Elland describes The Ladie Upstairs as female gothic horror, focusing on the character of Ann who hates her work as a scullery maid. When she has the opportunity to become the personal maid of ‘The Ladie Upstairs’, she takes it but soon finds the devils above stairs may be even worse than what she knew before. Hall remarked on how dark the book was, with a huge amount of gore and violence, which Elland confessed she had felt herself trying to censor during the writing process. She had been afraid to embrace those dark themes until reading Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, a very dark book set in a fictional Mexican town that explored violence and masculinity in Mexico. Elland highlighted how this book showed her how horror and violence can start conversations, and was inspired to write a darker novel that could spark discussions about womanhood, class and bodily autonomy.
We then turned to focus on ‘femgore’, a budding subgenre of horror exploring female bodies, extreme violence and ‘the grossness of life’ with books like The Lamb by Lucy Rose and films like The Substance. Elland feels it is important to keep breaking boundaries and making art about disgusting, violent women. In a society where bodily autonomy is being violated in new, horrifying ways like deepfake pornography and AI, she believes in the use of moments of disgust in horror to rip open conversations that would perhaps be avoided, conversations that can spark change and protest. I found this incredibly interesting and important: as a fan of horror, it confirmed a lot of my opinions about books I love like The Wasp Factory and The Yellow Wallpaper, and their ability to spark disorder and argument that transforms into education and perspective.
The conversation also focused on Elland’s process, and how the book came to life as she completed her degree and turned to an acting career. She spoke about how her experience as an actor, starting in a soap opera, helped her get into the minds of her characters and flesh them out into real people. She emphasised that training, for writing or acting, isn’t 100%: “what’s important is personal experience”. Hall elaborated on this, as a writer themselves: the two talked about imposter syndrome and how impossible it sometimes felt to attempt to write a whole book. Elland said she overcame it by focusing on the primary reader: herself. The Ladie Upstairs was written simply because she wanted to read something like it. This approach towards writing and art is more and more important as conglomerate publishers churn out pages and pages of what are essentially fast fashion, poor quality books designed to make as much money in as little time. Elland’s approach to writing is passionate and fascinating, and the evening spent discussing it was an evening well spent.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Juno Books is a community bookshop focused on amplifying marginalised voices, showcasing new work and highlighting independent presses. The Ladie Upstairs is available to purchase at Juno Books, 24 Chapel Walk, as well as other retailers.
