DARK OBSESSION
Nightmares of a notorious murderess inspired a chilling new novel
Every now and then a book chooses you,” says Melbourne author Sarah Schmidt, who fell under a spell in 2005 when, browsing in a secondhand bookshop, she came across the bloody story of Lizzie Borden, the infamous American accused of butchering her father and stepmother at their Massachusetts home in 1892. That night, a grinning Lizzie began haunting her dreams. “I don’t think I realised it at the time, but there was clearly a particular story hidden underneath the crime that resonated with me,” Schmidt tells WHO. “I just needed a little prodding.”
The nightmares inspired her debut novel, See What I Have Done (Hachette, $32.99), an evocative reimagining of the infamous axe murder that’s drawing plenty of buzz. “I’m so used to being alone with this book ... to see it out in the world feels a little unreal,” says Schmidt, who welcomes feedback—the creepier the better. “I wanted readers to feel they were stuck in that house with the Bordens, so when people say they felt anxious and disturbed reading this book, I take it as a compliment.”
Speaking of disturbing, during her research Schmidt spent a few nights inside the Borden house, now a B&B. “It’s up there as being one of the most surreal and creepiest things I’ve ever done,” says Schmidt, who heard a woman sobbing in the empty house and felt a ghostly hand brush her forehead as she was drifting off. “If I wasn’t writing the book I would never have chosen to sleep there—it’s an unsettling house.”
The mother of one, who works as a reading and literacy coordinator at a regional public library, has “always wanted to be a writer,” she reflects. Her next book is already on track. “It shouldn’t come as a shock to tell you that my new novel started off as a dream,” she says. “I saw a woman driving towards a mountain with her child in the back seat. Nothing is what it seems.”