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
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.
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.
contain dead highly impossible meticulous novels opening seeds structure
My crime novels are highly structured. I never start out with a dead body. I start with an impossible scenario. Opening questions should be mysterious, weird, intriguing, and contain the seeds of the solution. The structure has to be meticulous - I'm a structure freak.
few people
There are very few well-adjusted people in my books. But I do think that's normal. Because everyone does have their issues and hang-ups.
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?'
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.
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.
apply choosing committed crimes motives particular range thrillers
For me, a big part of writing psychological thrillers is choosing crimes committed for motives which would only apply to a particular person in a particular situation; a unique, one-off motive that is born out of someone's particular range of psychological afflictions.
books mysterious wrote
Agatha Christie never wrote books that just started with a dead body, and a 'Let's find out who the murderer is', which is kind of mysterious but not that mysterious. She always started with, 'How can this thing be happening; isn't it strange?'
area life
Reading is the only area of my life in which I prefer to be non-autonomous.
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.'
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.