Chris was the winner of the Ngaio March Best First Novel Award, for her debut novel, For Reasons of Their Own, which was also shortlisted for the NZ Booklovers Fiction Award 2021. Chris was also long-listed for the DAVITT awards in Australia. Chris talks to NZ Booklovers about The Glasgow Smile.
Tell us a little about the Glasgow Smile.
The Glasgow Smile is a compelling crime story of an ordinary woman who was found murdered in a dingy alley, kneeling with her face resting against the slashed red lips of The Joker, as if intimate with the painted portrait on the recess wall. While trying to determine the killer, the novel beats with issues of moral ambiguity and relates a tragic tale of what happens when we have flaws in our perception of people and events. The underlying theme is one of secrets, of the masks we wear and how we see one image but it hides another and how sometimes we need lies to hold ourselves together, simply because the truth isn’t good enough.
What inspired The Glasgow Smile?
This crime novel was inspired by a series of random events, including a stint working as a nurse with Indigenous communities in the outback, my time in rural Victoria attempting to become an author as well as my long-standing passion for iconography in Art. These disparate events culminated in a late winter’s night visit to the cobblestoned graffiti-filled art laneways of inner city Melbourne, where images, slogans and stencils of all shapes and sizes were painted alongside opinions, ideologies, religious and political beliefs. Every available surface, wall, window and darkened recesses were willing canvasses, covered in a visual cacophony of colour.
One particular portrait struck me, and I began to think of how historically, visual images and symbols used in art have been deliberately misappropriated or culturally corrupted by not only the powerful but also the powerless, and how this can alter a society’s consciousness and lead to destructive forces. The thought of a dead body being discovered resting against one of these images sent shivers down my spine and provided me with the perfect setting for a murder.
What research was involved?
A great deal of research went into this book, especially in the historical use of masks, iconographic symbolism and the various interpretations and versions and backstory of Batman’s Joker. I also had to do significant research on the medical side of story, given the changes in treatment and diagnoses since my nursing days.
What routine do you have when writing?
I get up early every morning and write for three to four hours, then take a break and go for a walk. I then do a couple of hours in the afternoon and stop writing when I have finished a scene. Writing a crime, with so many twists and turns, lies and misdirections requires me writing every day in order to keep the various threads in my head and to maintain continuity. My evenings were usually reserved for research.
If a soundtrack was included to accompany your book, what was a song or two you would include?
Peter Allan soundtrack: Don’t Cry out Loud. ……"learn how to hide your feelings”
If your book was made into a movie, who would you like to see playing the lead characters:
I would love to see Claudia Karvan play DI Gray and Mac of course would be a young up and coming Indigenous actor
What did you enjoy the most about writing this novel?
What I enjoyed most about writing the book was the feeling of more confidence in myself as a writer and that my writing had got stronger. In that regard, I felt better able to develop the characters more authentically and accord them more literary respect, while allowing myself to better trust my instinct. I also loved the way the narrative consumed me and at times I felt almost too close to the action, as if I were in and not merely writing the story. Sometimes I wanted to jump into my imagination and the pages and wrap my arms around DI Gray and Mac.
What did you do to celebrate finishing your novel?
I don’t know if one ever really finishes a book. It remains a part of you forever. I haven’t celebrated just yet, maybe I will when I know the book has been widely read.
What is your favourite book you have read this year, and why?
I haven’t read much this year. I recently picked up and re read Graham Green’s The Third Man. I don’t know why this book haunts me so much…..maybe I can answer that later after I have given it more thought or maybe its elusiveness is what attracts me.
What is next on the agenda?
What’s next for me is the NZ book launch, and then I am off to the UK to the Theakston Peculier crime writing festival in Harrogate. In November I will be on a panel with other NZ Ngaio winners at the Sydney BAD festival and I am in the process of organising a book launch in Australia with Sisters in Crime in Melbourne. Oh, yes, I am halfway through the draft of a new book.
Original Sin Press