In The Ideal Man, the lives of three women are changed forever when Sandy Gilligan, the man who connects them all is released from prison. The three women are Sandy’s daughter, Colette, his girlfriend, Lynne, and his former victim, Jane.
When I first started writing The Ideal Man, I knew it would have a father-daughter relationship at its heart. Whenever I read news stories about respected family men being accused of sexual offences, I often wondered what their daughters really thought about their fathers. In her non-fiction book, Daddy Issues, Katherine Angel discusses Ivanka Trump’s support of Donald Trump and says that, ‘She like many public daughters serves as a validator for her father.’ Colette has played this role for Sandy. She believes in his innocence and has defended him, even though this has resulted in her losing her career, her marriage and her friends. She believes her father is the one man who will protect her. The one man who would never hurt her. So, when doubts about his behaviour begin to surface, will she choose to act on them or to hold on to her ideal image of him?
A constant companion when I was writing this novel was Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. I saw parallels between the young, nameless narrator who is married to the widower Max de Winter and Colette and her father. Like the young Mrs de Winter, Colette idealises her father, she is wary of his moods and she wants to please him. In the introduction to the 2003 Virago edition of Rebecca, Sally Beauman says that the fate of the narrator is to have her identity taken over by her husband. At the start of The Ideal Man, Colette, a surrogate wife in place of her dead mother, is in danger of being entirely taken over by her father.
Lynne, Sandy’s girlfriend, is twice divorced and unlucky in love. She is convinced Sandy is ‘the one’ and is determined to make the relationship work. Sally Beauman describes the narrator of Rebecca as, ‘a masochistic woman, who is desperate for the validation provided by a man’s love.’ This certainly applies to Lynne. For her, the idea of romantic love is so important she is willing to ignore her instincts to maintain it, just like the narrator of Rebecca.
Jane doesn’t idealise Sandy. Her past experiences with him are too difficult for that. However, in order to maintain the romantic vision of her marriage and family life, she has never told her husband about what happened with Sandy. She doubts her husband’s ability to deal with the truth and is scared he won’t love her if she is no longer a ‘perfect’ woman. It is this inability to confront her past that will ultimately put Jane in danger.
Each of the three women in The Ideal Man is faced with a choice between romance and reality. What will each of them choose and what consequences will that choice bring?