Jane McGowan talks to Farnham author Rosamund Lupton about her latest emotionally charged thriller...
Ever since 9/11, the threat of terror has become part of our everyday urban lives. Airports, restaurants, crowded concert venues: all have been the target of extremist groups seeking to cause murder and mayhem for the causes in which they believe.
The nature of extremism – its causes and its consequences – is explored in Three Hours, the new novel from Farnham author Rosamund Lupton. But the book transposes the threat from the typical urban setting to a school in rural Somerset, where an armed gunman is holding captive pupils and staff.
Written in the first person, but from multiple viewpoints, the narrative leaps from protagonist to protagonist as the terrible events unfold. Teachers, teenagers, parents, police: all make their voices heard against a backdrop of issues ranging from the treatment of refugees to teenage love.
“I tried it from just the headteacher’s perspective, but it wasn’t really working,” says Rosamund, whose previous novels include her million-plus-selling debut Sister and the critically acclaimed Afterwards. “Then I tried from a parent point of view, and again, it wasn’t quite right.
“I felt I needed to hear from everyone – families desperate for news, police trying to get an insight into the gunman’s motives and so on. It all has to happen in three hours, and I think the different voices help to build the tension and propel the story along.”
Born
in 1964, Rosamund studied English literature at Cambridge and worked for a time as a literary reviewer. She later won a TV playwriting competition and subsequently moved into screenwriting, before turning her hand to novels.
“I always loved writing,” she says. “When I was little, my mum used to tie my stories together to make a little book. But I didn’t start writing novels until my children were at school.”
In the past, Rosamund has explored themes of kidnap, abuse and arson. This time she turns her pen to the rise of radicalisation and grooming, particularly by the far right.
“It’s hard to say anything without letting slip spoilers,” she admits. “I wanted initially to write something about radicalisation. Then I read a book by one of the mothers involved in the Columbine shooting [the murder of 12 pupils and one teacher by two Colorado schoolboys in 1999] and the two things just came together. I wanted to investigate why those that carry out these attacks are usually described afterwards as having been ‘such nice, quiet boys’.
“As a parent, I found this the hardest thing to write about: how easy it is not to know what is going on in your child’s life. How much privacy should we give them? It can be hard to determine whether things are just down to normal teenage behaviour. Are they unusually withdrawn? Are there other changes to their personality? And if they have turned to extremism, why?”
In the interests of realism, Rosamund’s research found her trawling the depths of the ‘dark web’ – an unnerving world which, she says, was worryingly easy to access.
“I got an old computer down from the attic and within five minutes of searching I was on there,” she reveals. “It was actually scarily simple. Some of the searches provoke immediate police interest, but other stuff comes from national newspaper sites. I was shocked at some of the horrific content mainstream platforms are prepared to carry. You can buy books about bomb-making on Amazon.”
While the novel twists and turns, Rosamund was clear on how to bring some of the strands together. When it came to the death of a certain pair, however, she found that she couldn’t go through with it.
“I was just too invested; I couldn’t do it to them,” she laughs. “I’d been through so much with them, and I just thought: ‘No, it’s too awful.’ Endings are really important. For the readers who have stuck with you, they have to make sense and they have to be satisfying.”
We’ll leave it there, I think
Three Hours is published by Penguin Viking (£14.99). For more details visit: penguin.co.uk
