Skip to main content

P.D James: The Woman Who Changed My Writing


On Thursday afternoon, travelling home from a meeting at university, I’m mid-phone call with my friend when he announces that P.D James has died. It seems to have been a year of deaths for the celebrity and writing community, but something about James’s passing really hit me. Which is probably why it’s taken me two days to write down my thoughts about it.

In the final year of my undergraduate degree, I opted to write my dissertation on detective fiction. To my utter dismay, I was paired with a lecturer who, whilst being a complete expert in her chosen field, had no interest or knowledge in the area in which I was exploring for my project. Four weeks into my dissertation meetings, I presented to her the three authors (and their respective works) that I would be investigating, analysing, and using as a blueprint for my own writing. P.D James was one of them. Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler were the other two, and so, as a young female writer interested in female writers, James had a place in my heart from that point forwards.

‘They’re just such random choices, I don’t understand why you’ve picked these authors,’ she said to me, in front of a seminar room full of fellow students.

‘Because they’re the best,’ I replied.

And I stand by that.

The first novel that I read by P.D James, and the first book that was officially planted on my dissertation bibliography, was Cover Her Face. And it was a wonderful read. The novel was first published back in 1962, and it was James’s first - although from the standard, you would never have known. James’s writing was stunning from the opening sentence to the final page, and she became a positive influence for me from that point in so many ways. Not only was she a wonderful author, but she was also a woman, writing in the genre of crime and detective fiction.

Now, a short while on from my undergraduate degree, I’m now doing my PhD for which I am researching the role of gender in crime, both fiction and non-fiction, with a mind to writing my own crime novel. In many ways, for planting the initial seed in the form of Cover Her Face, right the way through the Death Comes To Pemberley, I have P.D James to thank for the position in which I now find myself.

She was, is, and undoubtedly always will be, one of the finest crime writers we will ever know.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Diary of a Whatever I Am Now: Transition period.

Transition: 'the process or the period of changing from one state or condition to another'. I wanted to make this blog more of a regular thing once my PhD was over, for several reasons. Partly it’s just to log what happens next and this, in itself, is two-fold: I want to have some kind of documentation of this recovery process (yes, that’s what I’m calling it) that follows the PhD, but I also live in hope that someone who is struggling with having finished their PhD might find this blog some day, and breathe a hefty sigh on realising that the weird grief-cum-relief they’re feeling right now isn’t totally abnormal – in fact, it might even be quite common. I also want to get into the habit of writing more – something I’m encouraging my own students to do now and I hate giving out writing advice that I haven’t/am not taking myself, and so here we are. This is my first post as a Whatever I Am Now (because I still don’t have balls big enough to write The Diary of a Writer in th...
2 comments
Read more

A rough-around-the-edges poem: Talk Me Down

I’m on the precipice of panic, I’ve said something and I can’t retract it and worse still you won’t let me. I’m on the cusp of begging you to forget me but you’ve already made it uncomfortably clear that no matter how near to the cliff face I feel, you’re not letting me go anywhere. And so I run. Wind in hair, feet pounding ground, I’m endeavouring to outrun light and sound but then you catch me by the collar just as my feet are about to become unbound. I’m on the edge of something now, inhaling sea air and as my lungs contract you try to pull me back in tact but I’m still wriggling against you. You can’t understand what I’m hiding from on the cliff top, why a long drop and a slow stop might seem more appealing that whatever these emotions are that I’m feeling, which should give you an idea of how itchy they make me, or maybe an idea of how few I’m showing and how many I’m really concealing. I can feel a world of love inside my che...
1 comment
Read more

The Diary of a (former) PhD Student: Now I actually have run out of work.

In case the title of this blog post didn’t give it away, let me clarify: I have handed in my PhD thesis.  I handed it in exactly a week ago, actually, and I would have blogged a brag sooner if not for the fact that the day after my hand-in, a family member was taken into hospital, and the last week has sort of slipped away from me as a result of that. It’s been a while since I gave you an update at all, I know, and the last time we “talked”, I was in this blissfully ignorant place of not having any work to do. Let me catch you up from there:             My readers were wonderful. All of those who read and provided feedback for the book part of the project were insightful, considerate, and careful with their responses. I ironed out technical issues and even one or two final plot holes and so, to those who read the manuscript ahead of hand-in, I cannot and will not ever be able to thank you enough.         ...
2 comments
Read more