When NIghts Were Cold
What can you tell us about your new book When Nights Were Cold?
It begins in the 1900s. The narrator, Grace Farringdon, is excited and inspired by news and stories of the Antarctic explorers. She fantasizes about getting away from her stifling home and travelling to the South Pole. It becomes an obsession for her. She does manage to get away from home, to a women’s college, and then on to mountaineering adventures in the Alps with a group of like-minded university friends. A tragedy occurs which changes Grace’s life. On the eve of the Second World War, she looks back to make sense of these events and her own role in the mystery.
You have been compared to Barbara Vine and Sarah Waters so how does this make you feel as a writer?
They're writers I respect hugely so the comparison is nice and it’s always interesting to see the comparisons people make between writers. I don’t think about it when I’m writing though. I just want to sound like myself.
Tell us about the research required for this book.
It was a mixture of things. I'd already done some mountaineering in the Alps but went back and did more, taking notes. I often write about places I already know well so I have a strong sense of atmosphere and, if I don’t know the place, I like to go there. Some details I can get from books and photographs but I want to know what a place feels like before I can write about it.
The women's college in the book is based on Royal Holloway where I was an undergraduate and where I teach now so I'd already done some research simply by living in the building but I went back and used the college archives to find out details of college life for women in the 1900s. I spent a lot of time in libraries reading accounts of Victorian and Edwardian mountaineers, also of the Antarctic explorers. I wasn't very methodical about it but it all seemed to come together.
You studied drama at London University, so when did you decide to start writing?
I can’t remember not wanting to write. I did a drama degree thinking I would write plays but then, after college, I spent several years abroad, moving around frequently. It seemed that a novel was something I could write by myself, anywhere. I wouldn’t need actors, a director or anyone else and so it suited the way I lived. The way I write, though, usually in first person with an unreliable narrator, feels like acting. It's a kind of performance so I think the drama student in me is still guiding the pen.
What made you want to delve into the subject of turn of the century lady adventurers?
I love stories of adventurers and explorers. I wanted to write something exciting, the sort of book I would want to read. The early twentieth century is a particularly interesting time to write about women, against a background of suffragism and huge change in the world.
How autobiographical is your novel?
The pleasure of writing for me is in exploring other kinds of lives and characters. I don’t set out to have any autobiography in my fiction but, inevitably, I find things there. In some respects I can see that I'm a bit like Grace but, in other ways, we’re (thankfully) quite different.
The story is about friendship, so how important is this to you?
Very. I've moved around a lot and my friends are quite spread out around the globe but we're all close. Your oldest friends become like brothers and sisters.
What is your favourite novel?
It changes but, if I had to pick one, it would be Jane Eyre. My favourite contemporary novel is probably The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I've read it so many times and it never fails to move and fascinate me.
Which authors do you most admire?
Ishiguro, of course, and the Brontes. I admire Annie Proulx, Charlotte Mendelson, Sarah Hall, Shirley Jackson, Marilynne Robinson, Haruki Murakami and Orhan Pamuk. I love Daphne du Maurier’s novels too.
What is next for you?
I'm working on a novel set partly in Japan from the 1930s to the 1950s. It's a psychological thriller but also a love story.
What is your advice for aspiring novelists?
Like learning to sing or play the piano, the more you practice, the better you’ll become. It takes time to be able to do the things you want to in your prose, time to know the sound of your own voice and what you can do with it. Tenacity is important.
When Nights Were Cold by Susanna Jones is out now in paperback (Picador, £7.99)
Female First Lucy Walton