Ten Years in the Writing

Ten Years in the Writing

'You can try to commodify writing, you can try to regulate it and make people turn it out, but in the end it is a process that is kind of organic. There are some flowers that only bloom every two years... I wanted it to be a different, self-contained world that was just as real as the world of The Secret History, and it takes time to build up those layers of richness - you can't fake that. Also the style of this book was different; instead of a piece written for a single instrument, it was written for a full orchestra - a much broader range of characters and voices, and there were many technical difficulties in writing the book that I simply didn't face with The Secret History. So in that sense it's satisfying for me, and that's why it kept me engaged for all these years.'

Donna Tartt, whose second novel The Little Friend will be published in October, speaking to The Bookseller about why she has spent 10 years working on it.