Love, Fury, and Christmas Carols

PHOTO BY GLENN LANDBERG

A Conversation with Author Samantha Silva

BY CHARLES PINEDA

Boise-area local Samantha Silva may be best known to readers for her historical fiction novels Mr. Dickens and His Carol (Flatiron Books, 2017) and Love and Fury (Flatiron Books, 2021), but she’s the first to explain that at the start of her writing career, there was no intent to be a ‘traditional’ writer at all. “I didn’t set out to be a novelist,” she said.

Rather, as she puts it, she ‘cut her teeth’ on scripts and screenplays, which is readily apparent in her vivid, evocative portrayals of such colorful eras as early 1840s London. Her prose is a banquet for the senses, creating whole-cloth the ghostly quiet of a near deserted city square near midnight one moment, segueing smoothly into raucous sounds and the sweet and savory smells of a grand Christmas party just a few chapters, or even pages, later.

“My relationship with Dickens is long—and has a lot of twists and turns in it,” Silva said.

In fact, her debut novel, Mr. Dickens and His Carol, wasn’t ever supposed to be a book. It was first sold as a screenplay on four separate occasions. Only after what Silva describes understandably as “some heartbreaking near-misses with the big screen” did she decide that it was time to regroup.

“I had to re-think my writing life, so I decided to try my hand at novel-writing. I knew that the story worked, so I thought that I ought to be able to turn this into a novel, which didn’t sound that hard. It turns out, going from novelization from screen to prose is really hard,” she laughed.

Though difficult, Silva remained undeterred. Where Mr. Dickens and His Carol offers a semi-comedic, lighter air, she was ready to tackle something different. In her acclaimed follow-up novel, Love and Fury, the central character is Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Frankenstein creator Mary Shelly. Despite the similar time period, Love and Fury’s heavier, heartfelt themes explore the ferocity of love, loss, and the power of reclaiming one’s narrative for generations to come.

Silva admits that the second book was a different sort of challenge. “You have to find the part of you that lives inside of them, and the part of them that lives inside of you, and then it’s freeing, and the work can begin to sing,” she said. It’s how she writes about historical figures, which might seem daunting to some. “They (Dickens, Wollstonecraft, etc.) begin as icons, they begin as avatars, and then, they end as friends,” Silva said.

Talking about the future is difficult for writers, especially in the age of artificial intelligence and book banning, and Silva is no exception. While her concerns are for the literary world at large, she’s also fearful for literature in Idaho, which she says is changing. “There’s cognitive dissonance living in a state that claims to prize individual freedom, but would ban a book. As a writer and a reader, I worry for our future,” she said.

Still, the page must turn. An artist is driven to create, afterall. Without putting too fine a point or date on anything, Silva says that a story collection, long in the works, will hopefully be making its way to eager readers soon.

“I want readers to have the same experiences as myself—to find part of themselves in these characters,” Silva said.