Gothic Stories, Irony and Shakespeare: A Q&A with Ava Reid
Bestselling author Ava Reid sat down with blog writer Isabelle McConville to dive into her body of work. From YA to adult, gothic to historical, fantasy to dystopian, Ava writes for every kind of reader. Read on for Ava and Isabelle’s conversation on gothic stories, irony and Shakespeare.
IM: My name is Isabelle McConville and I am the blog writer here at Barnes & Noble. Today we’re here to dive into the incredible work of Ava Reid — The Wolf and the Woodsman, Juniper & Thorn, A Study in Drowning, Lady Macbeth, and come March, Fable for the End of the World. Ava, thank you so much for being here today.
AR: Thank you for having me.
IM: I am really interested in your style and the process writers go through when they’re fully forming a book and first coming to their ideas. Do you typically create your characters or your plot first?
AR: I think I’m a big-picture thematic writer — the why of a book comes before the what. I also usually have way more ideas than I have time to write. The why is really important to me, like why should I focus on this project as opposed to all these others? But then within that, the initial spark is often something quite random and obscure. For The Wolf and the Woodsman, I was writing a paper for my degree on contemporary Hungarian politics, and I ended up going down this Wikipedia rabbit hole about history and just tried to get a sense of the formation of their national identity. I came upon this anecdote about St. Stephen who was the first Christian King of Hungary. He was born a pagan, but he converted to Christianity, he had his nephew’s — his heir apparent — eyes stabbed out because he was a pagan and he didn’t want a pagan to inherit the throne. So, I think you can probably see having read the Wolf and the Woodsman, how that got the ball rolling. From the beginning, it was always about these big ideas of nation building, identity and religion.
IM: What did that process look like for Lady Macbeth and A Study in Drowning? Obviously, Lady Macbeth is a re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but what did the actual plotting and characterization process look like for you?
“I wasn’t interested in the minutiae of Shakespeare’s works . . . I wanted to focus on what kind of large-scale and emotional impact it would have if such an influential author turned out to be a fraud.”
AR: A Study in Drowning started with Shakespeare, which is something I’ve talked about before. I wanted to write about the Shakespeare authorship theories, which are essentially a collection of theories that posit that Shakespeare was not the true author of the works that are attributed to him. This is not a theory that is really given any credence today, but historically it was very much believed and advocated for by a lot of really important public intellectuals. It was something really serious to them; they dug up people’s graves and invented cipher machines trying to find out the truth, what they thought was the truth. Initially, I conceived it as a fully contemporary, dark academia novel about that, but then I realized I wasn’t interested in the minutiae of Shakespeare’s works and getting into it with Shakespeare people. I didn’t want to go there at all ironically, because then I went on to write an actual Shakespeare book right after. I wanted to focus on what kind of large-scale and emotional impact it would have if such an influential author turned out to be a fraud. I had to actually take it away from the context where anyone would have preconceived notions, so I moved it to the secondary world of fantasy and created a fictional author. It’s still about these big ideas of storytelling, nationalism, and erasure of authorship.
IM: When you mold your characters like Effy or Lady Macbeth, do you feel like they come to you fully formed, or how much of their voice have you fine-tuned by the time the narrative really starts?
AR: I’m not an outliner or a planner at all, to the point where my writer friends think that I’m insane! I typically just go into writing a book without a plan, but I do try and figure out the voice pretty early on. I need my characters to feel very distinct from each other, especially when I have to jump between different projects and genres and sub-genres. I’ll often rewrite the first chapter — that’s usually one that I go over a ton of times. The first chapter of Lady Macbeth is probably my single most revised piece of writing in my entire career. There’s one sentence that my editor and I went back and forth on over three different rounds of revision just trying to just get it exactly right. That formation of the voice does happen quite early on.
IM: I’m especially interested in Lady Macbeth — as in readers, we know how she’s been portrayed and treated for a really long time. I wonder what it was like when you decided you wanted to step into her voice?
“I’m entering this enormous canon of Shakespeare adaptations, and this was my effort to earn my place among them.”
AR: It was difficult — Lady Macbeth was the character that was most difficult for me to write, because when you’re coming up with a completely original story, there’s no baggage. With this novel, I was coming to a preexisting story, so I was looking for my way in. I’m entering this enormous canon of Shakespeare adaptations, and this was my effort to earn my place among them. There’s a different kind of pressure there. Since I was grappling with this, I decided to look at what Shakespeare’s original source material was and find out where he got his inspiration. His primary source was Holinshed’s Chronicle of Scotland, which was the preeminent historical reference of the time — it’s what people in Shakespeare’s time period would look at to learn about history and the history of the British Isles, though it’s not really historically accurate. It existed as more of a political project intended to create these national histories and national identities — mytho-histories, really — for the British Isles. You can tell it’s not historically accurate because that’s where the story of Macbeth and the witches comes from, and it’s presented as real history. In Holinshed’s version, the witches are called fairies, and when I read that, a little light bulb went off in my head and I suddenly felt like I had my way in. I was also thinking a lot about entering the canon of this new sub-genre that has developed over the past few years of feminist reimaginings, and what that means. I wanted Lady Macbeth to feel like it was actually a woman of that time period telling her story, so I started to read the kind of literature that 12th century noblewomen would read, which were chivalric romances. I like to think of it as if Roscille, the main character, is reading these romances and then using these tropes to write her own story, specifically the works of the most famous medieval author Marie de France.
IM: When you wrote this book, you were coming right off of being in Effy’s voice from A Study in Drowning, and they are such different protagonists, but they’re both so intriguing in their own ways. And I wonder what it was like to flip from Effy’s more reserved, anxious voice to Roscille, who has a little bit more of a bite to her.
AR: I remember when I was writing A Study in Drowning, I was finding it really hard to do it in third person because my first two books were written in first person. At the time, that’s what I preferred and what came more naturally to me, but I made the active choice to write this in third person for a couple of reasons. One, because I needed it to feel different from my adult work, and secondly because in this book there are letters and excerpts written in first person. I thought it would be much more confusing if I had first person narration and first-person letters and excerpts from the book. I think Lady Macbeth in general is the book that I’ve made the most active choices about word choice and syntax because I was trying to do very specific things and pay homage to the original in very specific ways. It was very measured and intentional, whereas a lot of my process for my other books has been more instinctual. I was making choices and executing them in a very deliberate way.
IM: Going back to what you said earlier about the original inspiration for Shakespeare’s Macbeth, you did write a really great guest post for us on the inspiration for Lady Macbeth and how it felt to read some of Shakespeare’s original source material and the power that adaptations have for keeping stories alive. With that in mind, what do you hope changes with the outward perception of Lady Macbeth after reading your book? What do you hope people see differently about her after reading this?
“I hope that it captures people’s imaginations . . . every adaptation of Shakespeare is valid in its own way because the source material is intended to be adapted and reimagined constantly.”
AR: The only thing I hope for in terms of reception of any of my books is that it makes people feel strongly. I think that’s really all you can hope for. You can never predict what reaction people will have. Lady Macbeth is not a straightforward retelling, and I think a lot of readers have reacted to that — they were expecting it to be something that hued closer to the original, but that wasn’t something I was interested in doing at all. I hope that it captures people’s imaginations and that they’re willing to go there with me, go beyond their own expectations of it, be creative, inventive and open-minded. Shakespeare’s work, by design, they’re plays. They’re meant to be adapted every single time they’re put to stage. That is an adaptation — it’s a reimagining of the source material from the actors that are chosen to the way it’s staged. Those choices are up to people in the modern world; how they’re interpreting and seeing the work through their own lens in their own experiences. I think every adaptation of Shakespeare is valid in its own way because the source material is intended to be adapted and to be reimagined constantly.
IM: Going back to characterization, what I was thinking a lot about while reading Lady Macbeth was about how she can be perceived as kind of an anti-hero, and that’s how I read her in your book. I really enjoyed that because I felt like I hadn’t seen her portrayed in that way before. What do you enjoy about writing an anti-hero and what makes them interesting or challenging to you?
“I want my books to be challenging and devastating . . . the whole point of art is human connection — who can connect to characters who are perfect? Where is the catharsis in that?”
AR: One of my fundamental beliefs about art and writing is that I don’t read or write for escapism or for comfort. It’s something a lot of people do, but it’s not at all appealing to me, which is probably obvious given the types of books I write. I want my books to be challenging and devastating and not something that people go to because they want to feel comfortable. For me, there’s nothing interesting or challenging about reading a character who’s perfect or a blank slate. The whole point of art is human connection — who can connect to characters who are perfect? Where is the catharsis in that? Where are the questions? Where is the emotion? I think the only requirement of art is that it provokes strong emotions in people and asks interesting questions, and a character who’s wholly one thing or another, who’s perfect or who’s a generic blank slate doesn’t do any of that.
IM: You make a really great point about wanting to write something that challenges people — my favorite books are almost never a breeze to read. No matter my age, whether it was me being so young and reading A Series of Unfortunate Events or something akin to that, was a challenge for me as a reader when it came to big ideas and themes I wasn’t familiar with at that age. I think if you’re writing and you don’t have something to say and challenge people’s way of thinking, I don’t see the point in it.
AR: I definitely agree. That series was actually my first book obsession. I loved those books so much — I would steal them from my school library.
IM: Speaking of challenging people, I know it is important for you to write about characters who grapple with trauma, mental health issues, and carry a lot of emotional baggage within them. I wonder why that’s important to you and why you want to make sure your books have that representation?
AR: It’s important to me because it’s real and it’s honest. There’s this Kazuo Ishiguro quote that I always come back to because it really encapsulates to me what’s important about art. It’s from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, where he says stories are about one person saying to another, this is the way it feels to me — can you understand, and does it feel this way to you? What is the point of art if it isn’t honest? Trauma and mental illness are really powerful forces that have shaped my life, so of course it’s going to shape my art too. It’s the most honest thing that I can say. It’s the most honest expression of myself. I’m quite a shy and introverted person, so writing and creating art is my way of connecting to the world in lieu of IRL interpersonal interactions.
IM: I know the first gothic book you wrote was Juniper & Thorn — I was working as a bookseller on the floor in B&N when that was one of our Monthly Picks a few years back. My friends were gushing over it at the time. What does writing a great gothic story mean to you and why are you so interested in that genre?
“Gothic connection to me is the last bastion of sincerity because it’s so melodramatic. It isn’t supposed to be diluted and distilled into tropes”
AR: One aspect that’s really big for me is the importance of style. It’s concerned with style, with aesthetics; there’s this very baroque quality to the writing style. The idea that style is inextricable from content is one that I really believe in, and that shapes my own philosophy about writing. I don’t know if you are a fan of Ethel Cain, but in a recent post, she talks about how demoralizing it is that everything is made into a joke. I can appreciate a good joke, but I felt that so much. I hate the way that people are so irony-pilled in their reception to media and the way they engage with art. Gothic connection to me is this last bastion of sincerity because it’s so melodramatic. It isn’t supposed to be diluted and distilled into tropes — by design it’s weird and off-putting and uncomfortable.
IM: I completely agree. I think when we have things like gothic stories, horror, or even paranormal romance, we have a different outlet for getting these big ideas and concepts across. Whereas if you put out a book that’s just straight slice of life talking about trauma, it might be made into a joke or a caricature.
AR: In so many ways, gothic is the essential, ideal genre for talking about trauma and mental health. These are topics that are so essential to the gothic, and it’s incredibly ironic and funny that people’s pearl-clutching reaction to hard topics in gothic fiction is confusion, aversion or disgust. The fact that the genre has become so diluted that people just see it as a synonym for spooky or dark is such bummer because it has a very long and rich tradition with very specific meaning and valence, and it’s become so reduced.
IM: Fable for the End of the World is your second YA novel after A Study in Drowning. Can you tell me a little bit about what you like about writing in YA vs adult? Do you find there are limitations or freedoms with either?
“We should view each category as having different opportunities rather than limitations . . . I hope the pendulum can swing back and we can continue to protect YA as a space that is primarily for teenagers.”
AR: When I sat down to write A Study in Drowning, I went in with the intention to write a YA novel. In my opinion, we should view each category as having different opportunities rather than limitations. It’s unfortunate that we’re in this time where some YA is just adult without explicit sex scenes. I think because the lines are blurring, we’re getting a little bit more of that. With adult, obviously you can write in a more graphic way or explore different topics, but YA gives you the opportunity to speak directly to a teen readership, which I think is something special that should be cherished and celebrated and protected. With my adult books, the characters were all in their twenties like me, so that was something I didn’t really think about. With my YA books, I had to go back and think about what it was like to be 17, or 18? That wasn’t too long ago, but it still required this level of real internality and reflection. I think because of that, my YA is inherently a bit more intimate and personal. I hope that the pendulum swings back and we can continue to protect YA as a space that is primarily for teenagers.
IM: I saw you share an incredible group Halloween costume of A Study in Drowning on socials this morning. I grew up a fangirl, I’ll always be a fangirl, and there’s nothing like the connection we have to stories we love, especially when we’re teens. What does that kind of support mean to you?
AR: It’s wild to me because A Study in Drowning was a book that did not have any of the hallmarks of being a big success. It was not sold in a giant auction for a bunch of money, it wasn’t a publisher’s lead title, it didn’t have a fancy special edition, it didn’t have a book club. It didn’t have any of the things that you think are so essential to a big success. So much this book’s success was word-of-mouth — it was promoted by influencers, by booksellers, and by who just talk about books for the pure love of books. I think I have a different type of career because of that. There are books that do really well, primarily because of publisher and retailer support, and then there are books that do better because of word-of-mouth success, and that inherently creates a different relationship to your readership. Having that is really, really cool.
IM: Lastly, who are you reading right now?
AR: I just finished a book called Miranda and Caliban — it’s a re-imagining of The Tempest from Miranda’s perspective, and it’s really about her relationship with Caliban. The Tempest is actually my favorite Shakespeare play. Miranda and Caliban is by Jacqueline Carey — she is one of my favorite authors ever. This book was everything I wanted out of a story, out of a book, out of a reimagining of The Tempest. I highly, highly, highly recommend it. I also just started The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling. This book was truly written for me. It’s about this castle under siege and people having to resort to cannibalism and weird religious fervor. It’s so good. I am going to need to read everything by Caitlin Starling now.
IM: Ava, thank you so much for doing this today. I really enjoyed speaking with you.
AR: Thank you so much for having me.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.