British novelist Susan Barker is the author of The Incarnations (2014) and The Orientalist and the Ghost (2008). She ventures into the world of highbrow horror with her beautiful and terrifying novel, Old Soul.
The story starts with two strangers who learn that people they've both recently lost were involved with an enigmatic woman shortly before their deaths. One of these strangers, Jake, begins an investigation that will take him around the world and discover truly chilling and terrifying things about the character known as “the woman.”
In a recent What We’re Reading interview, Susan Barker explained that her inspiration to write Old Soul came from watching the horror/mystery film It Follows (2014). Barker explained, “It's about a curse that's passed amongst a group of teenagers. And they're stalked to death by this entity. I think the film kind of appealed to me on every level--it was visually stunning, emotionally moving and also really terrifying.”
As Jake gathers more and more chilling testimonials from others who lost loved ones to the woman, a portrait of what she is and why she is ruthless in her pursuit of her victims slowly comes to light.
We learn that she never goes by the same name, she doesn't stay in one place too long, and she never seems to age.
But what is she?
Barker wanted the story to revolve around a female monster to play against conventional values. Her antagonist in Old Soul is solipsistic, only concerned with her own survival—which may appear seemingly anti-feminist.
But Barker countered, “I think there might be something feminist about having a female monster that so strongly rejects the conventional values that women are supposed to conform to. For example, being nurturing and maternal and empathetic and kind--I think there's something interesting in her rejection of those values.”
Another theme that Barker wanted to explore in Old Soul is art. Several characters are artists: from a sculptor and a painter to an experimental dancer and social media content creator. Barker admitted that she’d always admired visual artists whose creations are more physical and immediate than writing. Writing Old Soul gave her the opportunity to research and write about artists.
She said, “I think I just wanted to vicariously experience being a visual artist and one way of doing that is just describing their artistic process in my own.”
For more information on Susan Barker and Old Soul, visit her website.
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