For this week’s edition of ‘Weekly Chats’ we are joined by Gavanndra Hodge & Charlotte Edwardes to share Hodge’s acclaimed memoir ‘The Consequences of Love’. ‘The Consequences of Love’ is a reflection by Hodge on her childhood & coming to terms with her chaotic childhood as an adult. This chat is gripping, powerful & explores Gavanndra’s childhood with the loss of her sister. Painted with a backdrop of heroin, grief, denial, family-life & love in Chelsea this chat between Hodge & Edwardes will have you captivated to the very last minute.
For this weekly chat, Charlotte & Gavanndra discuss:
- The book’s opening on the day in which Gavanndra’s sister dies of a very rare virus. This moment was very central to the story, but also a pivotal experience in constructing the book based on Gavanndra’s memories.
- Gavanndra’s sister as the impetus of her writing & an opportunity to remember Candy. Gavanndra’s experience feeling as though she had forgotten about her sister after watching her two daughters engaging & growing up together & thinking “I had that.”
- Gavanndra’s father: a hairdresser as a heroin addict & drug dealer.
- The five years of unpacking memories in ‘The Consequences of Love’.
- Gavanndra’s unprocessed emotions that evolved as she addresses her sister & her death in the opening scene of the book.
- The moment standing in the room watching her sister die & why the book is about her, & for her.
- The emotions, tears & feeling of release after writing about her childhood.
- Acupuncture & the psychic experience she encountered in which she contacted her sister’s spirit & explaining to her sister how she died.
- Bringing Gavanndra’s sister back to life to reconnect & rekindle with Candy’s spirit.
- The power of memories & the process of remembering.
- The imploding of her family that Gavanndra witnessed after her sister died.
- Gavanndra’s experience being secret, suppressed, quiet & the difficulties she experienced with other’s reaction to her sister’s death.
- Gavanndra’s “well of oblivion” in Chelsea that was drinking & drugs, introduced by her father.
- Working in Tatler magazine as a young woman coming of age in Chelsea & the connection of the magazine with heroin & her past.
- Death & addicts – a common occurrence in Gavanndra’s childhood. “What happened behind closed doors” is other people’s stories.
- Being creative with magazines making wraps for cocaine to pay for her school fees. “Dad had a way of making everything feel fun” – “the greatest problem for a human being is being boring”.
- Gavanndra’s father having a relationship with a girl at her school & the charismatic & problematic aspect of his character. “At the time I felt that it was wrong & it was dangerous & it was a betrayal, but I couldn’t do anything about it.”
- Gavanndra’s experience of reinvention of herself at Cambridge & the experience of disconnect between her past & “the human she showed to the world”.
- Gavanndra on moving forward: “I needed to integrate my past into the present”.
Buy The Consequences of Love from your local Bookseller:
