David Cassidy on the Web
Debut novel on David Cassidy crush to get the movie treatment
March 11, 2011
By Rachel Mainwaring
Western Mail
www.walesonline.co.uk
When Welsh newspaper columnist Allison Pearson wrote a book about the life of a harangued working mum she had no idea of the impact it would have. Four million sales later, her debut novel I Don't Know How She Does It is being made into a film and her second novel, devoted to her childhood crush on David Cassidy, looks set to go the same way.
ALLISON Pearson is sitting in her office, surrounded by pictures and memorabilia of 1970s pop idol David Cassidy and it's looking like, in her words, a "serial killer's lair."
As we speak, she sits among the piles of photos and album covers she bought from eBay for research for her latest novel I Think I Love You, which tells the story of a 13-year-old Welsh girl, Petra, who is completely and utterly devoted to the Partridge family star.
It's a tale of first love, an exploration into the fragile emotions and tense relationships of the teenage years that Allison, now 50, still remembers clearly.
Indeed, so deep was her own devotion to the man with the once famous feathered mullet, she wore brown clothes for two years after reading that brown was his favourite colour.
And when she decided to write her latest novel, mother-of-two Allison, who was born in Carmarthen, wanted to immerse herself in teenage life again so transformed her small office into a shrine for her former teen idol crush.
"I wanted to become that awkward 13-year-old again so I pored through old copies of Jackie magazine and old David Cassidy fanzines, with their adverts for Clearasil and Anne French cleansing milk and their tips for using lemon juice on the hair to make it blonde in the sun, or beer to make it stronger, even though, in fact, it just made you smell of hops," she laughed.
The book, out now, follows a lovestruck teen Petra who is completely obsessed by David Cassidy. Her room is plastered with posters of the star, and she sleeps on her back at night in case David pops in for a kiss.
Petra's months are measured by the arrival of The Essential David Cassidy magazine, which she believes is penned by Cassidy himself but is actually the product of Bill, an embittered journalist.
The experience has made Allison, who is mum to Evie, 15, and Thomas, 11, relieved she never has to be a 13-year-old girl again.
She said: "I think we carry our younger selves with us for the whole of our lives. Just finding something like an old concert ticket or an old photo, or hearing a song, can take us back with a surprising force to the person we once were.
"When I decided to write this book I wanted to immerse myself once again in everything David Cassidy.
"So I raided my mum's attic for old Jackie magazines and bought hundreds of items off eBay.
"That way, I could remember what it was like to be a 13-year-old again."
The subject of her second novel was borne accidentally. After the worldwide success of her debut novel I Don't Know How She Does It, (more of which later) she was in Norway discussing the book with a group of women when they suddenly started talking about their first crush.
"Mine, I admitted, was David Cassidy, and they all shrieked telling me David Cassidy was huge in Norway," she said.
"It turned out that, while I was living in Wales dreaming of becoming Mrs David Cassidy and worrying, naturally, about what I was going to wear when I finally got married to David on a beach in Hawaii, these women, grown wives and mothers just like me, had been doing exactly the same thing in Oslo. The reminiscences bubbled out of us with tear-streaked laughter.
"But I noticed that one woman was not joining in the conversation at all.
"She sat there silently, and seemed quite aloof and I thought that she was probably thinking we were all mad. But then she spoke and all she said was, 'But he was mine.'
"And that was the moment I knew. As a writer, I'm always on the lookout for the small, apparently insignificant personal detail which can unfurl like a paper flower in water to reveal a hidden universe.
"In my first book, I explored the secret parallel world where the working mother believes she lives alone with stress and her crazy to-do lists. Here was another secret crazy world: first love.
"It made me start to question, where does that first love, which unleashes such piercing tenderness and such ferocious, primal screaming go when the female adolescent becomes a woman?
"How come, at my age, I could remember more about David Cassidy than I did about men I'd actually dated? Oh, and why was my own teenage daughter now solemnly eating a horrid breakfast cereal because she'd read in a magazine that it was the cereal of choice for Twilight star Robert Pattinson?"
The book is based in Swansea and, having spent her childhood first in Carmarthen and then Burry Port, Allison, who now lives in Cambridge, is fiercely proud of her Welsh roots.
There are constant references to the Welsh hiraeth in her novels
She was very close to her grandfather Daniel Elfed Williams and there are constant references to the Welsh hiraeth in her novels.
She said: "My mum lives in Kidwelly now and I go back two or three times a year and I love it. I always will. Petra ends up as a musical therapist in the book and that was no accident. Music is important because I grew up with the sound of my grandfather singing.
"I find music very therapeutic and as part of the research for my book I actually went on a musical therapy course which I found absolutely fascinating.
"It has such an incredible power.
"It can heal people and mend pathways that have been damaged. It's quite incredible."
Allison is hugely proud of her latest book, but she admits it took her a very long time to write due to periods of depression after the massive success of her debut, which has gone on to be translated into 32 different languages and has sold four million copies to date.
I Don't Know How She Does It, whose fictional characters originated in Allison's newspaper column in The Daily Telegraph, featured the misadventures of hedge-fund manager Kate Reddy as she teetered precariously between work and home life.
The book begins with an all-too-familiar scene for many working mums, where Kate is furiously trying to distress some shop-bought mince pies so it looks as if they have been homemade especially for her daughter's concert.
She was inspired to write after a chat with her close friend Miranda, a fellow working mum, which made her realise just how many mums were struggling in the abyss of work and parenthood.
She said: "When I wrote that book my daughter Evie was six and Thomas was three. I was an exhausted mum, trying to cope with the guilt and pressures of working and being a good mum.
"My friend Miranda rang me one night at about 11 o'clock and I asked her why on earth she was ringing me so late to ask if I had some liquorice. Apparently, she needed it to make some glasses for Postman Pat for her daughter's birthday cake but it made me think about the balance and the lunatic things we do and the pain we feel when we feel we are always in the wrong.
"That week I wrote the first column, I felt like I had opened a door to a parallel world. I started getting letters from other exhausted mums and realised there were so many of us carrying that weight and guilt around."
Allison insists the character wasn't based solely on her, but on the many stories she was told by the hundreds of women who contacted her.
But while she was delighted at the huge success that followed, she was totally unprepared for it.
The book, published by Vintage, although opening the doors to debate about the work/life balance for working mums, meant Allison's workload got even heavier.
She had never expected that level of success and was suddenly being invited all over the world for speaking engagements as well as taking over from Lynda Lee-Potter as the Daily Mail's star columnist.
She said: "I hope it helped to get the conversations about women and flexible working out there. Ten years on, it's now much harder to get away with chauvinistic behaviour and I do hope my book went some way to helping with that."
But that success meant Allison was frequently away from her husband, The New Yorker critic Anthony Lane and two children. Her mum suffered two heart attacks and she was constantly exhausted.
With her second book complete, after running severely behind schedule, she eventually found herself sitting in a psychiatrist's office, taking a quiz meant to assess for signs of clinical depression and realising that she could identify with nearly every answer.
Her doctor told her she needed to slow down, prescribing a period of detoxification, and so she took the decision to lighten the workload, leaving her column and giving herself time to go shopping, to cook, to go back to church and to spend more quality time with Evie and Thomas.
"I am slowing down after a bout of depression. I had to vaccinate this mad virus. I felt like my mind was like Gatwick on a Bank Holiday Saturday and I needed to refocus for my own sanity. So I've slowed down and I have to admit I am enjoying it.
"I have a gorgeous poodle called Gango, who is the colour of red autumn leaves, and I love to walk him. I've started going back to church after an absence of 30 years and I'm writing the musical of I Think I Love You for the West End.
"I'm still working but I've just slowed everything down. I write for the Daily Telegraph and I have just returned from a working holiday to New York and it was fantastic.
"I Think I Love You got fantastic reviews and I also visited the film set for I Don't Know How She Does it.
"She's a busy working mum herself so she knows the pressures that come with that. When we met, we talked about the trials and tribulations of being a working mum. She said she was in the fortunate position to be able to work when she wants to but as the mum of a six-year-old son and year-old twins, she knows only too well the pressures of trying to balance life and work.
"When I was writing that book, as a stressed mum myself, I never imagined it would be made into a film or that I'd be sitting on a film set watching something I'd created coming to life. It's fantastic."
And she admits that the Hollywood experience means her kids think she's "quite cool" after all.
She said: "They were only little when I wrote the first book but they've seen the row of 32 translations on the bookshelf and they know it took mum all over the world but actually going on the film set brought it to life for them.
"I promised Evie that if it ever got made into a film, I'd take her to the film set. And so for one day I was the coolest mum ever.
"And I've promised I'll take them out for the film premiere next year so I'll probably be quite cool that day too
