Interviewing AJ Ellwood

Hellooo!

Last week I reviewed and hugely enjoyed the mysterious and spooky gothic thriller The Other Lives of Miss Emily White by AJ Ellwood a tale of dopplegangers, tragic events and the pressure of the crowd. It is a fine read you should get hold of ASAP!. I was very lucky that AJ Ellwood kindly was able to answer some questions about this story and how it came about!

Hello to my favourite Womble!

How do you like to booktempt people to read The Other Lives of Miss Emily White?

It has a mysterious doppelgänger, much creepiness and dark secrets to be uncovered! It’s the story of Ivy, banished in 1864 to a seminary for young ladies, and her teacher, Emily White, who almost immediately gives rise to suspicions that she isn’t quite all she ought to be. Rumours spread that she’s been seen in two places at once – teaching a class while picking flowers in the gardens, or leaving the school and wandering its corridors at the same time. A book in one of the pupil’s possession tells of a teacher overseas who was said to have a doppelgänger, which almost caused the destruction of her school. The battle-lines are drawn: many of the girls, having taken against Emily White, are set on getting rid of her. But Ivy, already divided from the rest by her lowly origins, will do anything to keep her only friend . . .

What drew you to the Victorian period and this kind of school as a setting?

I love the era because it’s such a fabulous source of weirdery! With the foundations of people’s belief systems being shaken by geological and scientific discoveries, there was a proliferation of spiritual ideas and experimentation. I love that people could end up believing in some bizarre things for reasons that would have seemed perfectly logical at the time, such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s conviction that fairies could be captured in a photograph.

The Other Lives of Miss Emily White was inspired by a contemporary account of a teacher called Emélie Sagée, who was said to have a doppelgänger. Her pupils claimed to see her in two places at once, or even two of her in the same room. My character, Emily White, is similarly accused, though it seems that her double might well be wicked. Of course, the girls making the accusations have their own agenda, and are perfectly capable of a few nasty tricks of their own, particularly as they’re armed with the story of Sagée. And the school itself has the aim of turning out doppelgängers, of a kind – its young ladies are all supposed to become good little Victorian angels of the hearth. The setting provided an opportunity to explore the ways in which characters begin to exert their individuality and subvert social mores rather than conforming to expectations.

Your running theme appears to be people are rarely ever exactly who we see them to be – how did you plot revealing all these secrets. Was it natural or planned from the start?

It’s definitely a fascination of mine! And the answer is, yes and no. There are many accusations and counter-accusations going on in the book, often of a supernatural nature, which makes them difficult to prove or disprove. I wanted to create a situation where each character has their own agenda, casting their actions into doubt. But there was a whole tranche of stuff in the book that was a secret even from me! It didn’t click into place for some time after I’d finished the first draft and then fretted for months over why it didn’t feel like I was there yet. Then I realised there was a whole other layer to be uncovered. It feels something akin to magic when that happens in writing – hopefully the things that surprised me will surprise the reader too.

Ivy’s understanding of events due to her being a teenager is key to the novel’s success – is it difficult creating an unconsciously unreliable narrator?

It’s a part of the process I love, and I’ve played with unreliable narrators in a few books now, exploring limited perceptions and viewpoints and the way that, sometimes, we see what we want to see. In a sense, we’re all unreliable narrators of our own lives, so it seems to me a logical thing to do. I enjoy letting the reader glimpse things between the lines and draw their own conclusions, particularly where they can be different from those of the characters. In terms of the writing, it’s a case of immersing myself in a single viewpoint character’s mind and viewing everything through their eyes. The conclusions they draw have to be entirely logical, even if they sometimes get things wrong. It can be tricky when it comes to how much to reveal and how much to hide – it’s tempting to over-explain, but it’s important to trust the reader to make the leaps.  

What for you is the appeal of the gothic thriller and the gothic horror? What are your favourite examples?

I love literature of the unsettling and uncanny, stories that make us question the nature of the world around us and of ourselves. It’s often relegated to a dusty shelf at the back of a bookshop, but to me the gothic raises issues that are central to our humanity. These stories are always about us, after all, and how we react in extreme situations, those we don’t understand or can’t control. As such, it can have a beneficial effect; it’s cathartic to explore such feelings and fears in a safe environment. Plus, I love tales with a great atmosphere, and the gothic tends to deliver that in spades!

I’ve enjoyed gothic reads from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, but some of my absolute favourites are more contemporary. Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger is so vividly realised that by the time odd things start to happen, it’s incredibly impactful. I’m a fan of the subtle, where a sense of something just a little off-kilter creeps under your skin and won’t leave. Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter is another in that vein, with the addition of a main character with a wonderfully idiosyncratic voice.

What else can we look forward to from you in the near future?

I’ve been spending lots of time travelling between the east coast of Yorkshire and the south-western corner of the Peak District to work on a contemporary folk horror novel. I often look up the folklore around places I visit, and I was surprised to find that the Peaks are oddly abundant in mermaid tales. It’s a landlocked region, but each stretch of water seems to have its own legend, or in some cases, more than one. So I’ve written a novel about a family running away from a troubled past at the coast, only to find mermaids waiting for them. The novel also explores the meanings that can be found in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. It was my favourite story when I was little, perhaps because it made me cry more than any other, but it involves tragedy and the silencing of its main character and sacrifices made for someone who doesn’t love her back. I still love the fairy tale, but there’s a lot to unpick! I’m currently working on edits, but hopefully there’ll be more news coming along at some point.

What great books have you read recently?

One of my favourites of late is The Blackhouse, by Carole Johnstone. It’s intriguing and creepy and so, so vivid – one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. I loved The Night Ship by Jess Kidd, a blending of history and the present day, with a folkloric thread running through it. The Path of Thorns by A. G. Slatter is a sheer delight of storytelling. I was recently lucky enough to get an advance copy of Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes, a tale of Arctic exploration – it’s just astonishing, and left me in awe. Unquiet by E. Saxey is another that’s hitting bookshelves soon, a wonderfully slow-burn, creepy, beautifully written novel that’s well worth watching out for.