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Overview
Nestled in a picturesque corner of southern Australia, the Valley View Motel has been run by the Quinlans for years—and nobody adores the place more than Lola, the family’s lovable and mischievous Irish-born matriarch. So when she insists that her relatives spend their Christmas elsewhere, the close-knit bunch can’t help but be a bit curious. Lola has always had a knack for clever schemes; after all, she once slyly reunited her three feuding granddaughters, whom she nicknamed the Alphabet Sisters. And with the holiday season fast approaching, Lola decides it’s time to stir up some extra excitement.
Plotting in secret and online, Lola thinks it would be fun to invite a select group of strangers to stay at the motel for Christmas. Will these guests become friends, ignite sparks, fall in love? As she counts down the days until their arrival, Lola’s own family dramas threaten to upend her best-laid plans. Yet amid moments of humor, heartache, and unexpected twists of fate, Lola finds that she’s the one who’s in for the biggest surprise of all.
“[Monica] McInerney’s assured writing sparkles. . . . When you reach the end, [Lola’s Secret] will leave you feeling like you’ve been given a huge, warm hug.”—Hello! magazine
“A delicate treat . . . a lovely, gentle story of a family, a Christmas, love and different kinds of adventure.”—The Courier-Mail (Australia)
“Exploring universal family issues of loss, rivalry, aging and grief, [Lola’s Secret] is a warm, witty and moving novel.”—Woman’s Day (Australia)
Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780345534033 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 10/16/2012 |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.36(w) x 7.78(h) x 0.74(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Even after more than sixty years of living in Australia, eighty-four-year-old Lola Quinlan couldn’t get used to a hot Christmas. Back home in Ireland, December had meant short days, darkness by four p.m., open fires, and frosty walks. Snow if they were lucky. Her mother had loved following Christmas traditions, many of them passed down by her own mother. The tree decorated a week before Christmas Day and not a day earlier. Carols in the chilly church before Midnight Mass. Lola’s favorite tradition of all had been the placing of a lit candle in each window of the house on Christmas Eve. It was a symbolic welcome to Mary and Joseph, but also a message to any passing stranger that they would be made welcome too. As a child, she’d begged to be the one to light the candles, carefully tying back the curtains to avoid the chance of fire. Afterward, she’d stood outside with her parents, their breath three frosty clouds, gazing up at their two-story house transformed into something almost magical.
She was a long way from Ireland and dark, frosty Decembers now. About 9,941 miles and ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact. The temperature in the Clare Valley of South Australia was already heading toward 104 degrees and it wasn’t even ten A.M. yet. The hills that were visible through the window were burned golden by the sun, not a blade of green grass to be seen. There was no sound of carols or tinkling sleigh bells. The loudest noise was coming from the air conditioner behind her. If she did take a notion to start lighting candles and placing them in all the windows, there was every chance the fire brigade would come roaring up the hill, sirens blaring and water hoses at the ready. At last count, the Valley View Motel that Lola called home had more than sixty windows. Imagine that, Lola mused. Sixty candles ablaze at once. It would be quite a sight. Almost worth the trouble it would cause . . .
“Are you plotting mischief? I know that look.”
At the sound of her son’s voice, Lola turned from her seat at one of the dining room tables and smiled. “I wouldn’t dream of it. You know me, harmless as a kitten.”
Jim simply raised an eyebrow, before pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite his mother. “I was talking about you with Bett and Carrie today. We’ve all agreed it’s not too late to change your mind.”
“About what? My lunch order? It’s Friday. I always have fish on Fridays.” Another tradition from her days in Ireland, even if she’d long ago stopped following any religion.
“About you sending us away and taking charge of a fifteen-room motel on your own for five days. At Christmas. At the age of eighty-four.”
“You make me sound quite mad.”
“I don’t, actually. You manage it perfectly well on your own.”
Lola stood, reached for her stick, and drew herself up to her full five foot nine inches, fixing her sixty-four-year-old son with the gaze that had worked to silence him as a child, but hadn’t had much effect for many years now. There was a brief staring contest and then she started to laugh. “Of course I’m mad, darling. You don’t live as long as I have if you’ve got any sense. What’s the point? Hips giving up, hearing going, wits long gone—”
“So you admit it, then? Shall I call off our driving trip? Tell Bett and Carrie to cancel their holidays too? Say that you’d gone temporarily insane and you didn’t mean it?”
“And what? Let you and Geraldine down? Let down my poor adorable granddaughters and their even more adorable children, not to mention their handsome husbands and their handsome husbands’ families? Never. In fact, why don’t you leave now, all of you? Begone. Leave an old lady in relative peace. Literally.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. What if we’re not leaving you in peace?”
“It’s the middle of one of the hottest summers on record. We haven’t had a drop of rain in years. The Valley is beautiful, yes, but as dry as a bone. Who on earth is going to choose to spend Christmas in a parched country motel?” She opened the bookings register to the week of December twenty-fifth and placed it in front of her son. “See? Not a sinner. Or a saint. It’ll just be poor old me rattling around the place on my own, while the turkey stays happily frozen, the puddings soak in their brandy for another twelve months, and you and Geraldine and the girls hopefully get to have a proper Christmas break.”
Jim flicked through the pages, frowning. “It’s odd, isn’t it? This time last year we were much busier. I thought we’d have at least one booking, that you’d have someone to talk to.”
“I’ll be grand, darling. I’ll have the radio for company. They have lovely programs on Christmas Day for lonely, abandoned old women like myself.” She laughed at the expression on his face. “I’m teasing you, Jim. Don’t get guilty on me and insist on staying, please. You know I enjoy my own company. Now, shouldn’t you be helping Geraldine pack your bags? Getting the tires pumped up? Checking the oil? A driving holiday won’t organize itself.”
Jim was still distracted by the empty bookings register. “That’s the last time I try an online advertising campaign. Everybody kept telling me it’s the only way people find motel accommodation these days, but it obviously didn’t work for us. Our computer problems haven’t helped, either.”
“Never mind, darling. Worry about your advertising next year. Off you go and leave me alone. I have eighty-four action-packed years I want to sit here and reminisce about before I go do my shift at the charity shop.”
“I think you should cut down your hours there, by the way.”
She put her fingers in her ears. “Not listening, Jim. Reminiscing.” She shut her eyes, tight, like a child, until he left the room.
After a moment, she opened one eye to be sure he’d gone. Thank God. Any longer and she’d have been forced to tell him the truth. That in fact his online advertising campaign had worked wonders. She’d been receiving email inquiries all week. Not on the motel computer, of course. It had been broken—been “down,” in the computer parlance she loved using—for the past four days. Her official story to her fortunately distracted son and his wife was that the server was having problems. (“Server!” she’d said, pretending more amazement. “In my day that word meant maid or waitress!”) The truth was she’d pulled out the Internet cable on the office computer. Hidden it, too, to be doubly sure they stayed offline. The last thing she needed was Jim or Geraldine seeing the emails asking for more information about their Christmas special offer. As it happened, they didn’t know much about what that Christmas special offer comprised, either. Why bother them, when they were in almost-holiday mode? When even the hint that there could be a Christmas guest or two at the Valley View Motel might make them change their minds about going away?
Lola had given her plan a great deal of thought. First, Jim and Geraldine badly needed a break. Or, more accurately, Jim was due a break and Lola badly needed a break from her daughter-in-law. She loved Jim dearly but there had never been any love lost between herself and Geraldine. It had never been open warfare, for Jim’s sake—more subtle, underlying hostility. Lola herself could talk to a stone on the road if the occasion warranted it, yet in all the time they’d known each other—almost forty years—she and Geraldine had never managed a single lively, interesting conversation. The tragic events in the family nearly five years earlier had prompted a thaw, a brief closeness between the two of them, mothers both, but it hadn’t lasted. Lola thought Geraldine was a narrow-minded humorless milksop, and Geraldine thought—well, really, who cared what Geraldine thought of her? As Lola liked to say airily whenever she caught Geraldine giving her a disapproving glance, “Don’t worry, dear. You’ll be able to pack me off to a home for the bewildered any moment now. I’m sure I lose more of my marbles every day.”
Lola’s opinion of Jim and Geraldine’s daughters was a different story. She didn’t just love them. She adored them. Anna, Bett, and Carrie, her three Alphabet Sisters.
Theirs had been an unconventional childhood, living in motels, moving from town to town. Lola had taken over their care while their parents both worked. She’d reveled in all three girls, filling their lives with fun, adventure, and especially music. She’d even coaxed them into a short-lived and frankly unsuccessful career as a childhood singing trio called, of course, the Alphabet Sisters. A young Anna had taken it seriously, Bett had cringed through it, and Carrie had basked in the attention. Lola herself had been thoroughly amused and even more entertained. Everything about her three granddaughters had amused and entertained her.
But where there had been three, now there were two. Like a line from an old poem, so true and so heartbreaking, still. It was almost five years now since her oldest granddaughter Anna’s death from cancer at the age of thirty-four. Years of pain, sorrow, tears. Lola knew they were all still coming to terms with it, each in their own way. Even now, thinking of Anna sent a too-familiar spike of grief into her heart, less sharp now, but ever present. She knew Anna was gone, visited her grave once a month if not more often, yet sometimes she found herself reaching for the phone to call her, wanting to tell her a story or be told a story in return. Share a memory. Laugh about something. Simply hear her beautiful voice one more time.
Lola knew it was no coincidence that her other two granddaughters had stayed in the Valley, close to the family motel, since Anna’s death. There’d been a need to be near each other, to talk often and openly about Anna, to cherish and celebrate good times and happy events. The missing link was Anna’s daughter, Ellen, now aged twelve, who lived in Hong Kong with her father, Glenn. In the years since Anna’s death, Glenn’s work as an advertising executive had taken him and Ellen to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and now Hong Kong. It hadn’t been easy on any of them, Anna’s only child being so far away, but they had all understood that it was best for her and for her father to be together.
A family never completely got over a loss like theirs, Lola knew. The Quinlans hadn’t. Instead, they’d changed shape. It was the only way they’d been able to go on. And what better way for any family to change shape than with the arrival of babies, to help fill the gap Anna had left behind? Lola smiled even at the thought of her great-grandchildren. Carrie and her husband, Matthew, now had three children, Delia, aged four and a half, Freya, three, and two-year-old George. They’d kept up the family tradition of alphabetical names. Ellen had already bagged the “E” spot. Lola’s middle granddaughter, Bett, and her husband, Daniel, were the proud, if exhausted, parents of seven-month-old twins, Zachary and Yvette. They’d kept up the family naming tradition, too, although from the other direction. The twins were, in Lola’s opinion, the two most glorious babies on the planet, but heavens, the racket they made! Like echo chambers–one making a noise would set off the other.
An old friend of Bett’s had invited them to celebrate Christmas with her and her husband at their beach house near Robe, volunteering their teenage children for twin-sitting, meaning sleep-overs for Bett and Daniel. Lola had seen the longing in Bett’s eyes at the idea of it. Lola also knew that Carrie and Matthew and their little ones hadn’t spent a Christmas with his family in New South Wales yet. It was definitely time they did. The two girls had also expressed concern that Lola would be on her own in the motel at Christmas, but she’d argued just as forcefully with them that it was what she wanted. “I’ve had zillions of family Christmases,” she’d said. “Let’s all try something new this year. And I’ve been managing motels since before you were born. I can easily handle a few days on my own.”
She checked her delicate gold wristwatch. Good, nearly ten a.m., the time she’d arranged to be collected for her stint at the charity shop. Her alleged stint. Oh, she would do a bit of sorting and selling while she was there, but, frankly, she had bigger fish to fry these days. One step through the ordinary faded curtain at the rear of the shop and it was like being in a NASA control room, not a country thrift shop storeroom. There was not just a computer, but a modem, scanner, and printer. Even a little camera.
“Ladies, we have ourselves a portal to the World Wide Web,” Lola had announced the first day it was in operation, enjoying the look of surprise her young friend and computer guru, Luke, gave her. But of course she knew about the World Wide Web. And emailing. And blogging. She spent hours during the night listening to the radio, poring over newspapers, watching TV documentaries—how could she not know about new media? She’d been dying to give it all a try herself. And once the equipment was in place, she’d taken to it like a, well, not duck to water . . . What term would be more appropriate? Bill Gates to money-making? Luke had been amazed she’d heard of Bill Gates, too. Honestly, did he think she’d spent the past eighty-four years in an isolation unit?
She couldn’t wait to get onto the keyboard again today. She had so much to do. Catching up on the motel Christmas situation was a priority, but she also had an email to write to Ellen in Hong Kong. Lola didn’t get to see her nearly as often as she’d like, once a year at most, but the letters, phone calls, and lately emails they exchanged kept the bond between them strong. They had a regular correspondence going these days. Lola had even learned how to email photos of herself to Ellen. At Ellen’s request, in fact. For some reason, Ellen seemed to find Lola’s fashion style amusing.
Wow, Really-Great-Gran! she’d written in her last email. Pink tights and leopard-skin dress as day-wear? Watch out, Lady Gaga!
Reading Group Guide
1. Lola is charming, outspoken, and flamboyant, as well as a kindly meddler and a take-no-prisoners busybody. Would you like to have her for your grandmother or great-grandmother? How would your life be different with a Lola in it?
2. This novel has so many themes running through it—family, happiness, love, loss, reconciliation, mental illness, community, secrets, etc. Which thematic elements resonated with you the most?
3. The novel has an interesting structure, alternating between Lola’s perspective and that of several of her potential guests. Why do you think the author chose to structure the book that way?
4. Lola considers herself a “Fixer,” a concerned observer. She’s al- ways sticking her nose in her friends’ and family’s business. Why does she do it? Does her point of view change at all over the course of the book?
5. Geraldine and Lola are polar opposites and have never gotten along. What enables them to eventually come to terms with each other?
6. What did you think of Bett’s struggles with motherhood and work-life balance?
7. Why do you think Bett and Carrie couldn’t stop bickering without Lola’s help?
8. Lola is overjoyed to be able to reconnect with her old flame Alex, something that’s becoming more and more common in our day and age. What do you think is driving the resurgent interest in finding love late in life?
9. Of all the different characters and guests, who was your favorite?
10. To you, what is the true meaning of Christmas?
A Conversation with Monica McInerney
Random House Reader’s Circle: This novel catches up with some of the same characters your readers came to know and love in your earlier novel The Alphabet Sisters. What made you decide to revisit this family, especially Lola Quinlan?
Monica McInerney: Lola has always been one of my favorite characters. I loved writing her scenes and dialogue in The Alphabet Sisters, seeing the world and family life through the eyes of a woman in her eighties. She’s wise, outspoken, witty, cheeky, flamboyant, just so much fun to write. I didn’t know my own grandmothers, so I think in many ways Lola also became the grandmother I’d loved to have had myself—the only problem being that she was fictional.
In October 2010 I was in Australia on a monthlong promotional tour for my novel At Home with the Templetons. Throughout the tour, readers kept mentioning The Alphabet Sisters to me, telling me how it had made them laugh and cry and how they had loved Lola, in particular. I was so touched to hear that, because it has always been a special book to me, too. On the last week of the book tour, a missed flight meant I had to unexpectedly spend a night in a motel in my hometown of Clare, the setting for The Alphabet Sisters. I went to sleep thinking about being back there, about the Quinlan family from The Alphabet Sisters, and about Lola herself. I woke up at five A.M. with the entire plot for Lola’s Secret in my head. I leaped out of bed, made a cup of tea, and got my notebook. I also have to confess that I put on some lipstick—I was never able to write any of Lola’s scenes unless I was wearing a garish red lipstick like she favors! For the next hour, I wrote pages of notes. As soon as I got back home to Dublin, I started writing the book. It poured out of me, day and night, and I finished it in less than six months. It’s the fastest I have ever written one of my novels. I enjoyed every minute of it, too. It was like being in Lola’s own company the entire time, as though she was telling me the story and I was simply writing it down.
RHRC: Do you have plans to feature any of the family members or guests again in future novels?
MM: I’d definitely like to revisit the Quinlan family one day. As a reader, I often wonder myself what becomes of the characters in books I’ve finished, and as a writer, the great thing is you can write it and find out. I’d like to bring Lola back home to Ireland and see what she thinks of her home country sixty years after she was last there.
RHRC: You grew up in the Clare Valley of Australia, where the book is set. Are any of the locations or characters in the book based on people or places in real life?
MM: I love setting my novels in my hometown. So far, the Clare Valley has appeared in five of my novels—I think it’s a way of me visiting and being there, even when I’m on the other side of the world. The Valley View Motel is fictitious, although there are sev- eral motels in the town of Clare. I worked as a kitchen hand, waitress, and cleaner in one of them in my teenage years, so I certainly borrowed some experiences from that, for both The Alphabet Sisters and Lola’s Secret. As a teenager, I also used to haunt the thrift shop in the town’s main street, looking for books and vintage clothing. I loved eavesdropping on the conversations between the volunteers, usually older women. So that fed into Lola’s Secret, too. I’ve also experienced those scorching one hundred degrees Fahrenheit De- cember days in South Australia, the feeling of hot dry heat that’s like opening an oven door every time you step outside. All of those real-life memories found their way into the fictional story.
RHRC: What was your writing process like for this novel? Have your methods changed over time?
MM: Each book is so different. That surprises me about the writing process, even after nine novels. Lola’s Secret arrived unexpect- edly and flowed out of me, as I mentioned earlier. I knew all the characters already and it was a joyous experience to spend time with them again. I knew how each of them would react in any situation. I am writing my tenth book at the moment, and it’s a very different experience. I’m getting to know each of the characters slowly, and the plot is unfolding in the same way. I try to write at least two thousand words every day. Writing a book is sometimes like building a house, you have to do it brick by brick by brick.
RHRC: Lola defies many stereotypes of the elderly, including technophobia. Have you known any seniors in real life who love the Internet as much as Lola and her friends do?
MM: I’m surrounded by them! I’m also so far behind them when it comes to technology it’s embarrassing. My ninety-five-year-old father-in-law here in Dublin uses the Internet, sends email, and also rings and texts on his mobile phone. My seventy-two-year-old mother in Australia Skypes, sends emails, and texts all seven of her children and many of her grandchildren, too. My husband and I recently had visitors from Australia. I met them in the center of Dublin, and they said how much they liked our house. “But you haven’t been there yet,” I said, puzzled. They cheerily explained that they had looked it up on Google Earth the previous night on their laptop while they were using the free Wi-Fi in their hotel room, which they had booked over the Internet. They are in their mid-seventies. My local library has a trio of computers and every time I’m there I see elderly people blogging, researching family trees, watching videos. I can barely make calls on my cellphone (and it is a very long way from being a smartphone, let me tell you!).
RHRC: If she were here right now, what advice do you think Lola would have for yourself or your readers?
MM: Be kind to yourself and be kind to others. And try to laugh as much as you can.
RHRC: What have your experiences been with book clubs? Are you part of one? Do you ever speak at book clubs?
MM: I’ve been involved in book clubs from both sides, as a member of one here in Dublin for several years, and recently, as the guest of a book club discussing my previous novel At Home with the Templetons. I loved both experiences and they have also been so helpful for me as a writer. It was a revelation to see the different reactions my book club members had to the same book. We argued so forcefully about different aspects of characters, plots, finales, etc. There was never a discussion in which everyone felt exactly the same way about a book. I found that fascinating. It underlines to me what magical objects books are—they really do change to suit whoever is reading them, because we all bring our own hopes, experiences, opinions, and selves to each book we read.
The book club discussing my novel At Home with the Templetons didn’t hold back either. It was a very lively evening. Several readers were angry (with good reason, I must admit) with one of my characters’ actions, and I had to defend and explain why she had done what she had done. Another was upset that I kept two of the main characters apart for so long. I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. I felt like a lioness defending my cubs.
RHRC: What are some of your favorite books you’ve read recently?
MM: I’ve read and enjoyed so many different sorts of books this year: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins is aimed at young adults but has so much in it for all ages about morality, media, celebrity, and politics. I read all three back-to-back, I couldn’t put them down. How to Be a Woman, a funny feminist memoir by English columnist Caitlin Moran, is a book I’ve given to my friends, sisters, nieces, even my mother to read—it’s challenging, opinion- ated, comforting, invigorating, and very funny. I loved the 1950s classic of New York life The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe. Irish writer Sebastian Barry’s On Cannan’s Side was so moving and also enlightening about Irish emigration and many important moments of modern American history. I also loved a beautiful collection of poetry called The Taste of River Water by Australian writer Cate Kennedy.
RHRC: Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on next?
MM: I’m back writing the big family comedy-drama I was working on before I suddenly got the idea for Lola’s Secret. It’s been bubbling away in my subconscious for the past year and I am now nearly half- way into it. I’m enjoying writing it very much. I wanted to explore a different kind of family setup with this book, one with stepsisters and stepbrothers. I’m fascinated with the different dynamics and loyalties within a blended family, especially when an event forces everyone to face up to their true feelings. It revolves around one main question: Can you forgive someone you’re not sure you ever loved in the first place?