Alessandra Thom was a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awardee for Prose in 2023 and holds an MLitt with distinction in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews. In her short fiction, some of which has appeared in Gutter magazine, she has written about mad women, isolation, and the wild natural world.
Though Thom grew up in Aberdeenshire, her debut novel Summer Hours is set across a hot Edinburgh summer, and focuses on the intense and unsettling relationship between best friends Roisin and Eve.
Summer Hours focuses largely on navigating the liminal space between female friendship and love/lust that queer women can sometimes find themselves in. What drew you to exploring this dynamic with your characters?
I think liminal spaces are always great places to write from and about. The border between things, and what forces are at play to create that border, usually end up being more interesting than the thing itself. There are all kinds of borders and boundaries in Summer Hours: the space between friendship and romantic love, between mental and physical labour, class and wealth, Edinburgh the built city and Edinburgh the wild place. I was reading a lot about uncanny doubling in Gothic literature, where one person mirrors another in a way that is unsettling or strange. I wanted to intensify that in the queerest way I could think of – two friends who are so close they may as well be together.
Another significant element of the novel is how lost someone can feel in their twenties, especially with wealth inequality growing and housing instability an increasingly pressing issue. Can you touch on these themes in relation to the novel?
I can! I think the period of your life where you have to let go of youth is an extremely intense one, full of grief for a different stage of life, and for the people who represent that stage.
Right now, I think it can be increasingly hard for young people to feel grounded in adulthood when absolutely nothing is promised to them. Lots of people in their twenties work really hard, but working really hard no longer guarantees you ‘adult’ things like retiring, or owning your own home, or having a family. These things are almost completely out of reach for ordinary people. Why should young people think about their futures when your present is so challenging, and all the future promises is more instability?
In the book Eve has no home; she’s sleeping on Roisin’s sofa. And Roisin is reluctant to take any responsibility for herself, because what will she gain from it? I don’t think it would have been possible to write any story set in this time of history without it being touched by wealth inequality, housing instability, and by the material things that affect people day to day.
Edinburgh as a setting for this story felt so vibrant and alive. Why did you decide to set the novel there, rather than, say, Aberdeen or St Andrews?
I’ve never lived in the city of Aberdeen, or in St Andrews, but I was living in Edinburgh when I started writing Summer Hours, and then I left midway through writing it.
So it really became a love letter to Edinburgh – I don’t think this story could have been set anywhere else. Edinburgh is a city full of contradictions, a capital city famous for its architecture with a gorsesmothered volcano in its centre. What better setting for a novel about young queer womanhood, with all its external finery and internal wilderness. It’s also just really pretty, which was nice to write.
The popularity of shorter books is on the rise, and Summer Hours joins the ranks of brilliant novels that can be consumed in one scandalfilled sitting. Were you conscious of keeping the narrative concise?
I wasn’t, actually, though I really love short novels. I just tend to write short. I’d never written anything longer than a short story before, so Summer Hours felt like a long book to me!
Finally, are you working on anything new?
I am! I’ll keep quiet about it though. Don’t want to jinx it…
Summer Hours is out now, published with Polygon. Available here.
Main Photo Credit Laura Jane Hegarty
