Lucy Atkins is no stranger to the Changing People blog; I first interviewed her in 2014, which you can read here. She has a new book out this Spring, Magpie Lane, so a great excuse for another interview. I had hoped to bring you lots of glamorous photos from her book launch and pics of me clutching champagne inserting myself next to beautiful people and pretending I know them, (!) but for obvious reasons the event was cancelled. (Clutching a glass of fizz while we talked is a poor substitute…)
Jane: Lucy, we find ourselves in strange unchartered waters at the time of this interview. I am firmly of the opinion that stockpiling books is a good idea and escaping to another world can only be beneficial while the virus is raging. Your latest novel Magpie Lane is released on April 2nd, and I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy. I loved it, I think it may be your best yet and certainly one worth ‘stockpiling’. It’s been described as:
‘Intricate, intelligent, immensely satisfying, and with a deliciously spooky edge’.
Without spoiling the mystery can you tell us a little of what it is about?Lucy: It’s about Dee, a Scottish nanny in her forties who is being questioned by the police about a child’s disappearance. The child is Felicity, the vulnerable eight-year-old daughter of an Oxford College Master. In response to the police questions, Dee begins looking back at her seven months in the Master’s Lodging, which his a very eerie, spooky four hundred year old Oxford house. Dee paints an alarming picture of a dysfunctional but high achieving family. There is domineering, clever Nick, an ex-BBC executive, who is now a College Master, and Danish wife Mariah, the glamorous, pregnant stepmother to little Felicity, who is silent and troubled (Felicity’s own mother died when she was four). The mystery of where Felicity has gone unfolds alongside Dee’s growing friendship with the eccentric Linklater, a house historian and ghost tour guide – and some painful revelations about Dee’s past.
I know writers hate being asked ‘where do you get your ideas from?’ so I won’t. However, once you have got your idea for a book how long does it take for you to get it into novel form. How do you begin to organise the material? Do you know where it’s going to end up right from the start?
I never know the ending, and generally only have a sense of place, and a couple of characters at the start. With Magpie Lane I spent a couple of months reading and researching, then 5 months writing and re-writing the first five chapters, until I really got Dee’s voice. Then the rest unfolded pretty fast. After I had a first draft, I spent a good year or more rewriting, editing, reworking. It’s a bit of a tortuous process – I always envy writers who start with a lovely neat plan and know how it’ll end.
Magpie Lane is also about loneliness. As we talk, the world is in the grip of Corona Virus and many people, me included, are having to self-isolate. What impact do you think this is going to have novel writing around this time? What type of novel do you think will emerge? Will we have ‘carry on and keep calm’ Mrs Miniver type genres, or dark and forbidding, or might it swing the other way with plenty of light hearted, comic escapist stories abounding?
Of course, nobody can really predict how all this is going to unfold, and each writer will have their own way of coping in their work. When it comes to readers, though, I have a feeling people might gravitate to darker fiction, rather than straight up escapism. If you look at what people are watching/streaming in the way of TV and movies right now, it’s the pandemic/apocalyptic offerings that are rising up the charts.
There are actually psychological theories about what happens to the brain when we are reading a suspense novel that make a lot of sense here: suspense fiction keeps us in a state of uncertainty, with constant recalibration, until we reach a resolution, at which point there is a release, and a sense that ‘everything is okay’. In a way, that’s what we are going through right now (and hoping for).
Having said this, I do think people need to laugh, more than ever, in a time of crisis, so I suspect there might be a rise in comic novels too.
Lucy, when did you realise that you make a career from writing?
I’ve made a living from writing for over twenty years now. There was a point when I was working for Amnesty International and writing book reviews in my spare time and while I knew that what I was doing was really valuable, my heart was pulling me towards books. So I took a leap, quit my Amnesty job, and got a very lowly part time job at the Times Literary Supplement. I then began to build up my freelance feature writing. It was a struggle at first to make a living, but it was a case of following my heart and I’ve never regretted it, even though I sometimes worry it’s not anywhere near as socially valuable as working for Amnesty.
Which living writer do you most aspire to be like and why?
I think if you go down that path as a writer, you’re sunk. You can’t emulate other writers. The main thing for me is to work on my own writing, and to aim to get better with every book. To do that, I read a lot, and quite widely. I also write book reviews, and I tend to review fairly literary writers – book reviews force you to really engage and unpick a book, and I try to learn as much as I can from this.
If you could have an alternative career, anything, what would it be? I’ve always thought I’d like to be a hairdresser, because I think people probably tell hairdressers a lot of interesting things. And it’s creative, too. And you make people feel so good, which must be satisfying. But I’m sure if I were a hairdresser, I’d only end up writing their stories down…
Lucy, thank you so much. I wish you huge success with Magpie Lane and recommend it to readers; it’s a really good novel. It is such a page turner; I read it almost in one sitting. And about that hairdressing, wouldn’t that make a good book? Tales from the hairdresser!
(Actually, I shared a little story about my hairdresser at the end of this post Who Inspires You? )
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Posted on March 18th, 2020 by Jane
