We chat with author Lauren Beukes about her new novel Bridge, which follows a grieving daughter’s search for her mother becomes a journey across alternate realities.
Hi, Lauren! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
No pressure! I’m a South African writer, now living in London, UK, with my teenage daughter and two cats. I love board games and dinner parties with friends and great tv shows and immersive theatre and bike rides along the canals and all the sharks and weird parasites. I write novels that are probably best described as high concept thrillers or crossover or weird fiction, but usually I find out what genre they are after they come out and see where they get shelved. I’m best known for The Shining Girls, a novel about a time-travelling serial killer and the survivor who turns the hunt around which is now an excellent AppleTV show with Elisabeth Moss, Jamie Bell and Wagner Moura, but the book of my heart is Zoo City, which is a phantasmagorical noir and a love letter to Johannesburg about how we live with the things we’ve done, and oh yeah, magical animals, which also won the Arthur C Clarke Award and the Kitschies Red Tentacle. I’m so excited about the new audiobook narrated by South African actor Qondiswa James who killed it. I was a journalist for a very long time and I use those skills to do on the ground-research for my novels. I’ve directed an award-winning documentary about Miss Gay Western Cape and I was the showrunner on South Africa’s first half hour animated TV show, Pax Afrika back in the day. Oh! And I write comics from time to time too, including the Vertigo original, Survivors Club with Dale Halvorsen and Ryan Kelly, and the Fables spin-off, Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom about a J-horror Rapunzel with Inaki Miranda. My novels have been translated into 24 languages, in 27 countries.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
As a kid I loved fairytales and mythology and our illustrated edition of The Hobbit. I learned how to read quicker because I got so impatient waiting for my parents to read it to me at night. My mom got me into fantasy and comics (some of which were an education – looking at you, Barbarella) and my dad got me into SF. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was five years old and I found out that “author” was a job you could have, as in getting paid to make up stories all day. I didn’t realize how hard that would be in reality.
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 Hobbit illustrated edition.
The Tree That Sat Down by Beverly Nichols, a lesser known cult classic kid’s book about nefarious witches who turned people into toads I think? I remember it being delightfully weird.
The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson, a British 2000AD comic about a girl and her robot dog living in urban poverty who needed to “get out”, has had a lasting impact. I read it as a teen and re-read it once every couple of years.
Your latest novel, Bridge, is out August 8th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Grieving daughter discovers reality-tripping artefact.
What can readers expect?
The reviews I’ve seen have used the word “wild” a lot. It does go to some weird places, across shifting realities, although they’re all broadly compatible with ours (no Spider-Hams or sausage fingers here to shout out two of my favourite other multiverse stories). It’s the story of a young woman reeling in the wake of her mother’s death and the artefact that Jo left behind, the ‘dreamworm’ that Bridge thought was part of her mom’s delusion, only now it turns out that it really does allow you to move between realities and maybe, in one of them, her mom is still alive. She doesn’t know that some very, very dangerous people are also looking for the dreamworm and that her search is going to have devastating consequences. It’s a novel about the tangled relationship between mothers and daughters, about the family we choose and the choices we make. And it’s also about consciousness and mind-altering music, some good neuroparasitology, the impact of domestic violence, vital friendships, how we shape our own real.
Where did the inspiration for Bridge come from?
Oh man, lots of places. I’m a fan of alternate universes in general, I’m definitely from the BerenSTEIN Bears universe and would quite like to get back there please, because I suspect things might be going better? And of course, in a real way, I *have* recently switched realities, immigrating from South Africa to the UK.
I’m interested in choices, the roads untravelled, the idea of having a do-over or being able to follow a different track to a whole other kind of life – and what if you could actually do that, explore your other lives, otherselves? What if it was better over there?
The truth (in a post-truth era) is that we already live in alternate realities from each other. My experience of the world is so radically different and fundamentally incompatible with someone who is an anti-vaxxer for example, or a climate change denier, or a Trump voter or an Andrew Tate devotee or a slavery apologist or a TERF. We live in very fragile bubbles of reality that overlap and intersect. It’s about the stories we tell, which stories become dominant cultural narratives, which ones we have to fight with all our guts and heart. It’s so weird to live in a schism that is getting wider and more horrifying.
On a personal level, after a very recent ADHD diagnosis, I realized how paralysed I’ve been by choices, and the overwhelm of all those could-have-beens, and it’s something very much reflected in Bridge who is absolutely flailing in her own life until her mother’s death forces her to make some very tough (and possibly some very bad) decisions.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Dom is one of my favorite characters of all time. I love how they’re so very much themself – and that they’ve fought to get here, to be this person, especially in contrast to Bridge who is all over the place. I admire their compassion and fire and general goofiness. I also really loved writing the antagonist, who is, without any spoilers, almost kinda justified or at least you can see how this person came to this radical zeal about the dreamworm, although her methods are indefensible.
What helps you stay motivated when it comes to writing?
A meaningful deadline, knowing that people are counting on me to deliver a book, getting over my inner critic, working in a shared studio space with illustrators and animators and designers at the desk right next to my best friend, who is also a writer, Sam Beckbessinger. And medication plus excellent therapy. Turns out I don’t need to drink eight cups of coffee a day when I have proper medicine to help my weird squirrel brain not spend all its time doing donuts in the parking lot on the motorcycle of doubt.
What’s next for you?
A new novel is pupating (sorry, I may have spent too much time researching parasites) and I have an original TV show in development with my best friends, Sam Beckbessinger and Dale Halvorsen, which we’re hoping to get cracking on as soon as the WGA Strike resolves and networks agree to pay creators fairly.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
My co-conspirators Dale Halvorsen and Sam Beckbessinger have a brilliant 90s riot-grrrls supernatural thriller about the horror of adolescence and the power of friendship out, called Girls of Little Hope.
I’m loving the Youtube DIY horror, The Handyman Method by Andrew F Sullivan and Nick Cutter which is so imaginatively disturbing with imagery that will climb into your head and make a poisonous home there like black mold.
I’ve just discovered Sarah Pinsker (after multiple Hugo and other major award wins) and her short stories are a strange delight, very much in the vein of Kelly Link and Karen O Russell.
