Pauline Slot made her very successful debut in 1999 with the novel Southern Cross, this book became the best-selling debut that year. Death of a thriller writer is her seventh novel. She also writes non-fiction and teaches creative writing. The narrator in Death of a thriller writer Selma Hoogstins is an author and writing coach. During the summer, at her paradisiacal country estate in Greece, she receives people who want to work on a book for a week, undisturbed. Among them is the well-known literary thriller writer Esther Noordvlucht who comes to work on the sequel to her bestseller The Vinex club. But at the end of the week, her corpse floats in the bay. This novel begins as a whodunnit, is about reading and writing, success and failure, and is full of witty references to itself and world literature.
Excerpts from the podcast:
Main character Selma hates the literary thriller genre. Do you?
Pauline Slot: 'I find the style intolerable. Those short sentences, the naming of all sorts of emotions, the clunky dialogues. But this book was not born out of annoyance. I like the literary thriller as a genre because you can show all kinds of things with it. I could also have taken the bouquet series as a genre but I liked this one better.'
'The genre of the literary thriller is a Dutch invention and is widely practised by women. There is no equivalent for it in the English language. It will be a marketing thing. The addition literary at thriller perhaps takes the hard edges off for female readers. It suggests that there is a bit more psychology involved and about relationships. If set in the Gooi or a Vinex neighbourhood, it might sound less threatening. '
Everyone is writing a book these days. And most people who manage to produce 75,000 words and find a publisher quickly think their book will become a bestseller. How would that come about?
'When people go on a watercolour painting course, they don't immediately think that a year later they will be hanging in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague with their watercolours either. But with people who write, expectations are often very high. They quickly think that an invitation to DWDD is within reach. But they are less aware that it is simply a very difficult profession. To write a good novel, you have to be able to do a lot of different things.'
Self-realisation
'People who write want to be heard, they want to convey something to another person, that deeper desire is behind it. But that desire will never be fulfilled. For people, it is also a form of self-actualisation. There is nothing against that, but the chances of a book becoming a bestseller are pretty slim.'
In the book, Esther Noordvlucht tells the other attendees of the writing retreat week that she wants to wait there in silence for the moment when the characters whisper their stories to her, so to speak. They seek her out, she says. There is something magical about it. Selma thinks this is nonsense.
'When you are working on an idea for a book, it is natural that you are open to all sorts of things and notice things earlier. But that a story sought you out is, of course, nonsense. They are metaphors your mind picks up. But that sounds less romantic. Why shouldn't you be able to talk about it soberly? For me, that aspect of magic is not necessary. Writing is also just a profession with techniques you can partly learn.'
About this podcast
The podcast series The Story features writers talking about their books. The interviews are nice and long, about 45 minutes so there is plenty of time to go deeper into the content. Both fiction and non-fiction and more or less weekly. Also with famous and less famous Dutch and Flemish writers.
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
