When I was seven, I won the school ‘Avid Reader’ cup. It’s the moment I always go back to in my head if I’m asked for a happy memory. It came as a total, blissful surprise.
Julia Gray
I have chromatic-lexical synaesthesia, meaning that I see letters, numbers, some symbols and shapes, and piano keys in colour. It has always helped to shape my choices when writing and means that I tend to put in far too many sensory details.
Every time I encounter a book, television program or film that I really love, I ask myself how easy it would be to turn it into a musical.
I can’t act and have always wished that I could. That’s why it was so interesting to situate Little Liar partly in the world of acting: auditioning for parts, preparing for roles, performing on stage. Some scenes are set at the Cannes Film Festival.
I am fascinated by using songwriting to rework stories. My 2014 album Robber Bride did just this - I rewrote turning points from all kinds of sources, from Margaret Atwood, Lionel Shriver and John Donne to tales from Greek mythology. When I wrote Little Liar, it occurred to me to try and do the same thing with my own material. Because Nora is a liar, it was really interesting to allow her to take yet another perspective on her own tales.
People often ask me why my subject matter is so dark when I appear to be (and hopefully am) such a cheerful, upbeat person. I’m not entirely sure why this is the case, but I think it’s better this way around.
Songs for Nora Tobias is my sixth album, and my third solo album. Over the years I’ve experimented with lots of different styles and kinds of instrumentation, but always revert to the palette that suits my style best: piano, voice, strings (in this instance, double bass). I wanted a very simple instrumental setup this time so that the lyrics have plenty of storytelling space.
Little Liar was written in Scotland, looking out across Loch Long, at an interdisciplinary artists’ retreat called Cove Park. The tranquil, solitary setting was the perfect place in which to delve into the devious mind of Nora Tobias, and I was so struck by it that I used it as the inspiration for one of the locations in Little Liar.
I’ve been performing music for half my life. My first gig was at the legendary Kashmir Klub in Marylebone; Nerina Pallot, KT Tunstall and Paolo Nutini all played there early on in their careers. It took me nearly ten years to conquer my stage fright, though.
I find it easier to create difficult characters whose moral compasses and choices differ to my own; every time I try to write someone who is conventionally ‘nice’, they come out quite boring. Nora is a complicated person, but I hope that readers will still stay on her side, even when she does things that they might not.
Little Liar by Julia Gray is out on 7th June