7/27/2019 sophie Cook

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Sophie Cooke is not a writer; she is an observer o the human

condition. With a degree in anthropology, Cookes ascination

with human behaviour within a community and in isolation

saturates her work as a contemporary poet and novelist. Thendings rom her keen observations o human interaction

are presented through her relatable characters and plots.

However, it is Cookes ability to be both the creator o a ctional world

and an impartial evaluator o it, which makes her such an important

voice or this age.

Cookes ascination with the world around her goes beyond casual

observation and has always played a signicant role in her lie. She

remarks that even as a child, my mother said that I was always quiet

and very observant. I was always the one sitting in the corner watching

all that was going on. For Cooke, her devotion to the written word

grew rom this rst love o studying people, a study she rst sought

to record both in poems and surrealist short stories. She states: Ive

always been ascinated by human beings, and I like writing because Ihave a real interest in the human condition. Originally I wrote poetry,

which is more about the orm itsel and noticing the tiny details than

exploring the human truths you are expressing. Her decision to make

the plunge into straight ction (as she calls it) came rom her desire

to realistically investigate and analyse the social dynamics and human

truths working within the amily, or community setting.

Cookes critically acclaimed rst novel, The Glass House, ollows a

young girl, recently expelled rom boarding school, who returns home

to her tragically sel-destructive mother. Dealing with psychological

trauma, complex amilial and love relationships, and told in rst-person

narrative, Cooke details her inspiration: I wanted to use a narrator who

deceives hersel about the ugly realities o her lie. This is, o course,

in order to explore something human beings struggle with more thananything elsethe truth. Whether it is the difculty o being honest

with others or ourselves, Cooke recognises truth as a universally

complicated concept that aects even the most nominal acets o our

lives. Thoroughly explored in her second novel, Under the Mountain, one

particular truth serves to make a major impact in the lie o a amily.

The nonlinear, third-person narrative oUnder the Mountain tells the

story o Catherine, a young girl who is laid-up

with illness in a top room o her amilys Victorian

mansion or nearly the entire summer o 1981.

A window that looks down onto the gardenbelow is one o the ew paciying reprieves rom

her unbearable restlessness as she drits in and

out o sleep. From this window, she witnesses

numerous interactions, including clandestine

meetings and heated arguments between

her parents, sister, cousins, and aunt. Even rom this vantage point as

the silent observer, Catherines knowledge o these household events

remains limited since she receives tidbits o inormation rom her sister

and cousins at second or third-hand. However, one summer day, ater

always being the last one to know anything, Catherine becomes the

only one who knows the truth when she witnesses a violent act against

the beloved amily pet. As the only witness, she decides to eign sleep

and ignorance rather than implicate the culprit. As a result, an innocentperson is blamed, the real villain remains anonymous, and the entire

amily eel victimised by the event.

With this second novel, Cooke reveals her strong desire to explore

abstract themes, particularly the dierence between human truth and

world truth. According to her, peoples growing disenchantment with

religion has moved them toward a disillusion with objective truth. In

a sincere eort to create a global community, human beings have lost

the ability to distinguish universally-acknowledged truths. No longer

can a truth held by one individual be assumed as certain or any other.

Due to this global loss o objective reality, Cooke suggests that truth

can (or must) be manuactured between people, a collective action

she subtly depicts in the novel; and like all manuactured items, the

truth can depreciate. A clarication o this point reveals her interest inthe currency o truth and the way it uctuates. Truth can become more

or less valuable depending when you spend it. Even when you are in

possession o the objective acts, truth does not have a xed exchange

rate with accepted reality. It depends on when you speak it, and where,

and how. Sometimes it can prove completely worthless, as the young

heroine in the novel discovers.

Sophie Cooke

Under the Mountain is a ascinating account o amily relationships, young love and honesty.With a cast o varied and unexpected characters, Cooke reveals hersel to be an intelligentand keen evaluator o individuals and their silent struggle with the outside world.

Questions

writing

Trutho

7/27/2019 sophie Cook

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In addition to assessing the impact one truth has on multiple lives,

Cooke also shares her desire to study the varied reaction o each amily

member to what they eel is an act o terrorism against their way o

lie. The attack in Under the Mountain is a terrorist event in miniature;

a shocking, seemingly senseless, violent intrusion into the everyday

lie o the household. It is not terrorist in the true sense, because it

is not committed in order to engender terror; however, because the

household is unaware o the truth, they interpret it as an illogical

and terriying act. Cooke delicately crats the characters in Under the

Mountain to not only react realistically within their amily dynamic, but

to symbolically represent the reactions o various social communities

and exhibit varying reactions to tragedy. I wanted to place a world

thing like a terrorist attack in a domestic setting, to break the whole

thing down so that each o the characters represent how a whole

society or a whole nation responds dierently to an act o violence

or terrorism. They all have dierent responses to it, and, in a way, they

stand in or much larger groups o people as a microcosm in the plot.

In Under the Mountain, Cooke uses the universally relatable setting

o a household in order to passively observe and subtly dissect the

individual and communal reactions to nonsensical acts o violence. By

changing the normal setting o terrorist acts to a domestic sphere, she

is able to thoroughly scrutinize the sympathetic, vengeul, resentul,

and indierent sides o aected human beings. With her upcoming

appearance at the Kikinda Short Story Festival in Serbia (24-29 July),

Cooke continues to explore the human experience by this time diving

into Berlins surveillance culture in her short

story The Long Watch.The Kikinda Short Story Festival, in its

ourth year, celebrates the new works o

Eastern European authors while also inviting

a number o contemporary authors rom the

UK to share their writings as well. The Festival

brings a diverse community together through

the arts, creating a tangible record o the estivals creativity through a

published anthology o the participating writers short stories. One o

the chie goals o the Festival is to enable an intercultural exchange

o creative works between the nations o Eastern and Western Europe.

Cooke says that as an author she is proud to be a part o a positive

movement or the arts that grew out o the many negative conditions

o the post-war Serbian community.

For more inormation on Sophie Cooke and her new work visit

www.myspace.com/sophiecooke and to hear her share her work at the

Kikinda Short Story Festival visit http://kikindashort.blogspot.com.

Jordan Von Cannon

I wanted to place a world thing like a terrorist attack in adomestic setting, to break the whole thing down so that each othe characters represent how a whole society or a whole nationresponds diferently to an act o violence or terrorism. They allhave diferent responses to it, and, in a way, they stand in ormuch larger groups o people as a microcosm in the plot.