with her two young children. Her work often explores the pressure of small communities and fractured relationships, as well as the way our history shapes our beliefs and behavior.
Here Lea dreamcasts an adaptation of Prize Women, her fourth novel:
Imagine Succession in the aftermath of Logan Roy’s death, combined with the menacing social control of The Handmaid’s Tale and you have my novel, Prize Women. Set in Toronto 1926, the book follows a scandal after a fabulously wealthy lawyer dies, leaving the majority of his vast fortune to the woman who can have the greatest number of babies in the ten years after his death. The catch? It’s based on a true story. The story of the women caught up in the notorious ‘Great Stork Derby' sounds outrageous. Often poor and socially disadvantaged, they found themselves at the centre of a court battle, a media maelstrom and scathing public criticism, which examined what it meant to be a woman, what makes a ‘good’ mother and whether certain women have the ‘right’ to have children.Follow Caroline Lea on Twitter.
It feels like a story ripe for movie adaptation: while writing, I drew inspiration for my character from films and television past and present. My novel follows two of the women caught up in the hideous ‘baby race’. Near the start of the novel, they are the closest of friends: their love is one of the propulsive forces of hope in the story. However, as the women compete for a sum of money that will change their lives and save their families, their relationship is fractured and tested to its limits.
Lily is an outsider in Toronto, of Italian-Canadian heritage and, at the start of the novel, is on the run from her abusive husband. Her mixture of vulnerability and strength would be played perfectly by Elisabeth Moss, whose compelling performance in The Handmaid’s Tale is both haunting and hopeful and she brings such depth and nuance to her characters.
Mae is the wife of a wealthy businessman, weighed down by the pressures and demands of motherhood. Like Lily, she finds an inner steel over the course of the novel: I loved writing about the way these two women slowly take control of their own lives. Kate Winslet would perfectly portray Mae’s initial icy stoicism, along with her inner fragility and ultimate resolve – I love the complexity she brought to Mare of Easttown.
Tony is Lily’s charismatic and abusive husband: self-assured, handsome and furious at the world. I would conjure a young Marlon Brando into the role, as he was in A Streetcar Named Desire: a magnetic ‘alpha’ male, whose simmering violence shapes everyone and everything to his will.
Charles Vance Millar is the rich lawyer whose will started the infamous baby race. Although he doesn’t have a starring role in my novel, his capricious bequest overshadows everything and I’d love him to be played by Brian Cox, who plays the brilliantly misanthropic Logan Roy in Succession.
Leonard is Mae’s husband: privileged and confident, having been shielded from any challenges in life, until the Great Depression causes the collapse of the business he inherited from his father. Leonard slumps into despair and self-pity, while retaining some of the arrogance that lingers from his prosperous past. Jeremy Strong, who plays Kendall Roy so magnificently in Succession would perfectly embody Leonard’s mixture of egotism and weakness.
I would love a movie of Prize Women to be directed and produced by the team that brought The Handmaid’s Tale so beautifully and compellingly to our screens. The pacing, the gorgeous cinematography, the wonderful closely-shot, intense exploration of how women fight back in a society that is trying to control their bodies: all of this would fit perfectly with my novel, which feels like a real-life version of Atwood’s dystopian world.
My Book, The Movie: The Glass Woman.
My Book, The Movie: The Metal Heart.
Q&A with Caroline Lea.
Writers Read: Caroline Lea.
--Marshal Zeringue
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