Q&A with Meihan Boey

  

 

 

 

 

Meihan Boey is the author of the new novel The Enigmatic Madam Ingram. She also has written the novel The Formidable Miss Cassidy. She is based in Singapore. 

 

Q: The Enigmatic Madam Ingram is the second book featuring your character Miss Leda Cassidy--did you know when you wrote The Formidable Miss Cassidy that you'd be returning to her story?

 

A: Yes and no! The Formidable Miss Cassidy was written on a whim during the Covid lockdowns, and I have been very grateful for the warm reception she received then, and still does now.

 

That said, because I wasn't sure this would get anywhere, the original draft was enormous, easily three times longer than it really needed to be for a first book.

 

I'm a huge fantasy nerd, and I grew up with ‘70s and ‘80s fantasy, which featured anything from five to 20-plus brick-sized novels, and still saw the need for multiple appendixes, supplementary glossaries, magic and monster bibles, and the like. 

 

Miss Cassidy, Mr. Kay, and their world were created in a very similar way, with a tremendous amount of backstory and detail I didn't end up using in the first book.

 

When I had the chance to write a sequel, most of this backstory went into The Enigmatic Madam Ingram, which not only clues the reader in on what exactly Miss Cassidy is, but also how she wound up as a governess in 1890s Singapore, of all places.

 

There are two Madam Ingrams, Rose and her daughter Letty. Rose, Miss Cassidy's nemesis, is from the Malay Archipelago, and without giving too much away, she is connected to what I believe to be our region's most horrifying hantu (supernatural being).

 

In our part of the world, magic is regarded to be natural, real, dark, dangerous. Rose's and Letty's stories are a cautionary tale against those who don't afford this the respect it compels.

 

Q: What inspired the plot of this new novel?

 

A: The biggest and most obvious inspiration is the work of the Brontë sisters! Jane Eyre is my favourite novel of all time, and The Enigmatic Madam Ingram is my love song to Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. They have influenced and inspired not just myself, but every reader who has loved them for the past two centuries.

 

Anyone remotely familiar with the Brontës will see it. There is an isolated madwoman, a wild windswept moor, a giant dog (Emily Brontë had a giant dog), a dissolute husband, women who hide, women who refuse to hide, women who hide in plain sight, and ghosts that transcend time and space.

 

A secondary inspiration is a real historical figure who appears in the book, the famous courtesan Cora Pearl - to me, the ultimate example of a woman who refused to hide.

 

Q: How did you research this book, and did you learn anything especially surprising?

 

A: To be honest, there was no research done specifically for the book. Being both a history nerd and a fantasy geek, most of what is in The Enigmatic Madam Ingram is from stories, histories, and mythology I have known, read about, and loved for decades.

 

The only details I needed to align were specific dates and ages. Because this is not strictly historical fiction, I wasn't aiming for 100 percent factual accuracy.

 

I did include a location that I found absolutely fascinating when I first visited it - the Standing Stones of Steness. I'm always boggled by standing stones and henges, but this one henge is absolutely otherworldly, and such a perfect spot to be a fairy gateway that turns into a supernatural point of contention.

 

Q: How did you create your character Letty Ingram?

 

A: Letty Ingram is a blend of Brontëan heroines, with a dash (or more) of the uniquely Malayan version of the monstrous feminine. She starts off as an innocent Helen (Anne Brontë's heroine in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) who comes to realise that she has put her love and trust in a monster.

 

Trauma shapes her into a rigid yet secretly tempestuous Lucy Snowe (from Charlotte's Villette). Like Cathy (from Emily's Wuthering Heights) she finds she has let others make terrible decisions for her, the consequences of which may lead to her end.

 

Rose Ingram, her Mama, is the all-consuming monstrous Tiger Mother who lurks in the soul of every Asian child, with the added terror of being supernaturally empowered!

 

Small fun fact - their last name, Ingram, was originally taken from Jane Eyre's nemesis, Blanche Ingram.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am working on a couple of stories set within the same universe, though at this stage, I don't know yet if they'll get anywhere!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The Mr. Kay & Miss Cassidy novels are a completed trilogy. The third book is The Mystical Mister Kay, which has won a couple of literary awards in Singapore, to my eternal gratitude. The Mystical Mister Kay arose directly from a residency I did in Norwich, and is set in a barely-disguised version of Norwich called Tolwich.

 

Mister Kay, the Chinese-Singaporean merchant who is in stubborn pursuit of Miss Cassidy, travels to the U.K disguised as an Oriental Mystic (that is, he pretends to be in yellowface), and finds himself embroiled in the mysterious murder of a Southeast Asian princess, and the sinister motives of a peculiar couturier called Mr. Ruby.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Meihan Boey.