We chat with author Nydia Hetherington about Sycorax, which is a beautiful imagining of the life lived by the great witch Sycorax before her banishment to the island in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. PLUS we have an excerpt to share with you at the end of the interview!
Hi, Nydia! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello! Well, I was born on the outskirts of Liverpool and lived on the Isle of Man as a small child. But mainly, I grew up in West Yorkshire, in the then still industrial town of Leeds, where we moved to when I was still quite little. I’ve always been a daydreamer and I think that’s where my love of stories come from. My background is in theatre. I was a performer and theatre maker for many years before writing fiction. At 30 I moved to Paris where I continued my theatre training and set up my own theatre company. After ten years I came back to London and started writing stories and scribbling prose. I don’t know why or how I came to suddenly start writing like that, it just happened. I couldn’t stop filling notebooks with ideas and dark tales. So, at the age of 40 I went off to university to do a Creative Writing degree, and that’s where I started working on my first novel. Along with writing, the other guiding force in my life is the systemic autoimmune disease Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was diagnosed during the first year of my degree, and it is a big part of my everyday life. Being unwell takes a lot of time and effort!
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I have always loved stories, passionately so. As a child I believed in fairies (I still kind of do). I lived on the Isle of Man and magical beings were abundant on the island, so that helped feed my imagination. I was always making up stories and creating worlds as a kid and I just never grew out of it. Writing is a different matter, though. I wasn’t a good student as a young person because I had a very short attention span (I was too busy daydreaming to apply myself), so I thought I wasn’t clever enough to be a writer. The stories in my head eventually turned into plays and theatrical works, though. It wasn’t until I didn’t have access to the theatre world that I started writing. And then, I couldn’t stop.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
- The one that made you want to become an author: Wuthering Heights
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Can I have two? One Hundred years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits
Your latest novel, Sycorax, is out February 25th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Dark. Hopeful. Painful. Magical. Shakespearean.
What can readers expect?
The resilient rage, love and forgiveness of an unwell, silenced woman.
Where did the inspiration for Sycorax come from?
I’ve been a Shakespeare fan since my teens and had RSC playbills on my wall next to my David Bowie posters. In my early twenties I was cast in a bad production of The Tempest and the absence of Caliban’s mother, the witch who seemed a foil for so much of the play but isn’t in it, fascinated me. I couldn’t get her out of my head and felt I needed to find a story, a voice for her. It took me a while, but eventually I found my way to her through feminism and illness, and finally through the isolation of shielding from COVID.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved writing Atlas. In my novel she is Sycorax’s mother and the source of so much of her magic. She is wise and sexy, communes with birds and the moon. Atlas is also very human and although she sometimes seems fearless, is easily broken when pushed too far. I felt a deep to connection to her.
Can you tell us a bit about your process when it came to plotting out and writing Sycorax?
I did a lot of reading around The Tempest. Everything from critical theory to poetry. Then I set myself a vague timeline for Sycorax’s life with what I knew. I had her birth in Algiers at the start and her arriving on Shakespeare’s Island at the end and then I filled-in the gaps. I’d never written like that before. Normally I hit the page with words and see where they take me. Knowing where she needed to be at the end of the novel gave me a framework and it was strangely freeing. I could do anything within those given parameters with the safety of having a solid end point in sight.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
I wanted my imagined 16th century world of Sycorax to be as if seen through the eyes of Shakespeare and his audience, while also speaking to and coming from a recognisably 21st century voice. So, I had to try and free myself from my constant research into history and flora and fauna and temperature and climate and dates and everything else that caused me a great deal of anxiety to ‘get right’. I was terrified of making awful mistakes so chained myself to source material for a while and got myself into all sorts of knots. When I allowed myself to remember that Shakespeare himself made many errors (and I’m not saying I purposefully wanted to get things wrong, far from it) it was a case of finding a balance so that I could free up the writing a bit. Keeping some continuity with The Tempest and Shakespeare’s universe was really important to me. After all, it’s the genesis of Sycorax and among other things, my novel is in many ways a homage to Shakespeare the poet playwright, a sort of creative manifestation of my lifelong love of his work.
What’s next for you?
I have a few ideas for books and have written some tentative lines towards another novel. I will just keep writing for as long as I can, really.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao is high on my list. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to read it yet and I am itching to get to it.
I can’t wait for Essie Fox’s Dangerous, to be published by Orenda books this spring. It’s Lord Byron gothic loveliness wrapped in a detective novel. Perfect!
There’s also a book out in summer by Laura Elliot called Awakened that I’m very excited about. It’s her debut, a folk horror fable set in a near future London. The novel examines the idea of monstrousness, and I can’t wait for it. It’s published by Angry Robot.
Excerpt
Prologue
It is cold. The island hums. It knows I cannot sleep and tries only to soothe me. Moonlight touches my face. I lift my chin a little, bathe in the brightness, and blink. White beams reach like arms into my cave as I crouch on the smooth rock at its mouth. As always, the Moon’s beauty makes me gasp. Hairs rise on the back of my neck. I like the sensation. Resting heavily upon my staff, my trusty aid, still fragrant with the sap of the tree it came from, I enjoy the fresh bite of the cool night air. It will be hot when daytime comes, sweat will cling to us. As I shiver, the song of the waking island risks lulling me back into slumber, even as its scents of hibiscus, mushroom, and mint make me thirst for the day and its heat. How I love the contradiction. I try to stretch, but my limbs are too stiff and ache. In truth, I am racked with pain, but no more nor less than usual. I shrug, and turning towards a snuffling, snoring mound behind me, cannot help but smile. There’s no sadness here.
My son sleeps.
Spindle-limbed and chubby-faced, tucked into his bed of leaves and moss, of spider silk and crow feathers, he is safe. The Moon’s light pools about him while the steady flicker of my everlasting candle, the eternal flame I brought to this place when he was but a fish in my belly, dances beside him. It leaps gently at each outward breath. I see his long hair, lying like a blanket, ink black and thick across his berry-brown back. It is woven through with seashells, mother-of-pearl, shining fish scales, crab claws and fingers of brittle white coral, all manner of things he’s found washed up on the beach of this, his paradise playground. How he loves to adorn his body with the stuff of the island.
His island.
He reminds me of my mother.
I watch him breathe. The gentle ebb and flow of air, in and out, as the cage of his body lifts and falls. I marvel at his eyes flickering behind their lids as he dreams of tomorrow’s adventures. This small stretch of land, this enchanted rock, is all the world to him. Nothing exists beyond it, other than the salty sea and the starry heavens. He belongs here and he knows about belonging. This boy needs no book to tell him which mushroom will cause palsy, which root is a sure and bitter death. Neither is his knowledge spell-gotten; a thing born of magic. It’s learned from a life of running through the forests, from fishing in the brooks and clambering through the rockpools. He understands the nature of this place better even than I who made it. After all, he was born here. Even so, I fret for him.
I sigh and shiver, thinking of how my boy has no power to charm or enchant. Why should I care? I’ve ensured he has all he requires; he doesn’t need to use magic. But my heart hurts when he pretends to be a great magician. Swooping about in his glittering child’s cape woven from beetle wings, all iridescence, like a character from the stories I told him as a babe. And how it pains me when the island’s spirits tease him, knowing only too well he has no magic in him. They laugh openly at his nonsense made-up spells and silly barked incantations. He cannot control the sprites. Often, they’re great friends, but when the pucks are in buoyant mood, they’re like bees around a honey thief, stinging and pinching him. It’s his only torment, but how he suffers for it. I had to teach a certain mischievous fairy a lesson he’ll never forget. It hurt me to do it, for I loved the spirit. But without my gifts or his father’s allure, my son is but a poppet, an amusement for enchanted beings.
But hush. My thoughts make too much noise. See how my boy shifts, suddenly in his sleep. His hands are up now. They flit around his face as if to rid himself of some swirling, buzzing things. I must stop thinking on fear and bad possibilities before they invade his dreams further, and instead send him soothing images of clear streams with frogs, bright golden fishes, and the songs of crickets. There, he settles and grows calm again. My darling Caliban, almost a man yet still very much a child, full of curiosity and play. I wish I didn’t have to leave him alone, but all the charms and spells in the world cannot prevent that now.
I’ve heard the call.
