Hiding from Bullies

Margot Livesey (who visits 3/20) talks with Bookpage about some of the inspirations for her new novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a Scottish girl's coming-of-age story that pays homage to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Like the author herself, the novel's protagonist is the product of a rough, working class Scottish school for girls....

"....Livesey had no difficulty imagining a crumbling Scottish boarding school. As a girl, she herself was enrolled in one as a day student. Her father taught at the neighboring boys’ school and her mother was the school nurse. "

"'I ended up in a class with girls three years older than me. It was just an enormous gulf,' the author recalls. 'There were long, dark corridors, cloakrooms and stairwells. I was always hiding in some stairway trying to avoid some particularly hefty girl.'"

"The school eventually went bankrupt. 'It was one time I felt my prayers were answered,' she says, laughing at the memory." More.