The Book Gourmets Interview Ruth Dugdall

Posted in: Author Interviews, News & Views

Ruth Dugdall joined our Colchester groups for a meal and a discussion of her book The Sacrificial Man. It was a fun and interesting evening and we all thoroughly enjoyed meeting and chatting with Ruth.

Here are a few of our questions and her answers.
Please note there are spoilers.

Jo asked: Are you Cate?

Do you remember when she gets the handcuffs put on her, by the officer? Well that actually happened to me and I didn’t go and report it. So
there are bits of me in her, that feeling of frustration and powerlessness in this institution that is not listening. But I am no more Cate then I am the others.

There are bits of me in Alice. Although Alice isn’t a pleasant character, you still have to invest in that character. And so there is. My wardrobe is organised like Alice’s. I color co-ordinate my books. There are bits of my obsessiveness in Alice. You borrow, you borrow all the time. You borrow experiences and merge them. So Cate is a bit of me, but Alice is too and I suppose all of those characters are. And of course the backstory, Alice’s childhood with Matilde is very very important and that is really about the relationships between women, mothers and daughters. And having a daughter myself, that relationship is so crucial.

Caroline asked: Do you have any difficulty in deciding who is going to be written in the first person?

For me its Alice’s story, she is the important one. So that is the head I want to be in. That for me has the most interest, and her backstory. The backstory is Alice telling a story. She is telling us that story but she doesn’t really know that story. That is why she will occasionally jump out a bit and say “I’ve chosen you, you’re going to listen, this is my story.” It’s almost in her head and she is not sure what is true and what is not true. So that’s why that’s a bit distant. Whereas her story is the “I” narrative. She is standing on that platform, and she wants us to understand why she is doing what she is doing. She doesn’t necessarily fully understand herself and she is very distorted in what she is doing. She thinks she is a heroine in a love story, that this is some kind of tragic, passionate love that she has with Smith, that’s what she believes. But it is not true, but she can’t see that. And that is really her tragedy, that at the end she realises that the real love, the person who really could have saved her wasn’t Smith, it was Lee. She couldn’t see that. It is supposed to be a bit about love, and what we understand as love and how limited we can be. It’s those kind of ideas that I am trying to explore, inadequately, imperfectly, but trying to explore.

Alison asked: How tricky did you find the planning to go from this story to that story, for this story, from this setting to that setting? We have read a couple of stories that have done that. That worked for me, it flowed, which I think is really difficult.

It’s because they exist as different stories. So the backstory is it’s own story and on my computer file, it’s there as backstory. And then there is Cate’s story and Alice’s. I wrote them all as separately and not chronologically. I would kind of dive in where I wanted to write. But all three of those can be read as stories in their own right. And then I had to make the decision on how to slot them in and that’s the tricky bit. Because for me, actually the opening bit, on the train, with Alice waiting for Smith to arrive, that’s the opening. But for a long time I was being told by my mentor, and my writing group who I really respect, that “you shouldn’t be starting there, you should be starting with Cate driving to see ALice’s house in January. Not knowing she was going to meet.” So I have messed about with the order quite a bit, and also the backstory, is there too much backstory here, cutting it there, and when do we need to meet Matilde again?

So I do mess around with that quite a lot but the stories themselves would always be whole and quite complete. I would just be changing where I cut it.

I have particular music I listen to when I write certain scenes. So when I launched the Sacrifical Man I actually played a song and asked everybody to close their eyes and listened to the song. And as the song faded out I went into the opening because it was a song I used to listen to when I wrote the opening. So atmosphere is quite important . Those stories have quite different atmospheres. The backstory for me is quite emotional, I suppose that is the most emotional story. Which is why I wrote it so distanced. It’s so unbearably painful that to do it in the first person would be too much, I think. You know Alice can only deal with what has happened in her life by putting it in that story. I found it painful to write and to read and I think that adds something. I like to read a book where I feel the author has felt something.

Ana asked: What is your purpose when you write, do you want convey something?

My motivation is to understand, not that I can completely understand. I write about things that frighten me. Which is why The Woman Before Me is about a woman losing a child. Because as a new mother there is nothing more frightening than the thought of losing a child and I suppose The Sacrificial Man, that German case just hooked in my head. Why, why would somebody want to be killed and eaten? I had seen stuff about it on TV but it was inadequate, it didn’t answer my questions. So I suppose I write to try and explore things that disturb me, that I want to know more about and I think that might be a way of gaining control and I hope I give that to the reader in some way. That actually the backstory is about understanding. So that actually she is not evil , it doesn’t come from nowhere, there is a sense of understanding.

Of course, in the end, there is a understanding for Cate as well. And maybe for Alice as well, maybe it’s too late but she understands a bit more about what has happened to her. So I suppose it’s about understanding. Its not just about the criminal being caught. I finished one today where it was about the criminal being caught and I found for me, that’s where the story begins. We know what Alice has done, right at the beginning. It’s about why she has done it.

Moyra asked: Do you discuss your ideas with your mentor of what you are going to write or do you write it first, then discuss?

Yes, I do a first draft. I actually have a new mentor for my new novel who I am meeting on Thursday. She has read the whole of my novel, and she has done a report on what she thinks of it. She says “we are 80% there, we can get it 20% better”, so we will sit for three hours on Thursday and go through it. It’s partly because of the way I work, it’s a personality thing. I want the feedback. I will go with it, as far as I am concerned if somebody is willing to give me feedback, that’s good. I’m on a learning curve.

Ana asked: Has it made you reflect on your own responses as a probation officer, have you learned from your writing

That’s a good question. I have never been asked that before. When I hear people say Cate is a bit of a wimp I find that interesting. Because I think that probably I did respond like that. There is a lot of me in her, certainly in “The Woman before Me”. And that makes me reflect – should I have been more upfront. Yeah, I suppose it does really. I suppose cases will haunt me that I think I did less well and will come up in my writing.

Jo asked: Which authors inspire you?

I really like Margaret Atwood. If I like a book I will read it again and again. I love “The Handmaiden’s Tale” and “Alias Grace”, which is historical. I read that quite a lot before I wrote “The James Version”.
Gillian Flyn – she writes very dark and authentic crime, she is somebody I read again and again.
Donna Tartt – The Secret History – I have probably read that 20 times.
I also like Jodi Picoult & Anita Shreve.

Rosie asked: If it was a move who would you have play Alice?

I don’t know who I would have playing Alice but I know who I would have playing Cate – Carey Mulligan – she was in ‘Never Let Me Go’ and ‘An Education’. I really like her intensity because Cate is quite serious I suppose.

A few interesting things Ruth said:
• If I bring anything to the crime genre that is what I want to bring, that people aren’t bad or evil, I don’t see her as evil but she has this very damaged background. Which is why to me the backstory is so important to the book.
• I don’t think my job is to give answers, it’s to explore things.
• Probation officers, a lot of people don’t know what they do. They are much maligned. People see them as do-gooders, nobody likes probation officers. In the prison system they are the “care-bears” and in the court system where you have the very erudite, very educated barristers and judge, well the probation officer is the poor relation in the criminal justice system. That the sense the probation service have, I thought this was an opportunity to show that probation officers do get to know criminals in a very unique way.