Will Rycroft

Angela, what's it like, first of all, hearing something like that?

And how well do you think it sort of reflects what you were trying to do with the construction of that family?

I think as well, what I found was that with each of the siblings, they are so distinct and that is a feat in itself.

Obviously, any author writing a book is creating very distinct characters, but characters who are within a family unit obviously have to share some aspects of their character because of their upbringing, but to have an individual personality,

And did that ever present a challenge to you as you were going along or were they always really clear to you sort of, I guess, visually and in their character as you were writing your way around the house?

Yeah.

When somebody first explained the idea of birth order to me, I was immediately, it was one of those things where it made complete sense.

I was just like, Madeline was only thought of birth order in the creation of your family.

Rebecca, relationships have a very different kind of feel to them in your novel.

We're not talking about a sort of dysfunctional family as such.

I sort of thought that there's a kind of detachment, I suppose, for the curator in their own life and indeed with their job.

And then we go into the court, but in a sort of almost like we're observing what's going on in a very courtly way, sort of there's sort of people moving around and people gossiping and chatting about what's going on.

Again, I just want to read a couple of comments from a couple of booksellers because it's really interesting about that dynamic.

Charlotte in Manchester said,

that they loved that the time and the place and even the gender of characters was kept vague when reading it and Jack in Glasgow said that the book entranced them with its spare and objective writing style that masks an underlying current of strong emotion and its puzzle-like structure that resists being solved like a series of evocative and mysterious sketches the more you look the more you seem to see which I thought was a fantastic comment again

Can you tell me a little bit about that dynamic of the, as I say, the detached curator sort of doing the work and putting together these scenes and then what we observe when we're actually in the court and how that's so different to what we've been talking about with these other two books?

it's interesting that each of you in your own ways have chosen the moments where specificity is really important, but also left room for the reader to do some work.

So Madeline, the sort of underlying conspiracy in your book is, is a puzzle for the reader to try and work out.

Like, is it even a thing or, you know, is it real and what's going on exactly what you're just articulating there, Rebecca was sort of leaving space for the reader to complete the picture.

And then Angela, that, that,