Professor David Ullman may be a scholar of demonology, but his interest ends at the covers of his textbooks. Now, confronted with the unimaginable horror of losing his child he is forced to acknowledge that everything he’s studied may be real. In his most terrifying novel yet, Canadian author Andrew Pyper explores the depth and resistance of belief, and our paralyzing fear of the underworld.
We are excited to present a conversation with Andrew Pyper about this thrilling new novel!
Indigo Fiction Blog (IFB): How did Paradise Lost become part of this novel? Did it become a centrepiece that the story became grounded to, or did the idea for this book sprout from this classic masterpiece?
Andrew Pyper (AP): For me, each novel has a hundred births: tiny, disconnected ideas that float around in your head for months or years until they (often unexpectedly) cohere. In the case of The Demonologist, it "started" a few years ago when I was reading a lot of first-hand accounts of the paranormal, you know, those anthologies made up of people sending in their personal haunted house or afterlife or "possession" stories. What struck me was how many of these experiences occur at a time in the person's life that is particularly emotional – a disorienting move to a new town, a messy break-up, the loss of a loved one. Grief is so often in the background of these anecdotes it started me thinking about a character – some version of myself, I suppose – who didn't believe in the supernatural, but who suffers a terrible loss in his life that nevertheless opens his mind (or more, his heart) to the otherworldly. And that got me thinking about Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost, and how he is similarly suffering an understandable loneliness and grief in the poem even as he plots the death of humankind. Ah-HA! The first tiny idea was born: on the one hand a human protagonist and on the other a demonic villain, the two connected not by arbitrary malice, but by a shared emotion, by grief.
IFB: In the front of review copies for The Demonologist, you include a letter that states: “I have certainly used horror, here and there, in the past. But this time, the immersion is complete.” How did it feel taking things that one step further: darker, more sinister and more terrifying?
AP: Liberating! With The Demonologist I allowed myself to draw an entire world that I'd only flirted with before, only permitted my characters to glimpse. I still wanted the novel to be grounded in reality, for it not to depart from believability – but what moved within that believable reality could be anything I wanted it to be. The demons in the novel aren't drooling ghouls, but figures that move among us, sit beside us on the subway, offer to buy us a drink.
IFB: What is your personal relationship to Paradise Lost? How old were you when you read it?
AP: I first speed-read Paradise Lost prior to an undergraduate exam at university, which is to say I read it under less than ideal circumstances. When I started thinking of it again in connection with a story that would become The Demonologist, I was really remembering only one thing: Satan, the poem's villain who steals the show, and how Milton drew him so compellingly. My only way back to Paradise Lost was the idea of the demonic predicament as Milton brilliantly draws it. How does it feel to be an ancient, intelligent creature belonging neither to God nor to humankind, but necessarily straining to find a way to influence or impress or destroy both? Satan as unloved, exiled son. Loneliness. That was the key for me.
IFB: Your character, Professor David Ullman has a young daughter. Having children yourself, was it difficult to write from the perspective of a terrified, frantic father on the hunt for his missing child?
AP: I have a daughter a few years younger than Tess, David Ullman's daughter in The Demonologist. It's no coincidence. It was important to me that if I was to write a horror novel where the stakes are deeply emotional and not just physical threats to survival, then I had to feel what David feels, be driven the way David is driven. It wasn't easy, because the real-life dad in me didn't want to go there. But I had to.
IFB: The Demonologist paints a picture of many different cities, but primarily a uniquely dark version of Venice. Did you travel to Italy to research the novel?
AP: I have visited Venice only once, in my late teens, chasing after a girlfriend. It was all very romantic and charged and, looking back on it, a bit stupid. But I remembered the city well. Not the monuments and sites and history (I had to research all that for the book) but the feelings it inspired, many of them unsettling. It's a beautiful place, but also haunted, invisibly blood-stained. It was this sense of the place I knew I had to conjure.
IFB: After having completed your first full-on horror novel, do you think it is a genre you will want to spend more time in?
AP: Absolutely! I feel like I'm home.
IFB: Can you give us any insight on your next project?
AP: It's scary too. And the main character is very tall. Anything more would be a spoiler!
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Thank you to Indigo blogger Andrew Taubman, for his contributions to this post.
Thank you to our friends at Simon & Schuster Canada for facilitating this interview – and to Andrew Pyper for speaking with us!