Lizzy name sees her lights in at last
Meet the winner of this year’s Daily Mail First Crime Novel competition ...
LIzzy BARBeR’s dream was to become an actress after graduating from Cambridge University with an english degree, but now her name is up in lights for a rather different reason.
The 30-year-old restaurant marketing manager has won the 2017 Daily Mail First Crime novel competition, with a £20,000 advance from leading publishing company Penguin Random House, as well as the services of a top literary agent, Luigi Bonomi.
And it’s a change of direction she’s thrilled to embrace.
‘I really wanted to act after university — I was in 14 plays while at Cambridge — and hoped to be accepted at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, but although I got through to the final interview, I fluffed my last audition.
‘But I went on to work with some really good amateur theatre groups and even performed at the RSC in Stratford-uponAvon — after that I thought, well, if I never do anything else in life at least I’ve been on stage at Stratford!
‘Then I tried working in the film industry. But when my brother asked me to help him out marketing a restaurant he was opening, we found the venture grew and grew, so I’ve stayed on board.’
Creativity clearly runs in Lizzy’s family. Her mother is an artist and, before he started running the restaurant business, her brother Jamie was a talented musician. He still plays jazz piano and Lizzy does ballet every week.
But writing has always underpinned her other interests.
‘I’ve written stories since I was a child: when I was ten I entered a writing competition for Disney and won a director’s chair, and afterwards I finished my first novel — Jacqueline Wilson was my absolute idol.
‘ Since then I’ve found going to a creative writing course really helpful and until recently I’d been working on a historical novel, based on my grandmother’s life. But I hit a wall with it and felt I needed to try something in a completely different direction.’
That new path produced her winning entry, My name Is Alice, a literary thriller following the story of an 18-year-old girl who lives in Florida with her strict, religious mother — ‘a little bit Annie Wilkes from Misery’.
A secret trip to Disney’s theme park, a place Alice is forbidden to visit by her mother, triggers memories of a childhood trauma and she slowly realises that she was abducted as a young child.
MeAnWHILein London, her younger sister, Rosie, is growing up not knowing that Alice, or emily as she was then called, is still alive but feels the weight of the family’s grief every day.
Lizzy says: ‘I just heard Alice’s voice come to me and I became fascinated by the idea of a child being abducted and what that would mean for the sister left behind, always in the shadow of this terrible tragedy, trying to live up to a sibling they don’t know.
‘ I have always had a grim fascination with stories of girls who disappear but then turn up years later, people like natascha Kampusch in Austria.’
Lizzy is convinced that her experience as an actress helped her to create her two leading characters. ‘I wrote their stories in the first person and I’m sure my background in drama helped me get inside their minds and motivations. It’s like being an actress again, but this time they say my words and follow my directions.’
The contrasting settings of Florida and north London are also vividly important aspects of the book. Lizzy drew on her memories of regular holidays at Walt Disney World in Florida.
‘I remember my mum used to get off the plane and smell the oranges when we arrived, which I have used in the book. I do remember those holidays clearly.’
Technology has also played a significant role in shaping the book, as Lizzy explains: ‘I started writing it on my phone as I commuted to work on the Tube, and in the evenings and weekends. And, thanks to the internet, I could use Google Maps to actually visualise Florida.
‘I take Alice on a bike journey and I could see on screen in 3D where she would pass an equestrian centre or a plant nursery and then I use all that local knowledge. And obviously I’ve drawn on my own life in Islington for Rosie’s story. This prize will be completely lifechanging. I tried acting and film work but now I’ve found what I should have been doing all along.’
However, it seems that Lizzy’s not the only one in her family to be forging a writing career.
‘I married George last year — we met in my second term at university — and it’s really exciting that he’s also carving out a name for himself as a food writer and won an award last year. Some Sundays we sit side by side with our laptops tapping away!’
The four judges — Selina Walker, senior editor at Penguin Random House; literary agent Luigi Bonomi; best-selling crime writer Simon Kernick; and the Daily Mail’s literary editor Sandra Parsons — agreed that Lizzy’s entry was a gripping thriller with resonances of famous kidnapping cases and that the complex web of family relationships provided huge potential for tense emotional drama.
THE JUDGES SAID
LUIGI BONOMI, literary agent ‘There is something inherently unsettling about the tone of Lizzy’s writing. There are dark and disturbing secrets here, and a creepiness that makes you feel that however much you really don’t want to know any more, you just have to.’ SELINA WALKER, publisher ‘ I love novels about complex family relationships. As soon as I started reading, it became obvious that this author knew how to tell a story. Her characters hold one’s attention and, above all, this opening chapter sets the scene and asks questions that promise much more!’