THE writing of Canadian-born Edinburgh-based author Camilla Grudova deals in the gritty, the absurd and the abject. Her attention to detail depicts gruesome worlds that itch and elate, inspire and infect.
Published in November by Atlantic Books, The Coiled Serpent delves further and further into her own weird world: Employees of a custard factory plot revenge against their bosses; a group of flatmates practise semen retention with unexpected circumstances; boys and men who never graduate from their boarding school deify one of their classmates to an uncomfortable degree.
“All the stories in the collection have been written in the last five years,” Grudova explains. “There’s one story set in Canada but the bulk of them are about living in Scotland. Many places that appear piqued my curiosity, like a local sauna. [The collection] is both British and very Edinburgh-y.”
Grudova’s experiences in Edinburgh have been formative to much of her writing – her Women’s Prize long-listed debut novel Children Of Paradise (2022) details a fictionalised version of her experiences working as an usher in the Scottish capital. As a theme, employment remains prominent.
“A lot of it comes from my own work experience and trying to record that. It’s not something that appears in fiction all that much, at least the day-to-day of it. So much contemporary fiction is just fixated on romantic and social relationships, rarely work relationships. There are indignities and humiliations we can face in those situations so it felt important to record those.”
It’s not only the experience of work that drives Grudova but also the frustration of it as a creative.
“I kind of just go through the routine of working for a long time and then finding maybe three or six months that I can take off to really get into a project [usually after getting an advance for a book] before I have to start working again, and yeah, there’s just not enough freelance or reviewing work going around.”
Earlier this year Grudova was honoured as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, alongside a strong contingent of Scots and other writers living in Scotland.
“It’s such a privilege to be put in the same class as all these writers,” she says. “They’re all so talented and kind, and I think that’s kind of the best thing I’ve got from it – there’s all these new friendships with new writers and it kind of is like being thrown into a new class, so you just bond over that.”
The working world was brought further into the spotlight at this, as it was noted by some that most of the listed writers had not yet produced a sizable body of work. “Well,” Grudova begins, “we all have day jobs and have to do other things so we maybe can’t write at the same pace as someone with a trust fund or someone with a big ‘Ian McEwan advance’ that you might’ve gotten in the 90s”. At points in history, writers were sitting around in cafés, smoking cigarettes and honing their craft, but for Grudova, nowadays: “We’re there making the coffee for older generations to sit and drink while they smoke their cigarettes”.
She further highlights that “the average income for a writer now is £7000 and so very few people can make a living off it”.
“Life gets in the way a lot anyway,” she laughs. “Half the time when I get time off to write, I get so anxious about what happens when the money runs out that I can’t even write.”
Naturally, as with Children Of Paradise, the stories in The Coiled Serpent often feature the working world. So too will the future of Grudova’s writing – citing a bar and restaurant experience she had as inspiration, and a particularly terrible dishwasher that “grew its own flesh, all black and gelatinous – I want to write about that and turn it into a creature”.
Not all of the Edinburgh influence in her work is through working jobs that eat into her writing time, there are more positive aspects too.
“The bookstore scene is amazing, which has definitely helped me as a writer – they’re all so supportive. People like Heather Parry starting Extra Teeth is great, and now we read each other’s writing. So, I have that support system from her and people like Helen McClory – who actually got me the job at the cinema.”
Grudova has thoughts on Scotland and Edinburgh as literary scenes too, thoughts that will resonate with many Scots.
“I don’t think the legacy of more modern Scottish things is really properly celebrated,” she says. “And I think Edinburgh can be kind of stifling for a writer.
“There’s too little celebration of Alexander Trocchi (below), Alasdair Gray, or even the fact that the first [English language] translator of Proust [Scott Moncrieff] was from Scotland, the first of Kafka too [Willa and Edwin Muir].
“There’s this rich Scottish tradition of modern writing that isn’t really celebrated as it should be. We don’t give people the idols to look up, instead just Walter Scott and crime writers.’ Further, she notes a new crop of writers (many Scots) for us to read, citing among others Graeme Armstrong, Claire-Louise Bennett, Sarah Bernstein, Martin MacInnes, K Patrick, and Chris Kohler.
From her time writing stories to post on Tumblr, and her subsequent attention from and publishing by the now-defunct The White Review and Nobel success story Fitzcarraldo Editions, through to the publication of her debut novel and now The Coiled Serpent, every word Grudova writes asserts her as one of the most potently odd and inspiringly original writers working today.
