Rose Tremain: ‘Sex scenes are like arias in opera. They

The bestselling author on how to avoid reader indifference, the advantage of writing historical stories and why she returns to Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates again and again

Rose Tremain, 80, published her first novel in 1976 and has gone on to become one of her generation’s most admired talents, garnering numerous literary accolades along with a damehood in 2020. Her 17th novel, Absolutely and Forever, is a slender yet profound coming-of-age story whose heroine, Marianne, is raised in the home counties in the 1950s. When she meets floppy haired, artistic Simon, fateful consequences are set to accompany a potent sexual awakening. Tremain lives in Norfolk with her husband, the biographer Richard Holmes.

How did Absolutely and Forever begin for you?
I have for years been haunted by the life and destiny of a close, very beautiful school friend, who fell in love aged 15 and thought she saw the map of her future before she was hardly older than Shakespeare’s Juliet. And then that future was snatched away. The idea that a whole life can be determined by a catastrophe that happens in early youth is both fascinating and tragic. The story of Absolutely and Forever changes the shape of the original and Marianne is more like me than my beautiful friend, but it has its roots in her story.

Absolutely and Forever by Rose Tremain is published in paperback by Vintage (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply