Keira Knightley stars as Lo Blacklock in the screen adaptation of The Woman in Cabin 10.Netflix
About 10 years ago, Ruth Ware published The Woman in Cabin 10, a runaway bestseller that would go on to sell more than 10 million copies.
Last year, she released its sequel, The Woman in Suite 11, just before Netflix dropped an adaptation of the original.
“I didn’t know that it was going to be greenlit when I started writing. It has all come slightly spookily together,” says Ware.
Books we're reading and loving in January
The timing meant she had to consider two sorts of people who might pick up the sequel: Those who had loved Cabin 10 and had been pestering Ware for a sequel, and those who might now pick up Suite 11, fresh to the series. “I wanted the book to work for them without irredeemably spoiling book one,” she says.
Halfway through writing the book, however, Ware realized she would need to consider a third group of people. Those who would watch the Netflix film – inevitably different from the book, as all these adaptations are – might now be coming to its sequel. “There was a moment where I suddenly thought, ‘What have I got myself in for?’” she says with a laugh.
Amazon/Supplied
If Cabin 10 landed on shelves now, Ware isn’t sure that it would hit the same way it did a decade ago. “When I wrote it, I was partly writing to fill a book that I wanted to read – not quite a classic murder-mystery, but certainly something with Agatha Christie-ish pleasures, but with a modern-day heroine who swears and drinks and has a rich inner life.”
In the intervening years, Ware adds, crime has become a much more crowded genre.
“That is an incredibly positive thing. Competition makes everybody work harder. You read other incredible books and think, ‘Oh, why didn’t I do that?’” she says.
The Globe spoke with Ware, who lives in England.
Ruth Ware: “There are only so many ways you can pull the wool over someone’s eyes and a really passionate crime reader has probably encountered all of them. You have to make your peace with that.”Gemma Day/Supplied
Do you write for a reader? Do you write for yourself?
My first draft is always this complex process of pretending that no one else is going to read this. It’s the only way that I can take risks: be sort of selfish and write scenes that make me cringe if I think of anyone else reading them. I try really hard in that first stage not to think about a reader or my editor or my mother-in-law or whoever. When I get to the end and it’s the book that I wanted to write – or as close to it as I could get – it’s at that point that I start to think, “Well, what would my editor like for this book to be? Do I really want my mother-in-law reading this scene? How are readers going to take this?”
But I’m going to contradict myself here: Although the first draft is for me, crime is such a dance between the reader and the writer. In a lot of ways, a good crime novel is a puzzle set by a writer for the reader. You’re constantly having to put yourself in the point of view of the reader and thinking, “What do they know? What are they suspecting? Have I given them enough clues?” In the first draft process, I’m writing for myself as a reader, so when I’m dropping clues or trying to think of the perfect twist, I’m thinking of myself. How would I feel when I read this?
It’s always fascinating to me how that process goes when it gets into other people’s hands. The things where you think you’ve laid it on with a trowel, nobody gets them, apart from you. And then other times, the things you thought were super subtle, everybody is like, “I saw that coming.”
Author Louise Penny has been drafted into the trade war – and she’s relishing the role
I’ve heard that crime readers tend to be some of the most passionate fans. They’re a very engaged group of readers.
They’re usually a big fan of the genre. I have a lot of readers who read all my books, but they also read all the Lisa Jewells, all the Gillian Macmillans. Their standards are very high and they’re very good at spotting twists. There are only so many ways you can pull the wool over someone’s eyes and a really passionate crime reader has probably encountered all of them. You have to make your peace with that.
Crime as a community is actually a really lovely one. Crime readers tend to be compassionate, empathetic, interesting people. Crime writers, too, are usually genuinely nice. Part of that is we go to such dark places and spend our time thinking about the worst of humanity. But it also means you get a chance to work through all of your fears and phobias and come out the other side.
That’s been my experience interviewing crime writers. They’re often the warmest, loveliest people.
That’s the number one thing I get when people meet me. They say: “You seem so nice and normal! You seem so angsty on the page.” Well, exactly – it’s because I get it all out on the page. I can kill anybody I like in fiction. I don’t have to do it real life.
Lo Blacklock, the protagonist in Cabin 10 and its sequel, The Woman In Suite 11, is someone you empathize with. For a while there, we had a lot of these ‘unlikeable’ leads, where you don’t really care what happens to them.
See, I love an unlikeable character. My characters get criticized quite a lot for being either too neurotic or for making “poor” choices. I always bristle a bit because I think if I went through half the things I put my characters through, I would be a basket case. I would not be saving the world, I would be lying in a corner, sobbing. I don’t see why I should hold them to a higher standard.
But you’re right, Lo is a really empathetic person, which is her downfall in both books because she has a slight saviour complex. One thing I was interested in exploring [in] Suite 11 – and it was the gift I’d given myself by taking so long to write it – was finding out how different Lo was many years on. She’s had kids, she got married, she settled down.
One of the things I recognized about myself, looking back at the person I was in my 20s, is that I have gotten a lot more empathetic and, frankly, a lot nicer. Being pregnant gives you such a taste of what it’s like to go through the world as a vulnerable person who can’t necessarily manage the steps up to the bus or stand for two hours. And then when you have small kids, you realize we’re living in a world full of barriers and complications. Sometimes, going through that makes you a more easygoing person, and I wanted to give that part of my character to Lo.
This interview has been edited and condensed.