Interviewing Alison Littlewood

Hellloo!

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed The Cottingley Cuckoo a wonderfully eerie thriller covering fantasy, motherhood and belief. I am delighted to be able to speak to the author Alison Littlewood who was able to talk to me about the new book and a few other things!

How would you book tempt The Cottingley Cuckoo?

Aaaaaaargh – so hard to sum up your own book! I’d probably ask Mrs Favell to do it for me, she’s good at drawing people into her web, but here goes . . .

A young woman called Rose, working in a care home, is shown a stack of old letters by a resident, Mrs Favell. They were written by someone who lived in Cottingley at the time of the famous fairy photographs, but he says he can prove the fairies existed, since he possesses a tiny fairy skeleton. But his encounters aren’t quite so nice . . . indeed, older folklore tells us that fairies might punish humans for spying on them, or steal babies away and leave changelings in their place. Meanwhile, Rose discovers she’s pregnant, and odd things are happening in her home. What if the old story hasn’t entirely gone away?

What drew you to the Cottingley Fairies? Why does folklore appeal to you?

Folklore in general gives that wonderful sense of imbuing a place with stories – you can almost feel layers and layers of story-magic under your feet. And I’ve loved fairy tales since I was a little girl. The Cottingley fairies are fascinating because Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths were just little girls who loved such tales too, but they managed to bring theirs to life! They never could have imagined where their photographs would lead, or that we’d still be talking about the Cottingley fairies a hundred years later. But fairy tales are like that, aren’t they? They can take on a life of their own. As an adult though, I find them more convincing when they’re dark and twisted and mysterious and strange. Or perhaps that’s just me . . . 

Motherhood is not viewed with the usual rosiness – did you want to challenge the idea everyone is happy to become a parent?

I really wanted to look at the difficulties faced by a new mother and the way they affect her whole life, including her perceptions. The story touches on issues like post-natal depression and even psychoses that can be associated with pregnancy. I think generally such issues tend to be glossed over or not talked about. They’re over-ridden by the assumption that every woman wants to be a mother, or can be a mother, and that everything about motherhood is a rose garden. Of course, changeling stories originated around babies that didn’t seem to thrive, or didn’t match the perception of how they should be, so difficulties around motherhood and birth are inherent in the lore.

This story is ambiguous as to what is actually happening – belief is important. Did you want to never let the reader fall down on one side or the other?

I love walking the tightrope of whether something supernatural is going on, or whether there’s a more prosaic explanation. The Cottingley Cuckoo is absolutely about belief – why people choose to believe the things they do, and if, once they’ve begun, they can turn back. One of my favourite films is Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, where he essentially forces the viewer to decide whether they believe in magic. I really wanted to do something similar with the reader – in a way, the book plays with and questions their own belief too. So it does defy giving easy answers!

This time you’ve two narratives a hundred years apart did you know where each was going or did one influence the other?

I actually wrote the letters in the book as a stand-alone novella in 2017, which was published by NewCon Press as Cottingley. So the 1920s story thread was already there, but it somehow wouldn’t leave me alone. I started wondering what would happen if someone vulnerable, and facing some of the issues raised by that story in contemporary life, began to be drawn in by those letters. So Rose very much begins to respond and react to a story that pre-existed and that did indeed come from the past, albeit a more recent one! The letters make up about a fifth of the book, so it very much developed from there into Rose’s story.

What else can we look forward from you in the future and where can we find out more?

I’m working on a tale set in Victorian times about a girls’ boarding school, where a teacher appears to have a doppelgänger. It has the feel of a ghost story, though with a rather more mysterious explanation for events. The inspiration came from a reported case of mysterious happenings in a European school in the nineteenth century, which feeds into and affects the narrative. I am rather a fan of weird history!

To find out more – I’m around on Facebook and Twitter as Ali__L  (with a double underscore – it seemed like a good idea at the time!) or at www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.  

If there was one book, not your own, that you could get everyone would read what would it be?

Such a tough question! I could plump for one of the classics, but I love to keep up with new fiction and voices in the genre, so I’m going to pick something a bit more recent. Andrew Michael Hurley’s Starve Acre is a treat – folk horror at its finest. A man whose child has died starts to excavate an old gallows tree in his field, delving into the mysteries of the past. At the same time we uncover the story of the final months of his son’s life, which were increasingly disturbed, possibly even tainted by some unnatural influence. Meanwhile, his wife is convinced her son’s spirit still lingers, and tries to make contact. It’s beautifully written, and an absolute gem of a book.  

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.