Author Interview

Laura Purcell tells Caroline Lindsay about the gruesome background to her latest books

Like many teenagers, Laura Purcell decided she wanted to be a writer but, unlike most, she eventually achieved her dream. The author of thrillers including The Silent Companions and her new book, The Corset, Laura describes the path that led to a writing career.

“When I was around 15 I wrote a few quirky Regency romances which were absolutely terrible,” she laughs. “Obviously, writing is a very difficult career path to get into, so after leaving school I went out into the world of work and just kept writing in the background,” she says. “I started off in a Waterstones bookshop, where I met my husband, and later worked in finance and local government. I was in my 30s before I achieved enough writing success to make being an author my full time job.”

Books have been a big part of her life since she was a child. “The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark by Jill Tomlinson was a big favourite. I still love that his name is Plop,” she smiles. So who or what inspires Laura these days?

“It’s usually real-life history and the horrible tidbits I find hidden there,” she reveals, before reeling off a number of classic and current authors whose work she admires.

“I have so many. Jane Austen and Daphne du Maurier are the two I absolutely adore, but I also love the Brontes, Thomas Hardy, Sarah Waters, Philippa Gregory, Kate Morton, Karen Maitland, Emma Donoghue – the list goes on,” she reflects.

Laura’s latest book, The Corset, was out in paperback earlier this month.

“It’s about a seamstress who believes she has a supernatural power to hurt people with the clothes she makes,” she says. “So many things ended up inspiring the final story: The tight-lacing craze of the 1860s, the terrible working conditions of Victorian seamstresses and cloth-makers, and a true crime that took place at a milliner’s in the 18th Century.

“All of these built to give me the idea of a corset as a crushing weapon – and the terrible sadness that would drive a person to think such a thing was possible.”

The book’s second narrator is a wealthy prison visitor called Dorothea, who tries to disprove the theory.

“Dorothea gave me a chance to play around with the Victorian pseudo-science of phrenology – the idea that you can read a person’s character based on the shape of their skull,” reveals Laura.

“Again, I’d come across this in my research and wanted to use to creepy effect in my work.”

Explaining the creative process of a novel, she explains: “I tend to come up with the plot first, then decide what kind of characters would create the most conflict in those circumstances, or would act the way I need them to.

“The individual personality develops gradually as I rewrite.” Her next book, Bone China, is out in September, telling the story of a doctor who takes a group of consumptives to live in a cave in Cornwall, believing the sea air will help cure them.

“Forty years later, a young woman comes to work in the house above the caves. Strange things begin to happen, and it all seems to be linked to what happened down there in the caves long ago,” says Laura tantalisingly. Watch this space!

The Corset by Laura Purcell is published by Raven Books, £12.99.