Talking Lavender & Hemlock with author Lili Wilkinson
We chat with the wonderful Lili Wilkinson about her latest novel Lavender & Hemlock.
A&U: Hey Lili! Thanks so much for chatting with us. First up, can you please tell us a bit about your latest novel Lavender and Hemlock?
LW: Merit is a Carrion Knight - a dark soldier serving the Unmaker. But she doesn’t want to be an evil minion any more, and flees, finding herself in a strange cottage by the sea called the Oubliette, where she meets Tansy. Tansy is a housemaid, serving the crotchety old Lady Aster. Every day is the same. Exactly the same. And Tansy can’t remember anything from her life before the Oubliette. Together the girls must unravel the mystery of the little cottage, and the dark secrets it contains.
A&U: Where did the first spark of inspiration for the novel come from?
LW: I was angry at a Star Wars movie. I could rant about this for hours, but essentially, if you establish that the bad guys are actually brainwashed child soldiers who are capable of redemption, then maybe the good guys shouldn’t just… kill them all? Doesn’t everybody deserve a choice? And what if everything was way more complicated than good guys and bad guys, and you didn’t really want to be in either, you just wanted to go somewhere quiet and raise chickens?
A&U: We love the dual POV of Tansy and Merit. What made you decide to go in this route vs the single POVs of your previous fantasy novels?
LW: As I was planning the book, it was clear to me that they both had such interesting stories, and interesting emotional journeys to go on. I wanted to be able to get inside both their heads, and felt they deserved equal page-time. It was a fun new challenge for me, and one I’ll definitely be using again. But it is challenging, to figure out who is where, and who knows what, and where the dog is! I kept losing Bracken, which he definitely didn’t deserve.
A&U: The novel has this eerie dark but somehow still cosy atmosphere. How do you go about striking that perfect balance between the sweet and the sinister?
LW: Honestly I think that’s my natural state? I love cosy, wholesome things - making bread and knitting and pottering in the garden and talking to my chickens. But you need some salty to go with the sweet, otherwise you get a toothache. As a Uni student I was obsessed with finding dolls at op shops and then putting them in jars and photographing them like they were weird specimens. I love the way a little bit of sinister can just cut through the cosy, like a shiver running over you.
A&U: Being careful to avoid spoilers as best as you can, were there any scenes or moments in particular in the book that made you laugh or cry or scream while writing it?
LW: I loved writing the sweet early scenes between Merit and Tansy - the raspberries and the quarrelling. But I also really enjoyed writing the scene with the teeth. But my absolute favourite scene is almost at the very end, and it features the cat.
A&U: And finally, a fun one! If Tansy and Merit walked through a door into the world of your last book Unhallowed Halls, how do you think Page and the Agathion crew would react to them, and vice versa?
LW: I think the Agathion crew would immediately embrace Tansy and Merit. They would pull tarot cards from Oak’s handmade deck (Merit is the Knight of Swords, Tansy is the Sun). Merit would probably be a bit scandalised about everyone's language and Lacey’s short skirt. Tansy would recognise fellow picnic-lovers, and be thrilled to have so many lovely people to talk to.
Lavender & Hemlock
by Lili Wilkinson
A housemaid's quiet life is disrupted when the arrival of a mysterious stranger makes her question everything about her peaceful existence and her charming seaside home.
Comments