My Friday Reads this week is the captivating, dark retelling of Great Expectations, Estella’s Revenge by Barbara Havelocke. I really enoyed this book. Barbara has dropped by today to tell us what inspired her to write it, and I can’t wait to find out! So grab yourself a cuppa, get cosy, and let’s get chatting to Barbara. 😊
Blurb:
You know Miss Havisham.
The world’s most famous jilted bride.
This is her daughter’s story.
Raised in the darkness of Satis House where the clocks never tick, the beautiful Estella is bred to hate men and to keep her heart cold as the grave.
She knows she doesn’t feel things quite like other people do but is this just the result of her strange upbringing?
As she watches the brutal treatment of women around her, hatred hardens into a core of vengeance and when she finds herself married to the abusive Drummle, she is forced to make a deadly choice:
Should she embrace the darkness within her and exact her revenge?
Estella’s Revenge is a stunningly original, gripping Gothic read, perfect for fans of Stacey Halls, Eve Chase and Jessie Burton.
Buy link: https://geni.us/LoSHSA
Extract:
It is dark, so dark, as dark as my soul, but still there is just enough light down this dank alley for me to see that my hands are stained with something sticky. My blood. In this half-light they look slate-grey but I imagine them as the colour of the half-finished shawl I have been knitting, the vibrant wool lying unspooled somewhere nearby, across the filthy cobbles.
Beneath the blood veneer are cuts and open wounds where my knuckles have split on impact. An experimental try at gently opening and closing my hands makes me suck in my breath, short and sharp, and a smell reminiscent of a butcher’s shop hits my nostrils, mixed with the rank tang of urine, and the freshness of petrichor.
In that first surge of action the pain was blotted out. Now it is rushing in, along with…
I need to stop these ridiculous thoughts and try to find out where all the blood is coming from.
I hold my hands out and take a little shuffle backwards, trying to get away from them and the truth they spell out in violent vermillion. My stomach heaves. I hurriedly wipe my hands on my clothes – and they find something unexpected. My fingers explore. There is something protruding from my bodice. Something long and thin and cold to touch and…realisation dawns.
It is a knitting needle. My own knitting needle.
My heart, which had been slowing, speeds up painfully again, and as I pull the homely weapon out my breathing comes in gasping huffs that refuse to be controlled.
Murder, I think. How did it come to this?
Terror, anger, regret, guilt…
They aren’t the emotions singing through me. No, it is joy. Absently, I lick my lips. A metallic tang of blood spreads across my tongue as my thoughts start to shout.
Murder! It was always going to come to this!
Tears fall: happiness and relief forming a river down my cheeks. Slowly, I fold down onto the damp cobbles and curl up, red hands over my head, trying to quiet myself when all I want to do is scream my elation at finally accepting my fate.
The sound of footsteps running grows fainter. And beside me the dead body starts to cool.
Oh my goodness, what a chilling extract! Welcome to my blog, Barbara. You know how much I love your book. What inspired you to write it?
Imagine a retelling of Great Expectations from Estella’s point of view and…crime fiction probably isn’t what would come to mind. For me, it was always going to end that way, though. Indeed, in the opening scene of Estella’s Revenge the titular woman herself says: ‘Murder. It was always going to come to this.’ She’s been stabbed with a knitting needle, and at her feet a body cools. What on earth has happened to this woman and why?
I wanted it to be clear from the opening that while Estella’s Revenge is Estella Havisham’s untold story, the reader will be seeing a very different side to the enigmatic, cold-hearted creature from Great Expectations. But the clues are all there in the Dickens classic, if only we look hard enough, and use modern psychology.
Think of a child raised in a house filled with darkness and rage, whose mother tells her daily to ‘never love, never trust.’ Think of the psychological trauma that would inflict, and the damaged person that child would grow into, and the violence that would no doubt grow in her troubled heart. This is Estella’s reality – and this is the character which fascinated me from the very first time I read Great Expectations back when I was taking my GCSEs and A-levels.
For a short while I worked in a category A men’s prison, where I met people who had done some terrible things. As a journalist on national magazines, I interviewed victims and perpetrators of crime; ran an award-winning campaign about domestic abuse, and got involved with my local women’s refuge. Over the past decade I’ve written six psychological thrillers as Barbara Copperthwaite, and been a No 1 bestseller on Amazon and Kobo. Through it all, I’ve thought of Estella, that little girl told daily to break all men.
In Great Expectations we’re told she suffers at the hands of her violent husband, Bentley Drummle. Yet there’s a line, spoken by the character Mr Jaggers, about Estella’s marriage: “The stronger will win in the end, but the stronger has to be found first… he may possibly get strength on his side; if it should be a question of intellect, he certainly will not…may the question of supremacy be settled to the lady’s satisfaction!”
In other words, she’s cleverer than her husband and will get the upper hand. This line summed up my own thoughts on Estella, and yet the fate Dickens had seemingly given her was at odds with them. I wanted to explore this dichotomy. I read Great Expectations again, with this idea in mind and it was as though Dickens had left breadcrumbs there for me to follow. Slowly but surely, Estella’s dark story revealed itself fully until her troubled childhood and grooming into a weapon against men, combined with her marriage to the abusive and violent Bentley Drummle, triggers her to an inevitable conclusion…
How fascinating, Barbara. Thanks so much for dropping by and talking to us about Estella’s Revenge. I hope it soars!
Meet Barbara
Estella’s Revenge is Barbara Havelocke’s debut historical thriller. Writing as Barbara Copperthwaite, she has written six best-selling psychological thrillers, including the Amazon No 1 hit The Perfect Friend. The Darkest Lies featured on the USA Today bestseller list.
Her writing career began as a journalist on national magazines. She has interviewed countless victims and perpetrators of crime, ran an award-winning campaign about domestic abuse, and got involved with her local women’s refuge.
She also spent a short time working at Barlinnie, Glasgow’s Category A men’s prison.
When not writing at her home in Birmingham, Barbara loves walking her dogs, Scamp and Buddy, taking wildlife photographs, and drawing.
www.facebook.com/AuthorBarbaraCopperthwaite
Twitter: @BCopperthwait
Instagram: @BarbaraCopperthwaite
Karen King 