Dawn French says suicide has lived in her mind since she was 19, when her father took his own life, and she has brought that experience to the centre of her new novel, Enough.
The 68-year-old, best known for playing Reverend Geraldine Granger in the hit sitcom The Vicar of Dibley, is due to publish her fifth novel with a story about Etta, a woman who is planning to take her own life. French said the character is the same age she is, and that the book grew out of thoughts she has carried for decades.
“Suicide lives in my brain in a way it might not for somebody who hasn’t experienced it so closely,” French said. She added: “And as I’ve got older, I want to talk about the big things. I set out to write something I’m a bit afraid to admit: that getting older is difficult, end of life is difficult, suicide is difficult.”
French’s father, Denys, an RAF engineer, died by suicide aged 45 in September 1977, when she was 19. She said writing Enough meant facing many of her own fears, but insisted the book was not a personal blueprint. “I don’t want people to think that I’m writing my plan – I’m not,” she said.
The novel is set in Cornwall, where French grew up and has lived for the past 20 years, tying the book to the landscape that has shaped much of her life. That setting matters because the story is not only about death, but about age, place and the difficult calculations people make when they think about what remains for the people around them.
French said she does not think she would ever choose suicide, but she can understand why some people do. “What more selfless act could you make than sacrifice your life so that your children don’t have to deal with the crunchy, grim part of it?” she said. “It’s helpful to put your face in the s*** and then come up and breathe fresh air afterwards,” she added, describing the process of writing the novel. Enough is now set to enter the public conversation as one of the rare mainstream books that addresses suicide head-on, from inside the life of someone who has lived with its impact for nearly half a century.
