Tana French
I love mysteries. I always have - real ones, fictional ones, solved, unsolved. So a part of me is always looking for mysteries. So far, the ideas for my books have come from ordinary everyday things that set me looking for potential mysteries. Faithful Place came from a battered old suitcase I saw in a skip one day, outside an old house that was being renovated - I started wondering who had left it there, whether he or she had meant to come back for it, what had stopped him or her...
And The Secret Place came from a wonderful site called PostSecret, where people create postcards revealing their secrets anonymously, and send them to the site's owner. The site taps into two deep and contradictory human needs: the need to share our secrets, and the need to keep them inviolate. I think those twin needs are at their most intense in adolescence, so I started wondering how a board like that would work out in a secondary school - and then I started wondering what would happen if a teenager used it to reveal what he or she knew about a murder...
And The Secret Place came from a wonderful site called PostSecret, where people create postcards revealing their secrets anonymously, and send them to the site's owner. The site taps into two deep and contradictory human needs: the need to share our secrets, and the need to keep them inviolate. I think those twin needs are at their most intense in adolescence, so I started wondering how a board like that would work out in a secondary school - and then I started wondering what would happen if a teenager used it to reveal what he or she knew about a murder...
More Answered Questions
Jess
asked
Tana French:
Hi Tana! One thing I really love about your books is the way that they look at bigger societal issues while also dealing with the mystery at hand, like the gender dynamics of In the Woods and the class struggles in Faithful Place. What is the writing process like for including these concepts? Are they something you strategically set out to include or do they flow naturally from the characters and the story?
Carrie Lallo
asked
Tana French:
A comment, rather than a question; One of the most powerful devices in your books is auditory description. I have never read an author whose descriptions of the sounds of places are so powerful and haunting. I work hard on visual descriptions when I write, but rarely consider how things sound. I adore your writing. Keep going!
Smokydan
asked
Tana French:
Dear Ms. French, Do you find a great deal of tension when establishing the setting of a novel when the setting is a real place, especially if you associate the real place with unpleasant activities or if you characterize the people and local culture in an uncomplimentary way? Think you.
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