A mother’s secret past and her daughter’s present collide in this richly atmospheric novel from Jane Healey, the acclaimed author of The Animals at Lockwood Manor. We speak with Jane about her latest book release, The Ophelia Girls, along with writing, inspiration, and more!
Hi, Jane! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! I’m a historical novelist who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland where I write in a cupboard office late into the night and spend my afternoons taking blustery walks across the city and up its many hills. I like to write about fading opulence, girlhood, art and desire, characters who are haunted by the past, and old houses with secrets.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I think I knew I wanted to write as soon as I realized books were written and didn’t just spontaneously come into being, but the creative writing class I took in my first year at university was really formative. We worked on a lot of found poetry and I wrote my first short story which was later shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize and published in their anthology.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
The first book I remember reading is one of the first books I learned to read from, about a girl and her pet dog. I remember following my mother’s finger across the page as we spelled out each word.
The book that made me want to become an author is The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman. Reading it as a teenager felt like a blow to the chest. It’s beautiful and dark and romantic, mythic and familiar, bitter and hopeful and melancholy and gorgeously poetic.
A book I can’t stop thinking about is The Ensemble by Aja Gabel, a stunningly intimate novel that follows the four members of a string quartet from graduate school to middle age. The prose and the characterisation, the way Gabel delves so deeply and forensically into shifting emotional landscapes, the contradictions of identity, and the way relationships can change over time or in an instant, is just phenomenal. It’s a book that makes me want to be a better writer.
Your latest novel, The Ophelia Girls, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Feverish, romantic, bewitching, unsettling, bruised.
Where did the inspiration for The Ophelia Girls come from?
The Ophelia Girls was inspired by my fascination with the proliferation of self-portraits of women and girls posing as Ophelia clutching bouquet of flowers in rivers, lakes and, more often than not, a humble bathtub, that have haunted me across image sharing sites since I was a teenager myself. Where does that impulse come from to pose as a beautiful, dying, girl, I wondered, and what does it say about the experience of girlhood? I was also inspired by memories of my own hazy summers exploring the fields, the woods, and the cold waters of the river near my childhood home. Writing it felt like a fever dream at times and I hope it’s just as bewitching to read.
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
The Ophelia Girls took me a long time to write – I had the core idea of the story more than fifteen years ago! – so I think the challenge of writing it was letting it lie fallow and not pushing myself to sit and type out unsatisfactory chapters I would only need to delete later. I think as writers our minds do so much subconscious work we’re not aware of, even if you have months away from a story or spend weeks binge-watching TV on your sofa, your brain is still working through the knots of plot and character problems and absorbing things from the world that will shape your novel. I listened to a fantastic podcast interview with Ocean Vuong recently where he talked about how, for him, walking and thinking are as much his writing practice as sitting down at his desk, maybe even more so, and I really resonated with that. Having a daily writing schedule where you have to finish a certain number of words works for some people but I’ve found it doesn’t work for me. I prefer to think of a novel as a wave that I have to wait for that then catches me up completely in its swell.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
The best writing advice was probably to write the book you want to read, the one you’ve been searching for in every bookshop and on every bookshelf, that really spoke to me and to what I felt when I was writing The Ophelia Girls. The worst writing advice I’ve received is probably anytime anyone has said that you have to use a spreadsheet to plot your novel – if that works for them, great, but it’s not for me!
What’s next for you?
I’m currently working on my third novel, which I adore and which I’d love to talk more about but can’t because I get pathologically secretive when I have a work in progress. I will only say that I’m hoping to fit in a research trip to Paris later this year…
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
I have so many book recommendations but here’s three for now:
The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy, a haunting gothic noir about a lonely woman in a world a little different from our own who channels the spirit of a man’s ex-wife and becomes enamoured with them both. It swallowed me whole when I read it and had me gasping at the ending.
The Margot Affair by Sanaë Lemoine, a tender, luminous coming of age tale about the secret love child of a French politician and an actress who becomes entangled with an older journalist and his wife, which has exquisite prose and gorgeously lush descriptions of food and cooking.
Seven Days in June by Tia Williams, an utterly glorious romance novel about two writers who share a traumatic past. It’s warm and funny and tender and wise and I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun reading a book.
