Author Lucy Foley.Supplied
When Lucy Foley was about 12 years old, her family threw a Halloween party.
At one point, all of the children went to play hide-and-seek, and she found a hiding place in just about the spookiest spot you could imagine: among the graves of an old English churchyard on All Hallows’ Eve. “I’ve always had a strong stomach for the gothic,” says Foley from her home, deep in the British countryside.
That preteen coolness may have signalled that she would grow up to be an internationally bestselling author of spine-tingling thrillers. The latest, The Midnight Feast, centres on spooky goings-on in the woods around a newly launched, sinister wellness retreat. (Folk-tale aficionados, be on the lookout for Easter eggs that nod to Shirley Jackson’s The Man in the Woods, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and the Greek myth of the Golden Bough about a tree sacred to the goddess Diana that required the semi-regular sacrifice of the priest who guarded it.)
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This plot may have its deepest roots in what Foley calls a “core” childhood memory, when her mother came into her bedroom and found her “gibbering” with fear.
“She asked what I was afraid of, and I said, ‘The trees in the distance,’” Foley says. “There was this dark line of trees that I could see from my bedroom. And actually, it was this really spooky wood. We went there once and walked in it, and it had this … atmosphere.”
Atmosphere, of course, is something in which a Lucy Foley thriller abounds with, whether it’s the dreadful isolation of a wedding party marooned on an island with a murderer in The Guest List – a Reese’s Book Club pick – or the low-thrumming terror of the secrets that neighbours keep in The Paris Apartment.
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It might surprise you to learn, however, that Foley started her career writing historical fiction. She enjoyed modest success with her first three books – “it was a lovely surprise if somebody who wasn’t a family member had read them.” That meant that when she made a foray into writing thrillers in 2018, the runaway success that followed still feels like it’s happening to someone else.
“My writing experience was putting my heart and soul into something, really enjoying the process, but also slightly feeling like not very many people were reading them,” she says of her earlier work. “And then The Hunting Party came out, and that was just mad. I still have such imposter syndrome about the whole thing.”
Four thrillers in, Foley is learning how to grapple with that feeling. She chatted with The Globe about her process for piecing her mysteries together, the art of the twist and channelling spooky dialogue.
Why do you feel like you’re not a proper author?
I have this really chaotic approach to writing. Finally, on my eighth book, I’ve made my peace with the fact that that’s the way I write a book and that’s the only way I can do it. I don’t really plot properly. I’ve tried doing that whole mind-map thing, where you fill a whole wall with a bunch of strings. But when I’ve heavily preplotted things, I just felt incredibly bored, and the story felt dead to me. The only way to bring it alive is to start writing from the point of view of character first, and then the plot comes from character.
That’s wild considering how complicated your books are. They’re puzzles. It’s fascinating that you don’t have the pieces when you start.
I have the shape of it in my head. It’s not that I have no road map, but it’s quite abstract, and things can move around.
With Midnight Feast, for example, did you always know where it would end up?
I didn’t know who the murderer was. I had an idea who it was, and that changed. As I wrote myself into the book, and got to know the characters much better, something else occurred to me, and I got this really wonderful, goosebump, kind of euphoric feeling. You think, “This makes so much sense, and it’s so much more surprising” – and if I’m surprised by it, the reader will be, too.
It seems like in that writing process, you’re also working through clichés and expectations. You’re almost on the same journey as the reader.
I think so. I haven’t started my next book, but I’ve been thinking about it. And the other day, I got my big twist. I’ve never really had that till I started writing. I’m excited about it, but I’m also suspicious of it. If I’ve got it now, perhaps it’s actually a red herring and I’ll discover something better or less obvious along the way.
One of the things that I love about your books is that they all have a certain element of social satire. They’re very of the zeitgeist, but in a way where you’re poking fun at things or casting a critical eye on things in culture.
With Midnight Feast, I really wanted to have fun with it and push the comedy even further. It’s not laugh out loud.
Francesca [the wellness retreat owner character] is ridiculous.
I had so much fun with her. I thought, I’m just going to push this character as far as I can, and if she’s really annoying, my editor will help me rein it in. Hopefully, I get away with it because it’s multi-POV. The whole book from Francesca’s point of view would be a lot, but because you’ve got these other voices, I felt the licence to really ramp it up with her.
I enjoyed pushing the comedy from Eddie’s [a local young man who works at the retreat] point of view as well. He’s earnest and innocent, and just really poking fun at that Londoner and city dweller thing where, “We want the authentic rural experience,” but actually they want it sanitized and fragrant. They want “freshly foraged produce,” but actually it’s shipped in overnight. It was really fun playing around with that because it’s something that’s been happening for a long time in the U.K., but it’s been more of a thing post-COVID. Everyone just “discovered” the countryside. We’ve always had beautiful country hotels, but you’ve got even more of them now. You’ve got places like Soho Farmhouse, where you’ve got this fabulous restaurant and very clean pigs and designer wellies to slip on.
The other thing that I had fun poking at was the wellness side. It’s not knocking wellness per se, because there’s probably a lot of good in it, but there are some bad actors, and it’s unregulated. I just loved the idea of someone using it for this very hefty personal rebrand.
That’s why Francesca never feels like a completely absurd character. If you have any familiarity with that world, you will have met a Francesca, who is all “peace, love and light,” but is also one of the most toxic individuals you’ll ever meet.
Totally. Especially writing the way I do, you have an idea for something and then you kind of pull a string, and you find so much.
Are you ever surprised by what comes out of your mouth as an author?
It was worrying with Francesca. The dialogue was the really spooky bit to me, because when I started out, it was the hardest thing to write, to make it feel natural. Now, it’s the thing I have the most fun with. It does feel like it’s the moment as a writer when you can sort of sit back and let the characters take over. It’s the time writing when you get into this flow state, almost semi-conscious. You’ve sort of sublimated yourself. I’ll read the book, and I don’t remember writing the dialogue. Where did that come from?