Welcome to another Weekend Read post. My featured book this week is the dark thriller An Ordinary House by author Rae Starling. Rae has dropped by today to tell us what inspired her to write this story. So grab yourself a cuppa, get cosy and let’s get chatting to Rae
Blurb
We lived in a house on Beech Avenue.
Outside-People say we’re safe now.
But one of us wants to go back.
Back to that house and the darkness it held.
Police raid an ordinary house in a quiet suburban street and find a traumatised teenager held captive with his family. They call him a survivor, but he doesn’t know what to believe. His memories don’t match what his siblings and the press tell him about his home.
As he struggles to make sense of his new world, he must find and face the truth.
With one of his siblings set on revenge, should he forget his family, or turn from victim to killer?
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Welcome to my blog Rae. Can you tell us what inspired you to write this book?
In August 2006, I was living in Germany and listening to the car radio when the German news came on. The top story was about an eighteen-year-girl called Natascha Kampusch, who had suddenly appeared on a street in neighbouring Austria. She hadn’t been seen since she vanished at the age of ten. Assuming something had got lost in my translation, I pulled over to listen more closely. The story seemed so fantastical. But it turned out that what I heard was indeed true. The resilient young woman had escaped from an abductor who had held her captive for eight years.
The news story went on to be much covered not only in the German-language media, but also worldwide. Natascha Kampusch’s first interview for ORF, the Austrian national broadcaster, was aired in full in ten countries, and excerpts were shown in another one hundred and twenty.
Sadly, since then, I have heard of other women and girls – including Elizabeth Smart, Sarah Smith, Jaycee Dugard, Amanda Berry, Gina De Jesus, Michelle Knight, Katy Morgan-Davies – who suffered long-term abuse and captivity. I read memoirs by these survivors as well as two by Natascha Kampusch. One thing that several mentioned was the difficulty of readjusting afterwards under a media spotlight.
One academic, Fairleigh Gilmour, examined the media coverage of the ‘Kampusch’ case. She discovered that initially sympathetic reporting soon turned against the teenager. In Gilmour’s view, Natascha Kampusch received negative press because she did not present as the typical stereotype of a victim. Instead, she claimed her independence and seemed to hold a complex and contradictory attitude towards her abductor.
Gilmour analysed 355 newspaper articles in English language newspapers from 2006 to 2010 and noted the occurrence of four story ‘angles’ to refer to Natascha Kampusch: the ‘mad’ woman; the ‘bad’ woman; the ‘sex slave’; and the ‘virgin bride’.
In her first memoir, 3096 Days, Natascha Kampusch eloquently contests each of these stereotypes. In her second memoir, 10 Years of Freedom, published some eleven years after she escaped, she still itemises incidents of ongoing media intrusion.
These memoirs, together with the Gilmour article, inspired me to write about how an individual’s experience of kidnap might be rewritten by the media. Although I didn’t attempt to speak for real-life survivors, my aim was to highlight the issue of media manipulation.
In my thriller, An Ordinary House, a traumatised teenager finds his story sensationalised after rescue from years locked in a suburban house. As well as navigating lurid headlines and false allegations, he must suppress nightmarish memories of his ordeal to stop himself spiralling out of control. We see him face scrutiny not only from the media but also from detectives, lawyers, psychologists and social media keyboard warriors.
Source
Fairleigh Gilmour, ‘The Girl in the Cellar: Media Representations of Natascha Kampusch’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 25. 2 (2013), pages 645-666.
I remember reading about this case, Rae, and feeling sorry for Natasha not only for the ordeal she went through during her captivity but the media intrusion afterwards. What a fascinating subject.
About Rae Starling
Author bio
Rae Starling is my new penname. An Ordinary House, my first book under the name, was published this month by Hera Books, part of Canelo. A second standalone, The Chosen, will follow in August 2027.
As Rachel Sargeant, I write the Gloucestershire Crime Series, published by Hobeck Books. I also have thrillers with HarperCollins, including the top-ten-Kindle-bestseller The Perfect Neighbours.
After several years in Germany, I now live in Gloucestershire with my family. My hobbies are swimming, visiting coffee shops, country gardens and the theatre, and chatting about books on my blog.
Social Media Links
Amazon Author Page Rae Starling
More books by Rae/Rachel
Karen King 