Hayley Scrivenor’s debut novel, Dirt Town, was a number-one bestseller and won multiple awards, including the ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year 2023, and Sisters in Crime Davitt Award (Best Debut).
Narrelle M. Harris speaks with Hayley about her new crime novel, Girl Falling.
The psychology of the key characters in Girl Falling, Finn and Daphne, is hugely important to the story. Did that aspect of the story develop as you wrote, or was that relationship dynamic there from the start?
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to explore a friendship that ran very deep, but that also had begun to turn, to become something unhealthy. I’m interested in the ways other people can bring out elements of ourselves that are less noticeable otherwise. Finn and Daphne have a very distinctive set of personality traits that give rise to intense emotional reactions in each other. I figured out very early on that Finn feels powerless when it comes to Daphne.
What kind of experience or research did you draw on to make that dynamic so real?
Imagination is a huge part of my process – I slowly build characters from the ground up, and there is a lot of daydreaming involved. I don’t know anyone like Daphne personally, for example! But I do think everyone has had the experience of a relationship that made you question yourself, and I think most of us are in the ongoing process of trying to figure out where our boundaries should be.
Daphne and Finn are both internalised storytellers, recrafting the narratives of their lives to avoid unpleasant or unsatisfying realities. Do you think this is something that most people do, to a degree? What impact does it have on people and their relationships?
I do think we all craft narratives of our lives. The retelling of an event becomes the truth of what happened to us. That can be good and healthy, but as Finn’s girlfriend Magdu (who is training to be a psychologist) points out, a healthy mind can suffer when we try to edit the story too much. Honesty is often painful and scary, but it’s important.
The story is set around fictional places in the Blue Mountains – Did the rock-climbing opening for Girl Falling come as a response to that setting, or did you think of the opening and choose a location for it after
I’ve been lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time in Katoomba, where Varuna (The National Writers’ House) is, and this book was always inspired by that location. I’ve given a fictional name to my town because the one thing my books have in common is that unpleasant things tend to happen, and I didn’t want to tar Katoomba with that brush! I enjoy writing fictional towns because then I’m not constrained by the practical things – the distance between locations for example – but also because by not tying it to an exact place you give the reader more licence to engage their own imagination. But if you read the book and it makes you think of somewhere specific, then you’re probably not wrong. From very early on I wanted to tap into the beauty and power of the valley and the cliffs in the Blue Mountains – so the place definitely came first.
The ‘falling’ in your book is both literal and metaphorical, with physical falls and with characters falling through lives, as though they have little control. Have you ever had a fear of falling (either physically or metaphorically)? How have you dealt with that anxiety?
I think falling is a potent word. I originally wanted to call the book just ‘Falling’, but the title was taken. Implied in the idea of a ‘fall’ is that something unexpected or uncontrollable is happening to you. We fall in love, but we also fall from grace. I think as human beings, we’re all afraid of losing control. In terms of physical fear, I started rock-climbing in my twenties with a pretty full-on fear of heights, and the exposure therapy of getting out there with people I trusted really helped. The unfortunate side effect of writing this book, though, is that fear has come back with a bit of a vengeance. I’m mainly dealing with it by probably never going rock-climbing again
Finn often feels unworthy of love and deserving of pain. Do you think she’s right?
What you’re talking about is shame, which is such a corrosive emotion. I often show characters who act from a place of shame, and my writing unpacks just how disastrous that can be. I want the reader to walk away and think, A lot of pain could have been avoided if the characters had found a way to be kinder to themselves. It’s something that I have a hunch I’ll keep returning to in all my books. At my core, I think everyone is deserving of love. Not to negate or excuse or forget the actions of certain people, but because pain begets pain. Some people are certainly harder to love than others, but once you place someone outside of any possibility of love, things can only get worse, not better.