Q&A: Kit Burgoyne, Author of ‘The Captive’

We chat with author Kit Burgoyne about The Captive, which is a satirical Rosemary’s Baby for our conspiratorial present in which anti-capitalist activists unwittingly unleash terrifying demonic forces when they kidnap a pregnant heiress.

Hi, Kit! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

My real name is Ned Beauman, under which I’ve already published five novels, but I’m now making my horror debut under this new pen name. I live in north London with my dog Naska.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

I come from a very literary family – I have a mother, brother, sister, aunt, and a couple of grandparents who’ve all published books – so I’ve been steeped in them for as long as I can remember.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry. (I know I read books before this but I have a terrible memory for my early childhood.)
• The one that made you want to become an author: I’ve wanted to become an author more or less since I learned to read, but The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon was the book that crystallised what kind of author I wanted to be.
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Red Plenty by Francis Spufford broadened my sense of what a novel can do. We all know you’re allowed to write at great length in a barely-fictionalised way about a topic you find interesting and still call it a novel, as long as that subject is your own life. But Red Plenty shows that, actually, the barely-fictionalised topic doesn’t have to be your own life – it can be something much richer and more consequential (in this case the Soviet economic system).

Your latest novel, The Captive, is out September 30^th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Guerrillas tangle with supernatural baby.

What can readers expect?

When I was writing The Captive I was constantly asking myself, ‘What is the most lurid and shocking thing that could happen by the end of this chapter?’, and I think it shows. The book is designed as an absolutely relentless succession of cliffhangers, twists and reversals. Horror is often about the slow burn, and that can be incredibly compelling, but it wasn’t at all what I was interested in here.

Where did the inspiration for The Captive come from?

I’ve always loved the strain of horror that gave us The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby, and I think it’s due for a comeback. So I was imagining a more high-octane version of the latter where Rosemary lit out on her own, and then it came to me that you could combine that with the Patty Hearst story – a bit like the classic People Under the Stairs trope where thieves discover the house they’re robbing is far more dangerous than they expected, except instead of a house it’s a hostage.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

I love thriller films with a strong procedural element: Thief, Rififi, How to Blow Up A Pipeline… So it was really fun thinking about the logistical reality of all the capers in this book: how I would actually steal a painting from an office building without hurting the security guard, how I would actually find a safe place to hide from the police if I had a screaming baby with me.

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

The UK has more CCTV cameras per person than anywhere in the world except China, and they’re increasingly hooked up to facial recognition systems. This makes thriller plotting far harder, because it means if your characters are wanted by the police they can’t go out in public at all, let alone commit any more crimes. I recently watched Costas-Gravas’ 1972 film State of Siege, which is also about leftist guerrillas kidnapping a hostage off the street, and thought, ‘God, this was all so much easier back then!’ In the book, I try to strike a balance where I acknowledge this just enough that the reader feels like we’re in the real world, but not so much that it stifles the entire plot.

What’s next for you?

I’ve nearly finished another Ned Beauman novel. Like The Captive it’s about how one might fight back against the choking grip of the British establishment after conventional politics have failed, but the angle is very different.

Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?

A friend recommended Something Happened by Joseph Heller, which is an extraordinary book: the setting is the suburban New England we’ve seen a hundred times in Updike and Cheever and so forth, but it’s written in a spiralling Modernist style more reminiscent of Beckett or Bernhard. And speaking of experimental mid-century novels, the next one I hope to read is The Universal Baseball Association by Robert Coover, because it sounds like it has a lot in common with another project I’m working on – the trouble is, in the UK it’s not just out of print but borderline unobtainable.

Will you be picking up The Captive? Tell us in the comments below!