“I think it’s such a gripping relationship,” Ward says. When Ward first began tinkering with the idea, she meant to write a considerably more straightforward tale of a serial killer and his cat, largely inspired by Scottish murderer Dennis Nilsen’s affection for his dog, Bleep. The book didn’t start out as the audacious feat of storytelling it eventually became.

Every day I was like, ‘Can I actually do this?’ I remember saying to my agent, ‘I don’t know if I could do this.’ And she said, ‘I’d just like you to try.’”

“Not just the emotional content, but technically as well-all the different strands, and all the nested narratives within the Russian-doll structure. “I’ve never written a book where I was, on every page, not entirely sure if I could do it,” says Ward. For that matter, it almost didn’t get written. It’s one of the most anticipated horror novels of the year, for good reason.Īnd it almost didn’t find a publisher. It’s harrowing and profoundly disturbing, but it’s also hopeful. It’s grueling and horrific, but sometimes it’s sweet and funny. Still, it’s the experience of the book that’s so difficult to convey. When Dee moves in next door and begins to infringe on his carefully guarded privacy, Ted’s already fragile existence begins to unravel, and there’s no doubt that something terrible is coming.Īll of this is true, yet none of it divulges what the book is really about, or hints at the flayed-open hearts (figurative ones, probably) it will leave in its wake. He spends his time either managing Lauren’s angry outbursts or worrying about the things he’s buried in the nearby woods. Regardless of what he has or hasn’t done, Ted does not have an easy life. To avoid giving away any of its secrets, only a few things can be safely revealed: it’s a story about Ted, who lives in a ramshackle house on a dead-end street and might be a serial killer Lauren, the young girl Ted is raising Olivia, who loves the Bible, never leaves the house, and happens to be Ted’s cat and Dee, a woman who thinks Ted has done something terrible to her younger sister, who vanished years ago during a family visit to a lake near Ted’s house. It doesn’t hit US bookstores until September 28, but Catriona Ward’s THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET is already famously difficult to talk about. ‘The Darker the Tale, the Purer the Heart’

Sundial ward