Author Megan Davis talks to us about her debut novel The Messenger and gives us a sneak peek at her next book set in the Côte D’Azur in Southern France.
Megan Davis worked for many years as a lawyer in the film industry and her credits include The Constant Gardener, Atonement, Eastern Promises, In Bruges, Pride & Prejudice and the Bourne films. In the film industry she encountered the world of corruption and white-collar crime, and she has worked in the field ever since.
Megan has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. A partial of The Messenger won the Bridport/Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel in 2018, judged by Kamila Shamsie. The Messenger went on to win the 2021 Lucy Cavendish College Fiction Prize. Zaffre published The Messenger on 30th March and you can also find it on our catalogue.
My heroes were explorers. I’m quite risk-averse so I have huge admiration for anyone who sets off voluntarily on a terrifying journey without any idea of what will happen along the way, let alone what might be there at the final destination. I grew up in remote places and had a lot of exposure to unusual frontiers and different cultures so that sparked my imagination hugely as a kid. I loved Gerald Durrell, My Family and other Animals.
Yes, absolutely. When I worked in the film industry, I often read scripts and sat in on script meetings where my colleagues decided what projects to finance or take into production. As a lawyer, it was never my decision but I was allowed to chip in occasionally with views on the script. I developed a real interest in well-crafted dialogue because scripts are, essentially, all about dialogue.
I still love analysing the dialogue in films and TV programmes, and I think that writers like Jesse Armstrong (Succession) and Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) are some of the best writers out there. My favourite novels are ones with smart dialogue, or with a close point of view where it feels like the characters are talking directly to me.
It was great to be immersed in a workshop environment and to have a common love of writing as a binding element among the cohort, even though many people disagreed vehemently. I love seeing other people’s writing develop, and having my own work analysed by my peers. There’s no better way to hone skills than to subject your work to the ruthless critiques of other writers in a workshop format. It’s nerve-wracking but essential if you’re going to develop as a writer and thicken your skin for the inevitable rejections and reviews. It’s also incredibly beneficial to analyse other people’s work and learn skills from them too.
The Messenger is based on a true story that I came across when I was living in Paris. It’s about a 16 year-old boy who was convicted of killing his father. My sons were at the same school as this boy and although I didn’t know him, it was the first time a terrible crime had entered my orbit.
In retrospect, I think the story grabbed me because I felt very guilty for uprooting my kids from their friends in London, bringing them to France and putting them into a school where they didn’t know the language.
At the back of my mind was this fear: what if my kids hate this experience so much that they end up resenting me forever. What if they even want to kill me? And from there I started wondering what it takes for kids to want to kill their parents.
I think we all go through a period as teenagers where we resent our parents and want to be free of them. I wanted to explore that sense of rejection that a teenager has for their parents. It’s often a real physical disgust. And often parents can feel that same disgust too for the adolescent their child has grown into.
It was difficult to write. There were a lot of false starts and lengthy stops along the way.
I wrote part of The Messenger when I was living in Paris around the time of the 2015 Bataclan and Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. Even before the attacks, there was always this sense that there were two sides to Paris. The romantic Paris of the central monuments – the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and then there is the real Paris of the outskirts and the suburbs.
I was living in the central zone and after the attacks, the city’s focus which had always been inward, suddenly turned out towards to the suburbs and in particular, those areas where the terrorists were hiding.
A couple of days after the attacks there was a massive police siege in the suburbs and after that, the whole city was transformed into a battleground with riot police on every corner. Many places became inaccessible without ID and security checks. The ring road around Paris was already a gridlocked motorway that separated central Paris from the suburbs, but after the attacks it became like a barricade.
I saw how quickly Paris transformed from a touristy, fairytale Disneyland into practically a police state. I realised there was a lot more to Paris than met the eye and so I started exploring beyond the central zone. I wanted to understand the kind of life that went on beyond the periphery.
I have nearly completed my second novel, Bay of Thieves. It’s set along the Côte D’Azur among a group of people who service the wealthy elite living between London and Monaco. The book explores the seductive yet distorting power of wealth and its ability to transform and also to destroy lives.
Always pack a black dress, even if you’re just going camping.
A few non-fiction books about financial crime. At the top of the pile is Money Men by Financial Times journalist, Dan McCrum about the Wirecard scandal.
The best thing about being a published author is that people finally stop asking you when you’re book’s going to be published!
