The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel

by Schaffner Anna

  After a pause, she added: ‘She played you, too, Clare, you know that, don’t you? She read your soul like an open book – you know that her kind has the capacity to discover your deepest fears and greatest desires? She smelled your wounds like a shark, and she knew exactly what to say to make you do what you did. I bet she doesn’t even believe in her own sick theories. Not for a second. I’m not even sure her rape story is true. I mean, how can you tell? You know what? I really think she said all those things just to push you over the edge. Just because she could.’

  But Laura’s wrong. It’s not that simple. She’s still so young.

  My serpentine seducer, with a mind of winter. Still I puzzle over the meaning of it all.

  Sutton Valence, Maidstone, May 2015

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am indebted to Agnès Cardinal, Andreas Essl and Hubert van den Berg for reading early drafts of the novel and for their astute feedback, and to Sarah Savitt and Sam Copeland, my tutors at the Faber Academy, for their excellent advice, which helped me to shape and develop the novel, as well as the other students on Faber’s ‘Edit Your Novel’ course, whose passion and determination was inspiring.

  Thanks are also due to Francesco Capello, Jeremy Carrette, Laurence Goldstein, Katja Haustein, Deborah Holmes, Ben Hutchinson, Heide Kunzelmann, Gordon Lynch, Patricia Novillo-Corvalán, Lucy O’Meara, Natalia Sobrevilla Perrea, Axel Stähler, Núria Triana Toribio and Mikkel Zangenberg for being amazing colleagues, and to Katharina Paschkowski, my parents, Ernst and Eva Schaffner, and Verena Trusch for moral support.

  I would also like to express my gratitude to my fantastic agent, Caroline Wood, for her brilliant judgement, her support and her belief in the project, and to Amy Waite at the Felicity Bryan Literary Agency, as well as to my editors Sam Redman and Clare Drysdale at Allen & Unwin, whose perceptive comments, suggestions and enthusiasm were extremely precious.

  Finally, this book would never have been written were it not for Shane Weller, love of my life, who believed in me from the start, and whose encouragement, fine judgement, sharp ideas, unremitting proof-reading skills and love made all of this possible in the first place.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Anna Schaffner is a Reader in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent. She has recently completed a Faber Academy writing course and The Truth About Julia is her first novel.