Marie O’ Hare Knows Where You Buried Your Husband

Sophia, Safa, Ella, Ajola and Caoimhe have been friends since school. When one of them is about to be framed for murder, they inextricably bind their fates together via some bin bags, a spade and a promise never to tell. Afterwards, they decide to separate to ensure the safety of their secret, leaving each of them to navigate the daily challenges of womanhood alone.

To celebrate the release of I Know Where You Buried Your Husband, we invited Marie O’ Hare to chat about her debut novel.

What inspired the instantly punchy title, I Know Where You Buried Your Husband? It’s equal parts ominous and playful! 

It’s actually a line from the book that the group reads from a Whatsapp message, letting them know exactly what they’re up against!

This novel revolves around five unique women who are “difficult, unlikeable” and the book starts with a discussion that immediately has the friends disagreeing with each other. How did you ensure each character had her own voice and presence in this ensemble?

The characters were all very distinct in my mind before I started writing. They are composites of many women I have known and admired throughout my life, with different aspects of my own personality spread on top. In this way, I knew everything about them, their values and experiences, their way of talking, and I could picture how they gestured and moved as they spoke.

Also, there was a period when I was little when I had fifteen imaginary friends, so I’ve had a lot of practice holding several conflicting viewpoints and perspectives in my mind, making sure everyone gets a turn to talk and have their opinion heard—keeping five characters distinct in an ensemble was relatively straightforward after that!

Female friendship is always under scrutiny under the media. Was it challenging to strike a balance between having “difficult” women, and celebrating female solidarity? 

I enjoyed writing “difficult” women and then showing how they could unite together for a greater cause. I think female solidarity isn’t just about being agreeable with one another and feeling we need to be easy-going to fit in. I think female solidarity is about saying what we mean, disagreeing with one another, navigating conflicting viewpoints, but then uniting anyway. By acknowledging and appreciating differences, we can form a more meaningful expression of female solidarity, and this was something I really loved discovering whilst writing the novel.

Let’s chat about the plot. Did you plan all the plotlines before writing or did any twists come as a surprise to you too? 

I would say 85% was planned out and I knew exactly who was going to do what and when, but then there was about 15% where it came to me on the page and it felt really surprising. I’m learning constantly about everything, the writing process, internalised misogyny and the roles women play, and a lot of that discovery revealed itself to me in twists and developments that I didn’t see coming.

When the 5 friends found the body, they were in detective mode right away. How did you make sure everything feels believable?

I was hyper-aware that I needed to get the believability spot on in that scene. I focused on the writing and editing to make it happen, going over the scene carefully, changing reactions and speech and tone and gestures to ensure it was all believable and the reader was totally on board. I also did a sort of method-acting-but-for-writing process, where I visualised myself in the scene, with the women and the evidence. I tried to feel exactly what it would be like to be in that situation, knowing what they know and who they are, and then went from there to get the most believable responses.

Finally, do you have a dream cast in mind? Does Reese Witherspoon come to mind, given her track record with female-led, comedic-open-mystery stories?

I absolutely loved Reese Witherspoon in The Morning Show and the whole dynamic and themes, especially in series one, was a great source of inspiration for me when writing this book. If we’re talking dream cast, I’m watching The Bear at the moment and Ayo Edebiri is brilliant in terms of her comedic timing and ability to play stressful situations in a humorous way, so she’d be perfect as part of the cast for this. After watching, We Are Lady Parts, as well, I think Anjana Vasan would be amazing in the ensemble for I Know Where You Buried Your Husband, and Florence Pugh has got the right energy and intelligence to really bring a character like Ajola to life on the screen. I think my dream cast would also involve a completely unknown British talent who could burst onto the scene in her role in this adaptation and then go on to have a long, celebrated career as one of Hollywood’s top stars.

I Know Where You Buried Your Husband by Marie O’Hare is out now.