Sophie Hannah
Sophie Hannah
Sophie Hannahis a British poet and novelist. From 1997 to 1999 she was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge and between 1999 and 2001 a junior research fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPoet
arrive exactly seemed
What surprised me most while writing 'The Monogram Murders' was that everything I needed seemed to arrive in my head exactly when I needed it.
area life
Reading is the only area of my life in which I prefer to be non-autonomous.
elements involved poems
Everything is personal - the poems and the crime novels. I have never been involved in any murders, but there are strong autobiographical elements in each.
Just because someone has stylistic limitations doesn't necessarily make them a worse writer.
books carry emerging few literary mystery novel obviously proper snobby start
I'm snobby about books that aren't crime fiction: if I start reading a literary novel and there's no mystery emerging in the first few pages, I'm like, 'Gah, this obviously isn't a proper book. Why would I want to carry on reading it?'
bad depended entertain life performance somebody trying upsetting
With me, even if my life depended on it, I wouldn't be able to cry. Not with somebody there. Because even if I'm talking about bad and upsetting things, if there is somebody else in the room, I am trying to entertain them. If there is somebody there, I am in performance mode. I can only cry if I am on my own.
mind novels properly trying
I am trying to write novels for properly clever people, but I also want them to be proper novels that also stick in a person's mind and have an atmosphere about them.
nobody novels written
Nobody has ever written as many enjoyable, fun-to-read crime novels as Agatha Christie. It's all about the storytelling and the pleasure of the reader. She doesn't want to be deep or highbrow.
austen good highbrow jane literary romantic type
No highbrow literary type would ever say 'Moby Dick' is good but it's just about a whale, or a Jane Austen would be important if she wasn't just writing about romantic relationships.
benefit character classic
Poirot is a classic character from fiction, not a MacBook Air; he would not benefit from updates.
body came collecting copy cricket fair hobby secondhand whose
My father, whose hobby was collecting secondhand cricket books, came back from a book fair one day with a copy of 'The Body In The Library.'
doomed tries
When a writer tries to copy another writer, it's doomed to fail.
crime model writer
When I set out to write crime fiction, I didn't think to myself, 'I'm going to model myself on Agatha Christie' or 'I am going to be a crime writer in the Christie tradition'.
anyone business children decided intrigued nearly trip
When my children were very young, I was slated to go on a business trip. When it was nearly canceled, I decided I wouldn't tell anyone and go off for a week's vacation anyway. In the end, the trip went off as planned. But I was intrigued by the idea of an illicit holiday.