Twice a month, The Rumpus brings your favorite writers directly to your IRL mailbox via our Letters in the Mail program.
September 1 LITM: Claire Fuller
Claire Fuller is the author of the novels Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize; Swimming Lessons; Bitter Orange; Unsettled Ground, which won the Costa Novel Award and was a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and most recently, The Memory of Animals. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her husband.
The Rumpus: What book(s) made you a reader? Do you have any recent favorites you’d like to share?
Claire Fuller: We didn’t have many books at home and I don’t remember my parents reading to me, but my father had some nonfiction and poetry in his study and I would sometimes nose through them. The one I was always drawn to was Phenomena: A Book of Wonders by John Michell, which covered subjects such as Big Foot, spontaneous human combustion, and rains of fish. This led me to spooky stories and mystery novels which I borrowed from the library—M.R. James, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ruth Rendell. I read a lot and post short reviews on my Instagram account (@writerclairefuller). A recent favourite novel, which I loved for its wonderful nature writing and slight spookiness, is North Woods by Daniel Mason.
Rumpus: How did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Fuller: It crept up on me, and I didn’t know until I was forty-one or forty-two. I’d been doing some public art projects, things which deliberately made me feel uncomfortable, and one of them was signing up for a short story slam in my local library. I hadn’t written a short story since I was about sixteen, but now I had to write one and read it out to an audience who voted on the winner. I entered each month for a year and finally won, and only then did I know that I wanted to write some more.
Rumpus: Tell us about your most recent book? How do you hope it resonates with readers?
Fuller: The Memory of Animals has recently been published in paperback by Tin House. It’s about Neffy, who signs up for a vaccine trial while an illness is spreading across the world. She has a bad reaction, and when she comes round she discovers that she is alone in the London clinic with four strangers. It’s really a locked-room mystery but with some speculative and post-apocalyptic elements. I hope that readers will find that it’s about survival and suspense, grief and hope, and what lengths we’ll go to rescue ourselves and those we love.
Rumpus: What is your best/worst/most interesting story that involves the mail/post office/mailbox?
Fuller: When I was fifteen, I wasn’t getting on very well with my mum. I went on holiday with my dad (my parents were divorced) and I wrote a postcard to my best friend back at home about how much I hated my mum and her new boyfriend. Let’s say I didn’t hold back. But I hadn’t thought about the fact that my mum worked for Royal Mail (the national postal service in the UK), and she delivered the card. She wasn’t very happy when I returned home!
Is there a favorite Rumpus piece you’d like to recommend?
Fuller: Am I allowed a whole column? Yes? Then all of Dear Sugar. No? Then, this question and answer from Dear Sugar: Write like a motherfucker. It’s advice all writers can use.
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Author photograph by Adrian Harvey
