Felicity Wood at The Bookseller interviewed me about my upcoming novel, The Shining Girls.Â
The full story is behind a paywall for subscribers only, but here’s a snippet:
“Whatâs scarier than a psychopathic serial killer that can travel through time toying with victims at various points in their life? Not much if Lauren Beukesâ new thriller, The Shining Girls (April, HarperCollins), is anything to go by.
Set in 1931 Depression-era Chicago, the violent Harper is living a hand-to-mouth existence in Hooverville, until he commits a murder and takes refuge in a mysterious house. It is in this strange house that he discovers both a portal to other times and visions of his âshining girlsâ, women from various decades who âshineâ for him and become his murder victimsâbut only after he has visited them as children, teenagers and then as adults. With the ability to time travel on his side Harper is the perfect, undetectable murderer, until one of his âshining girlsâ does the impossible . . . and survives.
Harper is one creepy characterâincredibly violent, he takes pleasure and sexual gratification from the murder of his âshining girlsââand Beukes says that writing him âwas terrible, it was horrible being inside his head. Thatâs why he gets fucked up at every available opportunityâfrom breaking his jaw to getting stung by a beeâI just had to hurt him whenever I could. I loathed him, but at same time I had to make him human as well. So it was interesting to see how he feels trapped by the house, how he tries to resist that and break out of the cycle by trying to find the meaning in things. I think thatâs a very universal thing, weâre all trying to find meanings and patterns and Harper just has a very twisted and deviant form of that.
âThe rest of us might read horoscopesâheâs reading entrails…”