Ilona Bannister

Ilona Bannister is the author of three novels: When I Ran Away, Little Prisons, and the newly released Five.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Bannister's reply:

I love learning from other writers. Reading a wide range of authors and genres while I’m writing is part research, part search for inspiration, and part coaching session in craft. To write Five, I drew from fiction and non-fiction to inform my characters’ lives and to keep suspense-building at the forefront of my mind. I have learned that the stories and facts I take from books to fill up my subconscious may seem unrelated at the time that I read them, but they always work themselves into my fiction in unexpected ways. One of the best non-fiction books I have ever read for research was Unnatural Causes by Dr. Richard Shepherd. He is the UK’s most distinguished forensic pathologist, and this book is as much a memoir of an extraordinary career as it is a fascinating, factual examination of the social importance of this little understood but absolutely vital work. I have no medical background and I’m not a scientifically oriented person, which made this book doubly intriguing and unputdownable because it taught me about a profession I knew nothing about, but which we should all be very grateful for as a society. People like Dr. Shepherd, who work to understand death, are incredibly special.

When I need a pep talk to push me to make a scene suspenseful or a character’s dialogue unsettling, I turn to Shirley Jackson. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is her gothic classic about two isolated sisters, Merricat and Constance, who are ostracized from their community and relegated to a life in their huge but crumbling home where most of their family was poisoned under suspicious circumstances years earlier. Jackson is an expert at creating tension and uneasiness in the seemingly ordinary. But what I appreciate most about her and what makes her one of my writing idols is that she was a mother of four. She prioritised her duties as wife and mother within the constraints of 1940s and 50s gender roles, but she thought of her creepy, suspenseful, eerie tales while folding the laundry and making dinner for her children every night. Her life story, for me as a mother working from home, maintaining a writing career while running a household, is just as inspiring as her gothic stories.

Finally, one of my favorite ever thrillers that I keep as a model of expert craftsmanship of twists and truly shocking turns is Apple Tree Yard, by Louise Doughty. It’s the gripping story of Dr. Yvonne Carmichael, a respected, middle-aged, unhappily married geneticist and a chance extra-marital encounter at the Houses of Parliament that unravels her conventional life in a dark multitude of ways. You just don’t see what’s coming in this book. This is the book that taught me about tension. It’s a master class in how to hold a reader’s attention and keep them turning the pages. A real masterpiece of the genre.

Visit Ilona Bannister's website.

Q&A with Ilona Bannister.

The Page 69 Test: When I Ran Away.

--Marshal Zeringue