In conversation with Nita Prose

We spoke with Prose about her inspiration for the novel, her interest in the genre, and her approach to writing.

So you're on a flight home from the London Book Fair in 2019, and you get the idea for The Maid, so you scribble the prologue down on a napkin. You arrive in Toronto, and back to your full-time job in publishing. How did you find the time to write?

I don't think I've ever been accused of being lazy. Many other things, but not that. At the time, I was getting up at five in the morning to write. I love that time of the day to write: it's as though a piece of your subconscious mind has come alive in the night and is still dancing on the page. It’s a great time to capture a world that is not impacted by reality as much as your own fears.

You’ve written a gentle mystery that asks tough questions: How can we live in harmony when we all perceive the world differently? What does it mean to truly love another person? Why did you want to tackle these questions through the genre of the cozy mystery?

It's a bit of a bait and switch. I love the mystery genre, but the tricky part of it is that it's so popularized and there have been so many masters of it that anybody trying to do a new iteration needs to innovate it.

For me, I knew that I would find the answer to how to do that — to find some kind creativity in the genre — by combining it with something else. And so there are some aspects of the mystery genre and the whodunit that I hope serve as an engine to the story. But I wanted to have a book that is underpinned by a certain sense of morality. And not my morality — Molly's morality. I wanted the story to be a journey of the spirit, to be uplifting. And in the combination of those two genres, I found that I could very quickly reveal to the reader that we are in the world of the mystery and then slowly scene by scene evolve them to understand that this was going to be also a journey of growth.

Were there any authors or books that served as guideposts or inspiration?

Agatha Christie was very important to me. I tried to meld her in my mood board with a bit of the sensibility of the film Knives Out, and then a smattering of the board game Clue. You know, is it the bartender with a knife in the restaurant, or is it the maid with a pillow in the bedroom?

If you put all of those influences together on the mystery side and add to that the journey of the heart, the journey of the spirit, the journey of hope that books like Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine has, I think that comprises the world that I wanted to create.

Can you tell me about the inspiration for Molly's character? How did you research her character and her neurodivergence?

Molly’s voice truly descended upon me. I didn't choose that voice, it came to me. Sometimes you're delivered things from your subconscious mind that you're trying to work out as a writer.

Years ago, I worked as a teacher to special needs students. I learned so much from them.

The world could be so incredibly cruel to them, and I had to witness that and it was shocking. But there was a gift as well. What I also saw was how these kids were often stronger, more resilient, and more adaptable than most of us.

With Molly, I wanted the reader to discover over time that her difference might be her greatest strength. And I hope readers come to see how their own assumptions about her get called into question through the course of the book.

I never labeled Molly. I was concerned that if her neurodivergence was spelled out from the beginning, or on the jacket copy, then readers would miss the most important part, which is how she's exactly the same as all of us.

What’s your reaction to the great coverage the book has received? And is there anything you found interesting or surprising about the publishing process, now that you’re experiencing it from the author’s side?

Right from the get-go, I was abjectly terrified when I was writing. I didn't tell anybody I was doing it. I didn't tell my partner. I didn't tell my friends. And the last people I would've ever told were my colleagues in the book industry. In my head, I'd already written how this was going to go. It was going to go badly. I was going to submit my work to agents and publishers, and they were going to get back to me and say, Oh, it's really lovely Nita, nice little try, and roundly reject me in a very kind way. And then I’d have to spend the rest of my career knowing that happened and trying to get on with things.

So the reception I got to the manuscript early on was the first shock. There were bidding wars and multiple offers. I think people understood what I was attempting to do and were interested in it. Now I'm seeing that reflected in the most important people to me as a writer: the readers. And I am overjoyed and feel a tremendous amount of gratitude for those readers that are willing to open their hearts to a world and a series of characters that demand a softness and an understanding of hope. That fills me with hope. And I'm not a hopeful person, believe you me. I am quite cynical.

It must make the world seem like a more friendly and hopeful place.

Which was my intent all along. To see if that were true. Molly, in her way, ends up cleaning a lot more than rooms. She ends up sweeping up minds and hearts. And that, I think, is something we need right now.

Can I ask you about your writing process? You get this idea, and you start writing in the mornings. Did you create an outline? Or did you just get started?

I’m big on structure. I do not allow myself to write until I know what I’m doing. So with the exception of the prologue, everything else took me some time to figure out. I started with a mapping of characters and understanding who they were and why they were needed. And then I built a skeleton of scenes and moments. Once I had a few of the tent poles — and by that, I mean, that I knew in my mind that all of the action and momentum and drive in the book was leading to X scene or Y scene — then the question that got me waking up early in the morning and happy and eager to get to my writing desk was seeing how to get there.

That’s the way I write, and that's why I call myself a tent pole writer. I do love structure because it can serve as a guide. With mystery, it's really tricky because it's a genre with so many rules. It has one great gift, and one major deficit. The great gift is that the engine is the essential question of Who done it? The burden is everything else: how do you make a murder mystery new? How do you make it fresh? That was always in the back of my mind as I wrote.

Yes, as Molly reminds us many times. Okay, one last question: What are you reading right now?

A book that I'm really enjoying is called Wahala, by Nikki May, who is a British debut author. I love this book because it creates a cast of women, Anglo-Nigerian women in London, who are these contemporary people that feel like your sister or your cousin, or the person at work. They have a transparency and a tenderness to them. It’s a book about coming to an understanding of friendship, and learning to distinguish that from frenemies. I think it's a really brave, fun, energetic debut, and I've been talking a lot about it because it’s awesome.

The other thing I'll say is if there is a reader out there in Canada who has not read The Push yet, I don't understand what you are waiting for, because it is one of the best novels to come out of this country in a very long time — an innovative thriller that looks at the truth and the darkness of what it means to be a mother and a daughter. ◼