Lisa Jewell was spending the summer of 2017 in Nice when she suddenly saw a woman dragging two children and, trying to go unnoticed, sneaked into the showers at one of the most prestigious clubs in the city. She was thin, she seemed desperate, as if she were fleeing from a trauma. I couldn't stop thinking about her, I wanted to know her story about her.
The British writer never knew what traumas haunted that woman from Nice. So she invented them and captured them in Inside the House (Planet), a novel as entertaining as it was disturbing, which at the request of readers she had a sequel, Still Still There (Planet). In Jewell's work, the woman on the beach became Lucy and her childhood became a true horror story.
In the late 1980s, Lucy Lamb and her brother Henry live in their luxurious house in Chelsea with their millionaire parents, surrounded by comforts thanks to a fabulous inheritance. Until Birdie appears, a pop singer who, in principle, is only going to stay a few days. But her stay is prolonged. And later David also arrives with his wife and his two children, a manipulative man who wants to get hold of the Lamb fortune.
Lucy and Henry's childhood becomes a hell of abuse and mistreatment overnight. “David is the leader of some kind of sect and Berdie wants to be his second, the alpha female of that strange community. "They are two horrible people, lacking feelings and humanity," says Jewell in an interview with La Vanguardia during his time at BCNegra, which closed yesterday with a total of 8,700 attendees, and where he presented these two volumes that have been a success of UK sales.
Inside the House goes beyond Lucy's childhood and covers her adult life and her relationship with Michael, a man who seems charming, but hides something very shady behind his bright facade: he is a rapist. “Women spend our lives taking care of ourselves, trying to avoid dark places at night, staying away from bad-looking guys, suspecting what might be in the drink, and then it turns out that serial rapists don't necessarily walk down dark alleys.” says the author.
“The rapist can be your own husband and he can also be a serial abuser. Like Michael, who in Still Still There enters into a new relationship with another woman and also makes her her victim,” he adds.
Jewell's literature is full of horrors and sinister characters, but it also has a pinch of British humor that serves to give the reader a break. The writer assures that it is not intentional, because "it depends on the characters, if they are funny, they provide their touch of humor."
And in these two novels there is Henry, Lucy's brother, who is in charge of telling the terrible events of her childhood. An adult and quite disturbed man, who is nonetheless funny: “I adore Henry,” says the author. And she shows it, because the reader can't help but grow fond of her too.
It is not surprising that British readers asked Jewell to continue the Lamb saga because his books are addictive. But two is enough. “There will be no more sequels, I have written other novels, which have nothing to do with Inside the House and which have already been published in the United Kingdom and the United States,” he explains.
And yet, there will be a kind of spin-off. Detective Samuel is in charge of investigating a crime in which the Lambs could be involved. Samuel is “a normal guy, he is not tough or loaded with bad habits or traumatized like so many police officers in novels. Samuel gets up every day, goes to his work and begins to investigate until he solves the crime that he has been given. His ultimate eccentricity might be that he's thinking about renovating the kitchen. I like him and maybe if another murder occurs in London, he will be the one in charge of solving it,” the writer concludes.
