Its prose evokes the most hardy nature writing but also touches upon the mysteries of Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins, the gothic tension of Daphne du Maurier, the intense psychodrama of William Golding’s Lord of The Flies, cult films like The Wicker Man and any number of Hollywood chillers set in insular, rural backwaters.
I like to write things that are like British indie films. It was inspired by Bell’s move to London and “news reports about a lot of young women being found in houses nearby, without their passports, the houses surrounded by electric fence.”īell describes her writing as “coming from a place of righteous anger” but in doing so she underplays her novels’ poetry, dramatic dynamism and psychological subtlety. The second novel, Dirty Work, came out in 2008 and tackled sexual exploitation, trafficking and sex slavery and will be reissued next year. “I knew I wanted to write about the way women’s bodies are written about, the received opinion about what women should and shouldn’t look like,” says Bell. First published to huge success in 2002, it was a candid and prescient look at body dysmorphia. Her first novel, Massive, is being re-released to coincide with The Dark Light’s publication.
The Dark Light is a lush, dark, fast-paced drama which seals Julia Bell’s reputation as a fearless writer who hasn’t yet put a foot wrong.
Two young women, one an unwilling newcomer and the other a naïve neophyte, fight against the judgement, control and shocking violence they’re subjected to in the cult’s final days. The novel is set on New Canaan, a rugged island occupied by a religious cult led by a crazed pastor who believes the end of the world is coming. She was really inspiring – she looked like Joan Collins.”īell’s experience of a “Welsh gothic hinterland” humming with religion, madness and murder has been, as she puts it, taken and “amplified” in her thrilling third novel, The Dark Light.
It was my English teacher who saved my arse. She was really inspiring – she looked like Joan Collinsīell would escape to the attic to read books and write her own stories: “Writing was my way of being in the world. Writing was my way of being in the world.
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