Karen Swan

Karen Swan is the Sunday Times top three bestselling author and her novels sell all over the world. She writes two books each year – one for the summer period and one for the Christmas season. Previous summer titles include The Spanish Promise, The Hidden Beach and The Secret Path, and for winter, Christmas at Tiffany’s, The Christmas Secret and Together by Christmas.

Karen's most recent book is The Stolen Hours, published by Macmillan on 20 July. You can find The Stolen Hours and all of Karen's books on our catalogue.

Who were your heroes as you were growing up?

It’s a cliché to say it but Jane Austen was my queen! Her spare language, dry humour, irony, witticisms and deft characterizations are something to which I still aspire. As for her feminist sensibilities, in which the female characters are equal to the men, regardless of the plot requirements for differences in financial or social standing, she proved herself to be a woman far ahead of her own time.

What attracted you to St Kilda and its history?

It’s the ruggedness and remoteness of St Kilda that makes it stand apart from the rest of the Outer Hebrides, or indeed any of the other Scottish isles. It’s not like Skye or Harris or Shetland. There’s only one place to land a boat and even then that is only possible when the wind is in the right direction. The black sea cliffs are vertical and the highest of anywhere in the British Isles; I always say it looks like a Game of Thrones set – very gothic and it somehow doesn’t look real, the way it’s just magnificently there, on its own, in the middle of the Atlantic.

Crops and trees couldn’t grow on the isle so survival was scratched from primarily living off the seabirds and their eggs, meaning the islanders just getting their breakfast was a life-or-death climbing ordeal across the cliffs. Having said that, the island was inhabited continuously for over two thousand years so when they finally called it a day in the summer of 1930, it really was a momentous historical event. It was reported in newspapers across the world and even now, holds a special fascination for people; it is certainly no mere island.

Your new book is The Stolen Hours which is the second in the Wild Isle series. Can you tell us a little about it?

Each book in the series pivots around a different young woman from the island. The first book, The Last Summer, follows Effie Gillies and her relationship with the son of the aristocrat who ended up buying the archipelago after the evacuation. The Stolen Hours concerns her best friend Mhairi MacKinnon who is arranged to be married to a farmer on the Isle of Harris as her father can no longer continue to support her; unfortunately, she falls in love with the wrong man…

Uniting each book is a central mystery, namely the fate of the landlord’s factor on the last night on the isle. An unpopular but powerful man, we begin to see through the subsequent novels that each young woman had a reason to hate him and to do whatever it took to escape him.

You have mentioned in the past how a picture can have the right feel for a story to set things in motion. What helped you get to the starting point for the character of Mhairi MacKinnon?

I first ‘met’ Mhairi when I was writing Effie’s story, but she is largely off the page in The Last Summer – we tend only to hear about her rather than fully get to know her there. However I developed a vague sense of her as being steady, reliable, dutiful but also emotionally volatile; possibly she developed this way initially, purely as a contrast to Effie who was spirited, wild and tomboyish but also very rational in her thinking.

When it came to developing Mhairi further in her own book, I determined from those few first pointers that she would be an eldest child of the biggest family in the community, known for doing the right thing; that immediately gave me the dramatic tension and ethical dilemmas I wanted for having her do the wrong thing by following her heart.

Library readers look on your books as a guaranteed 'good read'. Do you ever feel under pressure to keep coming up with something new?

Thank you, that’s really lovely to hear – and yes, it is a constant worry that I’ll run out of ideas, or even words! I do my best to switch up how I write my books and that helps keep things fresh, so that I don’t feel I’m writing to a formula – so sometimes I switch between past / present storylines or I’ll have a ‘prismatic’ perspective through various different characters, or just one. I also experiment with different historical periods although I find I’m naturally drawn to the 1930s, be it the Spanish Civil War, Second World War or indeed St Kilda’s evacuation. I try not to think too much about public expectations or market trends; I just find a plot idea I like, characters I can love and/or hate, and trust the rest will work itself out!

Is there anything you can share with us about your latest project?

I’m currently writing the third book in the Wild Isle series, called The Lost Lover, and it follows Flora MacQueen’s love story. What’s really interesting for me now, three books in, is that much of her backstory has been shown in the other two novels so it’s really challenging and fun to take the assumptions that are made in those and provide a new context in which everything is shaken up and has to resettle again in a new guise. It’s difficult but I’m loving it.

One book, piece of music or work of art that everyone should experience?

Michaelangelo’s Pieta in Rome is a statue everyone should see if they possibly can – regardless of religion or creed, it is the most exquisite rendering of motherhood, devotion and loss. The fact that something so soft and spiritual is carved from marble just amazes me.

We're always looking for recommendations of good books to read. What was the last book you really enjoyed or a book you keep returning to?

I’ve always been a fiction gal and my favourite authors are Kate Atkinson and Elizabeth Buchan but I’m really enjoying memoirs at the moment. I read Crowdie and Cream – a Hebridean memoir - by Finlay J. MacDonald as part of my research for The Stolen Hours and I was so gripped by his wit, poignant story-telling and lyrical descriptions that I ended up reading the trilogy.

I’m currently reading Island Going by the naturalist Robert Atkinson, again for research purposes for The Lost Lover. It’s something of a cult classic, a memoir of his adventure in 1935 when he and his friend John Ainslie left Oxfordshire and travelled around all the Scottish isles; they had no budget, no experience and no idea but as the journey progresses, you can see how they fell in love with ‘islandeering.’ It’s a fabulous Famous Five / Swallows & Amazons-type adventure that’s been lost to another age. Naturally, they visited St Kilda and it’s fascinating reading their accounts as they were visiting only five years after the evacuation.

What is the strangest or funniest thing any of your readers has shared with you?

The loveliest anecdote has to be two best friends who travelled around Venice, eating and drinking at all the places my characters visited in Christmas at Tiffany’s, and then they sent me the photographs afterwards! I also had a lady ask me where the hotel was in Venice from that same book - it was a leap year and she wanted to propose to her boyfriend there. I was so upset to have to tell her that I’d made that bit up!

Can you tell us one thing about yourself that your readers may not know?

I’m left-handed, obsessed with my dogs, useless at accents, obsessed with antiques and love to sew.