‘Books aren’t meant to be just for a few months or a year’

CLEOPATRA AND FRANKENSTEIN AUTHOR Coco Mellors TALKS TO MEGAN CONNER ABOUT HER FOLLOW-UP NOVEL, BLUE SISTERS

Blue Sisters is a story of three sisters who come together in the wake of their fourth sister’s death. What made you want to explore this relationship?

While the sisters in the novel aren’t at all like mine, I think I wanted to capture that sticky, tenacious but absolutely consuming love you might have with a sibling. For me, there’s no other love like it. In therapy, we spend so much time thinking about the impact our parents have on us, but I’ve always thought that it’s siblings who have even more capacity to shape our lives.

The novel is set across London, Paris, New York and LA. What drew you to these locations?

When you’re writing fiction, there’s always so much to imagine – especially with these characters, who are a model, a boxer and a lawyer – so I wanted to draw upon the cities I knew best. London is the city I lived in until I was 15, when my family moved to New York. I wrote the book while living in a beach bungalow in LA. And Paris is where I’ve spent the most time outside of the three cities I’ve lived in. I loved this idea of capturing postcard visions: what is the one image that just is that place to me? New York features the most because it’s been most formative.

Your debut, Cleopatra And Frankenstein, was a global bestseller. What was it like to write a second novel in the glow of that success?

Although it ended up being a bestseller, Cleopatra And Frankenstein got rejected by more than 30 publishers, and took two years from being bought to appearing on shelves. Even then, it didn’t go to the top of the sales charts in the first year – it was word of mouth that gradually made it a success. I felt very little pressure with Blue Sisters because I had mostly written it by the time Cleopatra And Frankenstein came out!

It took you five years to write Cleopatra And Frankenstein. What motivated you to keep going?

Mostly the faith that it was getting better each time – the feedback was, ‘It’s good but we’ll pass’, so I wrote draft after draft. For me, the biggest disappointment of writing is the difference between what you imagine and the language that comes out – it can be excruciating. But I also believe that books aren’t meant to be just for a few months or a year – I love the idea of creating something that stands the test of time, and that people might go back to in different eras of their lives.

Addiction is a theme in both novels. As a former addict, what made you want to write about that experience not once but twice?

Every writer has topics or themes they’re subconsciously bound to, perhaps until we work through whatever it is that we’re trying to understand. I am an addict, my family is full of addicts, my friendship group is full of sober addicts – it’s informed so much of my life. Having said that, I wouldn’t want a character to always come to the same conclusions about their experiences that I did. I want them to live on the page, beyond my life.

You got sober at 26, a year into writing Cleopatra And Frankenstein. Do you think your recovery had a direct impact on you producing your best work?

Oh, definitely – I think we’re all familiar with that stereotypically male trope of the intoxicated writer, but I can honestly say it’s the greatest impediment to work that I’ve ever experienced. While I wrote through my 20s, I just didn’t have the clarity of mind that I do when I’m not numbing myself with a substance.

Why was life after loss a theme in Blue Sisters?

Most people find a way to live with loss that expands their life rather than just retracts it, and the question I wanted to answer was, how? When I first started writing Blue Sisters, my own experience of loss was limited – my mother lost her father when she was 10, and then her sibling when she was a teen. When she read the book, she wondered how I’d been able to get inside that head space. Then as I came to write the final draft, I had a miscarriage and I think that grief seeped into the final version.

What will your third novel be about?

I’m writing it at the moment – it’s set in Paris and is about the question of whether or not to become a mother. If Cleopatra And Frankenstein dealt with the concerns of my 20s and Blue Sisters looked at how to live an adult life, I’m working my way through the ages.

Blue Sisters (4th Estate, £16.99) by Coco Mellors is out 23rd May