Truth is often stranger than fiction: The Villagers by A.J. Griffiths-Jones

The Villagers

All my life I've known people who have battled with their inner demons. Some held family secrets for decades, others experienced flashbacks caused by trauma beyond their control while a few suffered mental torture over imaginary events that were yet to happen. All of them had one thing in common, the need to take just one person into their confidence. However, by default, it is unfortunately human nature that we sometimes share those intimacies confided in us, drop hints about the issues to others, or sometimes even judge quite harshly as the circumstances and dastardly deeds of those involved unfold.
 
'The Villagers' is a simple concept: that everyone has a skeleton in their closet.

Whether it be between lovers, siblings or friends, letting someone into your confidence creates a bond, and not always for the greater good. Sometimes those secrets can last a lifetime. In exploring this very fragile subject, I wanted to ensure that the topic be seen in a new light, with a touch of humour and a pinch of salt, allowing those who feel guilty for holding their secret knowledge, to realise that there lies some unshared intimacy within all of us. Of course there is a sliding scale of degrees, and an encumbrance that one person deems to be trivial and the cause of unnecessary worry, may have already resulted in years of sleepless nights for another. But at the end of the day, secrets will always exist.
 
To create my fictional work, I turned to a person close to me who can always be trusted to keep a confidence: my grandmother. She can also be relied upon to make me laugh & to see the lighter side of life. Although now ninety-six years young, grandma still has all her faculties, her memory is crystal clear and her humour still abounds. She was the perfect person with whom to debate this topic and to help create the world of 'The Villagers'.
 
Over a period of a few months, this dear old lady recounted the lives of people with whom she had come into contact during her days as a young mother in a small country village in the English countryside, just after the Second World War. Of course, my duty as a writer of fiction, was to create a slightly different version of the characters introduced to me and to exaggerate each to fit with the pace of the book. The result was many afternoons of delving into memories for my grandmother, but hours of side-splitting laughter for me, as she retold her tale with precision, often accompanied by accurate and hilarious impressions of the folks who had moulded her life. Only when the narrative was complete did I put pen to paper.
 
As I began to write, a whole drama began to unfold in my imagination. Thanks to my grandma's vivid descriptions and witty prose, I was suddenly able to really see 'The Villagers' for the first time. I could quite clearly hear them interact with each other, the stifled laughter, the genuine tears and the sinister whispers behind net curtains. Their homes came to life, shaping the characters daily chores into something real and meaningful. I could suddenly smell country life in the 1950's, freshly baked bread, strong tea, the undeniable aroma of a musty church and its parishioners and above all clean air blowing across the fields, bringing with it the fragrances of wild flowers and cut grass.

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A.J. Griffiths-Jones

The scene reminded me of a BBC television series that I used to watch called 'The Darling Buds of May'. The characters were similarly quirky, with real-life problems and daily routines, all played out in a countryside environment. However, for my own creation I wanted to develop the suspense of a Stephen King thriller, drawing the reader in and either shocking or surprising at the end of each carefully plotted chapter.
 
I am hoping that my readers will enjoy getting to know 'The Villagers', empathising with their individual plights but sparing a thought for the central character for whom the discovery of each new mystery brings far-reaching consquences. In discovering each character, there may well be tears of laughter, tuts of disbelief and sometimes even a pang of horror as the reader touches on something just a little too close for comfort. There is a fragment of each of us in 'The Villagers' whether it be from the point of view of the person holding the secret or the one to whom the secret has been confided.

Perhaps our lives are not as complicated or as dramatised as those of the strange fictional characters in this book, after all we must not lose sight of the fact that they have been created for the pure pleasure of fiction lovers around the globe.

One thing, however, remains undeniable and a necessary factor for the reader to bear in mind as they turn the final page:
 
Truth is often stranger than fiction.

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