A letter from Kat Dunn author of Rottenheart

Kat Dunn touches on the origins of her queer, gender-swapped reimagining of Hamlet.

Dear Reader,

Rottenheart is a book, first and foremost, about having a mother.

It’s really bloody hard to have a mother. I find myself reading work on attachment theory, on early childhood development, on human love, to try to unpick what it is to be a person, what it means to be born human, deeply, radically vulnerable, dependent, into the arms of those we did not choose, who may or may not be up to the job. Being mothered can be a comfort, a place of great solace - and one of absolute madness and suffering. And we do not know any other version than the one we get. My blue is not the same as your blue. When I say mother, I mean something unique, as do you.

The truth is this: we will love our mothers even when they starve us. I suppose, then, Rottenheart must also be a book about love. Love is like water. We cannot live without it, and we will swallow it down even when it is poisoned.

Hamlet can be considered a play about fathers - but it was not so difficult to turn things over and look at these questions from another angle. What is it to be a child of a parent? What do we owe the dead? Can we ever truly be our own person? (Indeed, Hamlet and Old King Hamlet cannot even separate their names). Who rules us? What do we do with suffering? Where can it be tolerated? Who must carry it? Who is allowed to suffer, and who is despised for it? Is there space for us, as well as our parents? Must we always clasp the knife to our breast? Can we escape our mothers? Can we escape the past?

I first saw Hamlet as a teenager, at the Old Vic in London, with Ben Whishaw in the title role. It was one of those seismic experiences you have growing up where the world changes shape, your own mind expands to allow something new in. The kaleidoscope is twisted, and the patterns of life reorganise themselves. I felt a deep kinship with the grief, the sense of suffering denied, of the inconvenience of pain. I read Coleridge’s lectures on Hamlet, and saw a friend’s moving play about Ophelia. I have been in pursuit of Hamlet ever since.

Here it is then, Rottenheart, my Odette and Cecilia, and their mothers, and their pain, and their deep, deep love. I am honoured to share them with you, my girls, and my heart. Thank you for spending your time with me and reading Rottenheart. As I said in the acknowledgements of another book - I hope you recognise these feelings, and I hope you don’t.

Kat xx

---

Rottenheart

by Kat Dunn

From the author of Hungerstone, an unmissable gothic, sapphic, gender-swapped reimagining of Hamlet.

FIND OUT MORE