Bestselling author Emma Healey on writing unselfconsciously

Monday 08 April 2019

Costa Book Awards winner, Emma Healey, once studied book binding in an effort to get closer to books, the likes of which she never envisaged she would be able to write herself.

A second novel for the author takes a look at the family drama and mystery surrounding a missing girl returned to home.

Experimental and playful with form, Emma Healey’s latest novel Whistle in the Dark is a change of pace from her first success Elizabeth is Missing. The latter used post-it notes left by an elderly woman to further the plot whereas the former has experimented with a teenager’s use of Instagram.

“I thought you can't write about 15 year olds now without mentioning instagram. It seemed odd to me people are quite so insistent on not mentioning social media and brand names,” she said.

The best-seilling Elizabeth is Missing, whose protagonist was 82-years to Healey’s 23 at the time she began writing it, is a ‘gentle novel’ which draws from family experience. 

“My Grandmother had dementia so that all seemed very fascinating to me I thought there was something to explore there. The idea of writing a novel for me is to try and find something out or to explore a subject I don't know enough about,” she said. 

The story, which is being adapted for TV, follows Maud as she leaves notes around the house to remind her that her friend is missing. As a reader you are unsure whether or not there is a real mystery at play or if the drama is all in the addled mind of Maud and presents either as a scary conclusion. 

Healey was living in London in her 20’s having graduated from a Book Arts (book binding and cover art etc.) course which she said she got into in lieu in a way of writing as a career.  

“She was unlike me, I was trying to write novels about young women, I found that really hard. It could be quite self-indulgent stuff. Everything you put into fiction people mistake for a diary especially women writers, it was a way of pushing that away. 

“I worked in bookshops and libraries, I've always wanted to be a writer, when I was 15 I had a breakdown and thought I'd said goodbye to doing something even vaguely academic. I think in a way doing book arts was kind of ameliorating it in a way, trying to get close to books without admitting I wanted to write,” she said. 

The topic of her teenage depression is something which informs her latest release Whistle in The Darkwhich, inspired by a real-life disappearance, tackles a big event from a periphery perspective. 

“I was inspired by a woman who went missing for 17 days in Australia and then they found her relatively unharmed early where she left. 

“The press were very suspicious of her, I thought it was really interesting, that was such a huge story, I was interested in what I could do with that story to narrow it down. So I made it four days and made it England, made it about the reunion with her mother,” she said.

Healey wanted to take a look at the depression which had made her think writing as a career was unattainable but again, as with her first novel, make it one step removed from her own lived experience.

“I wrote it from an opposite perspective, I wanted to look at depression but I didn't want to look at it from my own experience I was interested in what my mother might have gone though. 

“It pushed it away so I was writing something more honest, I could be a bit more objective about the story and not fall into traps about trying to self-justify, I used some of my experience but mostly used it as a jumping off point,” she said. 

The book is both a peak behind the curtain and an account of after the dust has settled on a life-changing event, it’s something that the writer said intrigues her when coming up with storylines that inspect the psyche in close. 

“I am always interested in what happens after a dramatic event I sometimes things dramatic events are quite easy to imagine, we get so much of them, the universality of how we react to really huge things. Whereas the bit that's less imaginable is the bit that happens afterwards.” she said. 

Emma Healey will be appearing at the Guernsey Literary Festival, Festival Hub on 4 May from 16:00-17:00 (tickets £4-£6)