Louisa Young continues the Cazalets

“At first I thought, don’t be stupid. Don’t even think about it. Then I thought about it and I thought it was a brilliant idea.”

With this remark, Louisa Young describes how she came to continue the story of the Cazalet family, created by her aunt, Elizabeth Jane Howard. Speaking with Chiara Valerio in Mantova, Young reveals both the challenge and the joy of taking on such a much-loved family saga.

Young begins the conversation by reading an extract from The Golden Hours in Italian. A fitting gesture for an author whose family has lived in Rome. The novel picks up the Cazalet story in 1962, four years after Howard’s final book’s ending, with the whole family gathering for Christmas. Valerio calls this a “courageous choice”, particularly since Young has to keep track of no fewer than 55 characters. Young describes the Christmas gathering as a “soft landing”, a refresher to the reader’s memory. Everyone is brought together, while the absences of certain characters can also be explained.

The conversation soon becomes as entertaining as it is literary. Young talks about Buttercup, a character of her own generation, and says that she might end the trilogy when The Beatles break up. Perhaps with Buttercup picking up a David Bowie Ziggy Stardust record. There is also plenty of discussion about 1960s England, particularly the position of women and what it was like to grow up during that time. Young sums up the unequal gender expectations for male and female artists: “The woman does everything and the man is an artist.”

Young’s favourite character in the family is Neville, whom she describes as someone who “swoons in, enchants everyone, and ruins everything.” She admits that she loves being able to pick up threads, introducing new characters and even borrowing characters from another trilogy of hers because she thought he would make a suitable boyfriend for a Cazalet family member. By the end of the conversation, one thing is clear: Louisa Young is not simply continuing the Cazalet story. She is creating new stories with them.