Books That Inspired The Seawomen

When I was a primary school teacher, we used to tell children to be on the lookout for “magpie words”. These were words or phrases they found in their reading, words that they liked or were a new discovery, ones they could use (or “steal”, like magpies) in their own work. I remember doing the same when I was at school, learning the word mischievous aged 8 and using it everywhere, every single piece of create writing was full of mischievous tigers, kings or ballet dancers.

Weirdly, writing as an adult isn’t that different. What we try to teach children – to look for inspiration and let themselves notice the skills of others in the hopes of absorbing it – we still emulate as adults.

The advice most frequently given to aspiring writers is: read, read, read! Often when I’m struggling with my writing, the only way to feel inspired again is to pick up a book by a writer I admire. Surprisingly it doesn’t give me the soul-crushing sensation of never being good enough, it sparks magic and motivation when I read an unusual turn-of-phrase or an image that encapsulates something perfectly.

During the process of writing The Seawomen I turned to hundreds of books for inspiration. Taking notes, taking photos of specific pages, or simply settling myself into someone else’s world to understand how to make mine work. Below are just a few of the books that inspired my novel. This doesn’t include the non-fiction about herring fishing or folklore about mermaids or fraught memoirs about escaping religious cults – I couldn’t begin to list every book that influenced The Seawomen, even in tiny ways, but these are the books that inspired me the most.

And perhaps if you enjoyed them, you’ll love The Seawomen too (and pre-order it?).

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

Since the TV adaptation, everyone knows The Handmaid’s Tale. Even people who don’t read know The Handmaid’s Tale! But back when I first read it, in school for my AS Level, it blew my mind. I’d never known anything like it. A near-future exploration of what the world could be like under a religious totalitarian regime, a concise style of worldbuilding that had so many different layers to unpick. I was awestruck and to this day, I’d cite it as one of my most influential reads. It’s become a bit of a cliché to say that, perhaps, but it really was a transformative read for me.

The ways in which The Handmaid’s Tale inspired The Seawomen is that, firstly, I knew I wanted to tell a first-person story where the brutalities of this world are just someone’s everyday. Atwood’s world building is very much rooted in reality – in history – even extreme and shocking violence and ritual is based on things that actually happened. In The Seawomen I read memoirs and testimonies of women who had grown up (and escaped) religious cults, I read about groups who had twisted religious texts and I read speeches by dictators to try and make Father Jessop (the cult leader on Eden’s Isle) sound authentic. While The Seawomen imagines a future more distant and more fantastical than The Handmaid’s Tale, I hope readers will feel the same dread and intrigue in my novel.  

The Gracekeepers and The Gloaming – Kirsty Logan

Kirsty Logan is one of my favourite writers of all time. When I first came across her work in her collection The Rental Heart and Other Fairy Tales I was captivated by the way she manages to weave the real and the magical together. It’s the fairy tales of childhood – that wonderous place of imagination – mixed with the gritty and contemporary. And beautiful, lyrical prose. The Gracekeepers – her first novel – imagines a watery future of a floating circus and a woman who deals with the souls (the graces) of the dead. I’d like to think that the world of The Seawomen shares this similar almost magical space, an imagined future where something mermaid-like lurks too. Similarly, The Gloaming has a fantastical element and takes place on an island, as Mara comes of age and works out what she wants. The story is set against a backdrop of selkie folklore, and you can feel the love Kirsty Logan has for these folkloric stories and the sea throughout her work. I like to think The Seawomen falls into this slipstream of watery, beguiling world.

The Mercies – Kiran Millwood Hargrave

A Norwegian coastal village in the 17th century is the setting for The Mercies, where a storm leads to forty fishermen drowning and women to run the island. Later, a religious man, Absalom Cornet, arrives come to take control, concerned this is a place touched by evil and witchcraft. Like The Mercies, my novel takes inspiration from the persecution women faced in the witch trials, being forced to confess to crimes and unholiness. Women facing suspicion, turning on each other and some having doubts about this enforcement of God into their lives also echoes the female characters in The Seawomen who live under Father Jessop’s control.

The Water Cure – Sophie Mackintosh

Sophie Mackintosh is another favourite writer of mine, whose style inspires me, and in her first novel The Water Cure is an atmospheric story about three sisters living on an isolated island, protecting themselves with water rituals and cures, fearing men. There’s a lot left unsaid in this novel, when and where it’s set, what the rituals protect from, and I was captivated by the strange mystery of it all. In The Seawomen I tried to play with this mystery too or when and where the island is set, and the use of ritual, though more religious, is a big part of my novel too. Mackintosh’s second novel Blue Ticket (which I also loved) deals with themes of reproductive dystopia which is also a theme in The Seawomen.

Salt on Your Tongue – Charlotte Runcie

This was a non-fiction read, part memoir, about pregnancy and motherhood but mostly a history of the sea – all its myths and magic and secrets. The way Charlotte Runcie writes about the call of the sea, the love for it, helped me to write Esta’s longing for the water – despite the fact such things are forbidden on the island. This book was also a reminder of how much folklore and superstition is tied up with the sea and how, centuries past, the sea was a dark, unknowable place and many people turned to faith for the answer.

Sea Journal - Lisa Woollett

Sea Journal by Lisa Woollett is a beautiful book of a photography that charts an area of the Cornish coast through the seasons. Woollett’s journal is full of beautiful observations, capturing the power, destruction and majesty of the sea. Her journal helped me with my research about coastal landscape and wildlife, how to best describe the weather and waves. Reading this as well as living by the sea as I do, was the best way to immerse myself in a watery world.

Salt Slow – Julia Armfield

There are few parallels between Salt Slow and The Seawomen, except that we both like a little strangeness in our worlds. The reason I added Salt Slow to this list – an exceptional short story collection – is because Julia Armfield is a writer I turn to again and again to marvel in her words. Bathe in them. Reading her is a lesson in how to be a better writer. Her turns of phrase, her precise imagery, are aspects I admire so much. So, even if there are no direct parallels in our work, reading her stories pushed me, and continues to push me, to be a better writer – and I think every writer needs that.

The Seawomen by Chloe Timms (Hodder Studio, June 2022) Available to pre-order now.