Independent booksellers across the country have chosen Alex Michaelides’ The Fury (Celadon Books) as their top pick for the January 2024 Indie Next List [4]. 

In The Fury, a gorgeous, private island in Greece becomes the site of a terrible murder. 

“The Fury is a perfectly paced, charming, devious mystery novel to fall in love with. On a small, private, Greek island, mythology, history, and personal baggage put our small cast to the test. Intense, captivating, and satisfying,” said Becky Doherty of Northshire Bookstore [5] in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Here, Michaelides discusses his work with Bookselling This Week.

Bookselling This Week: I think what makes this book unique is the narrator’s voice. As Elliot relates this story, he is conversational but also self-conscious, constantly checking in with us. Would you tell us more about developing his voice or building his character?

Alex Michaelides: I’m glad you like the narrator’s voice. It’s funny, Elliot wasn’t initially the narrator of this novel. In the first draft, written in the third person, he was a minor character, essentially providing comic relief. And something about the novel felt lifeless to me. So I walked along the beach, reciting the opening lines to myself — and, for the first time, I asked myself who was speaking. The answer that popped into my head surprised me: Elliot, the playwright.

And so I rewrote the story in the first person, in his voice, from his point of view — and Elliot took over. All kinds of backstory, like his unhappy childhood and the relationship with Barbara West, emerged organically as I was writing. It felt as if he were slowly revealing himself to me. A magical process, and a first for me.

I can’t remember when I came up with the idea of him addressing the reader in a bar. I liked the idea of it being a long anecdote, with Elliot doing everything he could to retain the reader’s attention; even plying her with drinks! The fact he was a writer fed into his awareness of narrative structure and genre, and I had a lot of fun playing with that with the reader — as readers are also hyper-aware of the conventions of genre. It was a delight to write, frankly.  

BTW: I’d love to hear a little about your writing process. What’s the first part of a story that occurs to you? And how do you typically shape it into the finished story?

AM: That’s a difficult question to answer, largely because I seem to have amnesia about the creative process once I’ve gone through it. I seem to start at zero with every new project. I’m currently sitting down to plan my next novel, and I find myself wondering “how do you do this again?”

I suppose I begin with a place. Not simply a location, but a container — I always start with a closed circle, be it large or small. It could be a house, a psychiatric institute, a Cambridge college — or, in this case, a Greek island. I think this comes from my study of Agatha Christie, and seeing how each of her novels is defined by a particular location with a finite boundary to contain the mystery. I chose the locations for The Silent Patient and The Maidens as they were two locations Christie hadn’t used. I’m on her turf now, using a small island, but it’s hard to think of any — an airplane (Death in the Clouds), an archeological dig (Murder in Mesopotamia), a train (Murder on the Orient Express) — that she didn’t already use.

And then I think about the movement of the story in general terms. I think about the twist, of course, but mainly I think about what kind of book I would like to read. I’m beginning to have a better sense of my process, the more books I write, and I see now that I write very much as a “fan.” I re-read the same books a great deal. There are certain types of novels that I love so much that I want to recreate them. I don’t mean copy them — but rather fuse my imagination with that of the book and produce something that pushes the same buttons for me as a reader.

Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, for example, has been thrilling me since I was seventeen years old. Its labyrinthine plotting, its flashbacks within flashbacks, lies within lies, makes it a contender for the first, and greatest, unreliable narration in fiction. I wanted to write something that made me feel the same way that book did. So I read it four or five times in a row, underlining my favorite passages, digesting it — and then set out to write my own. Ford deals with the relationships of a small group of sophisticated people. So I chose a movie star, a theater actress, and a playwright. And I started there.

BTW: The Fury continues your tradition of examining isolated environments and incorporating Greek theater/myth. Any hints about what’s next for you?

AM: I think I will always be drawn to the same themes. Hitchcock said movie directors only make one movie, and they just remake it endlessly. And I agree in terms of theme — there are certain subjects that I return to again and again. Greek tragedy and mythology is a big part of my make-up and a main source of inspiration. And I don’t think that will change.

Where I do want to grow is to improve as a writer, to develop. In the next book I am writing, I’m working on a story that is deeply personal to me — and, I hope, will hit the same buttons that a thriller hits, but also function as a “proper” novel, with authentic, deep, living and breathing characters; and as few contrivances as possible. 

I feel this is what really great crime writers achieve effortlessly — think of Patricia Highsmith — but for the rest of us it takes a lot of work. I certainly have no desire to repeat myself — and I doubt anyone would want to read endless iterations of The Silent Patient anyway!

BTW: Could you talk a little bit about the role of books and indie bookstores in your life?

AM: The first bookstore I went to was an independent store. It was in my hometown, Nicosia, Cyprus. And I went there throughout my childhood, with my mother. Browsing independent bookstores is always my first port of call in any city I visit. And it’s the only way I really find new authors, by physically scanning the shelves. I find it hard to enjoy the process as much online.

As a writer, I didn’t really appreciate the full importance of independent bookstores in terms of my career until fairly recently. I didn’t tour with my first book, and then COVID hit before my second. So it’s only recently that I have been visiting a large number of independent stores on the East and West Coast (with more to come, on my US tour in 2024). 

I was astounded to see how much hand-selling and re-ordering simply comes down to the individual taste of a bookseller. They like a book and so re-order it, and encourage customers to read it. It sounds so obvious but I didn’t appreciate it on a human level until I started meeting booksellers face to face. I’m glad I get to look them in the eye and shake their hand and say thanks. I certainly owe them all a great debt of gratitude.