Interview with Samantha Silva

Despite the plethora of novels based on Jane Austen’s works or tapping into the public’s voracious appetite for such books, once in a while, a story comes along that approaches the genre in a new way or asks interesting questions. Samantha Silva’s latest novel, Sometime This Century, addresses several such questions, as you can see from this written interview with the author. Most fundamentally, she asks whether Mr. Darcy would be able to cope with a modern woman. And would that modern woman, however much she loves Jane Austen, really fit comfortably into a world that imposed so many constraints on her options? Read on to find out more. You may also enjoy my New Books Network conversation with her about her debut novel, Mr. Dickens and His Carol, which came out in 2018.

You mention in your author’s note that Sometime This Century began as a treatment for a screenplay that never materialized. Where did the idea originally come from, and what made you decide to turn it into a novel?

The book actually began as a full-length screenplay that I pitched and sold to Universal Studios twenty-five years ago. We were all still living off the fantastic fumes of the BBC’s beloved Pride and Prejudice with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, which seemed to give an electrical charge to our enduring love of all things Jane Austen. The idea was born of all that—a young woman who feels she doesn’t quite fit in the modern world is obsessed with her hero Jane and wants to be a writer herself. When she’s magically transported to the Regency era, she falls even more in love with it, and in love for the first time. But what happens when she gets what she wishes for?… So, Universal didn’t make the movie at the time, but I kept the novel rights, sat on them for years, and on a lark decided to adapt it into a novel. And here we are!

Introduce us, please, to your heroine, Annabel. She is, as noted early on, already not quite living in the twenty-first century in certain ways.

Annabel Blake has always felt like she was born in the wrong century. Her skin’s pale and un-inked, she’s an Austen-loving book nerd who has naturally rose-colored lips and wears a ribbon in her hair. Picture her in a vintage Laura Ashley dress and ballet flats, with a tote bag full of whatever she’s currently reading and a rolled-up pashmina scarf. She grew up in cotillion and can hold her own at high tea. She longs to be a writer, has just finished her first novel set in her beloved Regency era. It’s a love story, but the problem is, she’s never really been in love.

How does Annabel wind up at the present-day Kidlington estate, and what does she find there?

Annabel works for literary agent Stella Barron, a posh English ex-pat who would much rather holiday in the Hamptons than sort out her mother’s “crumbling old pile” of a country house in England—Kidlington House. Annabel’s devastated when her hot literary crush says her novel feels like it’s been written by someone who’s never been in love! Stella tells her to rewrite it, “a hundred times if need be,” and strikes on the idea of sending Annabel to Kidlington House to sort out the Hepplewhites and whatnot, thereby saving her Hamptons holiday. Annabel finds a dilapidated Regency gem of a house full of antiques, including a simple satinwood writing desk, with a mysterious invitation in its drawer.

Annabel’s older sister, Cassandra, has, to put it mildly, a quite different personality. What should readers know about her?

Cassie Blake is Annabel’s opposite in every way. She’s a party-girl-slash-influencer with a travel vlog and a possible streaming deal in the works. She might be wearing a crop-top with cargo pants, likes furry pink Uggs, and is obsessed with flossing and whitening her teeth. She has never read a Jane Austen book and finds her younger sister Annabel maddeningly nerdy. Cassie is Charlie XCX’s “brat girl” on steroids, lives on her own terms, used to getting what she wants, a little messy sometimes, might say the wrong thing, and couldn’t care less. Let’s say the sisters are not at all close. And then they get trapped in the Regency world.

The third character who travels from present to past is Billy. Please give us a short description of him.

Billy Bronson is that skater dude who never quite grew up because he never had to. He’s Cassie’s ex but still oddly devoted to her. Willing to be the sidekick in her travel vlog, he’s secure enough in his own masculinity to get her matcha or hold her purse. Billy’s never read a book at all, at least not a whole one. But he has his own charms and a soft heart, which will be tested mightily through their adventures together.

And how do the three of them react to their unexpected journey back to Austen’s England?

Cassie and Billy are understandably freaked out when they realize they’re stuck in the Regency world with no way back. To say “off the charts” would be an understatement. They have no idea how to behave, which fork is which, how the rules work, how one makes a life or a living. Everything about their modern world is turned upside down. Annabel, on the other hand, is filled with wonder when her dream world becomes the world she lives in. She’s unsettled at first, and upset for Cassie and Billy, but she’s sort of breathless at the beauty and civility of it. She knows exactly how this world works and commits to making it work for them all, not knowing all the ways that will test her.

I doubt anyone who loves Austen’s books could fail to recognize the origins of Henry D’Evercy, but do tell us a bit about him and his effect on Annabel.

When Annabel sees Henry D’Evercy at her first assembly room ball, she assumes he’s doing an imitation of Jane Austen’s famous Darcy, believing the ball to be a Regency Society recreation event. He’s gorgeous, arrogant, aloof, as if a mere country ball is beneath him, as is everyone there. He is “way out of her league,” as Cassie puts it. But because she assumes he’s pretending to be Darcy, she finds a way to engage him in conversation and is surprised to find him charmed by her directness and keen observations. Let’s just say she is charmed in return.

And what of you? Are you already working on a new book?

I am working on something new, tackling another genre, which I seem wont to do! I’ll say only that it’s contemporary and autofiction, which I’m finding quite a different challenge from the historical fiction I’ve written. It’s scary and it’s stretching me in new ways. But why would I do something easy?

Samantha Silva is an author and screenwriter based in Idaho. Sometime This Century is her third novel, following Love and Fury: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mr. Dickens and His Carol, her debut. Find out more about her and her books at https://www.samanthasilvawriter.com.