Veronica got in touch with me after someone had told her about my project. She said that reading Lady Chatterley's Lover had made her decide to break out of an unhappy relationship. With that information I sat down to read the novel. Imagining what her reading must have been like, while at the same time remembering my own previous reading of the novel, was an immensely rich and moving experience. Our dialogue took place in a quiet and pleasant meeting room in her office building, on a blustery morning in November. My first impression of Veronica was of a warm, outgoing and confident person.

Thor: I appreciate your being willing to share your experience with me.

Veronica: My pleasure. I've been quite excited about it, actually. When I heard about your project, I thought, oh yeah, brilliant. I first read the book a number of years ago and I wish I'd had the readerly understanding that I do now, to be able to process it a bit better. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Thor: Good! As you know, I want to find out how books can change readers’ lives. So therefore, I'd just like to basically hear about your reading experience. It's up to you where you want to start. But one way we could start is, if there's a passage that you remember particularly well, if you could please read that for me.

Veronica: Initially let me just give you a bit of background, then. The reason that Lady Chatterley's Lover really resonated with me is that I read it for the first time about maybe nine or ten years’ ago, something like that, when I was in my midtwenties. I was in a long-term relationship in which I felt very trapped and at the same time had resigned myself to the fact that this was just what life was going to be. I was going to end up getting married, and I probably wouldn't be happy forever, but it was just … that was real life, and maybe romance was a bit of a fantasy. You know, this is what reality was going to be.

And then I read this book. I think it followed on from having read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which was another wonderful book for how I could sort of break free.