Season of Secrets

Seasons of secrets

ExtractOn a wild and stormy night Molly runs away from her grandparents’ house. Her dad has sent her to live there until he Sorts Things Out at home.

In the howling darkness, Molly sees a desperate figure running for his life from a terrifying midnight hunt. He has come to help her. But why? And who is he?
“Season of Secrets” weaves the tale of a heartbroken child and an age-old legend into a haunting story of love, healing and strange magic.

“Names are important. Everyone has one, except really tiny babies maybe, or stray dogs, or people who’ve forgotten who they are. And even stray dogs and people with amnesia have names. They’ve just forgotten them.”

About Seasons of Secrets

daffodils

Spring

The roots of this novel come from the story of the green man, who is the pagan god of summer. A friend told me this story, and I was fascinated by the idea of a person so powerful that he can create summer across a whole world, but who is also incredibly vulnerable, because in order for winter to come, he must be killed.

I wanted to tell his story, but I wanted the story to be based in real life, and to have some relevance to a modern child. I decided to use his cycle of death and rebirth to represent the grief-story of a child whose mother has just died. Like winter, grief isn’t something that happens once and then goes away forever. But I wanted to show that hope does come back. And after writing Ways to Live Forever, I wanted this book to end happily.

summer

Summer

Like Ways to Live Forever, Season of Secrets has a lot of things which come from real life. The reason Molly lives
with her grandparents over a shop is because when my father was a child, he lived with his great aunt and uncle over a newsagent’s. I never knew my father, but the way my mum described his childhood – the kind, old-fashioned couple who let him sleep in their bed because it was the warmest place in the flat – always made it sound like such a cosy, safe place to be.

A lot of the plans Molly and Emily have are for things my friends and I also wanted to do when I was a child. I remember reading Noel Streatfield’s A Vicarage Family and being very impressed that she’d captured that wonderful feeling of possibility – and also our tendency to spend our time planning rather than actually doing.
I’m pleased to say that I managed to get some of my things done.

Autumn

Autumn

Molly is a harder character to write about than Sam, for several reasons. Sam doesn’t like to talk about being sad – he just gives you the space and lets you fill in the details. But Molly is much more emotionally-driven than Sam is and she spends a lot of autumn and winter feeling very sad.
My first drafts had a lot of chapters with Molly moaning about her mum or how much she misses her cat. I took most of these out because they depressed me. But I then had to work with Molly’s need to tell you about how she’s feeling without letting it take up all of the book.
Season of Secrets works like Ways to Live Forever in reverse. Both are books of two halves, with each half having a very different tone. Both have a significant event which happens somewhere in the middle and changes everything.

winter

Winter

The sad story in this book – the dead mother and the absent father – comes from a book I read written by a woman
who looked after foster children. She once cared for a family of six children after their mother died and their father wasn’t able to have them. After a year, the father remarried and the children went back home.

Molly & Hannah

I originally wanted to write a book about those six children, but I hit two problems. Firstly, I’m better at stories that are centred around one character and secondly, I didn’t really have enough plot for a whole book. In the end I took the interesting bit of their story – how do you cope with a father who obviously loves you, but who abandons you? – and gave it to Molly and Hannah.

Reviews for Season of Secrets

It’s a simple story, told simply, but it’s dealing with some complicated and intense emotional issues and it does it in a tremendously accessible way

theBookBag

Sally Nicholls is simply an exceptionally talented writer, who writes beautifully. Her intelligent, warm fiction is honest and profound, complex yet accessible.

loveReading4Kids

This is a beautiful story… Absolutely wonderful.

Bookwitch

77 Comments

  1. sude
    May 8, 2009 @ 10:34 am

    süper

    Reply

  2. Sakura At Twilight
    May 3, 2009 @ 8:26 am

    I LOVED your book. My dad bought it for me one night and I could not stop reading it! I finished it the next morning. I read it AGAIN! I think it should be a movie cause its SO good! Wish it was a series! Anyway, good luck on your next book!

    Reply

  3. www.susieday.com » GingerbRed Dwarf
    April 18, 2009 @ 4:19 pm

    […] so nothing new on the bookish front (though I am itching to get my mitts on Sally Nicholls’s Season of Secrets, because Ways To Live Forever was great; Zombie Queen of Newbury High by Amanda Ashby, because […]

    Reply

  4. henriaah
    April 13, 2009 @ 12:26 pm

    I really liked your book, I was nearly in tears by the end (: I thought he might somehow be given the all clear…but he didn’t. But, it wouldn’t be that realistic if he did (: Can’t wait for your new book!

    Reply

  5. eqien
    April 11, 2009 @ 10:02 am

    hello..
    i like read your book ways to life 4eve..
    so sad..but something really

    Reply

  6. lucie
    April 6, 2009 @ 12:29 pm

    i loved the book ways to live forever and i’ve resently been given seasons of secrets for my birthday. i love it!!

    Reply

  7. Eli
    March 26, 2009 @ 6:20 pm

    I am reading this marvellous book (season of secrets) and it is just inspiring!

    Reply

  8. Wahyu
    March 11, 2009 @ 11:26 am

    Hi, i am wahyu.. i always quest that your book is a true story. But after read that.. Amazing! You’re a good writer ^_^

    Reply

  9. Dasmi
    March 8, 2009 @ 5:34 pm

    hey Sally damn you really hit the spot didn’t you?I’m sure thousands of people
    read this book and most of them posted a comment on this website and ways to live forever website and if you ever take the time to read the comments you
    will see that you have touched many peoles heart with that book.

    Reply

  10. Joel Ngo
    February 19, 2009 @ 1:38 pm

    hi i Joel . I love the book you wrote which is “Ways To Live Forever” It was a very touching story . Bye Good nite

    Reply

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