Holly Smale’s adult debut novel, The Cassandra Complex, is a unique, heartwarming and life-affirming novel about one woman’s unlikely journey through love, again and again …

Smale chats about the idea behind the book, her adult diagnosis of autism, and using her own life as inspiration for Cassandra.

‘I put myself on the page, and it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a writer.’

Where did the idea for The Cassandra Complex come from?
I came up with the concept about six years ago, immediately after a pretty distressing breakup. We had only been together four months, but the end had come from nowhere and it was confusing: I found myself obsessively trying to work out what had gone wrong (or, perhaps more specifically, what I had done wrong). I had repeating fantasies, on loop, where I would go back through our entire relationship in minute detail and try to figure out where it had broken, and what would happen if I could go back and fix it; how it would play out differently, and whether we’d have stayed together. I spent hours, days, weeks doing that. It occurred to me at some point in this intense mind-spiral that it might be the idea for a novel, but I also knew it wasn’t quite ready. There were big elements missing. So I popped it to the back of my head and let it stew until I was ready to write it.

Who inspired the character of Cassandra Dankworth?
Cassandra is me, although I appreciate how boring that is as an answer. I’ve used myself for characters before, but I was always tapping into a much younger version of myself. That meant there was a distance – a massive gap – which felt like protection and objectivity. With Cassie, that distance was removed. I had just been diagnosed as autistic, and I knew I wanted to write an autistic adult character. I also knew that to do that with integrity, I had to be as honest as possible. So I put myself on the page, and it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a writer (my sister describes her as ‘almost painfully accurate’).

You mention that Cassandra is autistic and so are you – why was it important to you to write an autistic character, and was there anything you hoped to achieve with it?
I have spent a lot of my life, looking for people like me in books and on TV and finding very little. When you grow up knowing you’re ‘different’ – and not knowing why – that failure to see people like you in fiction can have a very strong impact on your self-esteem, and in your validation as a loveable human. There are still so few autistic characters in fiction who are actually written by autistic authors, and even fewer who are female. It felt important to put a genuine voice out there, and to combine it with a fantastic, funny, uplifting and imaginative story.

Love feels like a big theme in the book, whether it’s romantic, familial or friendship. Was this important to you, and how did it inform the plot?
I think Cassie’s key need – the thing that drives her – is a deep, desperate need for love and connection. I don’t think she’s unusual in that. Her inexperience in romantic love might be less common, but also very much reflects my own. I, like her, have never had a serious romantic relationship, or been in love – despite really wanting it – and it felt important to explore that honestly. As an adult woman, it can come with a sense of shame, as if you’ve failed adulthood in some way. You can crave intimacy and love, but also struggle with it – feel isolated and lonely, while also isolating yourself – and that felt like a topic worth exploring.

What do you hope readers will take away from The Cassandra Complex?
Ultimately, I want this book to make readers feel less alone. I want them to laugh, cry – to feel the entire range of emotions – but I want them to walk away from The Cassandra Complex feeling uplifted, hopeful and perhaps a little more in love with the beauty of what it is to be human. We’re not all the same, we all see the world slightly differently, and that’s a glorious thing.

The Cassandra Complex hits shelves in June.

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This article was originally published in The Penguin Post, a magazine from Penguin Random House South Africa. 

Categories Fiction International

Tags Holly Smale Interviews Penguin Random House SA The Cassandra Complex The Penguin Post