This Is How We Are Human wasn’t my story, but it touched me deeply and was one I absolutely had to tell. I’d been there before, writing books that were inspired by truth, but generally it was from my own. Not with book seven.
When I wrote my debut, How to be Brave, back in 2012 I was developing it from a short story and also from a play, an extract of which 
was performed at a small festival in Hull. It was inspired by the real-life difficulty I had when my daughter Katy, having been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes aged just seven, later had a complete breakdown and refused her life-saving injections. The only way I could get her to have them was via storytelling – and the only story good enough to keep her attention was that of my grandad’s survival at sea during the second world war. We not only bonded over the shared discovery of our ancestry, but Katy found the courage to fight, just as Grandad Colin had done for fifty days on a cramped lifeboat, under searing heat, with little food and water.
My third novel, Maria in the Moon, was actually the first one I wrote way back in 2007 after the devastating floods in Hull. We were living in temporary accommodation after our home was submerged beneath four feet of sewage-rich, muddy rainwater. I created Catherine-Maria at a rickety, makeshift, metal desk because mine had been destroyed. I poured my pain into her experience, her voluntary work at Flood Crisis, her despair at what the water had taken, and what it flushed out from her past.
My own life has infiltrated some of my other novels, even in small ways. My voluntary work with children going through the care system helped shape The Mountain in my Shoe, and my own care records helped me create young Conor’s documents. I also moulded him around quirks and characteristics my own son had at that age.
My radio work inspired Call Me Star Girl. I’ve volunteered at community radio and then at BBC Radio Humberside for over ten years, and often thought – when doing the night-time show – how spooky the studio is when it’s d
ark. The huge windows become mirrors and you can only see yourselves rather than the passers-by. You’re very isolated, just around four of you, and thousands of faraway listeners. The corridor to the toilets is spooky and deserted too. I often wondered what it would be like to be trapped in the building for a whole night, for whatever reason. And so, I created Stella, a radio DJ doing her final show, entombed in the studio with a killer on the loose.
My role as a theatre usher had me create I Am Dust. Ushers steal about backstage, in the shadows, barely noticed. Invisible, we see everything. I’ve read theatre books where the actors are the protagonists and I wanted to give voice to those who work behind the scenes. When I wrote Chloe, and the musical world of the iconic show ‘Dust’, I wanted to create a claustrophobic place where only the theatre building exists.
In some ways, these are Own Voices stories, told from the perspective of a working class, northern woman. #OwnVoices is a fantastic movement; it’sa term coined by the writer Corinne Duyvis and refers to an author from a marginalized or under-represented group writing about their own experiences/from their own perspective, rather than someone from an outside perspective writing as a character from this group. It means that we hear first-hand the direct experience from those who don’t often have much of a voice.
I’m lucky enough to have a voice now. To have a platform. But when it came to sharing a story inspired by real-life young autistic man’s experience, I knew this would be my biggest challenge yet. This was a story about someone from an under-represented group, but it was not an #OwnVoices story. It wasn’t mine. Was it my place to even presume I could attempt to tell it?
I was having lunch one day with my dear friend Fiona, and she was very emotional, sharing with me that her twenty-year-old son Sean, who’s autistic, was struggling. He desperately wanted to meet a girl, have sex, find love, all the things most young men want. But being on the spectrum meant girls often found him either too different or were unsure how to treat him. Fiona said there was no help or advice, and she wished this topic was talked about more. When I said I would like to write a fictionalised version of Sean’s experience, she was delighted. ‘Please do,’ she begged me. ‘Your writing and Sean’s story … it would be perfect.’
I knew I had to do this one justice. Had to get every nuance of This Is How We Are Human right. A few people thought I shouldn’t write it, especially when I mentioned autism. But Fiona insisted that I was giving Sean a voice – after all he didn’t want to write it, but he was happy for it to bewritten. This isn’t an #OwnVoices story, and I don’t claim it is. But I worked closely with both Fiona and Sean. We got together and acted out scenes. I listened carefully to how Sean spoke, what he thought, and how he felt. Fiona read each chapter as I went and offered guidance and feedback. It was a truly emotional journey. I couldn’t have done it without the two of them. In fact, I never would have written it at all but for them.
If you want to read some fantastic #OwnVoices books, here are a few of my favourites…
Kate Fox is a ‘gentle activist’ and campaigner for the voices of northerners, the working class, women, and the neurodiverse. She is a Cultural Ambassador for the National Autistic Society. Her poetry collection, The Oscillations (2021, Nine Arches Press), is beautiful, rich, funny and sad, and I dip into it whenever I want to look at the world through her clever and witty eyes.
Shtum is a heart-wrenching and honest novel written by Jem Lester, inspired by his experiences with his own autistic son. He said, ‘A lot of the behaviours and the feelings that Jonah inspires in the book are very close to my feelings, because I couldn’t really see the point of reinventing an autistic character when I had one so close to home.’
Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty was one of my favourites of last year. Dara is autistic and a teacher once told him he couldn’t write. Did he ever prove them wrong. This glorious book, with writing that is wise and beautiful, chronicles Dara’s experiences as he turns fifteen, and describes his love of and connection with nature, this love of wildlife intense and inspiring.
What Cares The Sea? is the true account by the other man lost at sea with my grandad, Kenneth Cooke. It’s out of print and hard to get hold of, but there are a few copies floating around. It’s a brutal, searing, honest account of isolation, bravery, survival against the odds, and friendship.
Deon Meyer takes us to the scorching Karoo for Fever. This is more a post-apocalyptic coming of age story than a traditional mystery or thriller. The Times and Steven King both raved about it. The small community remaining after a deadly pandemic sets up their new home near the Gariep dam, hopeful that the water and hydroelectricity will help them keep the remnants of the old civilisation, but also build a better one.
Put on your dark glasses and indulge in armchair travel with Jeff Siger’s Murder in Mykonos, the first of the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mysteries, all set in Greece. Unpopular with the powers that be, Kaldis is sent to peaceful, tourist haven Mykonos. When two young women are murdered, the pressure is on, not only to solve the murders, but also to save the island’s tourist industry.
Femi Kayode’s Lightseekers is a stunning debut. The first line paints the scene: ‘The October sun is as hot as the blood of the angry mob.’ Three young men are mercilessly beaten before being set alight. The question is not who committed the crime, but why and who was behind it. One of the grieving fathers hires Philip Taiwo, an investigative psychologist who specialises in the motives behind crimes and mob violence. He soon finds he’s taken on far more than he bargained for.
Step back a hundred years and meet Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s only female lawyer, as she makes her debut in Sujata Massey’s multiple-award-winning The Widows of Malabar Hill. When she raises questions about the validity of a will, Mistry is thrown into the complexity of religious and legal diversity in a country struggling to free itself of British rule.
The Missing American is the first novel in Kwei Quartey’s new series featuring female private investigator, Emma Djan. The plot revolves around the activities of the young men who make fortunes scamming people on the internet with the assistance of witchcraft from traditional priests. Along the way, one of their targets goes missing. Emma has to find out how and why. It’s up for an Edgar award this year.
Step back another hundred years, and watch Investigator Yashim become embroiled in a plot to overthrow the Ottoman Empire in Edgar-winning The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin, the first of five Investigator Yashim novels. You will be able to hear the sights and sounds of the city, smell the spices of the souk, as the wily inspector plies his trade.
Mike Nicol’s crime fiction is a treat. Take Power Play. Staccato prose, tense plotting, intriguing characters. Don’t even think of crossing one of Nicol’s villains. The sun beats down on beautiful Cape Town, but this isn’t the city tourists see. Abalone smugglers. Secret agents with hidden agendas. Chinese smugglers. Rival gangs for whom murder is just part of the job. And a nod to Shakespeare thrown in.
In Ned-Kelly-Award-winner Candice Fox’s first novel in her Crimson Lake series, itself titled Crimson Lake, ex-detective, Ted Conkaffey, teams up with private investigator and convicted murderer, Amanda Pharrell, to help her solve a case of deception and obsession. What a pair! Beware of crocodiles when you set out your deck chair on the beach to read the story.
Pick up Jonathon King’s Edgar-Award-winning The Blue Edge of Midnight, the first of the Max Freeman Mysteries. Ex-cop Freeman exiles himself to the steamy Florida Everglades, wracked with guilt over the death of a twelve-year-old. When he finds the body of a young girl in the swamp, he becomes the prime suspect and has to dig into his own past to prove his innocence.
Writing letters to an old friend in Australia, a British academic tells the story of how he meets and falls for the woman novelist he has studied and taught on throughout his career. The academic and his subject become closer and a toxic mix of idolisation, envy and distrust develops. Our narrator also longs to write fiction, wishes he could crack “the trick of it”. The letters are natural, hilarious, touching and, at times, dark. Wonderfully done.
I found my way to Frayn’s The Trick of It via this book by novelist David Lodge. A collection of essays on topics such as Surrealism, the Unreliable Narrator and Ending, the book is packed with examples from writers including Orwell, Ishiguro and Austen. It’s less a how-to guide and more an entertaining eye-opener to the tricks of the greats. For readers and writers alike.
This story of a fictional terror attack on London is told by a grieving wife and mother in letters to Osama bin Laden. The plot is twisty and intriguing and the feel is apocalyptic given the scale of the attack that launches the story. But it’s the voice that made this book so superb for me. The letters are packed with turns of phrase that are simultaneously unique, funny and devastating, and everything is told with such directness that I have rarely felt so close to a narrator.
This funny, moving novel is written as a mix of emails, articles, first-person accounts and other documents. Semple gives us just enough of each character’s perspective and weaves everything together into a great page turner. The eponymous Bernadette is a wonderfully cynical character with a heart and her story is a clever reflection on missed opportunities and our conflicted feelings about fitting in.
I re-read this part of the Adrian Mole series while writing my book because I wanted to pick apart how Adrian sounds and feel in his thirties – a similar age to my narrator Rachel. I love the way returning to Adrian Mole is like meeting an old friend whose jokes I already know or anticipate, but I laugh at them just as hard anyway.
A book for children and adults alike, this is the darkest tale in the Moomin series. It’s effectively the account of a father’s existential crisis – though children probably see it as an adventure story. Moominpappa’s family have grown up, worse still, they have grown independent. His realisation that he is no longer the chief protector is beautifully shown in a scene where the rest of the family put out a fire without his knowing. His response? To move the entire family to a remote, rocky island, where once again he is needed. My book is largely about our search for purpose – aren’t so many books? – and Moominpappa’s quest to make his life make sense was an unexpected source of inspiration.
Full of dark humour and big themes of family tensions, this is one of my favourite books. It was on my desk throughout writing Everything Happens for a Reason. If I felt stuck, I would pick it up and read a few pages as a break and as inspiration. Holmes has a way of paring back and saying just what’s needed and of saying the unexpected, in dialogue particularly. Her characters can be brutally honest but are also vulnerable and kind.
I just love everything about this book. The writing is a beautiful mix of poetic and blunt, the characters are flawed but loveable, the setting is vivid, the backstories are so complex. The book I am working on now is also about someone returning to where they grew up so I had mixed feelings when I started David’s brilliant book – so much there to inspire me but it’s also mightily intimidating! I tell everyone to read this book – consider yourself told too.
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Beach by Alex Garland
100 years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
