I would like two different people to finish the book and entirely disagree about what really happened. ... I’m happy with both reactions.
Melanie Golding on her thriller Little Darlings
Mothers come along with their babies and we read stories and sing songs that I’ve written about what happens in the story. But these are ‘nice’ stories — not scary ones! Melanie Golding
The opening chapter gets your attention. A distraught woman is at water’s edge, on the verge of plunging her two children into a reservoir in England’s mysterious Peak District.
But then Melanie Golding’s debut novel, Little Darlings, goes backward in time to tell us about the sinister events that brought a caring young mother to this point.
Events that are not quite of this world — Kirkus Reviews, an influential organ of the book trade, calls Little Darlings “a gorgeous, creepy, modern fairy tale” that “will strike true fear into the heart of every parent.”
Filmmaker Roger Michell, the man who brought Notting Hill to the big screen, was so knocked out by it that he went after the movie rights early on and was hard at work on a screenplay even before the novel’s publication last month.
As for the book’s 40-year-old author — well, she’s wondering exactly what forces she has set loose in writing it.
Some of those forces possibly lurk in the spooky preambles that precede each chapter. Such as this piece of advice from Irish folklore:
“A branch of mountain ash tied over the cradle protects girls against fairy abduction, as according to ancient superstition the first woman was created from the mountain ash. A branch of the alder tree protects boys, as the first man was created from the alder tree.”
In the novel, published in Canada by Harpercollins, a new mother becomes convinced that her twin boys are not her own — that something unspeakable has occurred in the maternity ward when a grotesque woman makes an unearthly appearance and gleefully hisses, “I’ll take yours and you can have mine.”
Is this an anxious young mother’s paranoia? Or is something more frightening at play here. Early readers appear divided — and this pleases the author.
“I’m happy with both reactions,” she tells Postmedia. “I would like two different people to finish the book and entirely disagree about what really happened.”
And if those very ambiguities prove frightening in themselves, that will make Golding happy too because of her own fascination for the inexplicable in folklore, fairy tales, the supernatural and things that go bump in the night.
“People read horror stories to make frightening things safe,” she says matter-of-factly. “That’s what fairy tales do, too.”
Golding cites the brilliant fiction of the late Angela Carter who won widespread praise for her revisionist and often blood-splashed reworkings of the fairy-tale tradition. “And I believe in the power of that tradition — yes.”
But what sort of power do they exercise on the life of Lauren Tranter, the central figure in Little Darlings? Whatever else, she is undeniably a young mother in distress — one early review suggested that Little Darlings contains one of the most searing accounts of childbirth and postpartum depression ever set on paper.
“I read widely but I don’t think I ever found a realistic account of what having a baby was like,” Golding says.
She describes her own experience of childbirth as “traumatic” and suggests that a lot of mothers are “not diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder when they should be.”
But, she adds, this does not deny the reality of postnatal depression, as well. That condition is present in spades in Little Darlings as Lauren copes with lack of sleep, painful breastfeeding, frightening thoughts and a husband insensitive to her fragility.
On top of all this there’s another sighting of that strange and frightening woman — this time outside the family home. Then comes a terrifying event in the park and the disappearance and recovery of the children. That’s when Lauren becomes convinced they are not her own.
“Changeling stories show up in virtually every culture,” Golding says. “And I found that in many cases, they are related to the mother having a ‘mental health’ event.”
But is Lauren simply hallucinating? There’s no clear answer.
“She questions her sanity quite a bit,” Golding concedes. “But someone once wrote that you only truly lose your sanity when you do stop questioning yourself.”
So again the reader is left with ambiguity and uncertainty — and it’s creepy.
Golding began writing the novel as part of her master’s course in creative writing at Bath Spa University. She didn’t think she was writing a thriller at the time, but realizes now that those elements are present — she does succeed in keeping readers on the edge. At the same time, she was anxious to create a genuinely human document.
“One point of the story is that everything Lauren was before she had a baby is kind of gone. Her old life as an artist and sculptor is gone. Since the babies arrived she’s seen in a new role — as the mother of twins. That’s all she is now, and that’s contributed to her mental state, as well.”
A further problem is husband Patrick, who’s scarcely a tower of strength in her hour of need. “Patrick’s behaviour is terrible,” Golding says bluntly. “He’s not a good man. Early reviewers absolutely hate him — but that’s fine. You’re not supposed to like him.”
But you do have permission to like Joanna Harper, the caring cop who enters Lauren’s life. In creating her, Golding came to like Jo so much that she’s in her next book.
By the time she started writing Little Darlings, Golding had long been active in the world of music. She was a musician and songwriter and her husband a classical singer.
And despite the horrors that her character Lauren goes through, Golding likes kids. Not just her own two, now 7 and 9, but also the many she and her husband came to know at an earlier time when they worked in child care.
“We looked after other people’s kids — sort of professional nannies.” And now she runs a weekly “baby toddlers music group” in the Gloucestershire town where she lives. “Mothers come along with their babies and we read stories and sing songs that I’ve written about what happens in the story. But these are ‘nice’ stories — not scary ones!”