Sophie Hannah
Sophie Hannah
Sophie Hannahis a British poet and novelist. From 1997 to 1999 she was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge and between 1999 and 2001 a junior research fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPoet
contented incredibly kinds modes warped
I am actually incredibly contented and jolly. But, and I have no idea why this is, I have a really strong empathy with all kinds of warped and destructive modes of thinking. I don't know why, but those things co-exist.
books carry emerging few literary mystery novel obviously proper snobby start
I'm snobby about books that aren't crime fiction: if I start reading a literary novel and there's no mystery emerging in the first few pages, I'm like, 'Gah, this obviously isn't a proper book. Why would I want to carry on reading it?'
actual exactly instead inventing replicate trying
Try as I might, Agatha Christie is unique. The actual writing style can't be exactly the same, so instead of trying to replicate it exactly, the way I got around it was by inventing a new narrator.
committed crimes effect express people somebody terrible
The crimes in my books are committed by people who can't keep it together any more. They do something to express their own pain, and that has a terrible effect on somebody else.
bad depended entertain life performance somebody trying upsetting
With me, even if my life depended on it, I wouldn't be able to cry. Not with somebody there. Because even if I'm talking about bad and upsetting things, if there is somebody else in the room, I am trying to entertain them. If there is somebody there, I am in performance mode. I can only cry if I am on my own.
hour quarters west
In West Yorkshire, I'd have to drive three quarters of an hour to go shopping.
chapter chapters crime information plant revelation three
In a crime novel, if you are going to have a big revelation in chapter 30, you have to plant the information in chapters three and 11.
favourite french lots next
I've got lots of favourite authors, but I would say Nicci French because I look more forward to reading her next new book than any other author.
hooked house love time
I love the house we're in, but at the same time, I'm hooked on the romance of house-hunting.
poetry verses wrote
All through childhood, I wrote verses and mysteries. There is, for me, one connection: structure. My poetry is metrical, rhyming.
books incredibly puzzling
Agatha Christie's writing is incredibly skillful because her books are incredibly intellectually puzzling and challenging.
bound hunch satisfying seems telephone
Some writers, I'm told, look for their characters' surnames in telephone directories. I don't - it seems too obvious. Or too deliberate: if you go looking for names, you're bound to find them, of course, but I've always had a superstitious hunch that the names you find by accident are always going to be better and more satisfying somehow.
centre club converted couple favourite friday health inside joined lovely swim
My favourite Friday treat is to drive out of the centre of Cambridge, where we live, and go for a swim at the health club I've just joined out in the countryside at Quy. It's a lovely pool, inside a converted barn. Usually it's just me and a couple of other swimmers there.
contain dead highly impossible meticulous novels opening seeds structure
My crime novels are highly structured. I never start out with a dead body. I start with an impossible scenario. Opening questions should be mysterious, weird, intriguing, and contain the seeds of the solution. The structure has to be meticulous - I'm a structure freak.