What inspires me? It’s hard to say. A lot of daydreaming, some reading, a few travels, and the occasional Eureka!
It all begins in London, and I know several very different Londons.
There’s the London I discovered with my grandma when I was a young adult. The London where I lived with my husband (who was travelling, more often than not) and our newborn son. The London I found in the pages of countless novels, in old films and musicals, in Mary Poppins and Paddington. The London I explored for my research when I was working on my PhD. In short, a London that is vibrant, full of colours, sounds, smells, laughter, rules and freedoms, good and bad surprises, mews, avenues and parks.
And then there is Paris, where I grew up – a city I no longer love. But one day, while visiting a friend, he took me to La Mouzaïa, a little borough I didn’t know. And there I saw Stan’s house – the one with Alice and the white rabbit painted on its walls.
I had already started writing the novel, and suddenly it felt right for Stan to move there: a quiet place, but one full of mystery.
To be honest, like Stan, I never really liked Alice in Wonderland. Partly because I was jealous of Alice (I’m still waiting for a rabbit to come and fetch me), and partly because, as a child, I found everything in that book frightening. I could – and probably should – read it again, but for some reason, I don’t feel like it.
As for the plot, I wanted a male character. A composer. Someone who wouldn’t see or feel the world like the rest of us. Synaesthesia made sense, then. Stan’s sensitivity is extreme – and so, when Stan loves, he loves in an extreme way. Love that borders on madness. Absolute.
To the point where he recreates his dead wife’s voice.
What would we do for love? What would we do to keep alive the ones we love? To make sure they’re always there to chat with us, to hold us, to comfort us? How far are we willing to go to keep their ghost close?
This is where Oscar Wilde and Maupassant inspired me. Their fantastical short stories always play on that feeling: Is it real? Am I going mad? Who are these shadows? It’s eerie, and I love that sensation. We play with our fears, as if we were still children – ready to close the book and return to the safety of reality. But what if that’s no longer possible?
That is exactly what happens to Stan. As he wanders back again and again down memory lane, he forgets to live in the present. He loses himself in a past that, like all pasts, never truly existed. We all reshape our memories – brightening or darkening them depending on our mood. And suddenly, the mundane becomes extraordinary.
And we all fear and depend on our AI machines. We all wonder whether Alexa or Siri is spying on us. Remember that chat with your friends about going to Greece in the summer? And that same night, you start getting ads for dreamy little houses to rent by the sea on a remote Greek island? It’s happened to all of us. It stirs something strange in us. And sometimes, we can’t help but see these smart devices as our best friends – the ones we trust with our eyes closed.
Double Room is made of all these ingredients.
But above all, it’s what you see in it.
Anne Sénès’ English debut novel, Double Room, translated by Alice Banks, is published by Orenda Books.
