Heart-Shaped Bruise (27 page)
Read Heart-Shaped Bruise Online
Authors: Tanya Byrne
Tags: #Fiction, #Psychological, #Thrillers, #Suspense
Music has an important place in the novel. Do you listen to music when you’re writing, and if so, what?
Definitely. I used to work for BBC Radio, so music, especially live music, is in my blood, my marrow. I had different playlists for different parts of
Heart-Shaped Bruise
. I listened to Yo-Yo Ma whenever I wrote about St Jude’s or when Emily played the cello, and to a lot of Radiohead and Martha Wainwright when she was at Archway, not forgetting Sinatra when I wrote the scene between Sid and Emily at the wedding. I’ve been asked if that’s their song, I suppose it would be, but for me, ‘Rolling in the Deep’ by Adele always will be. I listened to it on repeat while writing most of their scenes. But if Emily had a song of her own, it would be ‘You Know I’m No Good’ by Amy Winehouse. Amy died as I was nearing the end of the final draft. I was writing the scene in the music shop when I found out and I sobbed and sobbed. I had to read the final paragraph of that chapter aloud recently, where Emily says that she would be better if she could be the girl she was when she was with Sid all of the time, and I still got a lump in my throat, even after all these months.
Is there hope for Emily at the end of
Heart-Shaped Bruise?
The ending certainly isn’t a happy one for Emily, but it’s an honest one. I struggled with it, to be honest, with what note to end it on. I wrote several versions before I found one that rang true, because the truth is no one is going to sweep in and save
her, Emily has to save herself. But that’s where the hope is, I think, she sees the line at last and has taken a step back from it.
How does it feel to see your debut novel in print?
I can’t begin to tell you how exciting it is, just seeing these words, these words I’ve spent hours agonising over, held to paper forever. It’s a remarkable thing.
What are you writing next?
My next book is about a seventeen-year-old girl called Scarlett Milton, who is very different from Emily, but I’d like to think, if they ever met, they’d be mates.
| 1. | Doctor Gilyard asks Emily: ‘Do you think you could have been friends, if this hadn’t happened?’ (see here ) Do you believe that Emily and Juliet could have been friends in other circumstances? |
| 2. | To what extent is ‘Emily Koll’ just as much of a fiction as ‘Rose Glass’? |
| 3. | Is Emily’s revenge on Juliet also a sacrifice? How? |
| 4. | Are there similarities between Emily and Juliet, and do you think, if so, that Emily is herself aware of them? |
| 5. | Does Emily want us to forgive her, even if she isn’t asking us directly? |
| 6. | Who do you think Sid is better suited to: Emily or Juliet? |
| 7. | Emily feels that Juliet took away her father by stabbing him and revealing the fact that he was a criminal. To what extent do you agree with Emily that her relationship with her father prior to the stabbing was an illusion? |
| 8. | ‘“Can you not make this about you?” she said with a sneer. “Don’t get me wrong, Rose, it’s quite a gift, how you can turn every conversation, every situation, back around to yourself.”’ (see here ) Is Emily self-centred, as Juliet implies? |
| 9. | Is Emily a reliable narrator? |
| 10. | In her letter to Juliet, Emily says that she ‘is not sorry’. Do you think this is true? |
| 11. | ‘Rose Glass felt more whole than Emily Koll sometimes.’ (see here ) Why do you think Emily enjoys being Rose Glass for a while? |
| 12. | Do you like Emily? |
| 13. | ‘After what you’ve read in the papers, you were expecting something awful, blood even, a few broken bones. But that would have been too easy. It was the little things, I knew, that would unpick her – slowly, slowly.’ (see here ) Why do you think ‘blood’ and ‘broken bones’ would have been ‘too easy’ for Emily’s revenge upon Juliet? |
| 14. | Is there hope for Emily at the end of the novel? |