07/12/06 - Adele Parks
Whitegrove Library, 7th December. Outside, it's drizzling and the community centre opposite is bustling with teenagers loud enough to give any civilised person a headache. However, inside, tonight’s audience aren’t distracted. Listening to Adele Parks, the bubbly blonde with the to-die-for legs imprinted upon her every book, is like the retelling of a Richard Curtis film, her anecdotes about working in an advertisers, where adults act like five year olds, or attending a kids-crazed Christmas party, where the adults tank up on booze to escape the noise, are filled with comedic moments.
Adele, like many writers, wrote prolifically as a child, and her grandparents kept every piece, telling her as she took up a post at an advertisers that she should write properly. Playing Away, her first novel, was partly in response to this, and partly a way of coping with five deaths in her family, including her grandfather. Adele wrote as a way to escape from the pain, opting for a story centred around the woes of Christmas time and adultery, but opting for a happy ending – since her life needed a lift.
Playing Away was sent off incomplete. Adele was working in her spare time on another novel when she had the call (pretty much the next day) that an agent wanted to see the whole thing. Adele had only that which she’d sent (the agent only wanted three chapters after all), and it wasn’t until six months later that she had an entire copy ready for reading.
Like many in her field, she doesn’t like the label: Chick-lit; Preferring instead: Contemporary author. Yet, her writing is, by her own admission, for fun and not to present a truth, or describe a moral value. Resolving the issues of her female protagonists, as they learn and grow, is the sole purpose of her plots – sounds all chick-litty to me. However, her readership, since the second release of her books came with the leggy idea of photographed appendages, draws in more men than might otherwise have been thought.
Perhaps her works have greater meaning in the way antagonists must learn from their mistakes as much as the protagonists. On a visit to Serbia, Adele, was told that her books were perfect for a healing country. The people needed to escape the horror after the previous decades, and novels like hers gave them that opportunity to escape. In fact, such is her status in countries like Serbia that her first morning as she came down the stairs at her hotel, she was greeted personally by four members of the public who’d seen her on the local news and come by. Adele says it was nothing like the anonymity she’s afforded in Guildford’s highstreet.
Adele in her own words
I was born and bred in the North East of England and had a very conventional 70s childhood, (lots of convenience food and bad TV). I went to the local primary school and comprehensive and then on to Leicester University to read English Language and Literature.
I left university and went to live in Italy for a year and taught English. I think this was something to do with a plethora of Ivory Merchant movies, portraying wilful young women finding true love and sense of self in Venice, they were popular back then. I didn’t find either but still had a marvellous time.
Back in the UK in 1992, I moved to London and started a career in advertising. The next decade reads like, well, one of my books...I played out my life at double speed. I worked extremely hard, earning prestigious promotions in London’s top agencies on cool accounts such as Wonderbra and Levis. I moved to Botswana for a couple of years. When I returned to London I continued with my career in advertising, securing a ball breaking roll at Accenture, the world’s largest management and technology consultancy. I designed and built a house in West London. I went to the gym, went out on the tiles and nearly went out of my mind. Oh yeah, and in my spare time I wrote Playing Away, which became the debut best seller of the millennium.
I know I’ve been really lucky. At the end of 2000 I gave birth to my adored son. In 2001 my next novel, Game Over also became a best seller. Since I have written four more bestsellers Larger Than Life, The Other Woman’s Shoes, Still Thinking Of You and Husbands. Be assured that I am hard at it right now writing book number seven, working title is Play Grounds . I'm doing this from the relative sanctuary of Guildford, where my husband, son and I now live a quieter life.
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