Interview : Araminta Hall (en VO)

Araminta Hall

Araminta Hall is the author of three novels, Everything & Nothing, Dot & Our Kind of Cruelty. Everything and Nothing was published in France as Une Dangereuse Emprise in 2012. She also teaches creative writing and lives in Brighton, on the South coast of England, with her husband and three children. @aramintahall

What inspired you to write this book?

I think every book begins with a little flame of an idea. The flame for Our Kind of Cruelty came as I was watching a Netflix documentary on the Amanda Knox trial. For anyone who doesn’t know she was a young American student studying in Puglia, Italy and sharing an apartment with a British student called Meredith Kercher. Amanda claims that she came home one morning, after spending the night with her Italian boyfriend, to find Meredith brutally murdered. Amanda however didn’t fit with what the media decided was the appropiate persona for a griefing young girl. She was outspoken and bright, happy to admit to smoking dope and having sexual partners and even, shock horror, photographed kissing her boyfriend whilst the police were inside dealing with Meredith’s body. The Italian police immediately suspected that she was involved and she was arrested and put on trial. The real trial however happened in the press, where she was painted as an old-fashioned scarlet woman, her personal life raked over and discussed endlessly, with shockingly puritanical views expressed. The media and the public found her guilty before the courts did. It then took years for a proper trial to take place, in which her conviction was overturned. Meanwhile, Meredith was as good as forgotten, her only role in the story to provide the beautiful mutilated body that had become so prevelant in the entertainment industry.

I felt the usual outrage as I watched, but it wasn’t until the film had finished that I realised I had barely heard Amanda’s voice throughout the whole process, and certainly nothing from Meredith. I then realised that in fact the media had never given either woman a voice and that almost all my information on both of them was nothing more than gossip. So there I had my little flame, why, I wondered, are women never listened to ? And what would happen if I wrote a book in which a woman was at the centre of the story, but whom I denied a voice ?

It quickly became obvious to me that I would set my story inside the mind of a male character and I quickly worked out that I wanted this character to be damaged and deluded. Mike’s version of the truth is questionable, to say the least, and he is clearly deeply troubled, with a warped sense of love and attachment and what Verity wants from him. At no time does Verity say anything that isn’t reported to us by Mike. The whole trial is only told to us from Mike’s perspective. My aim was for the reader to get to the end of the book and think, my goodness, I’ve judged this woman purely on heresay, from a dangerous and violent man. I wanted them to end the book desperate to hear her voice. And I wanted this feeling to be carried on in to life, so we’re not so quick to believe a piece of salacious gossip, so we actually start listening to women properly.

Could you share some anecdotes about writing it with my readers?

I don’t really have any anecdotes, as I wrote it the same way I do all my books, by turning up at my desk every day and getting the words down. Writing is quite boring like that and there aren’t many funny moments to share !

But I do have an observation from how the book was received. Although the majority of my reviews and comments have been wonderful, and so many people got what I was trying to do, there were a significant number of readers who hated Verity and felt very angry with her. People wrote to me about how awful they found her because, in their eyes, she’d led Mike on and driven him mad. I found this response interesting, but also depressing. I would ask these readers why they thought that and they would quote passages back to me, until I said, yes but those are all Mike’s words, we never actually hear what Verity thinks. It made me realise that even with #MeToo and the opening of the conversation, we still find it so much easier to believe the male version of events. A male voice still appears authoritian, a female one doubtful. We also seem to find it much easier to excuse and forgive men, whilst women are always judged so harshly. As Trump v Clinton proved – a man can admit to groping women on tape, whilst a woman sends a few emails from the wrong account, and guess which one becomes president.

Is it easy/ difficult to find time to write?

I have three children, now aged 20,16 & 12, so finding time is much easier now. But I’ve always written and my first novel was published when my youngest was one. I guess I’ve always thought it was important, not just to find that time to do something I love, but also because it’s my career and there are always more bills to be paid ! My husband works away a lot, so there have been times when it’s been very difficult, but I think if you’re serious about it, then you find the time. I didn’t want to do anything else, so I worked out quite early on that I was just going to have to get on with it. I don’t believe in anything like waiting for the muse to strike, if I have time, I sit down and write, because once you have words on a page you’ve got something to work with.

What are you favourite novels? authors? Why?

I’m always drawn to books that tell a good story about characters that feel totally real to me in beautiful language. Not much to ask then! I do however think that the ways books are marketed in such specific genres now means that lots of readers miss lots of greats novels because the book has been pigeon-holed. But actually really good writers, like Margaret Atwood for example, are happy to cross genres and just write amazing books. Rebecca by Daphne Du Murier and Charlottle Bronte’s Jane Eyre are, in my opinion, examples of books which have been allowed to become the classics they so rightly deserve to be because of when they were published. If they were published now I have no doubt they’d be marketed as a thriller and thrillers are never considered particularly high-brow. But, actually, there are some amazing writers working right now like Tana French, Laura Lippman, Belinda Bower, Erin Kelly and Sarah Vaughan (to name but a few), who are writing incredibly thoughtful, intelligent books that also tell a cracking good story.

Anyway, my favourite authors are, in no particular order, Patricia Highsmith, Margaret Atwood, Iris Murdoch, Daphne Du Murier, Carol Sheilds, Shirley Jackson, Meg Wolizer, Donna Tartt and Zadie Smith. And, in the same order, my favourite of their novels are Deep Water, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Sea The Sea, Rebecca, Unless, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Interestings, The Secret History and Swing Time.

Your last word?

I’d just like to say, whatever else, keep reading! I really hate book snobbery and truly believe there are no bad books. Just read anything that takes your fancy – obviously you won’t enjoy everything, but it doesn’t matter, every so often you’ll find a book that makes you heart sing. And that’s one of the best feelings in the world.

Thank you Araminta!!!!