Louise Griffin
Author Interview - Louise Griffin
Author of BAD LIKE ME
A propulsively told, multi-POV domestic thriller exploring envy, desire, privilege, and parenthood, for fans of Lisa Jewell’s None of This Is True and Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies.
When Sam, the hottest dad in the neighborhood, is stabbed to death in a leafy local playground, no one in tony Larchwood can imagine who would want him dead. No one except the mom he snubbed, the dad he laughed at, the outsider he humiliated. Oh, and don’t forget his lover. Or his wife.
This page-turning story is told by four women—each distinct, and not all reliable. There’s gorgeous Lucy, who’s ready to blow up her marriage; anxious Rachel, a classic overachiever; polished, powerhouse-lawyer Grace, who’s deeply unhappy; and real estate agent Carmen, an outsider, who’d do anything to fit in. When one woman disappears from the neighborhood soon after the murder, and then another, fear takes hold in Larchwood.
Meanwhile, questions begin to arise about another suspicious death, one that took place years before. No one would think to link these events. No one except the killer …
Author Interview - Louise Griffin
Author I draw inspiration from:
Since Louise Griffin is not one but two people (sisters Thea Bloomberg and Kate Farrell writing under a pen name), we will both answer individually—two for the price of one! We wrote our answers down separately, and some of them turned out to be the same, which didn’t really surprise us.
Thea: Lisa Jewell. Her books, while thrilling, are also completely believable. Her characters and settings have real texture and depth and humanity to them. I’m never thinking, but would that really happen? I’m sold from page one.
Kate: There are so many! This is really hard to narrow down, but for thrillers I absolutely love Lisa Jewell’s books, for their complex characters who feel like such real people, for how well she uses shifting perspectives, and for the vivid and nuanced details in her settings. If I somehow woke up one day in one of the fictional houses from a Lisa Jewell book, I would know exactly where I was. (And if this happens I really hope it won’t be in Thornwood, the house from her most recent book, It Could Have Been Her, because that place is BAD news).
Any books of theirs in particular that you loved?
Thea: So many! Watching You is one of my favorites. None of This is True. Lisa Jewell can make a neighborhood, or a house, feel like a main character. I love the messy seaside cottage in I Found You, full of dogs and children. I’d be comfortable there. She’s brilliant at depicting families and all their hidden secrets.
Kate: The House We Grew Up In and The Family Upstairs.
Author Interview - Louise Griffin | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
Thea: On a squashy couch.
Kate: On a deep, comfy couch near an open window with a salty breeze coming in.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
Thea: Mabel Waller from Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth.
Thea: Well, I think we’d both be fairly awkward tbh. But eventually we’d each pull out a book to read and then start talking about what we were reading. Mabel’s a hard one to crack. Such a memorable, singular sort of character, with a dry sense of humor. Really doesn’t suffer fools. Winning her approval would be huge. Maybe though, once the elevator started moving again, if I hadn’t put her off, we’d decide to have a coffee and keep talking about books.
Kate: I think I’d like to be stuck with Captain Haddock from The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé.
Kate: My son loved the Tintin books when he was little, and we read them over and over, especially The Castafiore Emerald. We skipped the earlier books which have some very problematic elements, and I didn’t love that there were basically no women in any of the stories. But we all loved Captain Haddock, who swears very colorfully, which would be entertaining in the stuck elevator. And I like how he looks in his blue sweater. Plus, he always has a flask of his favorite Loch Lomond whisky which I’m sure he would share with me.
Author Interview - Louise Griffin | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
Thea: When I was a child. My mother always read to us—The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Freckle Juice. Books were very important. I wanted to be able to do that too! Give that same kind of feeling that I got from falling into a story.
Kate: I’ve worked as a book editor for a long time. I probably always secretly wanted to write myself, but I wasn’t doing it, so I didn’t say so to anyone. It wasn’t until my sister Thea and I started talking about writing together, and trying to write something in the thriller space, which we both love so much as readers, that I started to think, maybe I really could. Doing it together is wonderful. I love collaboration. And the two of us bring different strengths to the work, but also tend to completely agree on what feels and sounds right. Once we started, I knew—I want this. I hope we get to keep doing it together forever.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
Thea: Most frequently, Ebooks.
Thea: With ebooks I just love being able to read anywhere, in any lighting, anytime, and not having to wait even a minute after finishing one book and starting the next. I can’t resist the instant gratification. Plus being able to read in warm, low lighting! The best.
Hardcovers are the most beautiful and make excellent gifts. I love being able to tuck the cover flap to mark your spot.
I love paperbacks for their ease, being able to hold the book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, stick it in your bag no problem, bring multiple on a trip. I read both hardcover and paperbacks with my kids each night—with my six year old we’re reading Ben Yokoyama and The Cookie of Doom (hardcover), and with my eleven year old we’re reading City Spies (paperback). I hope they’ll let me read to them until they move out of the house.
Even though I mostly read ebooks, our house is full of books. Sometimes I buy both the hard copy and ebook for myself. Books are beautiful and I would be so sad living in a house without them!
I listen to audiobooks only occasionally, but I really enjoy them when I do. The last one I listened to was Spellbound by Phil Hanley. Highly recommend.
Kate: I need them all.
Kate: I like hardbacks for being substantial and hopefully beautiful so you want to keep them forever. Don’t like them for being heavy and hard to hold over your face when reading in bed at night. Like paperbacks for being light and portable and less expensive so you can buy several at once. I can’t think of anything to dislike about paperbacks really. I don’t even mind when they fall apart because that makes them seem well-loved. I like ebooks for instant gratification and for reading at night in bed without waking up my husband who goes to sleep much earlier than I do. Dislike them for being impossible to lend to people once you’ve finished them. Like audiobooks for allowing me to read a book while walking or driving a car. Dislike them (sometimes) for being read in a way that sounds different from how I would hear them in my head when I read to myself.
The last book I read:
Thea: Katherine Faulkner’s The Break-In.
Thea: I loved it! She is so good at depicting the grittiness of motherhood and marriages. A really good read.
Kate: FIVE by Ilona Bannister.
Kate: Loved it! She is such a great writer. She somehow packs an entire novel’s worth of humanity into each character’s backstory, and you will care deeply about what is going to happen to each of them in the present. And the way she has the narrator breaking the fourth wall is so clever and darkly funny! I was just entirely delighted by it.
Author Interview - Louise Griffin | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
Thea: Computer.
Thea: I write with my sister, Kate. We talk a lot on the phone about ideas, then we pass back and forth a shared word document. I write standing up! At my dining room or kitchen table. I don’t have space for an office yet. And I pace around the house a lot. I need to move to get my brain going. But not all writing is done at the computer. Often I think of scenes as I’m walking the dog or helping my kids fall asleep, trying not to fall asleep myself. That staring-out-the-window head space is important. It’s often when things start to click. Whole scenes will play out like little movies. Then I jot them down in my notes app so I don’t lose the thread.
Kate: Computer!
Kate: Pen and paper is great and I will always love notebooks and pens and want to buy them. But I am too disorganized and sloppy to write anything important on a piece of paper because I will lose it. I also use the notes app on my phone to write down ideas that might pop into my head when I’m not near my computer. I just looked in there to see if I could find an example and discovered a book idea I wrote down and completely forgot about until this moment. I actually think it might have potential and I can’t wait to tell my sister about it.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Thea: Bel from Cover Story by Mhairi McFarlane
Thea: I hope we’d be good friends! She’s so smart and funny. And stylish! She stands up for others, but she’s also fallible. We’d have a laugh but also talk about real stuff. Mhairi McFarlane always writes characters I’d like to be friends with. Even though she’s a romance writer, she’s excellent at writing friendships. They have the best banter. I always laugh out loud reading her books. Maybe I’d just actually love to be friends with Mhairi McFarlane herself!
Kate: Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Kate: Because who is a better bosom friend than Anne? And I’d totally be up for all her crazy ideas. I’d love a best friend full of imagination and enthusiasm, and I wouldn’t mind if it sometimes got us into trouble.
Author Interview - Louise Griffin | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
Thea: A server or a baker. Writing was the dream, but until Bad Like Me, it was only that—a dream. I’ve worked in the service industry since I was seventeen. Back and front of house. My husband and I met and got married in a restaurant, Lot 2 (R.I.P). We still, stubbornly, own a coffee shop. I’ve always liked working in a group, making and serving people delicious things to eat.
Kate: I’d like to have a little junk shop. Well, not junk, my stuff wouldn’t be junk. But I don’t want to call it an antique store because that sounds too rarefied. I’d just love to have an old van and go driving all around looking for cool stuff to bring back to my shop. It would give me a great reason to keep hunting for treasures, which I will always want to do, but it would hopefully stop me from becoming a hoarder buried under too much stuff.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
Thea: Probably the 50s/early 60s. I can’t resist a Peter Pan Collar and a cardigan.
Kate: I’d have to say the 1940’s. I used to wear a lot of vintage clothes, and my favorites, which I still have, were these beautifully constructed jackets by Lilli Ann. I’d wear them with jeans. It was very stylish, if I say so myself. Those jackets are too small for me now but maybe I’ll resurrect that look.
Place I’d most like to travel:
Thea: Sardinia.
Thea: I’ve never been and it just looks spectacular and dramatic. The ocean! The mountains! Plus, the food would be amazing.
Kate: I’d love to go to Japan.
Kate: I’ve never been there, and my husband likes to watch this English language Japanese TV channel called NHK World. They have all these little 30-minute documentaries on fascinating things, like a 24-hour bookstore in Tokyo, or a temple full of cats. We kind of go into a trance watching this, and thinking . . . must go to Japan. If it’s propaganda, it’s very effective. And I want to eat loads of delicious food and buy weird things from vending machines, so I think I would love it there.
My signature drink:
Thea: My mom makes me the most delicious gin and tonic in the summer. I have a low tolerance for alcohol so she uses only an ounce of gin, plus lots of freshly squeezed lime juice and the fancy tonic. We have a big collection of old glasses, some states and some birds. Around five o’clock she’ll hand you your drink and say, “You’re Indiana tonight” or “you’re the Blue Jay.”
Kate: I like an ice cold rye Manhattan, straight up. But if you make me one with bourbon, I will still drink it.
Favorite artist:
Thea: Lately, my friend the painter Rose Manning.
Thea: Rose works in watercolor and her paintings just make me very happy. She uses super punchy colors. Many of her paintings are of bodies of water and food. Both subjects that I love.
Kate: This is another impossible question for me, because there are too many answers. But since I have to pick, I’ll say David Bowie. Some music, and voices in particular, hit me in a way that makes me feel like all my cells are vibrating at the exact right frequency. So many Bowie songs do this for me—Oh! You Pretty Things, Young Americans, Sound and Vision . . .
Number one on my bucket list:
Thea: At this very moment, number one on my list would be sitting on the beach and reading a book, for like a whole hour. In this dream my two kids are happily occupied elsewhere. Or, dream of all dreams, they are also at the beach, having the best time ever, never wanting to leave, not fighting, not needing a thing.
Kate: One day I’d really like to have the time to drive across the whole of the US. I’d like to stop at all the thrift stores and yard sales, so I’d need kind of a big car (my junk shop owner fantasy is popping up here again).
Anything else you'd like to add:
Kate: I’d like to thank all the readers who have taken the time to write reviews of Bad Like Me. As debut authors, it is an incredible thing to see our book going out into the world and actually being read, by people who don’t know us and have thoughts about it that they want to share! A few of you are a little mean, but so many of you are thoughtful and insightful and encouraging, and that is really amazing.
Thea: Thank you, Ashley! And thank you, Readers! You make this all feel very real and gratifying. And thank you, Kate, for being the one to read all the reviews first and only sending me the nice ones.
Find more from the author:
Instagram: @louisegriffinbooks
Author website: louisegriffinbooks.com
About Louise Griffin:
Louise Griffin
Louise Griffin is the pen name of sisters Thea Bloomberg and Kate Farrell. They both love reading thrillers and have always dreamed of writing a book together. Thea received her MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University, after which she worked for many years at a restaurant and coffee shop in Brooklyn. She now lives in Providence, RI, with her family. Kate was a salesperson, a bartender, and, briefly, a set decorator, before finding her way to book publishing, where she works as an editor. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. The sisters visit each other often and talk on the phone a lot. Bad Like Me is their first book together.
