Q&A: H.G. Parry, Author of ‘A Far Better Thing’

We chat with author H.G. Parry about A Far Better Thing, which is a heart-rending fantasy of faery revenge set during the French Revolution—think Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell meets A Tale of Two Cities.

Hi, Hannah! Welcome back! How has the past five years been since we last spoke for the release of A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians?

Hello! How are you all? They’ve been good, considering the world keeps finding new and varied ways to be on fire. I’ve had a few more books come out since then (Declaration’s sequel, A Radical Act of Free Magic; The Magician’s Daughter; Adonais, a short story collection; Heartless, a novella; The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door; and now this one). I also bought my first (tiny) flat, went travelling in the UK and Scotland last year, and raised many baby mice.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: Jemima Puddleduck by Beatrix Potter
• The one that made you want to become an author: I wish I had a good answer, but I can’t remember not wanting to be an author! Maybe The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis?
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Watership Down by Richard Adams

Your latest novel, A Far Better Thing, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Dickens, but with fairy changelings.

What can readers expect?

It’s a very close retelling of A Tale of Two Cities, from the point of view of Sydney Carton—only in this version, Carton was snatched from his bed by fairies when he was a baby, and Charles Darnay, his double from the original novel, is the changeling left in his place. So: London and Paris and the Fairy Realm, revolution and revenge and sacrifice, but also stage magic, goblin markets, houses out of time, and books with claws.

Where did the inspiration for A Far Better Thing come from?

I read A Tale of Two Cities for the first time about ten years ago, shortly after I visited London and Paris for the first time, which was magical. I remember having a conversation about it and saying, “But what if Carton and Darnay look identical because Darnay is Carton’s changeling?”, and that was basically it. It took me the next ten years to tease out the answer to that question, both in terms of what exactly that would mean for the characters and story, and how it could illuminate some of the themes of the original book in a way that felt meaningful and right. Like the original, it’s a book about shadows and echoes, the ways the past haunts the present and the ways in which people and nations struggle to break free of previous trauma and find a better way forward.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

I mean, I got to write an entire book about Sydney Carton, so that was amazing! I also loved creating the hidden spaces in the two cities: the hidden goblin market in Covent Garden that can only be entered through a secret pub between the strokes of midnight, the house on the Île Saint-Louis trapped out of time. My favourite magical worlds are always the ones lurking just out of reach, and places like London and Paris, intricate and sprawling and lived-in for centuries, always feel layered with them.

Can you tell us a bit about your process in plotting out A Far Better Thing?

I really wish I had a process—it sounds like a wonderful thing to have. But this book in particular really was just writing draft after draft, with a lot of plotting and scribbling and breaking off to research in between. The first version was almost a straight retelling of A Tale of Two Cities, with the fairies on the periphery, which I needed to get the events of the original novel and history very clear in my head before I started to play with it. As I discovered more about the magic elements, I could bring them more and more to the forefront with each draft, until I found the right story.

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge was always trying to entwine the plot and world-building of the fairy story with both the history of the French Revolution and the original story (which is already a complicated multigenerational saga with many moving parts). I wanted the book to read as a shadow version of A Tale of Two Cities rather than a reinvention–as though Dickens’ narrator was telling the story as he knew it, but there was a hidden dimension that he wasn’t aware existed. Carton is off-page for a lot of the original book, which gave me some wonderful space to play with, but there was still a lot of “this needs to happen in the summer of 1787” and “now there’s an eleven year time jump!” And I don’t know how I overcame it, as such, except that somehow it worked out and every time it made the book better and richer than it would have been if I’d been plotting it all by myself. (Apparently Dickens knew what he was doing.)

What’s next for you?

My next book is a Nimue-centred Arthurian story set half in Camelot and half in WWII-era Wales, partly inspired by T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. I’m editing it now, love it very much, and am very excited for it to be out in the world (hopefully next year!).

Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?

Most of my reading at the moment has been Arthurian retellings and WWII memoirs, but I’ve read a couple of fantastic books recently that will be out soon. Higher Magic by Courtney Floyd is a ferociously intelligent, deeply relatable magic academia about postgraduate camaraderie, the magic of literary criticism, and standing against injustice. Kill the Beast by Serra Swift is a glorious adventure featuring a flawed-but-awesome warrior heroine, a charming aristocrat with a secret, a very good dog, and a story of friendship and redemption that I tore through in a day. I highly recommend both of them. Also, I’m decades late to this, but I read Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred for the first time recently and it’s incredible–visionary, harrowing, effortlessly perceptive, so uncompromising and yet so compassionate. It obviously doesn’t need me to recommend it, but I do.

Will you be picking up A Far Better Thing? Tell us in the comments below!