Today I'm delighted to welcome Claire Fuller to the blog to chat about her latest book Bitter Orange as well as her appearance at Salisbury Literary Festival next month.
I started writing short stories when I was forty. In the eleven years since, I’ve had three novels published (Our Endless Numbered Days, Swimming Lessons, and Bitter Orange) and have continued to write short stories as well as flash fiction. While studying for an MA in creative writing I wrote my first novel, which was subsequently bought by Penguin.
If you had to give an elevator pitch for Bitter Orange, what would it be?
I’ve been practicing but it’s difficult! Frances Jellico is dying and remembering twenty years previously, to the summer of 1969 when she was commissioned to write a report on the follies in the grounds of a dilapidated country house. For a month or so she stays in the attics and meets Cara and Peter, a bohemian couple staying in the rooms below hers. She becomes dazzled by their way of life (drinking, smoking, staying up late) and the stories they tell. But Frances discovers a spyhole in her bathroom floor and she cannot resist spying on her new friends. As the hot summer rolls on and the stories become more outlandish, a small crime brings on another which will change all three of their lives forever.
How did the title Bitter Orange come about?
For a long time while I was writing, the book was going to be called Blood Orange, because there is an orangery in the novel, with one old orange tree growing in it. But just as I was doing final edits for my Penguin editor we learned that another book was going to be published called Blood Orange, and I had to change my title and some of the story. In the end, I’ve found I prefer Bitter Orange; Blood Orange seems to suggest a crime novel, and although there are crimes in the book, it’s not really that genre.
Bitter Orange features a socially awkward spinster and a hedonistic young couple whose paths cross whilst staying in a dilapidated country house, where did the inspiration come from?
It started with a flash fiction story of 100 words, about a man spying through a hole in a ceiling-rose onto a woman in the flat below his. I thought it would be interesting to make the person doing the spying a woman and the person below, a man.
To Frances' surprise, Cara and Peter are keen to spend time with her. It is the first occasion that she has had anybody to call a friend, and before long they are spending every day together: eating lavish dinners, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, and smoking cigarettes till the ash piles up on the crumbling furniture. Frances is dazzled.
But as the hot summer rolls lazily on, it becomes clear that not everything is right between Cara and Peter. The stories that Cara tells don't quite add up - and as Frances becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of the glamorous, hedonistic couple, the boundaries between truth and lies, right and wrong, begin to blur. Amid the decadence of that summer, a small crime brings on a bigger one: a crime so terrible that it will brand all their lives forever.
I'm looking forward to your panel at this year's Salisbury Literary Festival, how did you feel to be invited to be part of the festival?
I was absolutely delighted. Salisbury is a wonderful city, and a lovely place to visit. And there are some really interesting writers speaking. I’m also excited to be judging the adult category for the Salisbury Story Prize; I’m looking forward to finding some gems amongst the entries.
