The Farm is an Australian gothic that tackles questions about women’s bodily autonomy and power. We chatted to Jessica Mansour-Nahra about the inspiration behind the book and the process of writing a thriller set in rural Australia.
Women’s bodily autonomy is a strong theme throughout The Farm. Why were you inspired to weave these important themes into a psychological thriller?
I’m someone who has been engaged in these issues from a young age; we discussed politics around the dinner table. I was sent to a school that my father decried as ‘feminist’—but he still sent me there! Women’s bodies have been treated abhorrently throughout history: women have been chattel, women have been traded, women have been trafficked. In Australia, we have had to fight for the vote, for reproductive rights. Our reproductive rights are up for political debate too often and too recently. This isn’t a political rant; these are simply facts.
I wanted to explore bodily autonomy from a thoroughly individual and personal standpoint, and lay out how having your rights impinged upon actually feels and what it looks like. It’s having a partner who might try to control you or degrade your confidence, it’s having doctors that don’t listen to you or doubt your experiences, it’s feeling like the basic things you ask for are overstepping. The book is a way to explore an issue I feel very deeply about through the power of storytelling. And ultimately in exploring these things it built an unbearable amount of tension. Personally, too, I’ve experienced a medical crisis that took me down to brass tacks; there’s a terrible fear in entrusting your body to people you don’t know. I don’t think that fear has left me; I’ll probably explore it in future novels, too.
The Farm builds tension using its setting of a very creepy rural Australian farmland. What steps did you take to bring the setting alive in your novel?
The key wasn’t that the rural farmland was creepy—it is, in fact, beautiful. Isn’t that more frightening? It was my main character’s response to it that created the tension. She is struggling deeply with the aftermath of a health crisis which triggers issues from her past. When she moves to the farm, she realises that the protective distractions of her job and city life are no longer there, and all of those uncomfortable emotions rise up. On top of that, rural life is completely unfamiliar to her, which creates a lot of confusion and discomfort. Additionally, she feels unsafe, and she projects those feelings onto the landscape rather than perhaps where they need to be. All of these emotions can be used to create tension.
The key wasn’t that the rural farmland was creepy—it is, in fact, beautiful. Isn’t that more frightening?
In saying that, it’s fun to take a beautiful natural setting and imbue it with foreboding. Outside of building this ominous environment for Leila, I loved describing the landscape. I live in Wiradjuri Country, and everywhere I would go I would take videos, I’d record voice notes about what I was seeing and how it made me feel. Accuracy is very important, and for every book I write, I’m obsessed with the experience of landscape and setting for the reader, and the history of the place I’m setting the story in.
Why do you think the gothic trope lends itself to an Australian setting?
The wonderful thing about gothic tropes is that a lot of them are internal. Anywhere can be perfect for a gothic novel as long as you have a character that feels emotionally or physically isolated and there are dark motivations or a reckoning with something deeper. The external tropes of ghosts, violence, houses or castles are evocative ways to represent internal struggles.
In terms of Australia, it’s a vast continent and we don’t know everything about it. We have extreme weather and environments, we have an enormous amount of deadly fauna. These are brilliant external settings to work with. It’s important to note, as a white person born here, that as a country, we could know more, but England’s violent colonialism extinguished so much of what First Nations people had learned and practiced for forty thousand years. Part of why gothic works well with Australia is that I think there is a shame, a guilt and a misunderstanding of who we are and what our country stands for.
What other books in the gothic or thriller genres have inspired your writing?
I read widely, so I wouldn’t say gothic novels or thrillers inspire my writing necessarily, but there are definitely favourites in the gothic or psychological genre that I think about—Wuthering Heights, of course, and recently Feast by Emily O’Grady. The Engagement by Chloe Hooper was heavy with gothic tropes and a completely wild storyline. Hydra by Adrienne Howell had amazing gothic elements and a hilariously unhinged protagonist. I also loved Woo Woo by Ella Baxter, and though it’s not traditionally gothic, it felt very gothic to me. A thriller that had me gripped from the first page was one I randomly picked up at Heathrow Airport last year—it’s called Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra. It’s intense, feminist, and terrifying. Non-gothic books inspire me all the time, too—Exit West by Mohsin Hamid is a favourite.
What piece of advice about writing your first book would you give to other writers?
Your first book may not get published—see that as a good thing! Use it to make your mistakes and then keep learning. Write another book, and another one. Just keep going. Writing is enormously beneficial beyond the goal of getting published; we write because it is something we love to do. Don’t lose the love for writing by focusing so much on getting a book deal. However, if you do want one, you’ll want to be determined and resilient. Rejections are tough, and the industry is rife with them. You’ll need to get used to taking on feedback with the editing, changing the manuscript, talking to a wide variety of people, promoting your book. My agent said to me that writers transition from working on a deeply personal piece of art alone, with no other voices involved, to essentially a creative group project. That can be a tough transition for authors, so think about how you would want that group project to go and the kind of people you trust with it. After that, I’d say give yourself over to the process. Publishers publish books because they love them—you’re in good hands.
You can pick up a copy of The Farm (Hachette Australia) at your local bookstore today.
Debut Spotlight is a partnership with Australian publishers to highlight the release of local books. All titles are selected by KYD and we retain editorial independence.
