Three Books – Ruth Ware

Hello and welcome to Three Books with me, Angela Clarke on women's radio station. On today's show, we welcome Ruth Ware, number one New York Times best selling author of psychological crime thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood and the woman in Cabin 10. Ruth's latest, the Lying Game is the story of Isa Lee, who drops everything and takes her baby daughter back to her old school friends when summoned by a past secret that threatens all their futures. Ruth, would you drop everything for your friends? I wouldn't drop my kids, but pretty much everything else, yeah. They come slightly higher up the pecking order, but only very slightly. Yeah. Have you ever had that? Have you ever been summoned back by a text? Not to the degree in the story, no. But I've definitely had. I can't really say, like the exact circumstances without sharing stuff that other people would probably rather I didn't. But, yeah, I've definitely had times in my life when I've had a call that I needed to attend to and it was someone in crisis. And, yeah, you do what you have to do. So the issue of who we trust reoccurs throughout the Lying Game. And you presumably were working on this book as Brexit and Trump's election unfolded in the background, we've seen many families and friends tested by opposing political views and the resultant fallout, with feelings of betrayal being quite a reoccurring theme. Do you think that you were influenced at all by outside events to focus particularly on trust in this novel? Wow, that is such a good question, and it is one that I have never been asked before. It's strange because I don't think of myself as a very political novelist, but then again, I do notice themes feeding into my work. When I was writing the woman in cabin 10, it was only really, when I finished writing it, I realized that it was kind of a response to the number of he said, she said cases that had been in the news while I was writing it, and my anger about the fact that women always seem to be far down in the pecking order in terms of who was believed. And if you were a young, maybe even a young drunk woman, you were right at the bottom of credibility. And so that's who my protagonist is. She's a young drunk woman who sees something and nobody believes her. But I've never thought of the Lying Game in those terms. If you'd asked me, I would have said no. Out of all of my books. It's a kind of. It's one that exists in a bit of a bubble in a way, but yeah, you're right, it is. It's about what happens when external forces test a friendship. Yeah. This seems like a good point to ask, what's the book that made you think differently about women? I found this really difficult to answer because I don't think I've ever had a book that kind of made me radically reappraise women in that way. I think all of the books I've read have probably contributed to how I think about myself as a woman and how I think about women in literature. But definitely a book that changed how I sort of viewed women in literature and changed the way I thought about myself in terms of making me aware how vulnerable women can be even today, both to kind of people in their lives, but also to their own sort of biology and stuff like that. It's a book called the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilmour. And it's a stretch to call it a book, to be perfectly honest. It's barely a novella or a long short story, but it's incredibly creepy. And it's about a woman who has been probably imprisoned. She's the classic unreliable narrator, so you just don't know by her, you think, well meaning husband, probably because she's suffering some form of postnatal depression. But it's all told through this very claustrophobic, strange, hallucinogenic lens and you're never really certain what is going on. But it's brilliant, it's scary, it's unnerving and it really does make you think about what it would be like to be that vulnerable in a position like that. That sounds terrifying. It is, it really is terrifying. So I think that your books feature what might be termed scenarios of organised fun. So there's a hen do a cruise or a work do, a school reunion and all of them turn nightmarish. Have actually written an introverts horror series. Well, I often say that all of my books are a kind of free therapy for me. Basically they all explore some, you know, some personal fear of mine. So in a dark, dark wood, it's probably the fear of, you know, waking up in the middle of the night and thinking, did I do something wrong? You know, have I committed a crime? Did I run that red light? Did I inadvertently insult that person? And in that book it's just written very, very large. It's someone who thinks they might have murdered someone. But yes, in other ways my are also a form of therapy and I am quite a solid introvert, as many writers are. And yes, organized fun is very low down on the list of things I enjoy. So, yes, uncomfortable social situations where you don't want to be there feature quite highly in my books. But in my defence, it's not only, I think, because I find myself uncomfortable in those situations. I think it's something that's very universal. I think it resonates, doesn't it, that idea? Especially the idea that you've done something wrong, you know, or that you, you know, you wake up drunk, you see, what have you seen? There's just this ideas that we all kind of latch onto and that kind of anxiety that feeds out of them. Do you think that's why they're popular? I have no idea why my books are popular. I would like to have a pithy answer and then I could bottle it and sell the formula. The truth is, when I was writing my first book In a Dark, Dark Wood, I thought I was writing this weird British little book about a very, you know, UK centric institution. You know, the Hen Knight is quite weirdly English, even, not even British. And I was amazed that so many nations connected with these women and with their predicament. And, you know, of course, realistically, all, you know, all cultures have some form of coming of age, you know, ceremony when a woman goes off to be married. So it wasn't as. As British centric as I had sort of fondly imagined. I don't know. I guess I try to write. I don't write what I know. I've never killed anyone that I know of. But yeah, I try to write about what it's like to be a woman of a certain age and, you know, under pressure. And I know that. And I think it's something that a lot of other people connect to. Absolutely. I mean, because they are very popular. You're huge in the States, aren't you? You're very popular. And how many other countries have they gone? Oh, good question. I think In a Dark Dot was the first one, so that one's obviously sold to the most and then the others are kind of catching up. I think it's in something like 44 at the moment, but. 44 territories. It's quite a lot of territories, isn't it? Yeah, it amazes me. It's far more countries than I've ever traveled to. I think it's a bit invidious when my book is allowed to travel more places than me. I love it. And the actress and producer Reese Witherspoon is a fan of your work, isn't she? She is, yeah. Now, she's spoken about the need for complex and interesting female characters in popular culture. Do you agree with her? Yes. Yeah. Basically, there's no kind of long answer to that. I do. And I think the good thing is that we're seeing more and more of them, you know, with things like Big Little Lies, which actually was a Reese Witherspoon project, which I adored, and was also a very popular novel before it was a smash hit TV series. I think we're seeing women who are. They're not just front and center. They're allowed to be flawed and weird and problematic in ways that, you know, maybe we haven't seen as much up until now. There's always been the sort of expectation that a female main character needs to be admirable and sort of, you know, strong and feisty and all those other sort of slightly irritating terms. And the truth is, of course we want to see those women. Of course we do. But we need to see women of all calibers in all different roles. Do you think you've always written women that are that complex and that flawed, or do you think that you've had previous characters where they have been, I guess, more admirable, like you say? I don't know. I think. I mean, certainly all of my books have complicated, prickly, difficult people at the centre of them. And I think that's because, actually, not just as a writer, but as a person, I don't value likability very much in my friends. I mean, I like them, obviously, but, you know, they don't have to be nice in conventional terms. I'm more interested in whether people are interesting. And as a reader, that's what I'm interested in as well. I don't have to agree with everything a character does or find them admirable in every single way. As long as I'm interested in them and care about them, that's all that matters to me. Thank you, Ruth. We'll hear more from Ruth after these adverts. Welcome to women's radio station, the voice of women worldwide. So I do glitter for a living. 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The programme where we discover the three books that have shaped and influenced today's female writers. Today we are talking to international bestseller Ruth Ware, author of psychological crime thriller the Lying Game. So Ruth, let's start off the second half of the show with the book that you wish you'd written. This was another tough one to choose, I have to say. And the person I've picked is. Well, she's a writer I admire very much and I've read and enjoyed most of her books. She's also a friend, which makes me feel a little bit like I'm playing favourites. But the reason I've picked her book is because it is so furiously clever. It's He Said, she Said by Erin Kelly and anyone who has read it. It's one of those books that when you're reading it, it seems effortless, the story just flows, you kind of go along with it. It's only when you've finished it and you kind of ment turn it over and figure out how this plot was put together that you start to think, how on earth did she plot this? You know, it's so complicated, the pieces fit together so cleverly and yet she makes it look like it was nothing at all. And I think more than anything else, that's what I admire actually in any walk of life. You know, when you see like a ballet dancer or a really amazing guitarist and they just make it look like a walk through the park, they make it look effortless. But if you work in any capacity in that profession, you know how very un. Effortless that, you know that that thing that they're doing is. And yeah, you can definitely tell that he said, she said was not an effortless book to write, but it's definitely an effortless book to read. I. I read that twice for that precise reason. I went back immediately afterwards and started reading it again to check. I know precisely what you mean. It is an incredible book. And yeah, it's always difficult though, isn't it? The more going back to what you were saying about feeling like you're picking favourites because it's somebody that you know. But writing and publishing is a fairly small industry and if you happen to like things, especially within your same genre, it's quite quick where you actually end up meeting your heroes. Very much so, yeah. And then. So the people whose work you like, you tend to like as people as well. Have you ever met anybody that you haven't. Who you've loved their work but you haven't liked them? No names, obviously. Honestly, I don't think I have, actually. I've heard a few horror stories which I wrote, you know, I wrote name about people whose work I admired and I've later heard that they were maybe not, you know, the nicest of people. I don't think I've personally ever met anyone where I thought, you know, well, that was a letdown. That's good, because this supports my idea that writers are some of the best people in the world, particularly crime writers. I have to say, I always think it's like that truism about, you know, comedians are really miserable people in real life. Crime writers are absolutely lovely. All of that anger and rage and bitterness out on the page and dealt with. Exactly. It's free therapy. Like I was saying earlier, we're the most balanced people in the world. So sales of crime novels have soared and actually they've overtaken those of general fiction for the first time in the uk. Why do you think crime's so popular? I know, I saw that headline and I was very chuffed Although I do think that there may be a little bit of jiggery pokery going on with categorisation there because, you know, publishers love to publish things in a genre that's doing well. And there's a lot of books that I'm seeing that could sit quite comfortably in either crime or literary fiction. And I Wonder if maybe 5 years ago they would have been published as a straight literary novel. And now publishers are seeing that they might sit better in the crime section of the bookshop where, you know, all the cool people are hanging out, obviously. And so they're, you know, they're kind of deliberately giving it a more crimey feel. So part of it I think for sure is just that more books are being published in our genre. But yeah, I mean, it seems to be doing amazingly and Touchwood doesn't seem to be slowing down. And why do readers like it? Why do readers like crime so much? I don't know why readers like it, but I can tell you why I like it, particularly why I like the. The segment of the genre that I work in. I love a book that gives me a good intellectual puzzle in terms of pitting my wits against the author and having that, you know, really fun sort of, what do they know? What do I know? What are they trying to make me think? What can I get to the solution before the detective or whoever, you know, reveals it? But I also love a novel that takes you on an emotional journey and teaches you something about human nature and makes you think about the world in a slightly different way. And I think the wonderful thing about crime fiction, and particularly about psychological thrillers, is that you really do get both. You know, you get to travel these incredible pulse quickening adventures with, you know, fascinating, flawed, complicated, interesting characters. And you get to have a really good sort of intellectual workout at the same time. It's a brain gym. Do you think there's anything about now, about the time, why, you know, about the society in which we live that's made kind of crime so popular, or have this surge? I honestly don't know. I mean, I've been asked this before in interviews and I've said, which is true, that, you know, the golden age of crime was the 1930s and 40s. We were between two world wars. The world was in an incredibly uncertain and people reached out for something that would allow them to explore their fears, but in a very safe way. You know, these books deal with life and death, but they also deal with a very swift type of restorative justice. And particularly in the golden age era of crime. There's, you know, there's no moral ambiguity. You know, who's on the side of right, you know, who's on the side of wrong. You know, you're gonna get a fix at the end and someone will be banged to rights. And I think that was maybe comforting in a world where people were really having to nail their colors to the mast very firmly and pick a side. You know, if you're fighting for your life, you want to know that you're fighting on those kind of on the goodies. Today. We're in. You know, we're not on the cusp of a third world war, I hope, but we're definitely in a situation where we're seeing global conflicts playing out in our living room in a way that we never did before. You know, you could be on Twitter and you can see a horrific news story going down in another country in real time, and you can almost, you know, you can see people reacting to it there and then. So conflict is on our doorstep in a way that it never was before. But also those moral certainties have disappeared. We're in an era where right and wrong is very much more complicated. The media acknowledges that. And maybe the type of crime fiction people are writing today is, again, an exploration of that in a safe way, when you need a safe space. What's the book that you always return to? Oh, well, this is a funny one for me to pick. And in fact, I slightly cheated because it's not one book, but the book I find when I'm writing and first drafting, I find it impossible to read crime or, in fact, anything kind of close to what I'm writing, which rules out a lot of sort of women's fiction. And I always find myself going back to the Patrick o' Brien books he wrote, the Aubrey Maturin Chronicle, I suppose it is. It's about 20 books, and they're just wonderful. They're completely removed from anything I write. They're beautifully written. Their structure is so far from a crime novel. You know, there's whole books where you just kind of can't really work out where this is going, and then something will happen on the final page and where you thought it was heading. They'll end up shipwrecked on some Galapagon island or something. It's like, if I had to pick a polar opposite to my own work, I think it's that. And yet I love them. And I've probably read each book five or six times. For those listeners that aren't aware, you know, what genre is it? What kind of story is it? Well, the third book in the series was filmed as Master and commander with, oh, I can't remember his name. Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe. Well done. You can tell I'm no good at celebrity spotting, but they're very much like the kind of hornblower novels. They're set in the Napoleonic wars, just sort of at the beginning of the 19th century. Big ships, big sails, lots of cutlasses, big hats. Totally removed from kind of modern fiction. That sounds wonderful. That sounds wonderful. Well, thank you very much, Ruth, for all of your answers. The Lying Game by Ruth Ware is published by Vintage and is out in paperback. Now. If you have any questions for three books, email us on presentersomensradiostation.com or tweet. Usomensradiostn. That's Women's Radio STN. You've been listening to three books on women's radio Station with me, Angela Clarke. If you'd like to listen again or catch up on our previous programs, you can head to the presenters page on womensradiostation.com and I hope you join us again in the future. Thanks for listening. I'm Angie. And I'm Patsy. And we're open to share our own personal your stories dealing with life events, staying positive through the tough times. Share your stories, too. What worked, what didn't? Join us each week for open. We know you're gonna love it. Women's radio station can give a voice to your brand. With a wide range of sponsorship opportunities, including individual programs, we can tailor your experience. Go to womensradiostation.com welcome to Women's Radio Station, the voice of women worldwide. Hungry? An average woman eats about 2 to 3 kilos of lipstick in her lifetime. Women's radio station, we want to hear from you. This is women's radio station. You're listening to Avril Price with kitchen sink spirituality. It's Anna Kennedy talking all things autism. 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