"Generally, on these courses, you meet people who you know will never be published. He was struck by her ability and determination. She enrolled on a creative writing course at a Devon farmhouse formerly owned by Ted Hughes, and was taught by novelist Jim Crace. The glimmerings of the idea came to her while she was growing restless as a lecturer in French literature at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. This Yorkshire of the imagination is the Yorkshire Setterfield knows best, in any case: she only moved to Harrogate eight years ago, and grew up in Reading. But it perfectly suits the author of a story set in isolated houses on fog-shrouded moors, with twins who speak in private languages, an incestuously close brother and sister, a scheming governess, abandoned babies and copious references to the work of the Brontës.
(The phrase "from Yorkshire" is repeatedly used to describe her, in ways that imply electricity and plumbed-in toilets might still be a rarity there.) Some writers might take this as condescension. It hasn't happened yet."Īrriving from nowhere on the US publishing landscape, Setterfield has been received by reviewers as a strange, almost historical figure from England's wild north. "I'd be on a bus somewhere, and I'd look up, and there would be some stranger, lost in my book.
"I'd say I'm very satisfied." What would excite her, she says, would be to see in real life the recurring mental picture that spurred her on through the writing process. "I'm not really very excited, though," says Setterfield, a compact 42-year-old with a straightforward manner and an artfully tousled head of copper hair. Authors languishing behind her in the top 10 this week include Frederick Forsyth, Mark Haddon, and two of America's reigning thriller writers, James Patterson and Brad Meltzer. Her first book, a gothic mystery titled The Thirteenth Tale, has catapulted to first place on the New York Times hardback fiction list.
A few months ago, she was an unknown former lecturer, living quietly in Harrogate now, she is America's bestselling author. People keep assuming Setterfield must be uncontrollably excited. Far more of the power to make or break a novel is concentrated here than in all of literary London or New York, even if a few attendees are undermining this impression by wearing furry Mickey Mouse ears attached to plastic headbands. In a hotel beside a lake inhabited by giant plastic swans, Setterfield is the guest of honour at the annual conference of sales managers for the booksellers Barnes & Noble. A s if things haven't been unreal enough for Diane Setterfield lately, her American book tour - which also happens to be her first visit to the United States - begins in Florida at Disney World, the global capital of artifice and fantasy.
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