But now, looking back, I wonder if that might actually have been an advantage. What was your biggest challenge in writing or in researching for The Maidens?Īt the time, the biggest challenge was that I had to write it during lockdown. Also, from a genre perspective, a Cambridge college provides a perfect enclosed location for a Christie-esque thriller. I studied at Cambridge University and have always wanted to write about that experience. The setting was a big part of why I wrote the book. How important is the Cambridge University setting to The Maidens? But honestly, I don’t tend to impose moral judgments on my characters, and I think of psychotherapists as very much like the rest of us: flawed, troubled, deeply human.
I would say “ambivalent” as opposed to “cynical.” I’ve encountered many wonderful therapists over the years, but also an equal number who were as dysfunctional and damaged as any of their patients. Would you agree that in both The Maidens and The Silent Patient, your first novel, you take a cynical view of psychology? Grief led me naturally to Tennyson-I started reading In Memoriam for inspiration and then gradually it worked its way into the book. In this case, I began with Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides, thinking about the themes of sacrifice and grief. Growing up in the Mediterranean, I was heavily influenced by Greek myths and tragedy Greek mythology shaped my creative imagination-it’s very much where I “live” as a writer.
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