St. Andrews, a Master of Professional Communication from Toronto Metropolitan University and a Bachelor's degree in English Literature from McGill University, Turnbull focuses on finding stories of women lost within the cracks of the historical record.
Her debut novel, The Woman Before Wallis, was named one of the top ten bestselling works of Canadian fiction for 2020 and became an international bestseller. Her second, The Last Grand Duchess, came out in February 2022 and spent eight weeks on the Globe & Mail and Toronto Star bestseller lists. It was followed by The Paris Deception, which came out in May 2023.
Turnbull's new novel is The Berlin Apartment.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Turnbull's reply:
Despite my enduring love for history, I find that my reading interests these days tend increasingly towards contemporary fiction: character studies of so-called ordinary people, living so-called ordinary lives. I'm not entirely sure what's driving the shift. Perhaps it's because I've lived so long in the past -- after four novels set between 1910 and 1960, the early 20th century feels quite domestic. Perhaps, too, it's the realization that I've reached the age and stage where the early days of my lifetime are officially historical fictionVisit Bryn Turnbull's website.fodder: apparently, anything older than 30 years is fair game for historical fiction novelists, and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that, definitionally.
My newest novel is also my youngest: set in Cold War East and West Germany, The Berlin Apartment follows a twenty-something couple separated by the Berlin Wall, who hatch a plan to smuggle Lise, our East German heroine, west. Not to put too fine a point on things, but it didn't escape my notice that my historical novel fishtails neatly with my own story: it came down a year and four months after I came squalling into the world. Historical indeed.
So: contemporary fiction. A few weeks back, I picked up David Nicholls's most recent novel, You Are Here: a really lovely story that hits slightly too close to home about a young-ish (okay, young middle aged) pair of unlikely romantic leads, flung together on a weekend jaunt over England's rolling hills. It's not quite a rom com - it's more poignant than that -- but it has the exact right amount of romance to warm even the chilliest (of elder-millennial hearts.
My Book, The Movie: The Paris Deception.
The Page 69 Test: The Paris Deception.
Q&A with Bryn Turnbull.
My Book, The Movie: The Berlin Apartment.
The Page 69 Test: The Berlin Apartment.
--Marshal Zeringue