BOOKS
Débuts of 2024: Vol 2 Author Interview: Jennifer Delaney
Jennifer Delaney Tales of a
Monstrous Heart
into Katherine”. Aſter signing with an agent,
“I
wanted the romance to be the heart of the story and everything else built from that point”,
Jennifer Delaney says over video call from her home in Liverpool about her decadent romantasy debut Tales of a Monstrous Heart. The story follows Katherine
Woodrow, an incredibly power- ful Fey known as a Kysillian, who lives in a world run by an intolerant human societ that persecutes the Fey and other magical folk. When she leaves her studies at the institute with her shapeshiſting and wonder- fully stubborn best friend Alma, Katherine is sponsored by the mysterious Lord Emrys. In his sentient and eminently likeable house, reminiscent of the magical dwelling in Howl’s Moving Castle, Katherine continues her studies and becomes drawn into Emrys’ quest. Someone is murdering the Fey, killing magical creatures and unleashing dark beasts known as the Verr into the population. While the human council tries to suppress the evidence, Katherine and Emrys work together to solve the mystery while their relation- ship begins to deepen.
The relationship that unfurls between Katherine and Emrys is delicate and intimate, founded upon a shared sense of justice and academic interests as well as taut physical tension. But while the current social media trend on TikTok and Instagram looks at a book’s “spice”, a rating determined by its explicit sexual content, Tales of a Monstrous Heart focuses on emotional connection, in homage to a clas- sic, Gothic romance built upon
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everything shiſted. “I have learnt a lot from Katherine,” Delaney says. “Aſter I finished the book, I was so riddled with anxiet that I never went anywhere on my own. Then I got my agent and I was like: ‘If I’m going to do this, fight all [my] demons, then I have to go out into the world and do what Katherine does.’ I made a list: ‘Go on holiday on your own, go to London on your own and go for a meal on your own.’ I’ve done them all now.” Creating a story that was “accessible to everyone” was important for Delaney, who “struggled to read for so long”. The many fantastical languages in the novel were constructed from the etmologies of existing words and “dictionaries of mythological creatures”. They were also purposefully designed to be spoken aloud: “It’s very phonetic... I can’t spell or practise things, so I just have to say it.” I challenge anyone not to
“touches and litle glances”. Delaney explains: “I wanted to have a safe space in the story. Growing up, a lot of girls don’t have [a safe space] and are forced to be a certain way.” Speaking with Delaney, it becomes apparent that the novel has changed her life beyond the publishing deal, and that her character’s journey toward self-acceptance has been one the author has also embraced. Growing up in a “very working- class family” and atending an all-girls Catholic school, Delaney felt there were “harsh lines” she had to follow. At the school, classes were created based on where the students lived, and she remembers that some pupils were told by staff “you will only get a [grade] ‘D’ and an ‘E’ because you come from a council area”. Delaney was not diagnosed with dyslexia until she was 21 years old and remembers how at school
“they didn’t really look into me at all”. She recalls: “When I got into writing, I started geting beter at spelling and I remember a teacher chased me down and said that I must be copying someone else’s work because I can’t have become that good.” The effects of classism have stayed with Delaney and became a “massive inspiration” for Katherine’s character, who comes to defy those who look down on her human and Fey parentage.
Three years in the making Aſter completing a MA in creative writing, Delaney struggled to find an agent for the novel she had writen during the course. “It took three years of my life”, she tells me. “I didn’t go anywhere. I was [at] the lowest low.” When she began to write Tales of a Monstrous Heart, Delaney “channelled all that pain and disappointment
be uterly enchanted by the deliciously sibilant Fey language that echoes throughout the final jaw-dropping pages. Delaney hopes her novel will provide an entry point into fantasy for those who don’t usually read within the genre. She speaks ardently against the judge- ment surrounding certain genres, explaining that any book offering a “stepping-off point” into a new world is a “big accomplish- ment”. Tales of a Monstrous Heart certainly has the capabilit to be one such “stepping-off point”; the world-building, from the flora and fauna to the world’s history, is elegant and vivid, but never heavy-handed.
Tales of a Monstrous Heart heralds a new, spellbinding voice in the genre. With the second, “chunky” book in the trilogy already underway, it will certainly not be the last we hear from Delaney. Katie Fraser
Gollancz, 29th August 2024, £20, hb, 9781399615976
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