Hi I'm Elizabeth Macneal and I'm the author of The Doll Factory which is here, the
beautiful Waterstones exclusive edition. The Doll Factory is set in 1850s London
and it's about art and obsession and possession and curiosity and love. It's
about iris and she's a doll-making apprentice who dreams of becoming an
artist and Silas, a collector of curiosities who becomes obsessed with
her and whose obsession might destroy her world forever. So I'm at my local
Waterstone's in Canary Wharf and I'm here to share three books which have inspired
me and which I absolutely love. So the first one is Perfume by Patrick Suskind.
I actually read this just before I started writing The Doll Factory and
I was particularly gripped by the unredeemed psychopath at its core. Where
Suskind just completely embraces portraying
him as an utterly evil, reprehensible character. So it's set in 18th century
France, in Paris at the beginning. And it's about scent and smell. So you've got
Jean-Baptiste and he's born with this incredibly strong sense of smell which
leads him first of all to be a perfumer. And then he catches the wondrous scent
of a young woman and he murders her. The way that he builds Paris was
particularly inspiring for me as a writer, particularly through scent. So in
the very first chapter you've got the smells of the the tanneries and cat guts
and sewage and I just thought that this was just this incredibly evocative and
immersive, visceral sort of sense of historical Paris. And I also love it
because he plays so much with genre. So at the beginning it kind of opens with a
sort of historical, folklore element but it's also a thriller and he
touches on the sublime and romanticism and horror. And I was really inspired by
the way that he draws all of these things together and that he doesn't feel
confined by a particular genre but he just kind of embraces so many different
elements. So, yeah, this is a cracking book. So the second book which inspired me is
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell. I'm a massive Maggie O'Farrell
fan and I think I've read everything that she's ever published and this one
is my favourite of her books. I always find it quite strange
with historical fiction how historical fiction is sort of usually compared with
other historical titles and also you're sort of seen as an author to only be
inspired by other historicals. But for me, so much of my inspiration was
contemporary and this is one of the perfect examples. Because, Maggie, she
builds such a tremendous sense of pace and she interweaves threads so
evocatively. And I'm also fascinated by her characters. So she often has a very
powerful and quite unique female character at the core and I thought a
lot about that when I was writing The Doll Factory, particularly at
the beginning where The Hand That First Held Mine is about Lexie Sinclair and
she is in quite a stifling situation which was conventionally acceptable at
home but she dreams of different things and she kicks against that and then when
she meets Innes Kent, that's his name, she finds herself she moves to
London and she falls in love with him and she works on his
magazine and works to become a journalist. And I found this really
helpful when I was looking at Iris and she begins working in this doll-making shop.
And she longs for better things and she's willing to defy those around her
to achieve her own dreams and I just thought a lot about how that would feel
even though this is set in 1960s Soho and The Doll Factory set in 1850s, well, also
Soho I suppose, but still that kind of how eternal the human spirit is and
that desire to do something better and also how that freedom can be liberating
and fulfilling but it can also feel quite terrifying and fragile at the same
time. And Maggie O'Farrell just does that so convincingly and brilliantly and with
so many twists as well. So it's a fabulous book. So the final book which
inspired me is Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. And this is quite a
beast but it is my favourite historical novel. Historical in that it was written in
1848 but also because it is a historical novel in that it was set in 1814 during
the Napoleonic Wars. It's a brilliant book. When I was writing The
Doll Factory I, actually I'm a potter as well, and I had this on repeat on
audiobook just because I thought that his creation of that society and the
naked ambition of Becky Sharp was just so inspiring. And also I learned a lot
about 1848 in that lots of historical novels are more about the time in which
they're written than the time in which they're set.
So if Thackeray sort of said 'well they didn't wear varnished boots back then'
then I'd sort of think, oh well, you know, two years later in 1850 when my novel
was set I would put in a reference to varnished boots. So yeah I found it
immensely helpful and immensely interesting as well in how the
Victorians viewed that kind of ambition of Becky Sharp and that she's
never quite able to exercise it without conceit and selfishness and spite. And she
has to be punished for it. So that was incredibly helpful when I was writing my
character Iris and her ambition but she's also a very generous character,
where she doesn't have that kind of edge that Becky Sharp had in her own kind of
pulling herself up in that society. So yeah it's a wonderful book and
I come back to it all the time.