What everyone would like to know...

On endings, and of Before I Go to Sleep in particular...

In the years since Before I Go to Sleep was first published I’ve done many, many events, and lots of interviews. There are a few questions that crop up repeatedly, but two in particular I’ve been asked more than any other, almost every time in fact.

The first is about my gender, and it amounts to:

Why did you write the book from a woman’s perspective, when you’re a man?

Because the book is written in the first person, from a woman’s perspective, many readers assume I’m a woman. Usually by the time they’ve met me, or we’re communicating via another means (email, for example), they’ve sussed that I’m not. (I say usually, but it’s not always. I remember one woman emailing me from America, on behalf of her book group, to ask very specifically whether I was male or female. It baffled me, as especially back then, my email address wasn’t particularly easy to find. So she must’ve gone to a lot of effort to work out how to contact me. More effort, in fact, than a simple Google image search would’ve taken, but there we go. I replied that I was, in fact, male, and beyond expressing shock and what felt a little bit like a passive aggressive ‘are you sure?’, never heard from her again.)

People seem to be surprised I’m male, as they’d thought the book must have been written by a woman. That is actually a huge compliment, and I take it as such. I’ve written a little bit about the reasons behind that decision, and some of the early mistakes I made, in the post below. I won’t repeat it here. But, in short, if readers struggle to believe the female narrative was written by a man, then that means I must’ve got her voice right, at least.

Writing as a woman...

The second question, though, has proven much more problematic over the years. And that is:

*slight spoiler alert*…

‘What happened the next day? When she woke up?’