B
orn in London, Evie Wyld, 39, grew up in Australia and south London, where she lives now. Her debut novel, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice (2009), won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize; her next, All the Birds, Singing, was published in 2013, the year she was named one of Granta’s best young British novelists. Her new book, The Bass Rock, published later this month, tells the story of three interlinked women across several centuries and explores the ways that men seek to subjugate women and how women fight back. In the 1700s, Sarah is accused of being a witch; after the second world war, Ruth marries a widower and becomes a mother to his sons; and in the present day Viv is lost and mourning her father. How did the book’s structure come about?
I had a newborn at the time I started writing it five years ago. I was writing when he was asleep. A couple of hours in the morning, an hour in the afternoon. I didn’t really have time to sit down and think, you know, what am I working on?
So I ended up writing lots of different time frames and probably about two other novels underneath this one. I wasn’t even sure if it was all the same book. It was really when #MeToo happened that I saw I was writing about the same thing. The same problem, just a slightly different shape, I suppose.
Which of the women came to you first?
Ruth’s story in the 1950s, because she’s based on my British [paternal] grandmother [Wyld’s mother is Australian]. She shares a timeline with Ruth. She married very young, a widower with two little boys, and then became a housewife. She was really smart, and a very interesting woman in a lot of ways, but I also knew her as an alcoholic and a chain-smoker, and someone who hadn’t really done anything with their brain and was just bored with life. Then when she died I inherited her photo albums and got these pictures of a woman who was very different from that. There were honeymoon pictures where she’s all kind of sexy and involved in life and interested. I started going down this path, imagining who she was before she was the woman I came to know.
Where does the rage and anger expressed in the book come from?
I think it’s the same anger and rage that every woman has deep down, squashed down somewhere. It probably comes from it being ingrained into us that we’re not supposed to be angry, or we aren’t angry, we’re “hysterical”, “difficult”. There are quite a few murders in the book and one of the things I was really interested in was how women historically are always told to ignore their sixth sense, the hairs going up on the back of their neck, that feeling of discomfort. Whether it’s as a child when you have to cuddle the uncle, or just that feeling that the worst thing in the world would be to be impolite. So when somebody comes up to you on the tube and asks you what you’re reading, and wants to butt into your life and you feel like if I say “please leave me alone”, what’s going to happen is this tirade of “I’m just trying to be friendly”. All the feeling that you don’t even register any more – every time somebody passes you on an empty street in the dark and you have this sort of countdown in your head and you’re like, “Nope, it’s all right, I don’t need the keys in the fist.” And the fact that that is just part of your life.
Have you experienced any of the horrendous things that occur in the book?
I’ve had my drink spiked, which, thankfully, didn’t end badly. It was at a publishing party in London. What happened was I woke up with some quite elderly man snogging my face, and then I kind of pottered off. Other than that, it was a total blank. I managed to get in a taxi – or got put into a taxi – and called my boyfriend, now husband, and he said that I was just completely incoherent, and I had to hand my phone over to the taxi driver. [When I got home] I didn’t recognise him. I’d drunk three glasses of wine and I’m quite a good drinker.
The thing that amazed me was that, when I started talking to my female friends about it, a huge number of them had it happen to them, and far worse. But it just wasn’t something they’d talk about... it’s the nature of the drug; it affects the chemicals in your brain, you feel guilt and dread for a long time afterwards, so you just want to forget about it.
Simon Armitage recently said that his writing is a conversation with all the writers he reads and admires – who would that be for you?
When I was a kid I read so much Stephen King, and there are parts of his work that I always feel like I’m in conversation with – about what is frightening and why. That really interests me. I think his endings are always a bit of a letdown, because it’s like... showing the monster. I think I’m always interested in how to start off big and exciting and interesting and still have an ending that doesn’t disappoint, but doesn’t wrap things up neatly. Another one would be Tim Winton and his book
The Riders.
You live in south London and part-own a bookshop, Review, in Peckham. Do you still work there? I’m not behind the counter any more. I wander in and get in the way nowadays. The manager is a fantastic bookseller and I go in and offer a hand. I bring the wine.
Do you have a writing routine?
I sort of lie about this a lot. I lecture at Kent University in creative writing and [when asked] I say: “Oh, I might get up at six and then write for two hours.” I don’t do any of that at the minute. I just fit it in when I can amongst everything else. In an ideal world, I would get up and not talk to anyone, just write for three or four hours. But I don’t.
What was the last really great book you read?
I’ve just read Megan Hunter’s forthcoming book, The Harpy, which is incredible Also, Lucy Fry’s Easier Ways to Say I Love You, a memoir about being in a polyamorous marriage.
Do you know what your next book is about?
No, I’m still really in the headspace of the last one, which hasn’t really happened before. Normally I’m desperate to get on with the next one.
• The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld is published by Jonathan Cape (£16.99).
THE GUARDIAN
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