Here’s sneak peek at the cover of The Villa, out January 2023.
“There is something so like, narratively rich about that summer that they spent at Lake Geneva.
And you have people making literally world-changing art.
I knew that I wanted to do something with that idea at some point.
And then I just went from there.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: In terms of your two timelines here, what made you choose the 1970s?
RACHEL HAWKINS: I have always wanted to write a 1970s music scene book.
I don’t know if that’s because I had hippie parents.
Or if it was because I was born in 1979, and I just missed it.
But I had been thinking about doing something set in that time period and that scene for years.
I remember whenDaisy Jones and the Sixcame out, I was both thrilled and heartbroken.
I was like, “Oh yes.
This is a book I’ve always wanted to read.”
But then when I read it: “Oh, no, I’m so glad that this exists.
This is so different from anything I would do.
Now I can just enjoy it.”
And then it became a thriller in the way these things happen.
There’s definitely a slight vibe of the Manson murders going through there.
Was there something inherently evil about what happened in terms of the murder, stuff like that.
Is some part of this about putting the respect on Mary Shelley’s name that it deserves?
I definitely think she has a good amount of respect on her name these days.
Those sort of things take over.
That was definitely something that I wanted to talk about.
Somebody needs to vacuum the carpet and somehow that always ends up being her.
That was definitely an idea that I wanted to explore.
In terms of the novel that makes your Mari famous, it’s calledLilith Rising.
What drove you to invoke Lilith here?
Well, like any girl who graduated high school in 1998, Lilith Fair was quite big for me.
It’s a name that’s invoked a lot when it comes to feminism.
The 1970s is the greatest era of music in history.
I don’t think you’re free to go wrong with “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac.
That’s always a vibe.
You cannot go wrong with any Fleetwood Mac on this.
I have a whole playlist that I link to on Twitter a lot.
The book was originally set in France before I decided to move it to Italy.
Then I completely scrapped the whole France part of it, but the playlists were made.
I’d done too much work on it.
Or is there one that inspired the one in the book?
I wrote this last summer so, no, sadly, I did not get to really go anywhere.
It’s funny that now, all these years later, these things combined into this one book.
In the modern timeline, you really dig into frenemy relationships.
How would you say the female friendships in this novel compare to those in your previous thrillers?
In a weird way, it’s maybe the most familiar and the most twisted.
We’re debuting the cover and you’ve gone from torn wallpaper to a ripped shirt to cracked stucco.
Can you walk me through that evolution of that?
Which is very much what the world of the books is meant to feel like too.
InThe Wife UpstairsandReckless Girlsand now inThe Villa, these are glamorous people living glamorous lives.
There’s something a little aspirational about all of it, but there’s a lot underneath.
So I love that visual cue on each book cover of: “This looks perfect.
It’s not.”
Do the lemons signify something in particular?
Probably just how much I enjoy limoncello to be honest.
