Whispers Through a Megaphone by Rachel Elliott

For Ralph it was Leonard Cohen and Pearl Jam, and for Sadie the Pixies, the Violent Femmes and Juliana Hatfield. For Miriam, there was a lot of ‘Mad World’, ‘Wicked Game’ and ‘The Killing Moon’ – plus Kate Bush. Certain songs or artists seemed to represent something about a character, so I had different playlists on the go while writing about each one. Whispers Through a Megaphone features a huge array of musical references – do you listen to music while writing? Miriam feels that other people are more real than her – they know how to lead full, ‘proper’ lives. I also wanted to explore the paradox of how being alive doesn’t guarantee a sense that we exist. I spent a lot of time sketching these images, especially the inside of Miriam Delaney’s house: the cuckoo clock, the brown and orange carpets, the life-size cut-out of Neil Armstrong. Panning out, I knew they were opposing figures: a woman who wouldn’t leave the house, a man who wouldn’t go home. I kept imagining a woman, standing at her bedroom window, alone and apart from the world, and a man sleeping in a rickety shack in the woods. The novel’s beginning was completely visual. Where did the initial idea for the book come from? We asked Rachel about where she gets her inspiration from, her thoughts on social media and what music makes her think of her characters. With the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist now well and truly out there, we caught up with author and psychotherapist Rachel Elliott, who has been longlisted for her debut Whispers Through a Megaphone.

Whispers Through a Megaphone by Rachel Elliott