Marcia Hutchinson joins our Book Group
A VISIT FROM MARCIA HUTCHINSON
A New Leaf’s Wednesday book group was treated to a visit by yet another fascinating author this month when Marcia Hutchinson, author of ‘The Mercy Step,’ called in to talk about her new novel. It was, she explained, her first author event – and the first stop on a book tour that will take her to her hometown of Bradford and to Hull, Oxford, Islington, Manchester, Mold, Lincoln, Southwark, Brixton, Brighton, Leicester and Derby.
Awarded an MBE in 2011 for her services to cultural diversity and now named as one of the Best New Novelists 2025 by ‘The Observer,’ there is no doubt that Marcia’s novel will be well received and that her audiences will find her as interesting as those of us who attended her talk and reading at The New Leaf Bookshop.
Marcia was born in Bradford in 1962 to parents who were part of the Windrush Generation; migrants who were encouraged to travel to the UK by the Government to help solve serious labour shortages in the post-war years. Keen to find better economic opportunities and to make a better life for themselves and their family, Marcia’s parents left their four eldest children behind in Jamaica, before going on to have five more children whilst living in the UK. Her father died at the age of 56, when Marcia was just 14, and her mother was left to bring up the family as a single parent.
Marcia was the first pupil from her Bradford comprehensive school to be admitted to Oxford University, and when she returned to the school in 2009, she was surprised to find that she had remained the only Oxbridge pupil. She described the entirely different world she experienced when attending Brasenose College, reading Jurisprudence (the theory or philosophy of law).
After attending the College of Law at London’s Lancaster Gate, she qualified as a solicitor, working first in London and then Leeds. A career change saw her founding a multicultural educational publishing and training company based here, in Huddersfield, publishing books and training packs and delivering Theatre in Education, INSET diversity training and cultural diversity projects in schools around the country. In addition, Marcia was elected as a Labour Councillor but later resigned due to the ‘toxic culture.’
Marcia Hutchinson’s entire life would provide ample material for several novels, but ‘The Mercy Step’ doesn’t cover the adult life of the main character, taking us from just before her birth in 1962 to her father’s death when she was just over the age of 11. The novel, using the close third person narrative, allows us, as readers, to experience the thoughts and feelings of the central character from pre-birth to the age of 11 and, as such, it ‘draws us in.’
When speaking at ‘The New Leaf Bookshop,’ Marcia was extremely – and engagingly open about her first solo novel. It began life as a series of short stories, each recalling an incident from her childhood, but it wasn’t until she attended an Arvon writing course that she began to realise that she could write a novel. With the help of writing groups and mentors, she gathered the stories, and as she wrote, she recalled more incidents from her childhood. She described the writing process as being like therapy, both cathartic and painful, and said “I doubt anyone is more shocked than me that my debut novel will be published at the age of 62…” Marcia’s depiction of Manningham Library, a place where ‘it was warm and smelled of old paper, dust, ink, and polish,” reveals how important the library was to both Mercy, the character, and Marcia, the author. No wonder it is one of the first stops on her book tour.
The novel isn’t Marcia’s only published fictional work. Under the pen name ‘Lila Cain’ she co-authored “The Blackbirds of St Giles’ with Kate Griffin – which was released earlier this year and is currently on offer with a purchase of The Mercy Step from A New Leaf Book.