two pandemics as bookends to the story was sort of poetic. yeah, but you do see parallels. i mean, you mention in violeta the fact that violeta, when she has a baby, that she can t have a wet nurse come to be. she can t be fed by a wet nurse, rather, violeta, when she s born, because people won t let her in because of the pandemic. and she s got a goat tethered in the garden and she s fed, you know, from the milk of that goat. so, you ve got parallels there about the sense of isolation and keeping people out that, you know, we ve experienced in covid. they were very similar because they were both respiratory illnesses and they were fatal, very contagious, and the only precautions that people could take were masks and isolation, social distancing, and the vaccines came much later. so, there are analogies, of course.
18 million people killed, of course, in that pandemic. so why did you want to write about the spanish flu? is it because of covid? i didn t! really, i didn t. i wanted to write about a woman who was born in the same year that my mother was born, and that is 1920. and then i realised that what they call the spanish influenza had arrived in the southern part of the continent at that time. and if the woman lives 100 years, as is the case in the book, of course she would die with covid. so the idea of having these two pandemics as bookends to the story was sort of poetic. yeah, but you do see parallels. i mean, you mention in violeta the fact that violeta, when she has a baby, that she can t have a wet nurse come to be. she can t be fed by a wet nurse, rather, violeta, when she s born, because people won t let her in because
of course, in that pandemic. so why did you want to write about the spanish flu? is it because of covid? i didn t! really, i didn t. i wanted to write about a woman who was born in the same year that my mother was born, and that is 1920. and then i realised that what they call the spanish influenza had arrived in the southern part of the continent at that time. and if the woman lives 100 years, as is the case in the book, of course she would die with covid. so the idea of having these two pandemics as bookends to the story was sort of poetic. yeah, but you do see parallels. i mean, you mention in violeta the fact that violeta, when she has a baby, that she can t have a wet nurse come to be. she can t be fed by a wet nurse, rather, violeta, when she s born, because people won t let her in because of the pandemic.
so the idea of having these two pandemics as bookends to the story was sort of poetic. yeah, but you do see parallels. i mean, you mention in violeta the fact that violeta, when she has a baby, that she can t have a wet nurse come to be. she can t be fed by a wet nurse, rather, violeta, when she s born, because people won t let her in because of the pandemic. and she s got a goat tethered in the garden and she s fed, you know, from the milk of that goat. so you ve got parallels there about the sense of isolation and keeping people out that, you know, we ve experienced in covid. they were very similar because they were both respiratory illnesses and they were fatal, very contagious, and the only precautions that people could take were masks and isolation, social distancing. and the vaccines came much later. so there are analogies,
so, the idea of having these two pandemics as bookends to the story was sort of poetic. yeah, but you do see parallels. i mean, you mention in violeta the fact that violeta, when she has a baby, that she can t have a wet nurse come to be. she can t be fed by a wet nurse, rather, violeta, when she s born, because people won t let her in because of the pandemic. and she s got a goat tethered in the garden and she s fed, you know, from the milk of that goat. so, you ve got parallels there about the sense of isolation and keeping people out that, you know, we ve experienced in covid. they were very similar because they were both respiratory illnesses and they were fatal, very contagious, and the only precautions that people could take were masks and isolation, social distancing. and the vaccines came much later. so there are analogies, of course. right. and, i mean, obviously,