Talking Location With author Victoria Brownlee – Paris to the Loire Valley

22nd September 2019

TalkingLocationWith … author Victoria Brownlee – from Paris to The Loire Valley

Deciding to set my first novel – Escape to the Paris Cheese Shop – in Paris was rather easy. It was a love story after all, and is there anywhere better to fall in love than in Paris? From the moment my protagonist, Ella, first arrived, she was wooed by the city. By the parks, the markets, the bakeries, the cheese shops. To transport this heartbroken Australian to Paris simply made sense. As Audrey Hepburn once said, “Paris is always a good idea.”

But after discovering the City of Light in this first book, what should come next for Ella and her new partner? I didn’t want Paris to lose any of its shine for them or for their romance, and I knew they were ready for a new adventure. But should they leave France? I toyed with sending them back to Ella’s hometown Melbourne, but in the back of my mind there was that little je ne sais quoi that kept pulling me back to France. But then where in France?

From my own travels, I knew that I loved Provence for its idyllic hilltop villages and rosé lifestyle, the Atlantic Coast for its long sandy beaches, and the Côte d’Azur for its glitz and glam, but none of that felt right for Ella.

So I turned my thoughts to food. What did I most want Ella to be eating in the sequel? After some deliberation, and cheese tasting for inspiration, I decided to send her to the heart of goat cheese country, The Loire Valley. To the rolling hills scattered with many castles. To the farms. To the vineyards that make some of my own favourite wines (despite her surprise pregnancy).

Moving Ella from Paris to The Loire meant that she would be dealt a whole new hand of challenges. She would have to learn how to fit into the lives of the country folk who had become her neighbours. She’d have to adapt her career to her new environment. And she’d have to contend with goats. But with these changes came opportunities – for her to take on renovations, to make friends, and to navigate through this huge life overhaul with her (still relatively new) partner, who would be experiencing some adjustment issues of his own. The French countryside provided the perfect amount of drama, without becoming completely overwhelming.

Victoria Brownlee

The role that setting plays in a novel is huge, both for characters and for the writer. Because while I was tapping out Ella’s ups and downs throughout the sequel, I was grateful that she was the one putting in the hard yards while I sat behind my computer drinking a glass of Vouvray and dining on goat cheese and fresh figs for inspiration.

You can buy both Escape to the Paris Cheese Shop (Quercus, 2018) and Escape to the French Farmhouse (Quercus, 2019) via the TripFiction database

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