Alice Winn, 30, is the author of the bestselling novel In Memoriam, about the illicit love between two public schoolboys on the western front. Already the winner of this year’s Waterstones debut fiction prize, it’s currently on the shortlist for Waterstones book of the year, announced on 30 November. Wartime historian Peter Parker recently called it “horrifyingly visceral [with] a remarkable feel for the complicated emotions of her two protagonists... easily the most affecting novel I read this year”. Raised in Paris and educated in England, Winn speaks to me from her home in Brooklyn.
Where did In Memoriam begin?
Procrastinating online, I found my old school had uploaded its student newspapers from early last century. Reading articles about debating societies and cricket by these public schoolboys was kind of enjoyable. War breaks out and they’re so excited. A lot of them enlist and start writing letters back to their friends: “It’s great, no one’s making me bathe!” Then they start to die and the letters turn raw. Most world war one literature I knew was from the late 1920s, by people who’d spent 10 years processing terrible trauma into something more manageable; these articles were just teenage boys writing for other teenage boys going through this absolutely cataclysmic tragedy. They upset me so much, the novel came pouring out of me in two weeks – then I spent a year and a half editing.
How did you approach the battle scenes?
I read Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel, a very intense and cold memoir of war as a German stormtrooper. On every page someone is maimed or killed in a dizzying variety of ways and I wrote down every single instance of violence in this horrible little notebook I kept. I was doing that with all the books I was reading, but Jünger had the most concentrated proportion of violent deaths clearly described. I basically plugged them in – every terrible thing that happens to a person in In Memoriam is something I found in a first-hand description of world war one, so it’s not me fantasising about violence; it’s just descriptions of what happened.
What about the sex?
Male friends who are gay or bisexual were able to read what I’d written and give very generous pointers: “This specific thing wouldn’t be true to how I’ve experienced it...” I followed their advice to the letter, but I also read between the lines of literature from the time. The most helpful book was The Loom of Youth by Alec Waugh, Evelyn Waugh’s older brother, who was expelled from Sherborne after a homosexual incident. When he’s 17 on the way to war, he writes this novel about boarding school and there’s a lot of between-the-lines discussion of homosexuality and its unspoken rules [at the time]: if you’re popular, if you’re discreet and it’s after dark and you’re going to end up marrying a girl anyway, it’s OK to experiment a little bit.
Have you found that readers respond differently to the novel in the UK and the US?
In the UK world war one is a selling point; in the US it’s more of an obstacle. In the UK we live in the fossilised wreckage of world war one; a lot of people see it as a turning point for the empire and it looms larger in the consciousness. Seeing In Memoriam do well in the UK makes me feel less crazy – like less of a fraud for feeling really English; because I’m American and Irish and grew up in France, England and America, I have a tenuous grasp on my own identity.
The novel takes its title from a poem by Tennyson. Are you a fan?
He’s one of my favourite poets. He’s been out of fashion for a long time. I remember teaching The Charge of the Light Brigade to the home-schooled teenagers I used to teach in Los Angeles and they were just so completely disgusted by the “noble six hundred” going stupidly to their deaths, but that’s so relevant to that first wave of young men who signed up for world war one. It was considered noble. Young people are so vulnerable to people promising them glory.
You recently said you’re at work on a novel about Arthurian legend. What led you to that subject?
I’ve always loved Thomas Malory; at university I wrote my dissertation on three knights of the round table. Sometimes I worry [the new book] is just another world war one novel, because the decline of chivalry and the fall of Arthur were often seen as a way to talk about world war one by world war one writers themselves. But I love the original medieval texts; I’ve been doing a deep dive and enjoying Gottfried von Strassburg [author of Tristan].
What else have you been reading?
I read Nicola Dinan’s Bellies in a day or two. It’s a really quick and fun but also substantial book about this relationship between two men who fall in love at university and then one of them transitions and starts living as a woman. Apart from the fact that it’s just very well written, it really makes you feel like you’re 20 – it captures that feeling of righteousness you get when you’re young. It’s a delight.
What did you read as a child?
I was very dyslexic and couldn’t read until I was nine. Reading The Lord of the Rings felt like such an escape when I was having a hard time in school – it was like Tolkien was my only friend, which is embarrassing to say out loud but that’s how it felt. My mother read a lot of Edwardian children’s novels to me and I really liked Les Malheurs de Sophie [Sophie’s Misfortunes] by the Comtesse de Ségur, a horrible book about this four-year-old girl who spends her life torturing animals and is violently punished at the end of every chapter. I loved it as a kid.
• In Memoriam is published by Viking (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
