Her psychological thriller set in small-town Northern Ireland looks at the complex themes of female friendship, class disparity, complicity and murder. The book opens on the morning after a New Year’s Eve party, when best friends Keeley and Jude wake up to find Keeley’s boyfriend stabbed to death next to them. It’s no surprise the TV rights have been snapped up…
It was such an interesting challenge. Jude and Keeley’s friendship is tested from essentially the first line of the prologue, so it was important to me to get that super close bond weaving in and out of the scenes from the off, in both the present tense police procedural chapters and in the flashbacks. Being able to explore how the girls interact with one another in times of great stress was actually helpful, as opposed to hindering – it is usually in troubling, difficult times that we see the best and worst in people, and when friendships are pushed to the limit. The question lies in whether a relationship is stronger or broken afterwards. I think it’s a matter of opinion what happens to Jude and Keeley, at the end.
How important was getting the characters of Jude and Keeley just right?
The entire story relies on a read er believing and being interested in the girls’ relationship – I always think, ‘I’ll follow a well-drawn relationship down any plot hole’, so for me this was the most important bit. A reader has to accept the claustrophobic friendship and understand why the girls are close, but their distinct personalities need to – and I hope, do – shine through. I think the reason they work, certainly in childhood, is because they’re on opposite ends of the scale: Keeley is so confident and loud and bold, while Jude is happier keeping to herself and watching the world around her. I think they fit together: Keeley comes first, but she doesn’t make any sense unless Jude follows. While they do start to flatten that curve as they get older, they grow together, around each other almost.
The characters aren’t necessarily likeable. Was that deliberate?
In a way, yes. There is an awful lot of ‘people not doing things’ in the novel – there are only one or two instances of a character actively doing something terrible, and the rest of the deplorable things that happen are down to a distinct lack of any active decision. Mack ‘does nothing’ twice, Chris ‘does nothing’ at the end, Linda ‘does nothing’ for Jude’s entire life, and we see Jude paralysed with fear twice in the novel, ‘doing nothing’ to help herself or, later, Pete. I also think my characters bring out the worst in each other, which creates an interesting tension.
If we met them all at another time though – on say, a day when a dead body wasn’t discovered and the characters weren’t all dying of a hangover – I think we might see the best in them. There are some likeable traits in there – mercurial Keeley’s thirst for life, Jude’s sensitivity, Mack’s thoughtfulness.
The story jumps backwards and forwards. How do you think this benefits a reader?
I think for the story I was trying to tell, it was necessary to have the two timelines running concurrently, with the July 2018 timeline filtered in, too. I hoped this would help a reader understand the girls’ motivations a bit more, and some of the flashback childhood scenes even mirror what’s happening in 2018-2020 on a smaller scale. Watching that bond form first-hand is important and I hoped it would add a more emotional resonance to the scenes, especially to the ending. The flashback scenes help with the pace of the novel too, and I always imagined a reader learning of the incident with the dead bird, for example, or Jude and Keeley sharing the Crème Egg, maybe at the same time that Detective Rice is hearing about these things too, over the course of his interviews with the girls.
Was it important for you to set She and I in Northern Ireland?
Absolutely. I had been writing She and I in my head for about five years before I put pen to paper properly, and the girls were always Co Down girls. The place names are fictionalised, but the locations I’ve described are real enough. Vetobridge is an amalgamation of my hometown and my nearest seaside town, though maybe a little shabbier, a little sadder. Place is so important to me when I’m reading fiction, and really good authors can make a town (or even just a house), another character to which their protagonists can relate and with which they can have a really interesting dynamic. I hope I’ll be able to do that someday, and I expect Northern Ireland will be the location for everything I write. I know it, I love it, I want to explore it.
NI fiction has – thankfully – grown in popularity in recent years. Why do you think that is?
I’m so glad that it has! The number of things I’ve seen on TV lately where I’ve been able to say ‘Oh, I’ve been there!’ or ‘I know where that is!’ is wonderful, and a completely new phenomenon for me. A lot of detective fiction and literary thrillers are set in London, and that’s fair enough – it’s a melting pot of everything and a writer’s dream for inspiration, but I think Northern Ireland is still unfamiliar enough, maybe ‘exotic’ and different enough, that it’s growing in popularity. The island of Ireland in general is getting a lot of attention in the literary world with Normal People and all of Tana French’s stunning books – I’m so happy that writers like French are showing the world that there is a lot to explore here too, in Dublin, Belfast and beyond.
How good are you at receiving positive feedback/criticism?
Criticism and positive feedback are always welcome – if someone has a suggestion that might make a character more believable or one that might take the plot in a different direction, I’m keen to hear it, always. If something isn’t working for a reader, I want to look into it.
The thing about being a writer is that you get better every single day and you always will. I’m 27 and I know I have an awful lot to learn and a lot of life experience to get behind me, and that’s fine. Good reviews are, of course, so encouraging. Writing is a very isolated experience, so having someone say ‘hey, good job’ can be all the validation you need sometimes. Bad reviews will come too, but each of us could go online right now and read a terrible, single-star review of our all-time favourite novel. People like different things and we’d all be so bored if that wasn’t true.
She and I by Hannah King, Raven Books, £14.99, is available now
