Q&A with Julie Berry

 

Photo by Travis Tanner

 

 

 

Julie Berry is the author of the new young adult novel If Looks Could Kill. Her other books include the YA novel Lovely War. She is the owner of Author's Note, an independent bookstore in Medina, New York. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write If Looks Could Kill, and how did you create your characters Tabitha and Pearl?

A: If Looks Could Kill is, in a nutshell, a myth-meets-true crime thriller that pits Medusa versus Jack the Ripper.

 

Medusa was the germ of the idea for the novel. I’d written about Greek gods, and now I wanted to explore Greek monsters. I settled upon Medusa and began building a story around her, which ultimately brought me to Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the late Victorian era.

 

While researching a book about the Bowery neighborhood of the Lower East Side, I came across a mention that Jack the Ripper may have lived there for a time. A credible suspect in the Jack the Ripper investigations left London, slipping bail after the last of the Canonical Five murders, and sailed to New York trailed by London detectives.

 

I already knew that to write a Medusa story I needed to find a villain worthy of Medusa’s wrath, and my research served him up on a silver platter. 

I loved researching and writing this book, and I especially love the characters (well, with one notable exception – he’s pretty despicable). It was hard to say goodbye to them, but I’m excited that so many people will now get to meet them. 

Q: Can you say more about your research for the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

A: I have a teetering tower of books I read about Jack the Ripper and his victims, life on the Bowery, life in the Five Points, life in East London, life during the Gilded Age, immigrant experiences and the lives of the poor in both Manhattan’s Lower East Side and London’s East End.

 

I’ve spent a lifetime happily devouring and studying mythology; I also took a Morbid Anatomy course entitled “Medusa Manifesting” which was fascinating.

 

I was fortunate to be offered the chance to join a tour group to Greece where I saw many monuments, museums, and artwork of Medusa interest, and I spent a few days in London where I visited Whitechapel briefly. My husband and I spent a happy few days in the Bowery neighborhood of Manhattan, exploring sights and museums as well.

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

A: The default assumption for Medusa is that one look at her turns you to stone. Medusa is thereby more object than character, and that’s a profound story limitation. She’s an unassailable weapon, but not a personality.

 

So one of the first decisions I made was to upend the default assumption of what Medusa is and write about Medusa as a way of being, with a power that could be controlled and modulated by the Medusas to range from frightening to stunning to haunting … and maybe to killing, though that power, if used, would come at a terrible cost, as I believe it does to the human psyche. 

Q: The Horn Book review of the book says, “Berry’s call to awareness of misogyny in its many guises is strong and clear. And, as is her way, she treats historical detail with a light but sure hand and religious conviction with sympathetic clarity.” What do you think of that description?

A: I was delighted with that description and with The Horn Book’s review. This reviewer did a much more graceful job of articulating what I try to do in my works than I could ever do, so I felt profoundly honored by the four words, “as is her way.” 

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Mostly I’m working on my massive “Monster Tour” for If Looks Could Kill which will bring me all around the country. I’m still at the early stages with my next YA, so not much to reveal yet. 

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I love books, so I write them, and I love bookstores, so I bought one. I’m now the proud owner of a small independent bookstore in my hometown. I’d like to encourage more authors to consider buying or starting bookstores. Maybe someday I’ll host a webinar on that.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Julie Berry.