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Hindustan Times

Sophie Mackintosh: 'I never really set out to write a feminist book'

Your novel Cursed Bread was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. How did you learn about the mass-poisoning incident that is the subject of the novel? Author Sophie Mackintosh (Saurabh Sharma) I stumbled across it online. And I remember just thinking it was such an interesting story, so I just filed it away in my head. But I kept thinking of it. I think it was something about the idea of a mass poisoning — in the sense how quickly a town could just tip over from one state to another and how it affected everyone. There's something very terrifying about it and kind of primal, too. While a really good straightforward non-fiction book could've been written about it, and there has been stuff about it, I didn't feel like I was the right person to tell that story. I liked the freedom of the fiction form. The town is not even mentioned by name in the book. It kind of becomes [the story of] any town but it's still the story of the town if that makes sense. With fiction, I was free to interpret it in a way that was more about the relationships and the dynamics [people share], focusing on the elements that I wanted to explore, say, how quickly things can change, about the violence under the surface. Fiction gave me more freedom essentially to do what I was interested in doing. 240pp, ₹559; Hamish Hamilton Ltd The opening sentences of the book signal a deep suspicion of the nature of reality, as from the get-go the book questions if an incident of the sort actually happened. Were you shining a light on the politics of remembering in the reconstruction of the incident? How challenging was it to depict this duality in the narration? I wanted to signal the unreliability of the narrator immediately because so much of the book is about memory and desire. I think about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and also about the script of our life. So, Elodie [the baker's wife] is basically living in a fantasy and she's living in memories and they become almost more real than real life. I wanted to signal that sense that she is very much slipping between these worlds, between these [different] modes and [perhaps] we can't really trust her. She can spin us a good story but she's only telling us one part of it, right? I think it's really interesting that the narrative provides the possibility of remembering and misremembering. There's a lot stylistically in the book in terms of repetition and stuff. And some reviewers have said that the book is a bit repetitive. That was done on purpose because I wanted it to give the sense of ruminating, going over and over and over something because you never remember anything the same way. You're always slightly misremembering, which changes the story each time. So, Elodie's memory is not the same memory that she originally had. Even though I was confronted by all the ways that this story could be told, it just felt a bit overwhelming for me. However, this ruminative effect was something that was really important for me. Interestingly, all your books have this distinct style. Tell me a bit more about the playfulness of your writing style. According to GauZ' this is very basic to storytelling. I suppose we all, as writers, have these things which are really precious to us. Things that we really treasure in our own writing or things that are our trademark. I would agree with GauZ' here: style is fundamental. I love style. I feel like I put style at the forefront of my stories too. I like to keep it a bit spare though, but with style, I try to bring about a distinct texture. Maybe it's just texture then? I like writing that has these textures. I like something that feels tactile and also something that feels very immersive. I feel like I'm always trying to find a balance between writing in a way that's overwritten and writing that's too sparse. But I'm very precise about how I do my sentences at the end. They've been refined a lot. So maybe precision? I don't know. It's not really pretentious, I think. [Laughs.] You're right, the sentences are really chiselled. They say a lot but still conceal something. How do you strike a balance between repetition and sharp writing? I think there's ambiguity there as well. Again, like you say, there is a lot left unsaid, too, in the story. I'm very interested in what we can leave out to let the reader fill in the gaps a little bit. It's nothing but just trusting the reader really. I feel like it's a collaborative effort when you're reading. You're having a bit of an adventure together. There have been several narratives like the Blue Ticket – a dystopian world, policing of women and their sexuality, how they are treated and mistreated just because of their ability to reproduce. I was wondering what sort of literature may have inspired it. Is Margaret Atwood an influence on your writing? I never really set out to write a feminist book or even specifically focus on women's stories. I think it was just the things that interested me and things I was thinking about. So, with The Water Cure, it was sisterhood, but then you have these patriarchal elements, too. With Blue Ticket, my second one, I was thinking about having a baby. So, I thought that I'm going to explore this in a larger social way but also a very weird way. I guess Cursed Bread was the one where it's kind of [based on a] true event. But still, I was like, oh, I'm drawn to desire and the idea of its role in this specific time. I guess I am very much interested in [exploring] the power of desire. And it manifests in different ways, something like female desire especially because it's often pathologized or is seen as something gentle or non-existent. And I'm like, no, it's ferocious and it'd be great to think about it as more like a propelling force. 304pp, ₹546; Doubleday About the hero-worshipping of literary giants like McCarthy or Neil Gaiman – you may have read the Vanity Fair piece on how McCarthy exploited and appropriated Augusta Britt's real life. You've also written a piece on McCarthy. There are also allegations about Gaiman. What do you think of them now? I don't want to support the work of someone who has done quite monstrous or bad things. I don't find it difficult to approach it objectively at all. In the UK, at the moment, you have a lot of very transphobic writers and journalists. In no way do I want to support them. I can't separate the artists from their work because it's like, well, how do we separate ourselves from the work? It's what we do as well. Maybe that's just something I feel. This is your first time in India and being here at the Kerala Literature Festival. What sort of similarities and differences have you noted between Indian and English literature festivals? It has been great being in India. And I think here versus in the UK, it feels more democratic. There are so many people coming to the talks, and it's much more accessible. I really loved seeing a lot of young people and school children attending the festival. This is something that we really don't get to witness in the UK, which is a shame. I wish we had something more like the literary festivals in India. Then, I think the array of topics has been broad and some interesting topics were platformed, too. The diversity here actually reflects that no one is afraid to shy away from difficult subjects. Not that we are in the UK either, but I think there were some really interesting discussions here on the legacy of colonialism, for example. Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. They can be found on Instagram/X: @writerly_life.