Q&A: Krystal Sutherland, Author of ‘House of Hollow’

Life, death, and everything in between, that’s where Vivi and Iris will have to search for their older sister, Grey. After months and months of hype, House of Hollow is finally here!

We chat with Krystal Sutherland—author of Our Chemical Hearts and A Semi-Definite List of Worst Nightmares—about her latest dark and gritty novel. Learn more about the three Hollow sisters, the Halfway, and the writing process of this stellar author. But be careful, she might plant some love seeds in your heart and you will not be able to escape!

Hi, Krystal! Congratulations on your new novel, House of Hollow; we absolutely adored it! First of all, could you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’m an internationally published author of novels for young adults. My first book, Chemical Hearts, was published in over twenty-five countries and was adapted into a movie starring Lili Reinhart that came out last year. I’ve lived on four continents and currently call London home (I’m trying to get back to Australia though – get me off Plague Island!).

House of Hollow is a novel that relies heavily on sensory descriptions to immerse the reader into the world of the Hollow sisters. If you had to describe your new novel by its smell, what would it be like?

It’s smoky, earthy and green – but there’s an undercurrent of rot and decay.

The atmosphere and tone of House of Hollow take a completely different direction from what we saw in A Semi-Definite List of Worst Nightmares. Do you feel like your writing process has changed along with those as well? In which way?

I’ve always read and written about the supernatural; I actually wrote three unpublished manuscripts before Chemical Hearts, which were all fantasy and/or thrillers. I’ve never enjoyed creating anything as much as I did House of Hollow, because it’s the kind of book I’ve been trying to write for a decade: lush, dark, eerie. After publishing two books, I finally felt like I was good enough as a writer – that I had the necessary toolkit – to do the story justice. It felt like coming home!

The Halfway—the liminal place between life and death—and its effects on the human body are a truly enthralling, but what is the inspiration behind it? And how did you develop it as a concept?

Like the characters themselves, The Halfway as a place developed slowly over multiple drafts. I didn’t decide that it was a place between life and death until the very last draft, when my editor said that it reminded her of Hell in the Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come. It was at that moment that everything clicked for my. It seems so obvious, in retrospect, that it’s a kind of limbo. Those instants of epiphany are my favourite part of the writing process.

Out of the three Hollow sisters—Grey, Vivi, and Iris—who was the hardest to shape as a character? And who do you identify the most with and why?

I’m probably most like Iris, who’s quiet and studios and keeps her head down. Vivi and Grey were a lot more fun to write though! They’re dream girls. They’re the women I wanted to be when I was growing up. Vivi is rough and wild and heavily tattooed. Honestly, she’s borderline feral, a ball of walking chaos. Grey is the opposite: The height of glamour and the embodiment of control. I think Grey is the most morally grey (and appropriately named) character in the book, so she was probably the hardest to shape, because she’s balancing on a knife’s edge between relatable and monstrous.

The three sisters’ powers and beauty are both a great weapon and a curse, because while they make things easier for the girls, they also bring the worst out in people. Could you expand a bit on that? Is it possible to translate it into current social issues?

The way these three sisters look – and their reactions to their beauty – is very much a commentary on how we treat women and girls in society. All three of them are very aware of their beauty and the dangers that come along with it. Grey has weaponized it; Vivi has tried to rebel against it; Iris is uninterested in participating in it to the point that she doesn’t wear perfume in case it’s interpreted as some sort of invitation. Together they are very much a critique of the “she was asking for it” cliché that we hear time and time again after women are assaulted.

Death, grief, and loss are very much constant elements in your novels, and House of Hollow is no exception. Why do you feel it is important to talk about these negative feelings to accept them as one more part of life? What do you hope your readers learn from it?

Those are the stories I’m most drawn to – and I think others are drawn to them as well, because we’ve all experienced grief and loss, or at least we all know we will experience grief and loss at some point. They are among the rawest of human emotions. I think reading about death in literature both a) helps us to work through our own losses and b) prepares us for losses we may experience in the future. My partner was quite sick with COVID in December/January. At the time, I was reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, which is about the grief of a child dying from plague. It was honestly miraculous to read my exact feelings there on the page, like the book had been written exactly for me exactly when I needed to read it. (My partner is fine now by the way!)

To wrap things up, if each of the Hollow sisters could recommend a book to our readers, which would they be?

Grey would recommend something obscure and slightly pretentious, so probably Daemonologie by King James VI of Scotland. Vivi would recommend something underground and difficult to acquire: let’s say the mysterious Tales from the Hinterland from Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood (except it’s now a real book – and not that hard to find anymore!). Finally, Iris would recommend a contemporary YA, since she has no interest in the supernatural: You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson and Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo are her jam.

Finally, what’s in store for the future?

I’m working on the draft of my fourth YA novel right now – and a horror movie screenplay! I’ve always been interested in screenwriting, so that’s something I’ve been pursuing in London.

Will you be picking up House of Hollow? Tell us in the comments below!