VIDEO: Watch author Claire Fuller talk to Phil Hewitt/SussexWorld about her Fishbourne talk

She will be talking about Unsettled Ground which came out in hardback two years ago and in paperback last year, but she will also touch on her new book The Memory of Animals, a taut and emotionally charged novel about freedom and captivity, survival and sacrifice, which comes out in April: “Unsettled Ground was really inspired by my son who came across a dilapidated caravan in the woods. I went to see it and I just thought who had lived here. How did they manage with no electricity and no sanitation? And I just started thinking.

“Unsettled Ground is about 51-year-old twins that have lived with their mother in rural isolation and poverty all their lives and the book opens with their mother dying on the kitchen floor. They discover her. They have led a very isolated life. They stayed at home for 51 years and suddenly they have to deal with the world and they don't know how to. It is also a book about homelessness because they lose the cottage that they have lived in.”

Jeanie and Julius would do anything to preserve their small sanctuary against the outside world, but as their mother's secrets begin to unravel, everything they thought they knew about their lives is at stake.

The Memory of Animals – “the books are all about very different things”, Claire explains – is in different territory again. Neffy is a young woman running away from grief and guilt and the one big mistake that has derailed her career. When she answers the call to volunteer in a controlled vaccine trial, it offers her a way to pay off her many debts and perhaps to make up for the past.

“I started writing the book before the pandemic. In October 2019 a friend of my son’s said that they had done a flu camp where you volunteered for a vaccine trial and you were given a trial vaccine and then you are given the flu and you have to stay in an isolation unit for two weeks to see whether you get the flu. Lots of students do it because they are paid a lot of money to do it. I had never heard of it before and I thought I fancied doing it so I signed up but I was rejected on the basis of having too many antibodies in my body. I was really gutted! To sit in a room for two weeks and to be paid several thousand pounds and just get on with writing for a couple of weeks would have been rather nice but it didn't happen. But again it got me thinking.”

Speaking at the festival on March 25 will be Claire Fuller, Phil Hewitt, Deborah Moggach and William Shaw in a full day’s programme from 10-4pm. The day will include book signing, sales and a second-hand book fair, plus gifts and promises tree and a prize draw. Lunch will be available in the church hall. Tea, coffee and cake will also be available throughout the day.

Tickets are £25 for the day, available on fishbourneliteraryfestival.co.uk. The money raised from the event will go to St Peter & St Mary Church and the chosen charity for 2023, the Snowdrop Trust. The timings for the speakers will be Phil Hewitt – 10-10.45; Claire Fuller – 11.15-12; William Shaw – 12.30-1.15; Deborah Moggach – 2-2.45; and Nicci French – 3.15-4pm.

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