Sanctuary, the debut crime novel by Guernsey based author, Tom Gaisford is being talked about this week.
Today in fact, at the Guernsey Literary Festival, where he’s giving a talk, as all good authors do, so his audience can see what made him write the book and why.
I’m here to give you a flavour, because I’ve read and met him… a profile feature on him, what makes him tick, and his experiences living in Guernsey will be out next week via Express. For now this is about the book.
This is the general blurb by it’s publisher, and it’s pretty succinct as a teaser to entice:
“Alex Donovan is a young refugee lawyer in crisis. Helping desperate clients reach safety is what gives his job meaning. But he now finds himself demoted, signed off sick for stress, and facing redeployment to the firm’s subterranean billing department.
Then there is Amy, the woman he adores. The irresistible junior barrister seems to be drifting away from him. With little to lose and all to prove, Alex dreams up a madcap plan to restore his honour and secure Amy’s affection.
It’s a book you can curl up and escape into, but honestly you have to pay a bit of attention, there are twists, and many characters, love interests, and soul searching.
For me it raises questions like ‘What makes people leave their homes? and ‘What happens to them and how are they treated when they arrive in a new country?’
Every day in TV, radio, and newspapers we see words surrounding ‘refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and immigration’. We see images of people crammed into boats, taking diffcult journeys, sometimes dying before they get to their desired destination. We might also hear about people being caught at Dover, after being ‘stowed away’, hiding in trucks and shipping containers, as they try and find ‘sanctuary’ and escape from where they have been living.
For me this debut novel shines a light on the UK’s asylum process, from the inside of someone who has lived and breathed it, but puts a human perspective on it, through artistic license.
Talking to Mr Gaisford I ask him why the book is sectioned into four parts, for readers these are FIGHT, FAIL, FACE and FIND, with above illustrations to demarcate. I asked him what their significance was.
“I wanted the focus to be on the inner story. Typically with thrillers, you’ll expect a lot of plots, and I think most of us have had our fill with very plot heavy thriller which appear to be lacking in heart, the purpose of a good story is to take you on that internal journey, invariably you want to know, how the person is going to solve that story problem. The inner story then I guess is delineated by those act headings, the fight, fail etc and the pictures, which my sister did,” said Mr Gaisford.
There are two issues that the author delves into throughout the book to make points about finding humanity or vocation and indeed the real side of what it must be like too be a jobbing asylum lawyer.
These are faith, or religion and what informs Alex’s belief system and then the dry, almost boring day to day admin of being an asylum lawyer, and the dispelling of the glamour that possibly some people may think is associated with being a human rights barrister. His chapters really make you feel what an exhausting job it is to do the ‘right thing’.
Then there is the author, Tom Gaisford who is keen to stress that Sanctuary sprung from the question ‘What if an immigration lawyer like me were to claim asylum? not, ‘What if I were to claim asylum? This question clearly comes from the fact that Mr Gaisford was a barrister in the field of immigration and asylum law, and did indeed work in South London and then at the Bar.
Prior to law, he did a degree in History, an MSc in Human Rights; and spent a year at Salamanca University, where he studied Spanish literature…all great credentials to build narratives around the settings of London, and Spain, which are decscribed in such detail, you really are transported there.
When I asked him if Alex is based on him, he replied: “I haven’t suggested that the story is based on my own life experiences per se, rather, the story is loosely informed by my background and experiences, as is inevitably the case with all fiction writing, in my view – desirable as it might be, one can’t ever get oneself entirely out of the way.
“The best way I can put it is that for me at least, the process is like a potter’s wheel: inevitably your life experience, perceptions, reflections, influences, imagination, form the clay from which you fashion something new and with a life of its own i.e. a fictional story. And the process continues until you stop working on the story – that is to say, you continue to add clay to it – further thoughts, experiences, responses to events, influences- until you stop the wheel and deem the thing finished.”
Gaisford started working on the book when he was a barrister.
In 2021, he froze his practising certificate and moved with his young family to Guernsey, where he has since completed this, his first novel, and begun work on his second. And he tells me Sanctuary is the first in a trilogy.
Using those Spanish language skills he has also been working as a language teaching assistant at Elizabeth College.
More to follow…
Express will be profiling Mr Gaisford next week and discuss his views on diversity, his white privilege and his experience of living in Guernsey.