The first five pages: Phoebe Wynne introduces her new novel

EJ o s e p h i n e C r o n k NTERIN THE RUINS G

Read the opening of The Ruins at

Feminist gothic novelist Phoebe Wynne walks us through the opening of her chateau-set new novel The Ruins

The Ruins is my second novel, and unlike many second novels, it was wedged in my imagination all the time I was writing my first, Madam. When the time came for me to write it, the words flowed easier than ever before – from the opening, to every plot point, to the height of the climax and the slow ease of the resolution. I can ’ t tell you exactly why, but just like my protagonists – and hopefully the reader – I was swept up by the decadent summer holiday, the intrigue, the tragedy, the horror, and the revenge contained within the pages.

The Ruins begins with a prologue. Prologues seem to be a popular trend in contemporary literature, and they are something my agent and my two editors encourage. It is a promise, a dash of excitement, a taste before the reader is launched into the novel. I imagine the prologue is designed for two things: to give the reader a taste of the writing – the themes, the setting, the general colour – and to give the reader a sense of where you ’ re going, a glimpse of the ending, perhaps, which was the case in my first novel. The prologue in The Ruins doesn ’ t refer to the novel’ s ending, but gives a sense of place, or atmosphere, and a taste of the bigger picture. More significantly, it shows a catalytic event that happens just hours after the novel’ s beginning time, an event – the aftermath of a car accident – that changes everything for everyone and sets a standard for the rest of the novel. Lastly, it tells the reader what I am trying to say about damage, accountability and the difference between men and women in the world I’ ve created.

For me, writing inspiration comes like a knock on the head. My first knock with The Ruins was watching the Sky TV show Patrick Melrose. After loving the series of books by Edward St Aubyn, I was thrilled to catch up with the TV series – but the second episode floored me. The young Patrick was on holiday with his dysfunctional parents, continually neglected and terribly abused amidst the glimmering glory of their sunny French chateau and his parents ’ visiting friends. I recognised the small boy ’ s suffering as clearly as if a hand reached through the television and grabbed me by the chest. Was this a genre, I asked myself, has my story got a place here? The answer was yes. Even if the answer had been no, I would have felt forced to write it. The inspiration forced me forward.

Then came the novel’ s beginning. The opening of a novel must strike the balance between exposition, and good writing. To give away the information in a gentle, unassuming manner and woo your reader with your woven words through every paragraph. This craft was much easier in The Ruins, hopefully because my writing improves as I go from book one to book two, but also because the world

building in my first novel was colossal. Madam ’ s world is a boarding school in an extreme location filled with multiple characters, while The Ruins is a domestic drama set in France, on holiday, something perhaps much more in tune with the general reader – and yet, being more attainable meant that I had to get it exactly right.

For me, the setting is a crucial part of picking up a book and carrying on with it. By that I mean the place, the season, the era, and almost a sense of ‘ set design ’ . Right from the beginning of this novel the stage is set: the house is glowing like a cream-white jewel, and the evening is lit up for the Ashby ’ s party. This first paragraph changed in the edit, and was brought forward to the very beginning so that we ’d have those images in the reader ’ s mind from first glance. It gives the prologue an immediate sense of place and atmosphere.

The narrative can then elaborate to establish the protagonist and the world around her. She is a child, so she sees things directly – but not clearly at all – more so than any adult protagonist. The reader has seen a glimpse of Ruby in the prologue, a girl with red hair and frowning eyes, but she appears more fully in the first chapter. She is not at ease in her own environment, even though she knows it well, and her unease is felt early on, after the end of the concert: the unseen sea was gently roiling, rumbling out a soothing encore after the heroic might of the concert. The reader learns more about Ruby via the people around her, and the party at large: how they speak, and what they wear: mothers draped in pastel silks and linens, glittering with smiles and diamonds or precious gemstones. The reader understands Ruby ’ s place in the party, and how she responds to it, Ruby felt a twinge of anguish, remembering fondly her happy school moments through neat exposition, even telling the reader about the boy she likes. The reader might feel her regret that something is ending, and worry that this is the beginning of something else.

The use of French is deliberate, too. It is simple French but enough to catch the reader off guard in the same way the guests at the party are caught off guard by the sudden arrival of the police car.

And therein lies the hook. The hook is traditional in psychological suspense and the thriller, but here I am playing with genre and so I must play with the hook. The hook would traditionally be the siren and terrifying woman, the high pitched wail of a siren; her white face wore no blood but her eyes stretched wide; the tops of her fingers were soaked red, bright against her pale her and paler skin, but for me, the hook is also the chateau, the party, the gathered crowds of people out of place. The hook is also Ruby, a child separating herself from the throng of messy, delighted children, and finding herself in a situation she can ’ t control. She is a plucky, unhappy, firecracker of a character, feeling annoyed with her small dread of more guests than [she] bargained for finding out that her father didn ’ t come to the concert, now busy with an important phone call. Even the prologue tells the reader that this story will be told from a girl’ s perspective, since the screaming woman is someone ’ s mother and not an equal. In such a way the opening is entirely thrilling for me even as a reader – but of course it should be be, since I always followed the infamous advice of Toni Morrison, by writing a book that I would want to read.

In this novel I am playing with genre, more so than I’ ve done before. I am a gothic novelist, where traditionally the young woman with her hair streaming behind her is trying to escape some oppressive masculine monster while holed up in a looming castle. In The Ruins here my heroine is a child, in a house she knows well, with not just one man she needs to escape, but many – in fact, a whole collective she needs to destroy. But my most elaborate step away from the usual gothic is the temperature. Gothic novels are cold, fearful, and biting. This novel is hot in climate and in tension, it is fierce, with the chateau crumbling and the guests sweltering. Another step towards a gothic update is my adding a dual timeline, a character from that very summer, but older, remembering and returning to confront those fateful events. My next dose of gothic newness is the feminist punch, which I cannot seem to avoid including in my writing. Finally, I add the Classics element, using mythological stories to follow alongside and add depth to the narrative as well as the characters ’ understanding. The result of this genrebending is The Ruins, a feminist gothic coming-of-age revenge story – colourful but hopefully not overloaded.

As aforementioned, my luckiest strike with this opening, and for much of the novel, is that I’ m writing from memory. I write best when I write without thinking, unconsciously, when a flurry of images flit through my mind and fall onto the page. Ruby is a version of me, just as many of my characters do or say things I’ ve always wanted to do or say – but more than that, since I was once a girl on holiday in the south of France, after an orchestra trip, surrounded by people that I both knew and feared. This means that the feelings coming through are living and breathing, and the sensory detail – the sights, the sounds, the smells – is felt through the pages just as vividly as in my memory: Ruby breathed in that smell so familiar to her, a deep, damp green pine. This also makes novel-writing easier: the brain nudges you forward, because even if the content is melancholic, the familiarity of it is warm and comforting. I imagine this is why some writers say writing is an exorcism.

Another lucky strike I had with this novel was that I wrote it with urgency. I had a story to tell – a monster to get out of me – that took me from scene to scene, almost panting as I paced through to the triumphant, violent ending. This book was written out of passion, and anger – and the agony I felt while writing helped me carve out some clarity on the page. This means that my two protagonists, Ruby and the older Mrs Cosgrove, squirm with discomfort as they meet conflict at almost every moment. The result is – hopefully – a dark beauty of a novel, hard hitting, truth telling, and rich.