by Byrne, Tanya
But then I got Miss Briggs for English Lit. Miss Briggs used to act, so when she read aloud in class we were rapt. (Her Lennie from Of Mice and Men was particularly good, if I recall.) I had no idea books could be so entertaining, so exciting, and when she took us to the theatre (it was the first time I’d been to the theatre to see something other than a pantomime), all of a sudden, the stuff we were reading in class was being played out in front of me and it began to make sense.
But as much as I enjoyed seeing the play of Jane Eyre, reading the book was still arduous. That sounds awful given what I now do for a living, but, to me, books were written by solemn – usually dead – people who said things like ergo and methinks. Girls from East London who get detention for wearing DMs don’t say things like ergo and methinks. So watching a play was one thing, but spending weeks reading a thick book with tiny writing was quite another.
Then someone brought a copy of Forever, by Judy Blume, into class and when we heard what it was about, we were hysterical. I had to wait my turn, but when it was finally passed onto me, I devoured it. Obviously, the subject matter held some appeal, but more than that, it was about teenagers, teenagers who spoke like me and talked about things my friends talked about. I didn’t think books could be like that. Some people will say that they shouldn’t, that teenagers should be reading the classics, but I think there’s room for both. After all, if I hadn’t read Forever, I don’t think you would be holding my book right now. So read. Read everything you can get your hands on. And if it makes you happy, read it again.
How did Emily’s voice develop?
I’ve been asked this a lot by writerly friends and I wish I could say that I did this, or I did that, but really, I just wrote and wrote. It’s a bit like trying to tune in an old radio; for a long time all I heard was staticstaticstatic then this voice. I had the plot, so I knew what was going to happen to her, and I kept asking myself, How would Emily react to that? How would Emily react to that?
The friends who read early drafts would sometimes say to me, Emily wouldn’t do that and I’d raise an eyebrow and think, Um. Excuse you. I created Emily, I think I’d know what she’d do. But then I’d read it back and realise they were absolutely right. By the time I was done, they knew Emily as well as I did. I hope readers will too.
What were your influences when writing Heart-Shaped Bruise?
Hamlet is one of my favourite plays so, with hindsight, it’s no surprise to find so many of its themes in Heart-Shaped Bruise – morality, corruption, betrayal. Emily’s need for revenge, her procrastination, her madness, for want of a better word. I think it influenced me more than I realised, as did all the books I love. Characters like Scout Finch, Briony Tallis, Lyra Belacqua, Will Parry, Katniss Everdeen, Holden Caulfield, Alaska Young and so many others, all shaped Emily in some way.
What was the inspiration behind the novel?
Initially, I wanted to write a novel about a girl who has to join the witness protection program when her father is murdered, so Heart-Shaped Bruise was originally from Juliet’s point of view. But then, in an effort to create more tension, I introduced Emily, Juliet’s new friend at college who wasn’t quite what she seemed. I quickly realised that Emily’s version of events was more interesting, so I started again.
How do you want your readers to feel about Emily?
This is such a hard question. I want readers to love her, to see that she’s broken, that what she did isn’t who she is. And while I’m sure most people will see that, not everyone will love her for it. After all, Emily did a terrible thing – lots of terrible things, actually – I don’t expect anyone to be TEAM EMILY, but I hope no one just dismisses her as evil.
What do you want your readers to most remember about Heart-Shaped Bruise?
People ask me all the time why I write about young adults and I tell them it’s because they feel things so intensely. The first time their best friend betrays them, the first time a boy doesn’t love them back and, even deeper than that, the first time they realise their parents are human, which is what triggers Emily’s downfall in Heart-Shaped Bruise. I hope readers remember how that felt and understand how it was enough to make Emily do what she did. I also hope Heart-Shaped Bruise reminds readers that bad things happen to everyone, but it’s how we react to those things that matters. Whether we overcome them and move on – like Juliet did – or if we let them fester and infect everything in our lives, like Emily did.
What advice would you give to aspiring novelists?
Read, read and read some more. Read everything, not just books in your genre, not just books, read newspapers, magazines, graffiti. Inspiration comes when you least expect it. You don’t even have to finish a book if you’re not enjoying it, just remember why you abandoned it and don’t make the same mistake with yours.
Most of all, be honest. If you’re not proud enough to stand on a chair, hold your book up and say, I WROTE THIS, then start again. Don’t write what you think will sell. Don’t write what you think readers will like. Don’t write what other authors write. Just write. Write until your hands shake, until the words begin to weigh on those bruised parts of you that no one else knows about and when they do, keep writing.
Which writers do you most admire, past and present?
I read pretty widely. I didn’t do a creative writing degree, so I learned to write from reading other people’s books. I read everything. I’m not sure if it shows in my writing, but if Heart-Shaped Bruise has even a little of Kurt Vonnegut’s honesty, Suzanne Collins’ energy, John Green’s humour or Nabokov’s bone-meltingly beautiful prose, I’d be happy. I’ve also recently become besotted with Melina Marchetta. I love the way she writes boys. They’re such, well, boys. I hope people will say the same of Sid.
Music has an important place in the novel. Do you listen to music when you’re writing, and if so, what?
Definitely. I used to work for BBC Radio, so music, especially live music, is in my blood, my marrow. I had different playlists for different parts of Heart-Shaped Bruise. I listened to Yo-Yo Ma whenever I wrote about St Jude’s or when Emily played the cello, and to a lot of Radiohead and Martha Wainwright when she was at Archway, not forgetting Sinatra when I wrote the scene between Sid and Emily at the wedding. I’ve been asked if that’s their song, I suppose it would be, but for me, ‘Rolling in the Deep’ by Adele always will be. I listened to it on repeat while writing most of their scenes. But if Emily had a song of her own, it would be ‘You Know I’m No Good’ by Amy Winehouse. Amy died as I was nearing the end of the final draft. I was writing the scene in the music shop when I found out and I sobbed and sobbed. I had to read the final paragraph of that chapter aloud recently, where Emily says that she would be better if she could be the girl she was when she was with Sid all of the time, and I still got a lump in my throat, even after all these months.
Is there hope for Emily at the end of Heart-Shaped Bruise?
The ending certainly isn’t a happy one for Emily, but it’s an honest one. I struggled with it, to be honest, with what note to end it on. I wrote several versions before I found one that rang true, because the truth is no one is going to sweep in and save her, Emily has to save herself. But that’s where the hope is, I think, she sees the line at last and has taken a step back from it.
How does it feel to see your debut novel in print?
I can’t begin to tell you how exciting it is, just seeing these words, these words I’ve spent hours agonising over, held to paper forever. It’s a remarkable thing.
What are you writing next?
My next book is about a seventeen-year-old girl called Scarlett Milton, who is very different from Emily, but I’d like to think, if they ever met, they’d be mates.
Reading Group Questions
1. Doctor Gilyard asks Emily: ‘Do you think you could have been friends, if this hadn’t happened?’ (see here) Do you believe that Emily and Juliet could have been friends in other circumstances?
2. To what extent is ‘Emily Ko
ll’ just as much of a fiction as ‘Rose Glass’?
3. Is Emily’s revenge on Juliet also a sacrifice? How?
4. Are there similarities between Emily and Juliet, and do you think, if so, that Emily is herself aware of them?
5. Does Emily want us to forgive her, even if she isn’t asking us directly?
6. Who do you think Sid is better suited to: Emily or Juliet?
7. Emily feels that Juliet took away her father by stabbing him and revealing the fact that he was a criminal. To what extent do you agree with Emily that her relationship with her father prior to the stabbing was an illusion?
8. ‘“Can you not make this about you?” she said with a sneer. “Don’t get me wrong, Rose, it’s quite a gift, how you can turn every conversation, every situation, back around to yourself.”’ (see here) Is Emily self-centred, as Juliet implies?
9. Is Emily a reliable narrator?
10. In her letter to Juliet, Emily says that she ‘is not sorry’. Do you think this is true?
11. ‘Rose Glass felt more whole than Emily Koll sometimes.’ (see here) Why do you think Emily enjoys being Rose Glass for a while?
12. Do you like Emily?
13. ‘After what you’ve read in the papers, you were expecting something awful, blood even, a few broken bones. But that would have been too easy. It was the little things, I knew, that would unpick her – slowly, slowly.’ (see here) Why do you think ‘blood’ and ‘broken bones’ would have been ‘too easy’ for Emily’s revenge upon Juliet?
14. Is there hope for Emily at the end of the novel?
