Goodreads asked Jane Davis:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Jane Davis In December 2013 I announced publicly that I was going to cut right back on paid work and spend a year trying to live on my earnings as an author. I was already earning very much less than I did at the height of my career as the deputy managing director of a firm of insurance brokers. Already, I had had no new clothes for over four years, but in December I got rid of my car and cut out all of the little luxuries - the takeaway coffees, for example. Everything that was not essential had to go. At the same time, mine was arguably low-level risk. My house is paid for and I have no dependents relying on me. If push comes to shove, I doubt my partner would let me starve. But as my world shrank even further I began to think about how much of our identities are bound up in the things that we surround ourselves with, much of them completely unnecessary, but the things that have become our armour. To my right as I sit here is my bookshelf. The selection of books on display in my dining room is not random. Each book tells part of my history and says something about me. 'If we are what we own, then who are we when we own nothing?' And so, in the first scene of my new novel, An Unknown Woman, I burn down my house and everything in it. Anyone who knows me will recognise that it is my house; those are my things. People who have read the early drafts asked me how could I do that? (Certainly, I’ve become quite paranoid about switching anything electrical off before I leave the house). Although the character is not me, I think that in order to make the emotion as raw and authentic as possible, you have to make it personal.

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