He says: “Before my motto was ‘if it doesn’t have incest, abuse or rape, I won’t read it'”; He says: “I see all the women resigned to blood and I don’t identify at all”; He says: “Writing is such a beautiful and easy job that it should be illegal.” To talk with Virginia Feito (Madrid, 1988) is to witness an incessant production of headlines and intelligent reflections, surfaces of very deep seas that you want to explore. Perhaps the speed of his responses, always ingenious, without fear of controversy, has something to do with his past as a publicist, a profession that he gave up to dedicate himself completely to writing, with which he has not done badly at all. His debut feature, ‘Mrs. March’ (Lumen, 2022), triumphed on both sides of the ocean and caught the attention of Ellisabeth Moss, who will star in the film adaptation; and his new novel, ‘Victorian Psycho’, set in the times of Dickens and De Quincey, will also be brought to the big screen thanks to one of the most important production companies in the United States, A24. This is the context of success that welcomes our meeting in a famous hotel in the Barrio de las Letras, an ideal winter morning to chat with this Madrid native who writes in English about the shocking adventures of her protagonist, the psychopathic governess Winifred Notty, who arrives to the Pounds family mansion to sow panic and subvert the classic roles of criminal fiction, increasingly full of seasoned detectives, but a lack of murderesses without fear of botched bloodletting and lacking in kindness.—Let’s start with the question that arises. Many surprised readers will ask when they finish the book: What was this?—It is a cry of rage. And enjoyment too.—Rage and fun together.—Yes, one led me to the other. It was funny to me how angry he was while writing it. I started writing ‘Victorian Psycho’ during lockdown. She was happy to have sold ‘Mrs. March’ to an American publisher and angry because she could not travel to promote the novel. It was difficult for me to accept it. I felt frustrated. Explicit “One of my fears was falling short. The other, that the morbidity seemed gratuitous and, in its excess, pornographic»—We could say that Winifred Notty is the result of not being able to do what she wanted in her real life.—Partly yes, but, beyond my own frustration , I was also enraged by what I discovered when delving into the Victorian era, full of abuse and machismo to a point so ridiculous that it made me laugh; a time so extreme that it seemed like a parody of itself.—That humor is interesting, so present in a story, on the other hand, full of horrible crimes, which in the novel become a game in which the reader participates, making him know from the beginning that it is heading towards horror. “That’s it and, even so, it stays there,” he laughs. His only way to escape is to close the book.—I think he won’t close it, because above all it’s surprising. If ‘Mrs. March’ can be compared to a pressure cooker about to explode, ‘Victorian Psycho’ is the raw explosion, before our eyes, without any filter. -I agree. You can’t title your novel ‘Victorian Psycho’, tell the story from the point of view of a psychopath and leave out certain things.—If you’re worried you’ve fallen short, forget it. You can be calm.—That was one of my fears. The other, that the morbidity seemed gratuitous and, in its excess, pornographic. That would make it cheaper. —But nothing for free…—Showing blood and guts was important for many reasons: the first of them, to detract from the romanticism of the figure of the psychopath, so sweetened lately in literature and the audiovisual medium. It is good to approach that type of profile, to try to understand it, but sometimes we forget that it is a murderer. It has to be grotesque, absolutely unbearable, to be in your head, and I wanted to describe that. Furthermore, I was interested in my psychopath being a woman. Serial killers are not usually very violent, they prefer poison over blood, but I wanted to propose a bloody psychopath, since it seems that we do not have representation in that area.—In fact, Winifred reflects on the masculine idea that bloody things can offend women and they laugh at her because, to begin with, we live with menstruation and its effects.—Exactly, something that I am still traumatized by. I see all the empowered, adult and mature women, resigned to blood and I don’t identify at all. I am very apprehensive in general. I have OCD, everything scares me, dirt disgusts me. —So ‘Victorian Psycho’ has been shock therapy?—And an attempt to find the reason for all the apprehensions that I feel and others don’t… although it also has some manipulation, so that the reader gets on my side aside and accept that everything is very disgusting.—You told me a moment ago that one of the reasons why you wrote the novel was to demonstrate that there is nothing idyllic about the figure of a psychopath. However, this manipulation of his makes us laugh with Winifred. “Because he has a wonderful sense of humor.” They say psychopaths are charming. You can sympathize with them and many people will sympathize with Winifred. Also, the fact that she is a woman may have something to do with it. But what I didn’t want was to ignore the cruelty. He wanted to tell his crimes in detail, and manipulate the reader so that he was surprised by justifying his actions. —And why does the fact that she is a woman make it easier for us?—Because we are already very “fed up” with violence against us, and it is possible that this fact tends to justify our own violence, the one that a woman exercises. against others after having herself suffered abuse at the hands of patriarchy.Literature and society—Reading it I wonder if you don’t take literature too seriously, because ‘Victorian Psycho’ seems to me like a leap into the abyss after the sobriety of ‘Mrs March’. —I take it very seriously. What happens is that there are times when, aware that we have too many rules, I decide to break some.—One of the risks you run lies in the language. He uses it in a strange, but very accurate way, he makes it contribute to the climate: the wrinkles of a face “copulate” with each other; The cries of a baby “impale” the brain. Are they conscious or spontaneous choices?—Fully conscious. Furthermore, the translator, Gemma Rovira, has done an exceptional job.—And what do you think Dickens, the clearest reference to his story, would think if he read it?—I don’t think he would like it at all. Although I adore his work, mine goes against everything he fought for in his literature: hope, for example; and that romanticism capable of making even violence welcoming. So I would be disappointed, but I’m a little disappointed in him too. In my research I discovered that he tried to put his wife in a psychiatric hospital because he wanted to divorce her.—This brings us to cancel culture. Is he a worse writer for that? —Under no circumstances. He seems to me to be one of the best writers who have ever existed in this life.—Even if he was mean to his wife.—Despite that. Also, on the other hand, he did some wonderful things to improve the working conditions of working children in England. —The issue of children appears in the novel and Winifred ironically talks about it: “Why worry about people when they are little if when they grow up no one cares about them”?—This also happens today. We are contradictory beings. It is impossible to be consistent one hundred percent of the time. Our values always end up conflicting with each other, and we couldn’t live if we only had one. I think hypocrisy is a matter of survival.—Let’s say goodbye by talking about the future: how does someone who has triumphed so resoundingly see the future of the genre?—Before I had a motto: “if it doesn’t have incest, abuse or rape, I won’t do it.” “I read,” but I’m over it. Now I explore other territories, although for me there is nothing comparable to a book that traumatizes you, it is the most magical thing there is: a book that traumatizes you with words and haunts you for the rest of your life.
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