined all of that and I think, you know, as a mother, it's you can imagine it, can't you?

Just that, that, that it's a loss you'll never recover from and also how it would implode a marriage and whether you can actually get that marriage back on track. And actually, funnily enough, when, um, I was on submission with the novel, I had this really exciting Zoom call with some, um, some film producers who were interested in the option.

And one of the very first questions they said to me was, we thought that you must have experienced child loss. And I said, well, actually, no, that isn't my experience. I, you know, I, I imagined put myself in Beth's shoes and I imagined how, what that would be like and how hard it would be to recover from it.

But then afterwards, I That I do connect with Frank and Jimmy's loss because they lose their mom when they're young, which is what happened to me. And they both don't process it, and they both don't cope with their grief, and it really forms their character. So Jimmy, who loses his mother when he's nine, becomes very volatile, he drinks too much, he's occasionally violent, he's always in trouble.

And what that is, is he stops caring about himself because his mom's not there and his dad was a 1950s man who didn't know how to give him the tools to process it. And the same really with Frank, you know, he just, the way he deals with his grief is just, is just throw himself into his hard work and to just ignore it, you know, just get on and get on.

And, and I, I was like that too, because I lost my mom when I was at university and it took me 20 years to actually sort of deal with it really. And I, so I felt afterwards, I, I, I can see myself in Frank and Jimmy, which is funny, isn't it? But I, I knew how to write those characters. But while I was writing them, I didn't realize it was kind of my own personal stuff going in.

Zibby: Wow. And you even say in the book at one point that that Jimmy basically stopped developing. Like, he just was arrested in his maturity from that age. Like, not that he couldn't care for himself, just, he just couldn't move on from there. And it was, it's almost that, not childish, but that, like, processing level that, you know, I mean, I have a 10 year old here.

Like, what, what can you possibly, how can you process something so big and know how put it in the right box and go on with your life. It's so hard. So anyway, I thought that was beautiful. Yeah. 

Clare: Yeah. No, I agree. I think he was, he's stuck at that age. Unfortunate. 

Zibby: Yeah. Can I ask what happened to your mom? I'm so sorry.

Clare: Oh, um, yeah, she had cancer and I was at university. Yeah. So I was sort of 500 miles away from home and what was, um, this was the end of the eighties and what was strange about it was that of course, you know, we didn't talk about grief and mental health in those days. And also everyone was 20. All my friends were 20.

And I just remember, and we lived in Cambridge, I remember, you know, she died at the beginning of the summer and we went back, I went back in the October and no one said anything. And I was like, oh wow, you mean I've just got to carry on? And this seismic thing has happened. And so that became very unhealthy because I just zipped it up and carried on.

And as we know, you can't really do that. So yeah, but it was a very long time ago. 

Zibby: Oh, yes, it, it will come out sideways if you don't. 

Clare: Everything comes out. No matter how much you try and squash it back down, it just doesn't work, does it? 

Zibby: Have you read The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith? She wrote a memoir about losing her mother in college.

I don't know if you've 

Clare: Ooh. 

Zibby: Read it.. 

Clare: No, but I'm going to read it. I think, um, no, that sounds great. 

Zibby: Yeah. I think there are some similarities. I mean, it's a real story, but just, like, holding all of that at once, the school and the dating and the loss and all of it, it's such, you know, not that there's ever a good age to lose a parent, but it's a very unique thing.

Clare: I mean, there's never a good age, but there's something about, but actually it's interesting because my children are now the age that I was. It's my daughter. is well she's just turned 23 actually and it's just so interesting seeing how they are like some of them a couple of them their parents have have fallen ill and they're always saying to me i don't know whether to say anything i i don't know whether to talk to them i i don't want to make them sad and that made me realize that's really what it is isn't it it's when you're young you don't realize you're so nervous about upsetting your friends Um, and so, but, but I equally, I do notice in their generation that they do talk to their friends and they do share their problems.

It's kind of amazing. I'm so thrilled to see how much more open they are. 

Zibby: One of my roommates in college lost her father while we were there. And I remember us all taking a plane to go to the funeral and then coming right back and even just being in that setting and then coming. Right back in and jumping in to like dropping off our laundry and going to the dining hall.

It's like, wait, weren't we just in that giant church with all those people? And how are we here now? It's like whiplash. 

Clare: It's, yeah, that's exactly what it's like, and, and there's so much pressure on you when you're young to be, seem to be having a good time, and it, that's, you know, it's, it's, it's a very difficult age, and I also think when I look back on it, I was 21, you're not really an adult at 21, you think you are, but emotionally, you definitely are not, I would say.

Zibby: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, you also have, like, this horrific mother character in the book, too. She's, like, going a complete other direction of, like, what would the worst in law, what would your worst possible dream in law be is this woman, right? Like, this complete narcissist. I know you give her a backstory that makes us somewhat sympathetic, but, like, not enough.

Tell me, tell me about that. 

Clare: Oh, yeah, I totally agree. Tessa Wolfe. I mean, I had to work quite hard to not make her a real pantomime baddie, but she is, she's an awful sort of snobbish, prejudiced, very judgmental person who, and a troublemaker. She really is, who has had, she's had some disappointments in her life.

She loves her son too much, but in the wrong way. And she's responsible for, really for a lot of, um, of, of trouble that Beth finds herself in. She just is, yeah, she was great fun to write. And I suppose I, there isn't one single person that I've based her on, but actually there is a line in the book. I'm prepared to out them.

I won't, no names. Yeah. I remember staying with somebody's parents. They were such snobs when I was like, 20 or something. And we all had dinner with the parents. And then I stood up and I started to pile the plates one on top of each other. And he said, we don't stack in this house. And it was like, and I was so crushed.

So that went in the book. 

Zibby: That is so funny. 

Clare: So I do know a few sort of. Yeah. Not, not as bad as Tessa, but yeah, I've seen, I've seen a few people with traits like that. 

Zibby: Not to throw my mom under the bus or anything, but she also has a stacking issue. 

Clare: Yeah. Maybe it must be bad manners or something.

Zibby: I guess so.

I don't know. But now I've like, you know, now I take pride in how many I can put on my arm at the same time. We all are reactions to how we grew up or something like that. You mentioned you had been early on talking to film producers. Is there, I know there, you put in your bio on Instagram that there is a film in the works.

Can you talk about that or? 

Clare: I can only say that they've bought the option. It's really exciting. And it's on the team who made The Cruel Dad. So it's, it's a partnership between Sony. 3,000 pictures and, um, Hello Sunshine, and it's in development, that's, that's as much as I know, but I'm, I'm really, I think they've attached scriptwriters, so fingers crossed, it would just mean the world to me to see those characters on screen.

Zibby: I feel like I've already I've already watched the movie. Like I feel it's all in my head. I feel like it's so visual the way you wrote it. 

Clare: Oh, Zibby, I love that. That's exactly how I feel. I just feel like I'm just seeing it. 

Zibby: Yeah, it's, yeah. 

Clare: Well, you're gonna have to come to Dorset and then you can see the landscape.

Zibby: Oh, I would love to. Oh my gosh, that would be amazing. Well, how fun to get to go through all that casting and everything. I have to say this is literally the only book in my Lifetime ever where I handed it to my son who I like read with every night and I handed it and I was like, I can't like, just tell me what it says on the, when it was the verdict.

I just like couldn't read it myself. I just couldn't. I was like, Oh my God, tell me. No, don't tell me. Okay. Tell me. 

Clare: Oh, I love that. That's so great. 

Zibby: Anyway, it was, um, yeah, very immersive and everything. Which character do you miss the most? Who do you wish you could continue writing about, if anybody? Or would you continue writing about anybody?

Clare: That's a really good question. It might be Frank, I guess. Oh, I don't know. I really miss Beth and Gabriel and actually I've got a playlist and I, I've got two playlists. I've got a Broken Country playlist, which is on Spotify, which is kind of like songs from the book and particularly, um, a song that makes me think of Frank and Beth is Elvis Can't Help Falling in Love, because they play it at the wedding and they're dancing.

And so when I sort of miss the characters, I'm, I know it sounds a bit sad, but I put the playlist on and then I can just sort of get back there with them. I think Frank, I'm going to choose Frank because he was the one when the book was really hard. It was always because of Frank I went back and I needed to know how his life ended.

And I. It would be nice to know the how it carried on. So yeah, I'm going to go with Frank. 

Zibby: Maybe you could do one of those like bonus chapters, you know, never published, but it's just your imagination. And I don't know, it's almost like it doesn't count, but it's we get to peek into your brain or what might happen.

Clare: Yeah, that would be brilliant. 

Zibby: That would be fun. That and some sort of a destination, you know, broken country house where we could all go and groups could gather and, you know, experience the farming. I mean, that would be 

something. 

Clare: Well, yeah, my house is, you know, it's definitely authentic. 

Zibby: Yeah, we've, I've just invited myself.

basically what happened. 

Clare: So in part of the tour, I would take you to, of the broken country tour, I'd take you to the pub, the compasses, because it's exactly like it is in the book. It's really oldie worldie. It's like this, um, 16th 16th century coaching in. It's amazing. 

Zibby: I mean, literally in the book, I feel like I could hear the door open, right?

It's just like, yeah, yeah, it's just so great. 

Clare: Like straw dogs, you know, the film when they, everyone turns around, it's not like that. It's much more than that, but that's what I sort of picture. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Wait, so are you writing anything else now? 

Clare: Um, I started something and it was a sort of an old idea which I kind of revived and I was all guns blazing.

I've got, what I've got is a setting and a family and it's a sort of clifftop hotel. So I've got that, but funnily enough, I actually sort of haven't really got time at the moment, but I started, I wrote 5, 000 words. I'm like, yes, I'm in. Brilliant. And then There was a thread that had a hospital psychiatrist in it and a friend of mine very kindly organized for me to go to this hospital and have a tour, which was amazing.

And I met the psychiatrist and that was amazing. She was very generous and she gave me so much really colorful stuff. And then when I got home, I went, Oh, I didn't want to write it anymore. Unfortunately, I don't want to write about a hospital psychiatrist, so I'm looking for inspiration. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, I'm sure. 

Clare: I've got half an idea.

I would say. 

Zibby: Wow. Amazing. Okay. What advice would you give for aspiring authors, particularly on the keep going variety and you know why you didn't give up on this project? 

Clare: Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, there are two things I would say persistence and not giving up is everything, and I did give this book up twice, I was actually advised to give it up, and I did, and I started writing this new book, and then I was like, I can't bear not to write it, or to be with these characters.

And so I think, keeping going, accepting that it's just not going to be as good as the idea in your head at the beginning, and it's, you know, really it might be 20 drafts, and that's fine, you just have to keep going, because the more you keep going, the more you edit. And also, the more you step away and have a break, because I think those breaks really helped me, and then go back to it with fresh eyes, the more you will eventually get there.

And one other thing that I think I've learned with this book is to be brave in your writing. And I think if you're writing something, of course everyone says write what you know, but I think if you're writing something that you think, oh, I don't know if I can write, like, that. Like for example, for me to write a courtroom drama, it's almost always when you push yourself to do those things that the best things come.

That's what I've learned. And so I think don't be afraid of things you think you can't write, subjects that you think you don't know enough about, you know, like farming even, because actually half the fun is the research. So I Think being a little bit brave and also just keep going. That's it. 

Zibby: I love it.

Oh my gosh. Well, Claire, I'm so excited for all the exciting, fabulous things to come with this book. Once it comes out, I am just so enamored by it and so excited for you. So thank you so much. 

Clare: Oh, thank you so much. I've loved chatting to you. Thank you for having me. 

Zibby: Have a great day. Thank you. Bye bye. 

Clare: Bye bye.