10. People often have a time in their life that they think of as golden, or as the best time of their life—for Angela, that time is high school and her relationship with HP. How does this idolization of her past affect her present and future?
11. Saskia is obsessed with elephants because they mate for life and mourn their dead. Why is the elephant such an important symbol? And what is the significance of the necklace that Detective Novak presents to Angela?
12. Later in the novel, Saskia tells Angela, “Sometimes I think we met on the same night because of fate.” Do you think Angela believes in fate? Does fate direct Angela’s actions? How?
13. Is Angela a trustworthy narrator? Why or why not?
14. Discuss the structure of the book. What effect does alternating between Angela’s present interrogation and her memory of the past have on the story? Did learning about Angela’s past help you better understand her future actions?
15. Is Angela a sympathetic protagonist? Did your feelings about Angela change as you read the book? If so, how?
16. Discuss the power of love in the novel. Discuss the power of obsession.
17. How does the author foreshadow the final events of the novel? Did you see the twist coming or were you surprised by the novel’s outcome?
18. Could Saskia’s death have been prevented? Why or why not?
19. Discuss Angela’s final revelation to Detective Novak. Is she manipulating him or does she truly believe in her own version of the events?
20. What do you think happens to the characters after the novel is over? How do you think the events will impact each of their lives and relationships going forward?
a conversation with Roz Nay
This is your debut novel. How long has this story been with you, and what is your writing process like? Did the story change and take shape as you went along?
The novel began as a one-thousand-word story I wrote in a creative writing class a few years ago. After I’d written it, Angela’s voice stayed with me: I knew she had more to say, and that writing it from her point of view would be fun on a grander scale. I wrote the novel in a year; I tend to go like an Energizer Bunny until I reach the safety of a third draft. The shape of the story definitely changed as it went. Early drafts saw Angela stealing Olive, which was the most despicable thing I could have Angela do at the time, since Olive is very closely modeled on my own daughter. Through edits, both the crime and the victim changed. Secretly I was relieved—I could then stop hugging my daughter so maniacally.
Why did you choose to tell the story from the inside of an interrogation room?
The interrogation room came naturally: I liked the enclosed space of it, the idea of writing an entire story that, in the present sense, really doesn’t move scene. I also enjoyed the dynamic of Novak and Angela; when you only have two people in a room, you can have all kinds of fun with how they evolve together.
The love story between Angela and HP is so captivating and endearing but is part of something much larger and darker. Did your imagining of the book always involve both a compelling love story and a mystery, or did one come before the other?
I always wanted to write a high-school era romance, because there’s a poignancy to those years—a tenderness—and I wanted to get that onto paper somehow. Of course, it’s much more interesting to mix tenderness with creepiness. I wanted the whole book to be ambiguous in those ways—is the love story sweet or is it dangerous? Is Angela relatable or is she psychotic? Are all of the characters likeable or badly behaved? I always wanted everything to be a bit of both.
Have you ever made a Manifestation Jar? What would you write for it?
I haven’t made a Manifestation Jar, but I have been wishing hard on eyelashes for decades. Is that the same thing? I live in a town where manifestation is all the rage. If I were to put scraps of paper into a jar, most of them would have “Publish a novel” on them, so perhaps there’s something to it . . .
Angela seems to be stuck in the memory of her high school experience. Is there a time in your life that you idealize or remember with great fondness?
Yes! Of course! I think everyone’s nostalgic for those brightly colored years of youth and young adulthood, where you have twenty friends at all times and everything’s just about to be fun. I can relate to Angela wanting that brightness back, but luckily I’ve evolved more healthily than she has so I’m not harboring anything damaging.
What books or films influenced you while writing this novel?
I read a lot of psychological thrillers, and writers like Harriet Lane, Jessica Knoll, and Emma Cline inform everything I’m learning. As a just-forming teenager, I read The Collector by John Fowles, a book that really rattled me. It’s a master class in how to write an eerie, obsessive, first-person narrative, where readers are given only the psychopath’s point of view. I think Fowles’s book influenced Our Little Secret more than I realized as I was writing it. For TV shows, I watch Luther and other British crime dramas, and I noticed the interrogation room aspect of The Affair, which struck me as similar in terms of whose version of events to trust.
Are there any real-life events or people that inspired the book? You’ve spent time in Britain, Australia, and the U.S. Are Freddy or Saskia based on people you met in their respective countries?
I think writers are thieves and store aspects of a whole cast of characters they know or observe. All the characters in the book are slivers of different people I’ve noticed, but mostly they’re all slivers of me. I stole the voice of Freddy from a guy I spoke to briefly at a Christmas party in London about twenty years ago. It’s surprising the things writers stash. HP’s based largely on my husband, which he’ll like me saying, because HP comes out of the whole thing quite well. I keep telling my husband that HP’s better-looking, but he’s not having it.
Which character did you identify with most, and why?
I’m laid-back like HP, I’m idealistic like Saskia, I’m snobby about stupid things like Freddy, I’m secretly dark and fearful like Angela. I’m all of them. But mostly I’m Angela. Except I wouldn’t hit anyone on the head with a rock, or haven’t yet.