Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S9 Ep4: Bookshelfie: Karin Slaughter

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Bestselling crime writer Karin Slaughter reveals the gruesome storytelling culture she grew up in and why she thinks Wuthering Heights’ Cathy is “kind of a whiny bitch”. Karin is one of the world’s most well-known and popular crime writers. Since publishing her debut novel, Blindsighted, in 2001, she has gone on to sell more than 40 million copies of her books internationally, including the hugely popular Grant County and Will Trent series. Karin is known for reaching beyond simple formulas of suspense and satisfying resolution. Instead she chooses to explore the darker side of humanity, criminal psychology and the systemic violence against women both in and outside of the home. Outside of her writing, Karin is also the founder of the Save the Libraries project - a nonprofit organisation dedicated to supporting local libraries in Atlanta, Georgia - the city where she grew up and continues to draw inspiration from in her writing. Karin has adapted a number of her works for TV and is currently showrunner for The Good Daughter, which will star Meghann Fahy and Rose Byrne. Her latest book, We Are All Guilty Here, was an instant Sunday Times No.1 bestseller, and will be published in paperback on 23 April. Her forthcoming novel, The Secrets We Hide, is published on 18 June and available to preorder now; the second book in her bestselling North Fall series, it sees a quiet town shattered in the wake of a brutal attack. TW: this episode contains references to rape and sexual violence.Karin’s book choices are:** Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë** Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor** Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier** Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell** Mister Sandman by Barbara GowdyYou can buy all books mentioned from our dedicated shelf on Bookshop.org – every purchase supports the work of the Women's Prize Trust and independent bookshops. Every week on Bookshelfie, Vick Hope is joined by inspirational women to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize for Fiction, the greatest celebration of female creativity in the world, is run by the Women’s Prize Trust, the charity building a better future by championing women’s writing. Don’t want to miss the rest of season nine? Follow or subscribe now!

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after 20 gigs a month. Hi, everyone, it's Vic here. Just to know that in this episode, we do cover some hard-hitting topics, including rape and sexual violence. Coming up on bookshelfy. We have all these stories that my generation certainly looked at as these hallmarks of romance, right? And it was just about really horrible men. Yeah, he's stalking you.

Yeah. Well, and Heathcliff is a terrible person. Kathy's kind of a whiny bitch. Linton is like sew up his own ass, right? I didn't have the phrase Southern Gothic for it. It was just how people spoke around me.

All the stories I heard were always tinge with some sort of crime or criminal aspect. I mean, they all have this idea, oh, you've met this beautiful woman in a podcast in London. That's what being a writer is. And it's like, no, it's like not bathing and being your pajamas

for four days. It's saying the timer on my oven. That's right. That's right. Hello, I'm Vic Hope and this is Bookshelfy, the podcast from the Women's Prize that asks women, with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. Now, before we begin, remember to subscribe or follow so you never miss an episode with thanks to our sponsor, Bailey's. Today, I'm joined by Karen Slaughter. Karen is one of the world's most well-known and popular crime writers. Since publishing her debut novel, Blindcited in 2001, she's gone on to sell more than 40 million copies of her books internationally, including the hugely popular Grant County and Will Trent series.

Karen's known for reaching beyond simple formulas of suspense and satisfying resolution. Instead, she chooses to explore the darker side of humanity, criminal psychology and the systemic violence against women both in and outside of the home. She's a long-time advocate for victims of sexual violence, and her books hold a mirror. up to society and crucially emphasised female agency from the perspective of the victim. Outside of her writing, Karen is also the founder of the Save the Libraries Project, a non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting local libraries in Atlanta, Georgia, the city where she grew up and continues to draw inspiration from in her writing. Karen's adapted a number of her works for TV and is currently showrunner for The Good Daughter,

which will star Megan Faye and Roseburn. Her forthcoming novel, The Secrets We Hide, publishers on the 18th of June and is the second book in her best-selling North Fall series which sees a quiet town shattered in the wake of a brutal attack. Karen, welcome. Thank you. Wow, that was a lot. When you hear the biography back, does it make you go, oh yeah, I did it. Well, it's new.

Usually it's my Wikipedia page, but that was really well done and well written. I was like, oh, wow, that sounds, you know, really good. Oh, anytime. I don't often reflect back on all of the stuff I've done. because it's been so many years. But yeah, I'll give you an A plus on that. Oh, thank you. How does it feel to take stock of the body of work over all those years?

You know, it reminds me one of the first really big events I did in America was there were a thousand people there, and none of them were there to see me. They were there for Mary Higgins-Clark, who was a wonderful human being, but also a great writer. And I remember after the event, we went to sign books. And here I am at my table and two people come up to give books. And Mary was one of them. She was very generous. But she had 1,000 people in her line.

And they were bringing stacks of books. And I said to her, wow, I hope one day I've written that many books. And she said, the problem is you have to get older to do it. And I didn't realize how right she was until I, I, I hear introductions like that, and I think that's like 26 years of my life now doing this. Hopefully 26 more, but it does make you a bit reflective. It does. Noticing that with achievement comes the passing of time, whether that's positive, negative, or neither.

It's just a fact. It's just life. And I guess things change over time as well. You're a different person in all these different chapters. have you seen the way that you read evolve as well as the way that you write over that time period? Yeah, and I think it's not particular to being an author. I think everybody feels that way. You know, there's certainly books that resonate more with me now than they did when I was young.

And it's a bit like, you know, when I was a kid, I read a lot of Flannery O'Connor, and I loved her because she was amazing. And, you know, as an adult when I read it, I thought, oh, wow, a lot of this is very, religious that I had no idea and the symbolism and the metaphor and all these other things and the thoughtfulness that went into the writing. And I think as you get older, you see more of that. You have more life experience. You certainly have, whether you like it or not, you know, you experience different things as you age. I'm sure as a new mother, now reading something like Nightbitch resonates a hell of a lot more than it did years ago. I get it. So many things. I'm

seeing in a whole new light, one of understanding, possibly one of more confusion, actually, sometimes. But yeah, throughout my life, there's books I've gone back to because they've taken on new meanings because of the experiences and the ways that I've changed. You're on the road at the moment. You said to me just before we started recording that you sort of just landed from Atlanta, it's whistle stop. You're back in a few days.

When you're traveling, what sort of books do you pack? Do you plan your reading out? I do I try to um and I love I love reading on my iPad but I also my favorite is like an actual physical book it's just it's bad having sometimes it's anything and so I have kitty stockets new book um the calamity I think and I had it right by my suitcase to pack but it is like 700 pages and I thought I just can't I can't cart that around with me in my backpack. So I decided there's a book called The Sea Captain's wife about a woman who was married to a sea captain. She's 18 years old.

They were on a merchant ship. He got very sick. And she ended up having to be the captain of the ship. And there was a mutiny and there was like people trying to murder people and all this stuff. And I thought that that would be fun to read while I'm flying across the hands. Yeah, let's read a travel epic while I travel. I'm just looking through your list actually of what you've brought today as your book Shelfy Picks. Notably, there's no crime novels.

Is that by design? Not really. I mean, if you look at the selection, there are aspects of crime and thriller in all of them. I mean, even the Great Gatsby is basically a murder mystery, right? Yeah. And I think crime is always a good way to talk about society. So, you know, you do have something like Rebecca, which is very much a thriller. Or, you know, Flaner O'Connor constantly wrote about crimes and criminals and the pathological need for people to lie and steal and just be bad people.

She even wrote about a serial killer. So there's a lot of crime in there. It's in there. It is. Well, let's get into it. Your first book-shelfy book is Weathering Heights. Yes. by Emily Bronte. Wuthering Heights is The Tale of Two Families, joined and divided by love and

hate. Kathy is a beautiful and willful young woman torn between her soft-hearted husband and Heathcliff. The passionate and resentful man who has loved her since childhood. The power of their bond creates a maelstrom of cruelty and violence which will leave one of them dead and cast a shadow over the lives of their children. Emily Bronte's only novel remains a stunningly original and shocking exploration of obsessive passion. When did you first read this book? Tell me about the Karen that you were at that time. Yeah. Oh, I was a kid and I loved it. I loved the what I thought was the romance of it, right? What you thought was the romance. This is what we thought was right. Exactly. I mean, but when I, but around the same age, there was a very popular soap opera

called General Hospital. And every girl in my class loved it. We would all rush home to watch it. And one of the storylines was this guy, Luke, raped a girl named Laura. And the end of that was that they fell in love and they got married. Right. Great. And we all ran home to watch. It was the most romantic thing. I mean, my generation was raised on flowers in the attic, right? It was about incest. And so we have all these stories that my generation certainly, looked at as these hallmarks of romance, right? And it was just about really horrible men. Yeah, he's stalking you.

Yeah. Well, and Heathcliff is a terrible person. Kathy's kind of a whiny bitch. Linton is like so up his own ass, right? I mean, it's just, if you look at it from an adult, and I'm sure the movie will capture all of this. I love Margot Roby, but there's no way I think they're going to really capture the essence of the book. It's had mixed reviews.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Because if you really told the story, a lot of it's just awful people. And then, you know, the guy narrating it is just the Mr. Peeping Tom of all people. Um, I, but I love the book so much. And I love the evolution of my understanding of the book that I actually borrowed names for blindsided. You know, you have Sarah Linton, Kathy Linton. There's a Heathcliff in there. There's an earth. A cousin in Earnshaw. So I did borrow a little bit from that. And one of my favorite early reviews of blindsided was this is nothing like Wuthering Heights. And it's not supposed to be. No, no. Even though you've borrowed. Exactly. It's an homage. Exactly. It doesn't have to be like it. Do you see Wuthering Heights as a love story? I don't. I see it as an obsession. It's a very much a. cautionary tale, and there's nothing romantic about it. And it's a lot about how women get trapped in situations where they're idealized as a thing rather than as a person and how damaging that can be.

But, you know, we still in America will have, and I know you have it here, you know, stories where men kill their families and the police will say, well, you know, his wife was leaving him. He just loved them so much. And it's not love. And so we, I think as a society, we just sort of accept in a very strange way that when men do stuff like that, it's out of love. And if a woman, very rarely, but if a woman does it, then she's a crazy bitch. We've seen that in literature, in art, since the beginning of time. Why did you choose to borrow those names for your own work? I just, I thought this would be my way. It was a stupid, you know, 20-something year old. I thought I was being poet. and taking it back because I was talking about violence and obsession from a woman's point of view and not through a male lens.

And so it felt like I was reclaiming that story in a way. But, you know, only that one person on Amazon even noticed that I took the names. And they were very angry. Guys, you don't need to be angry about this. This is not what you need to be putting your energy into. And you will see the film. Will you? Or maybe on it.

an airplane, maybe. I love Margo Roby, so maybe. I don't know. I don't know. It has to be, I have to look at it as a different thing. I think so. It's very, very zeitguise. Obviously, at the moment, we're seeing it everywhere. And I'd be really interested to see we were talking about perspectives and flipping that lens. I'd be interested in what the perspectives are, what the lenses are that, you know, we're looking at this quote-unquote love story, whether it is a romantic love story on screen. I feel like it will be because it's Hollywood. Yeah, it has to be. You've actually spoken in the past about the influence of the Southern Gothic on your writing. What is it that draws you to that gothicy texture? Well, I just love it because it's what I grew up with.

And I didn't have the phrase Southern Gothic for it. It was just how people spoke around me. All the stories I heard were always tinged with some sort of crime or criminal aspect. But I remember one time a reporter came from the Wall Street Journal to interview me, and my dad was there because they wanted to meet my dad. And he wouldn't let them leave without meeting him. And he played it so straight, like during the interview. He didn't do anything crazy. My dad can go on a tangent. And, you know, he was perfectly normal, perfectly nice dad.

And then the interviewer was leaving, the reporter was leaving. And she said, oh, is there a good place to eat around here? And he's like, well, you don't want to go here because, you know, that guy was arrested for being a pedophile. And, you know, his wife tried to kill him. But the chicken is good. Or you can go here. Oh, you should look under that bridge because they found a body there. And she was looking at me like, why wasn't he doing any of this on camera?

Why wasn't he? That's what I grew up with because he knows. He knows. He knows. But he was being careful. He could bring in. Yeah. Yeah, not for us, though, because when I was a child, he constantly terrified us with stories about, you know, murderers lurking and that sort of thing.

So everything he said had some sort of underlying menace to it. I mean, not like horrible, more like, you know, the little girl who left the refrigerator door open and died or, you know, cautionary tale. Yeah, yeah. Blows that fridge door. Yeah. And one time we went to visit my grandma. mother at the cemetery. She was dead, obviously. And there's a pre, this is a very southern story. And there was a preacher who was buried near her, and he had them bury him with a telephone

in case the rapture came and he needed to get out, right? And there was a phone wire coming out of the grave to a telephone pole because he didn't have cellular. And it terrified us, just the thought of that dead person in this casket with a telephone. And one time we went to visit my grandmother at Easter, and my dad had a bell that sounded like a phone behind his back, and he rang it when we passed by the grave. And so I'm the youngest of three girls, and we all ended up in the car. Like, I was on the bottom of the floorboard. My sisters were on top of me. We're all covered in urine in screaming. And my dad was laughing so hard, he almost wet himself. But he loved doing stuff like that to us. Isn't that where the phrase kick the bucket comes from where they'd have a

bucket with a bell? And if someone was being buried alive by accident, you could kick it. Yeah. And just let them, so he could have been down there. Well, you have graves here that have like submarine things. So you can see down and make sure they're not screaming. Just to be sure. Yes. Well, I can see where it all propagated. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So the Southern God. really close to me. Flannery O'Connor, her short stories. But I think what I put on my list is Mystery and Manners, which is her writing about being a writer, which also was a revelation to me. Because I'd never, you know, it's sort of like when you live in school, when you go to school,

you think your teachers live in the basement. And then you see them at the grocery store and it freaks you out. In real life, yeah. Yeah. Just people. Yeah. Crazy. I know, right? And, um, So with Flaner O'Connor, for her to write about writing, I thought, wow, this is fascinating. I've never thought about writers as human beings who, you know, control language and the way she utilized language and dialect and talked about very southern specific stories was so amazing. But to read, you know, she got this from the apocrypha and she was, you know, having these long correspondence. with, you know, cardinals and priests and all these amazing people from her time. And she traveled all around the world lecturing about writing was really interesting.

Because I growing up a little girl in a small southern town where I was too loud. And, you know, I'm sitting when my legs cross now. I don't know how that happened. But I was always being told, sit up straight, cross your legs. You know, we had to wear skirts. And when I started writing very macabre stories, I was. was told that something was wrong, right? Because girls weren't supposed to do it. Yeah. And I, when I discovered Flannier O'Connor, I was like, you motherfuckers. Like, you never told me this

woman who was amazing, born in a small southern town, traveled the world and was celebrated for her writing. And, you know, that she could have been a model to me. She could have been a model to them. And they just treated me as an anomaly. And this is something I can do. And, you know, that she could have been a model to me. I'm, I'm do. For anyone who isn't familiar, the book that we're talking about, Karen's second bookshelf a book is Mystery and Manors, occasional prose by Flannery O'Connor. At her death in 1964, O'Connor left behind a body of unpublished essays and lectures, as well as a number of critical articles that had appeared in scattered publications during her two short lifetime. Selected and edited by O'Connor's lifelong friends, Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. These writings are characterized

by the directness and simplicity of O'Connor's style, her fine-tuned wit and understated intelligence. The collection opens with the King of the Birds, her famous account of raising peacocks at her home in Georgia. Essays such as The Nature and Aim of Fiction and Writing Short Stories are seen widely as gems, really. This collection just touches such a range of subjects. Was there anything in particular that stood out for you

when you were sort of reading it in this illuminated state of, oh my gosh, this is, this is writing. This is something I can do. Yeah. There was a line, there are two lines. One is, and I'm going to misquote it, so people should Google. Basically asking a writer to talk about writing is asking a fish to talk about riding a bicycle. And it's such a funny way to put it.

But then she went on to write about writing, right? So obviously she thought she could do it. And she was so brilliant in the wit of her writing, that dry wit, which a lot of when I'm in England, people say, oh, you have a dry English wit. And when I'm in Germany, they say, oh, you have a dry German wit. But I think I have more of a southern, which is just basically a combination of all these. I mean, we've got so many immigrants who settled in Georgia, right? from so many different countries. And I think it's just this combination of this very dry wit that I thought, wow, okay, so I'm the person who's made to feel like an idiot when I'm sitting in class and I laugh at

something that I think is funny and no one else is laughing. And that really, her wit really appealed to me because I thought, oh, it has a name. The other thing she said that I particularly hold on to as someone who is ill-educated. You know, I dropped out of college. My dad jokes with me about how he's still looking in the mailbox for my diploma that he paid for. I love you, dad, by the way. Well, you don't know them. And she said people often ask me if writing courses stifle creativity. And my opinion is they don't stifle them enough. And I think that's a really good lesson that I try to pass on, you know, if somebody asked me about being a writer. And it's that you just have to write, you know.

A lot of times you'll talk yourself out of it. And 99% of it is just putting your butt in a chair and starting to write. I mean, you can be the most creative person in the world and have so much to say. But if you're not putting in the discipline work to hone it and craft it, then there's really no point of even having that talent. You really have to work on it. Do you ever struggle to put pen to paper? I've never, I'm knocking on wood here. I don't, I think what people call writer's block can be you psyching yourself out

or maybe forcing yourself to write when you're not ready to write. And so I try to listen to that, but you can't be precious about it. You know, I write a book a year. I foolishly did, on top of writing a book last year, did this television show, which, was like the stupidest mistake I ever made in my life. As far as the volume of work, it's like, oh, I have a full-time job. Let me have another full-time job on top of that. But for me, you know, you can't get trapped in that.

And even if you're writing something that you know, okay, this is going to really need to be edited, at least you're giving a framework for your future self. And many years ago, I developed a habit when I was in college briefly. when there's a paper due and I didn't want to do it. I would set the timer on the stove for 30 minutes and tell myself, you're just going to write for 30 minutes. It's just 30 minutes. 30 minutes.

We can do that. Yeah, anything, right? And so I never had an occasion where the timer went off and I wanted to stop. So mostly it's just making yourself sit down and do it. It's getting into it. I did exactly the same thing when I was writing for newspaper and would procrastinate that I'd say five minutes. All you've got to do is five minutes.

anyone can do that and once you're in you're in it's okay it's always okay because I mustn't forget I do actually like this yeah yeah yeah in the state of procrastination you sometimes you forget that but hey setting the timer on the stove that's how you end up with that big old pile for someone to sign this episode of bookshelfy is sponsored by baileys baileys is proudly supporting the 2016 Women's Prize for Fiction, helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bailey's is the perfect adult treats, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream, or paired with your favourite book. Check out baillies.com for our favourite bailey's recipes.

You talked at the beginning about how peppering all of your choices today there is crime. It is there in these stories. And you mentioned your third book, Shelfly book, which we'll get into now, which is Rebecca, by Daphne de Morier, a modern classic, beloved by readers since it was first published in 1938. It follows the story of a young woman who hastily marries a wealthy widower Maxim de Winter and moves to his large estate, Mandelie, in Cornwall. Upon her arrival, the new Mrs. De Winter finds Mandelie overshadowed by the presence of Maxim's first wife, Rebecca, who died to the previous year. The story explores themes of jealousy,

the struggle with the shadow of the past and the dynamics within a troubled marriage. When did you read this book, what sort of age? Can you remember what impact it had? Oh, yeah, as a teenager, like 13, 14. Well, first, it's just, it's very pacey, right? People forget that,

that the pace of it, just from a technical point of view, is very interesting to study. and because it moves so quickly. But it's not telling a lot, right? But there's tension in every word. And that is a real talent. So, I mean, she was incredibly talented as a writer anyway.

But here you have another situation where, like, there are really horrible people, right? And it's just like a microcosm of a lot of stuff we're dealing with today, where you've got really horrible women being horrible to other women. And then you've got a man who's like, should get some of the blame. Yeah. But it's all about. But for some reason.

Yeah. He's Scott Free. Yeah. But we're supposed to feel sorry for him because his wife died a year ago, which, by the way, a year isn't that long to upgrade to a new hot wife, right? But, you know, it is kind of shocking in that regard to read it. 13 and then later consider the story and think, wow, Maxim, what a dick, right? You do, you see it completely differently. Yeah, and Mrs. Danvers, like, what's up with you?

Like, were you, okay, well, clearly you had something going on with the first Mrs. DeWinter where you had some sort of obsession with her. It's truly terrifying character. But it is, it's so amazing because it is a classical design and domestic violence, right? domestic abuse because, you know, one aspect of domestic violence is to constantly hold up a woman to a standard of an invisible woman who, you know, is perfect and funny and she never, you know, she never took a shit on the toilet. She never, like, she was always beautiful, always loved her husband, always available, which is like this total male fantasy, right?

Well, Krisha, she's not there. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And so, to see it through, you know, Mrs. Danvers, like being the instrument of Maxim in this regard, right? Because, of course, he knows what's going on. I mean, come on, man. That, I think, is a really interesting way to look at it. She is terrifying, Ms. Stamber. How do you create these really unnerving, frightening villains in your work? What do you have to put into a character like that? Well, you know, I think one thing that I took from Mrs. Danvers is that women who are bad can be the worst of the worst. I mean, I don't know if you're aware of this Jeffrey Epstein thing going on. It's quite hard to avoid, unfortunately. Yeah, but you look at what some of the women did, Gawain Maxwell, for instance, who's been experienced a very nice life in prison right now.

And you just think, I don't know, as a woman, everything is horrific about it, every detail, every scintilla of it. But I don't know why her transgression seems so much worse. And I know from working in my books and talking to sex workers, for instance, that, you know, pimps will often get with, in American slang, they're called bottom girls. And they're basically women who are also sex workers, but there's the right hand of this pimp and they run the other girls. Like a madam? Well, not like, but you know, madams have some power. But they're in charge. They don't answer to a pimp, right?

Right. Okay. So, you know, I mean, like a Heidi Fleiss, she was the person in charge. And but with these bottom girls, they can be so sadistic and horrible. And I think a lot of the reasons why women as villains are so much more terrifying, particularly to women, is because there's such a psychological component. Women really know how to hurt other women. And I think that's one reason why, because, I mean, we all went to high school. We know who these people are. But I like writing about the peculiar cruelties of women toward other women because they're just horrific.

And I've talked to people who work in child services. And whenever there's a report called in on a woman that no one wants to respond because they know it's just going to be so much more terrible. Did you find the book influence how you develop your female characters? Because there is a real journey that our protagonist goes on in Rebecca and she changes a lot. Yeah, she does. Well, she grows up because she's terribly young too. Yeah, and she starts so shy and timid and that really evolves. Do you remember that having an impact on how you,

saw how women could develop and how maybe your characters develop. Yeah, you know, it's very difficult for me to write women who are, you know, sort of the shy, you know, in some ways, you know, I'm saying this, but Emmy in my North Fall series, she's not shy, but she has, she has things she's not going to talk about, right? And she has stage fright. She doesn't like being the center of attention. She just wants to do her job, that sort of thing. But I do have other characters I've written about, other female characters, like Amanda Wagner in the Will Trent series, who's like used to being in charge, and she's in the middle of everything. And so it's a challenge for me to write a woman who was not sure of herself. And I did that in pieces of her with the

character, Andy. You know, she starts out being very uncertain and sort of not sure about her life, and she's failing in her adulthood. And what she needs is just like a violent murder to happen. And she goes on the road and she learns a lot about herself. Like it's just this journey into discovery. So any parent out there whose kid is failing to launch, I suggest a violent murder to get him out of the house. Yeah.

Okay. As a new mom. Yes. Not it. Yes. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Let's look like your fourth book, Shelfy book,

which is Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Gone with the Wind is a Pulitzer Prize winning historical novel by American writer Margaret Mitchell set in her home state of Georgia. Scarlet O'Hara, the daughter of a plantation owner, and Southern Bell, navigates the complexities of love and life against the backdrop of profound social and economic changes with the onset of the American Civil War. Why have you chosen this novel?

Do you remember how you came to read it for the first time? Absolutely. I mean, it's a rite of passage in the South, or it was when I was a child to read this book. And on the surface, it is quite amazing. It's a saga. It's a love story. It's about war. It's about good men and bad men.

And Scarlet O'Hara as a character is so very well developed and indicative of a lot of the struggles that women go through to assert themselves and have their own autonomy and power. Margaret Mitchell wrote this in the 1930s. Yeah, yeah. But also, you know, you can read it on the surface, and it's a fantastic book. But then you're like, wait a minute, slavery is bad, you know? And one of the reasons, and I've read it again as an adult, and, you know, all through my childhood, I would reread it. And there was this sort of evolution where I realized, God, this is, like, it, there's, It actually has a name, the lost cause narrative, right? The noble Confederate, and his cause was not slavery. It was a way of life. And you're like, well, that way of life was underpinned by slavery, right? There's no way to say the Civil War was not about slavery. And, you know, the idea of the happy darkies in the field, which is a line from the book and that even after the war was over, that they still wanted to be enslaved, right? I mean, that's some crazy shit, right?

And as an adult, you read that and you think, what hell, but it also gives you an understanding, particularly in America, that this lost cause narrative still exists because it's completely divorced from reality. And who wouldn't want to be the, you know, noble Confederate on his steed, fighting for state's rights, you know, but then you look at what that actually means, right? and when people talk about heritage, I mean, one of the most shocking things to me is to go in America to the north or out in the northwest and see people with Confederate flags. And you're like, those are the losers. Like, why are you on that side? And, you know, my generation, which is Gen X, we are the first generation to live without Jim Crow and with the Civil Rights Act and with, you know, you know, some form of women's rights, in effect. And so you can see why the backlash to that was to reembrace the lost cause narrative. And, you know, I think that's a really good, this book is a really good touchstone to remind ourselves of the power of words, the power of fiction.

You know, I mean, good God, what goes on on the Internet and the way. people just believe things if they sound right, you know, and they don't understand what sounds right because it's reinforcing something you want to believe. So as far as being able to explicate a story, I think it's a really valuable tool, but also, you know, from a writer standpoint, the structure of it, the narrative, how pacey it is, how, you know, all the twist and turns and that sort of thing has always fascinated me. But it's also been a reminder of the power that, you hold as a popular fiction writer. Fiction serves history and history serves fiction. Correct. Always. It's always important to read it with that context in mind. Who wrote this?

Why did they write this? What narrative does that play into? How do you feel that history influences and an understanding of history, historical context, influences explorations of modern crime and violence? because it's got to be intertwined. Yeah, I really, a lot of my books, I talk about, you know, historical facts and are all set in different timelines, you know, just to give perspective. But particularly now, we're reliving a lot of our history. Yeah. You know, it doesn't repeat. It rhymes.

And I think it's so important to know these facts. And you, as a reporter, know this. Like, you know, a lot of times I'll read a tweet or a newspaper article and I'll think, this 25-year-old didn't realize this and this and this and this happened, right? They're not steeped in history the way I think older reporters have been, you know, not just because they lived through it, but because these were taught. You know, a lot of things just aren't being taught anymore, valuable history that we've lost sight of. So, you know, I always think it's important in a book. I never, I'm writing fiction.

This is popular entertainment. I'm not here to preach to people. But if I can put something in context, which if I can say, well, you know, such as it ever was, or this is how we're treating criminals and we're creating more hardened criminals by being, you know, so vicious to them when we put them in prison or, you know, this is what violence is doing to women. This is, you know, what it looks like after the violence is wrought and what that leaves behind. I think that using history as a context is really important. Do you feel a responsibility in that sense?

I absolutely do, particularly as a woman writing about violence against women. So I was raised on a lot of books, a lot of thrillers written by men that was basically torture porn, right? Specistization. Yeah, yeah. And just horrific things happening to women. And if they survived, it was only because a man saved them. And, you know, if she, if a woman was raped, like in the next scene, she's smoking a cigarette and wearing leather pants and riding a motorcycle. Or she's catatonic, right? Those were the two options. And the way she's better is the hero saves her and has sex with her. And, you know, everything's better. And, you know, that's one of the reasons why I wrote Blindsided because I thought, I'm a woman. I'm in college.

I know so many women who are raped. I've been sexually harassed since, you know, the first time a man flashed me, I was on a school trip with a bunch of girls. And I was 10 years old, right? And every woman I know has some story. It usually happens between the ages of 10 or 30. 13, where they've had something horrible like this happen. And of course, not all men, but it's a hell of a lot of men because somebody's flashing 10-year-olds. And so I just, I think when I write these books, and especially that first book, I thought, I want to talk about what this violence is

really like and what it leaves behind and how women recover or don't. And the bad choices they make and how we need to contextualize these choices instead of blaming them. You know, we see this with a lot of survivors who come forward, and people say, well, you can't trust them. There were drug addicts. They're this, they're that. And it's like, why have they left it so long? Yeah, exactly.

You wonder. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, maybe they're drug addicts because they were horrifically abused, right? I mean, nobody becomes an addict because they're like so happy with their lives. So, you know, we don't really look back at some of these, the cause and effect of this. Karen, we have arrived at the point at which you will talk about your fifth and final book, shelvee book, which is Mr. Sandman by Barbara Gowdy. Mr. Sandman is a compassionate and darkly comic portrait of the Canary family, steeped in deceptions and unruly passions. The family consists of Gordon, head of the household and secretly gay.

His wife, Doris, a compulsive liar, and their daughters, promiscuous Marcy, eerily contented Sonia and Joan the mute brain damaged musically brilliant youngest child as the family laughs loves and lies Joan quietly listens blending their discordant conversation into harmony and this feels quite different to your other picks today tell us about it I love Barbara Gowdy and it was hard because I want I love Anna Dine He she wrote a book called Slammerkin that I read around the same time but I really went for the humor because Barbara Gowdy in that book is so funny. I mean, she's just a revelation, the voice of the character. And I've read other things. And so it's not, you know, a lot of writers will develop a certain type of voice and it's in every book, right? And I try not to do that. I probably am not as innocent of that crime as I'd like to be. But it's such a distinctive form of storytelling. And it's really one of those things where, I mean, something happens. There's a place.

plot, but it's kind of about nothing. It's just this family getting along and not getting along and living their lives. And the narrator is a revelation. I mean, everything about it is just so, it's one of those books where you're reading it and you're laughing so hard you can't see the words. So to me, I think that's just a wonderful way to be a writer. You've talked about your dad a couple of times in this episode so far. Did you relate to the Canary family in any way? Any of that dysfunction? Well, I mean, it's certainly not gay. You know, I probably have more sisters out there than I know about.

But, I mean, in a way, the dry sense of humor, the sort of like, you know, okay, well, I mean, there's not a lot that I think any of my siblings could do that would surprise my dad. And, you know, it's like, oh, you know, I swallowed a screaming monkey and he'd be like, okay, well, what are we going to do? You know, I mean, it's just like there's, there's not a lot that phases him. We came up with a lot. Maybe he was phased when we were younger, but we beat it out of him. But the dad is a lot like that. And the mom's compulsive lying is hilarious. And it also is really a very good insight into how families normalize insanity.

And anybody who's grown up in a crazy family will recognize a lot of the Hallmark. Yeah. But you just, you don't think anything's wrong until a friend comes over and they're like, your mom is a compulsive liar, right? My mom's not a compulsive liar just to be clear, but you don't realize there's anything crazy about your family until you go around to someone else's house or someone comes around to yours. Yeah. Turns out everyone's insane. Yeah. Everyone's families are insane. We're all just going about doing our weird stuff and sort of our moral compass is just our justification of those things. It's true, though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I went over to a friend's house and her grandmother was visiting and there were rolls, like bread rolls everywhere. And she was like, oh, yeah, my grandmother just takes them out of her pocket and puts them on the counter. And I was like, okay, well, how do they get in her pocket?

So she grew up during the Depression, the grandmother. And so every time she would go out to a restaurant, she would put rolls in her pocket. But, you know, but that's also a little bit about history because it makes you, and it made me read a little bit about the Great Depression. as a child because I wanted to know, you know, what is this thing? And it gives you an understanding about some of the behaviors of not just, you know, the silent generation who grew up with these privations, but boomers and how their response to that was to, you know, embrace freedoms and all this and then how they got more conservative as they got older and, you know, all these societal changes just because women put bread in their pockets.

The family is the site of quite a lot of tension. On the one hand, it is a place of joy and hilarity like we've just described. But equally, and something you explore in your novels, is that it's a place often of domestic violence and of danger, particularly for women. How do you wrestle with those tensions? Well, you know, fortunately for me, I write crime, so there's not a lot of wrestling. It's more like embrace. It is? Yeah.

We need those tensions. Yeah. And you know, and my new book touches a bit on domestic violence just as a side story, but it's so prevalent. It's something that, you know, in America it was not until the 1990s that marital rape was illegal. Yeah. We even recognize that that could happen in a marriage and a relationship. Yeah. Yeah.

And you look at a lot of in-cells and a lot of Manusphere stuff is. really wanting to go back to that, you know? When faced with two choices, evolve or devolve, they're saying, let's go back. Let's not evolve. But I've always written about families because I think they tell you two things. They tell you who you really are and who you want to be, right? And everybody who goes home, no matter what they've done in the world, family will sometimes remember you at your weakest moment, right? And that's always very humbling. And for a lot of people, it's very claustrophobic. And I think it explains why we have these tensions in families. And as a crime writer, or just as a writer in general, family tensions are the best tensions to write about because there's so much history in them. How has your family and your feelings towards your upbringing showed you who you are and who you want to be? Well, you know, I think primarily I don't come from a reading family.

My, you know, my dad just thought it was crazy that I wasted all this time reading books. I mean, he was delighted, right, because he gave me this life where I could have this leisure time. Because when he was a kid, he was working, he was literally picking cotton and working at a sawmill. And, you know, he only could go to school until the eighth grade. So it was like a really big thing for him to create this life where I could. could have so much leisure. And he never really understood how anybody made a writing, a living being a writer, which is fair enough because no one really does.

I know if no one around you does. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they all have this idea. Oh, you've met this beautiful woman in a podcast in London. That's what being a writer is. And it's like, no, it's like not bathing and being in your pajamas for four days. It's saying the timer on my oven.

That's right. That's right. So, but, you know, I think it's so important to to talk about these relationships. And particularly, I mean, let's be honest, most of my readers are women. Most of fiction buyers are women. I mean, that's just the facts. 80-something percent of women are fiction buyers pretty much across the board. And so I like to tell these family stories from my own perspective, you know, my relationship with my sister. and with my dad and with my stepmom and, you know, all the women who have dated my dad and, you know, all these other things, I think. It's good to have an outlet to talk about these stories because they're pretty universal stories. And I think if you can find, if you talk about a family, when you're a writer, as a reader, what you're saying is, how are they like me, how are they not like me? And, you know, if they're not like you, gives you a sense of superiority, right? my family's better.

But equally when they are like you, you feel a little bit validated. Yeah, exactly. It's okay. I'm not alone. Exactly. Looking through the stories that you brought today, if you had to pick one book as a favorite, Karen, which would it be in why? Well, I mean, as a reader, it would probably be Mr. Gowdy.

I mean, Barbara Gowdy, Mr. Salmon. As a writer, it would always be Flannery O'Connor, just because, as a writer. There's so much insight in there. You came right from the beginning with Fannery O'Connor's name on the tip of your tongue. And that's where we finish as well. It feels only right. Karen Sauter, thank you so much for joining me on Bookshelfy. It's been such a pleasure to chat to you.

You too, thank you. I'm Vic Hope, and that was Bookshelfy from the Women's Prize, supported by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thanks for joining me for this episode. You'll find all the books that we discussed in our show notes. There's also a link to our bookshop.org shelf where every purchase supports independent bookshops and the work of the Women's Prize Trust, a charity helping build a better future by championing women's writing. Now remember to hit the follow or subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

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