The Literary Mirror

Why organise The Inheritance of Loud Rooms by room rather than by year?

Because in my own family, certain arguments only ever happen in certain places — the stairs, specifically, because it's the one spot nobody can storm off from mid-sentence without it being obvious. I noticed that pattern and built the whole book's structure around it.

At nearly five hundred pages, this is a long novel. Did you consider cutting more?

My editor wanted the cousin subplot gone entirely, and in retrospect she was probably right. I kept it because I liked that character too much to let her go, which is not always a good enough reason, professionally speaking.

Do the repeated arguments, across generations, reflect something you believe about families generally?

That families don't resolve conflicts so much as hand them down, slightly altered, to whoever's standing in the room next. I think that's true well beyond my own family, which is why I wanted the book to feel almost structural rather than personal.