We chat with author Nicholas Binge about Dissolution, which follows a woman who dives into her husband’s memories to uncover a decades-old feud threatening reality itself.
Hi, Nicholas! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! I’m an author who lives in Edinburgh with my wife, two kids, and our dog River. I write ‘speculative thrillers’, which is basically a catch-all term for genre-blending sci-fi, horror, mystery, and fantastical stories that will hopefully keep you up late at night turning pages and unable to put the book down. When I’m not writing, I do a bit of lecturing in creative writing at Edinburgh Napier University, I like to go for long walks where I think about stuff, and play extended and extremely nerdy tabletop RPGs with my friends.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Storytelling has always been part of who I am, particularly SFF and speculative stories. I first picked up Tolkien in charity shop when I was about 8 years old, entranced by the cover, and lost myself in fantasy ever since. At the same time, my dad was feeding me a solid diet of classic sci-fi, from Asimov and Clarke to Dick and Herbert. I think I’ve been reading varied speculative stories for so long that the elements have become more than just an inherent part of my writing process; they’re ingrained into my identity. I like to say I think speculatively: that is, I process my thoughts, fears, dreams, and relationships through the lens of possibility, turning over ‘what if’ scenarios to examine them from multiple angles. At heart, humans are storytellers, but we’re also fantastical — as a species, our earliest stories all engage with the magical and impossible to gain a deeper understanding of our own humanity. It’s how we make sense of the world, and I’ve always striven to do that in small ways with my own writing. It can be hard to meet our deepest emotions head-on. Sometimes we need to take weirder and more circuitous routes through the impossible to really understand them.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The Lord of the Rings
- The one that made you want to become an author: Dune
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: House of Leaves
Your latest novel, Dissolution, is out March 25th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey memory diving madness (yes, hyphenated words count as one word).
What can readers expect?
A novel that constantly shifts under your fingers. A novel that will keep you guessing, keep you turning the pages to find out what is going on, and hopefully keep you compelled. It’s a story about memory and identity and connection, but it’s got everything from romance to dark academia to cosmic horror buried in it. Expect the unexpected, and hopefully, you’ll come out feeling something you haven’t felt before.
Where did the inspiration for Dissolution come from?
I’ve watched two of my grandparents (on different sides of the family) succumb to dementia and memory loss. Over time, two things really stuck out to me. The first was seeing the way in which my Gran didn’t just lose her memories, but her entire identity. It was less that she couldn’t recognize her family, but more that she no longer exhibited the traits and behaviours that made her uniquely her. I found that terrifying — the idea that your identity could be scooped out of your body in that way — and it has haunted me ever since. The second pivotal moment came with my Grannie on the other side, and the impact her illness had on my Grandpa. They’d been together for decades and had the most loving relationship, but watching the emotional toll that caring for her took was heartbreaking. Though physically taxing to a man in his mid-nineties, it was never an option for him to have someone else take care of her. She was no longer the woman he married, and yet, there was the constant and persistent hope that she might return to him. Seeing this mixture of duty, hope, and guilt that he couldn’t do more to help her was tragic. It left me with so many feelings that I wanted to explore about the human capacity for love in the face of tragedy, and how we can salvage hope in situations that feel inevitable.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I just love writing the really weird stuff. The bits that make you sit up and go “What the hell is happening?” There’s a line from Daniel Craig’s stellar performance as Benoit Blanc in Knives Out where he says, “It makes no damn sense… compels me, though.” Trying to find that balance between mystery and tension is some of the most fun I have. Professor Waldman was my favourite character to write though, and hopefully when you read the book, you’ll see why.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
A fair few. Due to the relative complex structure of the narrative, with characters recalling events about them diving into other people’s memories, it was easy to lose my place in the POV and which pronouns I’m talking about. There’s a chapter where my main character, Maggie, is recalling an event where she dived into her husband’s memory of a much earlier event, where she saw herself meeting her younger husband for the first time and is comparing it to her own memory of that moment… Do I use she, or you, or I? Do I use past or present? Oh, she’s recounting this to an interviewer in the second person, too. I don’t know why I do this to myself.
The real truth is never happy unless the book feels like a bit of a stretch: thematically, narratively, structurally. It’s how I learn and grow as a writer, and it’s the challenge that makes the end result worth it.
What’s next for you?
EXTREMITY is out later this year (September) from Tordotcom, it’s a noir crime novella that gets very weird very quickly. Think True Detective if it was written by Philip K Dick. I had a load of fun with it, and it’s amazing how much madness I can pack into forty thousand words. Next year, there’ll be another speculative novel out with Riverhead (US) / HarperVoyager (UK) that I’m really proud of it. We go deep and dark in this one: underground caves, cults, and nightmares.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
I’m really hoping we get another James SA Corey book this year. I loved The Expanse, and The Mercy of Gods, the first book in their new series, was great fun. They’re meant to be releasing the second this year, but it’s not confirmed.
Confirmed books that I’m excited to pick up include Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore (I love her writing, it’s so evocative), Stephen Graham Jones’ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, and I recently discovered Mark Z Danielewski of House of Leaves fame is releasing another book this autumn! I will definitely be getting my hands on that.
