The award-winning author on the joy of satire …
Henrietta McKervey is the author of A Talented Man, Violet Hill, The Heart of Everything and What Becomes of Us. She has a Hennessy First Fiction Award and won the inaugural Maeve Binchy Travel Award. She curates the Echoes festival, and contributes to the Irish Times, Sunday Independent and Brendan O’Connor show on RTÉ Radio 1. Her latest suspense thriller The Woman in the Water is inspired by a “lost” character in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
“Much as I love fiction inspired by fiction, I also have a soft spot for novels about novels. Not because I think the process of writing is inherently fascinating (it isn’t), but because fiction that interrogates itself can be enjoyably self-deprecating while simultaneously celebrating the power of storytelling.
I’m currently re-reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, a hilarious satire of gothic novels. Written in 1799, it is testament to Austen’s skill as a chronicler of the interior lives of women that the novel’s zingers land perfectly today. Some other favourites in this genre include The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge, revenge story The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz and About the Author by John Colapinto.” @henriettamckervey
The Woman in the Water by Henrietta McKervey (Hachette Books Ireland) is out now.
