The War Zone: 20th Anniversary Edition

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I still remember the Friday afternoon in London when I really started writing The War Zone, when I found the “voice” for the novel – Tom’s voice – and knew that I had finally worked my way into it.

The fact that that afternoon is now well over twenty years ago is as stunning to me as the passage of time is to anyone else – especially anyone with children.

The War Zone has been a huge part of my life, in part because of the novel’s reception and the fact that it was turned into a film with a life of its own, but also – very significantly – because it is irretrievably bound up for me with the birth, five years of life, and sad (but ultimately, in the most spiritual way possible, acceptable) death from cancer of my first son, Joe Buffalo Stuart.

When I started the book, I knew only that I wanted to write about family and about the startling power of the relationships we have with our parents and our children. I loved my parents deeply, but I also enjoyed, if that is the word, the inevitable period of adolescent fury directed both at them and at society in general, most particularly in the form of my school, Bexley Grammar (the British equivalent of a high school) – although I now recognize that it, and more especially my wonderful parents and younger sister, Lynne, helped make me who I am today.

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