Somerset Storyfest, The Lodger delayed, and talking Andromache's big twists
March was one of those months without big announcements or releases, but with a lot going on, much behind the scenes and much I can’t talk about.
The main event was, of course, Somerset Storyfest. Elsewhere I’ve been juggling edits on High-Rise and The Lecter Variations with preliminary work on a new standalone book and also what I hope to be the next step in Andromache Peters’ adventures. More on all that next month.
But to kick off this newsletter, there is one little announcement that’s something of a mixed bag.
The Lodger has been delayed
This will be a bit disappointing for some, but I think it’s ultimately the right choice – The Lodger, my upcoming audio exclusive sequel to The Hitchhiker, has been pushed from April back to October.
There’s no conspiratorial reason for this. The book is finished and edited and ready to go. It’s just a scheduling thing; with a lot of big releases out on Audible in April, The Lodger probably would be overshadowed, and there are better promotional opportunities later in the year.
It also makes sense given The Hitchhiker’s August print release – for readers who’ll first discover that book in physical form, you’ll have a nearly immediate sequel and there won’t be any confusion about said sequel being released before the original goes out to a whole new audience.
Somerset Storyfest
This year I was lucky enough to be invited along to Somerset Storyfest, Australia’s biggest literary festival for young readers. Naturally I was very excited, but when friends told me Somerset was big I never quite comprehended just how big. And with a couple of busy weeks leading up to the festival, I got on my plane to the Gold Coast a little less than totally prepared. But I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t done Somerset can be totally prepared for it.
After a big dinner with all the authors on Sunday night, we hit the ground running Monday morning – arriving in a school courtyard packed with food trucks, a book store and lots of excited kids. I bounced between talks and that night everything got a step more wild at the enormous Prologue Party, complete with live performers, a marching band and fireworks.
By the end of the last day I was dead on my feet, but tired in that deeply satisfied way of having had a really, really good time. I met so many cool new author friends while reconnecting with old ones. I was energised constantly by all the young readers and writers so interested and excited to hear what we all had to say. I signed far too many copies of The Hunted for disturbingly young students and as such am probably never going to be invited back.
But I hope I am. I had such a great time, it was like nothing I’ve experienced before, and I won’t ever forget it.
Wheeler’s Hill Talk
My In Conversation event at the Wheeler’s Hill Library is just around the corner – April 11. Tickets are free but bookings are essential – grab your spot here!
Bad Panel Video
The recording of my panel at BAD Festival last year with Candice Fox, Michelle Prak and Tim Ayliffe is now on YouTube. I loved this chat and learned so much from some great writers, in between a lot of rowdy laughs.
Andromache Spoiler Blog
It’s always exciting to get a book into the world and to be allowed to discuss it with readers, but you have to be a little careful with spoilers when you’re in the midst of promotion. So, staring with The Caretaker last year, I’ve taken to writing lengthy blogs that delve into all the most shocking moments for those who’ve finished the books and want to know how the twists came about. I wrote one of these for Andromache Between Worlds – check it out here!
Recommendations
If you know me at all you’ll know I am a gigantic Tana French fan. Reading her Dublin Murder Squad thrillers in 2019 was revelatory for me; not only did I love the way she played with perspective by writing essentially a series of standalone thrillers with crossover characters taking turns as protagonists (whose point of view on the same events could often be starkly divergent), but I adored how different each book was to each other, with French tweaking her writing style, themes and even genre depending on which character was taking centre stage.
So the release of her standalone novel The Searcher in 2020 was a full fledged event for me. I read every interview and review I could find. I even got up at four AM one day to watch a live panel she was doing – although to be fair this was during lockdown and time did not have the same meaning.
With that much hype it’s probably not a surprise that I found The Searcher a bit disappointing. I enjoyed the typically lyrical descriptions, but found the book slight and anticlimactic compared to her earlier novels. So when she announced after several years of waiting that her next book would be a sequel to The Searcher, I was a little deflated. I would read it, of course, but I wasn’t tripping over myself to return to that story.
I should have been. From the first pages The Hunter dug its claws in deep and refused to let go. It builds beautifully from the foundation established in The Searcher, adding new layers of pathos and tension and menace while developing the characters and creating new dangers out of their increasingly ill advised but understandable choices. Where The Searcher, to me, meandered, The Hunter sets off at a gallop and doesn’t slow down. Big moments seem to occur over every page. It escalates and intensifies and during my entire time at Somerset I found myself itching to get back to my hotel room and read more.
When, before The Hunter, Tana French suggested that this would be the second book in a trilogy I was less than enthused. After The Hunter, I can’t wait to return to this story. I also think it makes The Searcher better in retrospect. The Hunter isn’t A-grade Tana, not on the level of masterpieces like In The Woods or Faithful Place, but it’s a case of one of the greatest living crime authors showing off all the things she’s so damn good at, and that will never be less than a treat.
Another recommendation for this month is a slightly more qualified one, but still worth talking about. It’s no secret that I’m a 70s/80s horror buff, and among my favourite classic franchises is The Omen. I love those films for their atmospheric sense of creeping dread, the inventive deaths and, of course, the Jerry Goldsmith music. But unlike its fellow 70s Satanic horror property The Exorcist, the Omen series has never really gotten that much respect or demonstrated a lot of cultural endurance.
Given the franchise has progressively gotten a little worse with each sequel, I wasn’t especially hopeful for this year’s The First Omen, especially after the insult that was Exorcist: Believer. But of course I’m susceptible enough to nostalgia that a lack of hope didn’t mean a lack of excitement, and after the first trailers I started to entertain a possibly misguided suspicion that this film might surprise everyone.
So, did The First Omen land for me? Yes, with caveats. There were certain outright contradictions to the canon of the original film that annoyed me largely because they would have been really easy to get around. And the ending is a cheap Marvel-esque set up for more films that just screams studio interference and doesn’t seem to grasp that there isn’t a lot of room for continuation here.
But what fascinated me the most about The First Omen is that it’s very obvious from the start that this is a film determined to do its own thing. It doesn’t always feel like an Omen film, but that’s okay because The Exorcist: Believer and countless other shitty legacy sequels have proved how misguided it can be to try to replicate a classic original with none of the talent of those who made it.
Instead, The First Omen concerns itself with ideas that aren’t really inherent to the 70s and 80s films, but don’t stand in contrast to them either. It’s a highly engaging movie with some riveting and upsetting scenes, and while I walked out maybe a touch let down by the ending and the lore contradictions, I found myself thinking about it a lot the next day. And the day after. It’s arguably a more thematically ambitious film than the earlier ones, even if it doesn’t entirely deliver on the memorable death scenes or oppressive mood of baroque menace. Don’t get me wrong, atmosphere is not a problem for this movie, but the first three Omens always suffused themselves with an apocalyptic hopelessness even when the actual events didn’t entirely back this up. That’s not as much the case here, although not having Jerry Goldsmith handling the soundtrack probbaly doesn’t help.
The First Omen has absolutely earned its place on the shelf alongside the other films. In fact, I’d happily swap out Omen IV or the remake from my blu-ray box set to make room for this one, a film that is more worthy of the original than any since probably the second and maybe not even that.
Horror reboots or legacy sequels/prequels are so often gigantic letdowns that seem to actively hate their audiences. To get one that mostly lands is a nice surprise.
And speaking of reboots, I’m going to add a last minute addition here before I post – Ripley, on Netflix, is a fantastic reinterpretation of well trodden source material. I’m a big fan of Patricia Highsmith’s novel series and I like most of the Tom Ripley films, even if I don’t think any of the actors have quite gotten the character as written right. But Andrew Scott in Steve Zallian’s noir interpretation of the first novel probably comes closest to Highsmith’s reptilian but oddly charming conman.
At first I thought the choice to shoot in black and white was a mistake, robbing the sumptuous 1960’s Italian lifestyle of all the vivid appeal that makes Ripley want to kill to stay there. I also had doubts about casting actors in their 40s as characters originally written to be in their 20s for similar reasons – there’s a certain reckless impulsiveness that rings truer coming from younger characters, as it did in the 1999 The Talented Mr Ripley.
But as the tension mounts, the cinematography becomes an increasingly indelible part of the storytelling, immersing us in the inky darkness of Ripley’s world and forcing us to sit with a different, less comfortable kind of beauty than that of earlier takes, one that robs us of the wish fulfilment side of the Ripley story and leaving us with the murk. I’m not in totality convinced it was the right choice, but it is certainly a strong choice and one that sets this version apart from the others. This is fantastic thriller TV and I hope Scott and Zallian get a chance at exploring the rest of the books.