The inspiration for the events in My Side of the Ocean came to me when I was interested in buying a paddle ski and asked an instructor in Cape Town if he had ever seen a shark off one of the local beaches. Turned out he had seen many.
In one particular instance, he had been teaching a beginner how to catch a wave and spotted a large dorsal fin pop up out of the water. It was a massive great white and the instructor knew that if he told his charge that a huge shark was tracking them, the student would probably panic and flip over. So he told him to lean into his shoulder and they would catch a wave in together, and while he ruddered the two of them to the shore, he looked to his side and was confronted by the shark’s massive eye contemplating them through a veil of water. Then the shark just ... vanished.
This story gifted me the kernel of drama that would open the novel. It also put me off buying that paddle ski!
The house where the main character, Stella, lives in Bakoven, Cape Town, is actually based on a real home there where an editor I know used to live. I was amazed at how it had been built so close to the ocean: on really rough, rainy days, the waves would cast spray against the windows. She told me it was a wonderful place but the salt water was destroying the house’s foundations and showed me where the wood was just rotting away. That also made it into the novel.
But My Side of the Ocean is really a story about a woman who has an affair with a (much) younger man. Stella is a married, expat, American artist. When she meets Ben, who is essentially a transient surfer, their worlds collide. I wrote much of My Side of the Ocean in secret because I wasn’t sure I could pull off a woman’s point of view, especially a woman who enters into an illicit affair. I finally sent a draft to a very tough editor and novelist I know in New York — a South African who had emigrated there years ago named Jenefer Shute, who wrote the novel Sex Crimes (among others) — and she was very excited about it.
My colleague, the literary critic, poet and novelist Joan Hambidge, finished it in one evening and texted me the next day to say she loved it. Women have been the real champions of this novel. My editors at Pan Macmillan, my advance readers, most of the people who have offered advance praise, are women. And my wife, Jacqueline, played a major part in the final editing. So I’m thrilled that this very tough, passionate, subversive artist has come to life in My Side of the Ocean and already has found her people and her place.
My Side of the Ocean is published by Pan Macmillan
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