Imogen Crimp studied English at Cambridge, followed by an MA in contemporary literature from University College London, where she specialized in female modernist writers. After university, she briefly studied singing at a London conservatoire. She was born in 1989 and lives in London. A Very Nice Girl is her debut novel.
Today, Imogen Crimp is on the blog to take on our Ten Terrifying Questions! Read on …
Imogen Crimp
1. To begin with, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I was born and raised in London, where I also went to school, before studying English at Cambridge. I moved back to London after my degree and have mostly lived here since.
2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
I’ve pretty much always wanted to be a writer; I was one of those children who spent my spare time covering page after page with scribbled ‘novels’. There was a period in my early twenties when I stopped writing at all because I was worried I wasn’t any good at it, and I basically stopped reading at that time too. Instead, I briefly studied classical singing, but I kept finding that the main aspect of opera and song that really interested me was the text. In my mid-twenties, I did an MA in modern literature to rediscover my love of books, and I started writing again.
3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you don’t have now?
I actually really wish I’d had more strongly held beliefs at eighteen. In particular, I wish that I’d had more confident opinions on feminism and gender politics, and that I’d had the courage to stand up for myself. At university, there was a lot of behaviour and language amongst the boys that really shocks me now, and I wish I’d had the strength and conviction then to challenge it.
4. What are three works of art – this could be a book, painting, piece of music, film, etc – that influenced your development as a writer?
Jean Rhys’ 1934 novel Voyage in the Dark directly inspired A Very Nice Girl, so she’s definitely first on my list. I love the combination of the spare and lyrical in her writing style; her close focus on the interiority of a female protagonist; and the boldness of her depiction of relationships between men and women, which was way ahead of its time.
I also find the writing of Doris Lessing incredibly inspiring, and her 1962 novel The Golden Notebook is one of my all-time favourite books. I admire Lessing’s sheer intelligence, the engagement with political issues in her fiction, and her brilliant story telling.
Finally, when I was developing the idea for A Very Nice Girl, I listened to Leonard Cohen’s ‘If I Didn’t Have Your Love’ on repeat. The song describes, with plaintive conviction, the experience of needing another person – a loved one or possibly God – to give your life meaning. I love the melancholy tone of it, and it coloured my thinking at the time about the obsessive need for someone and how all-consuming that can be.
‘I think you have to maintain the joy in writing – the sheer excitement I found in covering the pages when I was a child – if your writing is also going to be enjoyable to read.’
5. Considering the many artistic forms out there, what appeals to you about writing a novel?
I think the honest answer is that it’s never occurred to me to try another type of writing – it’s the form I’ve always been most drawn to, and the type of art I most enjoy consuming myself. I really enjoy the flexibility of novel writing – the combination of dialogue, description/action and interiority. It gives me a huge amount of freedom. I also think that that combination – alongside the fact that (if you’re writing in the first person) you can show your reader the world through the eyes of one single character – is as close to experiencing what it’s like to be someone else as you can get in art.
6. Please tell us about your latest novel!
A Very Nice Girl is about a young woman training to be a singer in London. One night, in the hotel bar where she sings jazz, she meets Max – an older, much wealthier man. The story then follows Anna’s growing obsession with and dependence on Max, and the impact this relationship has on her fledgling singing career. It’s a novel about the ways our different desires can come into conflict with one another, and the dangers of obsessive, misplaced love.
7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
I did think about specific ideas I wanted my readers to take away from A Very Nice Girl, but I also really wanted to write a book that would be enjoyable to read. So I’d say that I most hope people reading my work will have found it pleasurable.
8. Who do you most admire in the writing world and why?
I really admire Edna O’Brien for her insight, wit and the daring of her artistic choices – from her first books, the trilogy collected as The Country Girls, which were banned in her native Ireland, to the sensitive way she dealt with the subject matter of her two most recent books, The Little Red Chairs and Girl. I’m also in awe of the fact she’s still publishing such brilliant novels in her nineties.
9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?
My ultimate goal is to be able to keep writing novels and to keep enjoying the writing process. I think you have to maintain the joy in writing – the sheer excitement I found in covering the pages when I was a child – if your writing is also going to be enjoyable to read. I hope that writing always brings me pleasure.
10. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
I think one of the best lessons I learnt was the importance of having the courage to give up on a project and start over with something new. I wrote another book before A Very Nice Girl which just wasn’t working, and I’m really pleased that I decided to give up on it, rather than fiddling endlessly. You learn to write by doing it, and that means you’ll always produce material that you don’t use – but no writing is ever wasted, because the process of doing it always makes you a better writer.
Thank you for playing!
—A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp (Bloomsbury Australia) is out now.
A Very Nice Girl
Anna is struggling to afford life in London as she trains to be a singer. During the day, she vies to succeed against her course mates with their discreet but inexhaustible streams of cultural capital and money, and in the evening she sings jazz at a bar in the City to make ends meet.
It's there that she meets Max, a financier fourteen years older than her. Over the course of one winter, Anna's intoxication oscillates between her hard-won moments on stage, where she can zip herself into the skin of her characters...
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