YA Book Prize shortlist: Krystal Sutherland talks about House of Hollow

How would you describe House of Hollow to someone who hasn’t read it?

House of Hollow is the story of three strange sisters – the Hollow sisters – who went through a mysterious and traumatic event when they were children. They disappeared for a month and then came back with no memory of where they had been or what had happened to them. They also came back slightly different – their hair and eyes changed colour, missing baby teeth grew back and they each had a small hook-shaped wound cut into the base of their throats.

Ten years later, the youngest sister, Iris, is trying to finish high school and live a normal life – something that is difficult to do in the shadow of her older sisters, both of whom are famous, glamourous and wild. Then the eldest sister, Grey, goes missing again and Iris and her middle sister, Vivi, have to confront and unravel the mystery of what happened to them as children so they can find and save their sister.

It’s a story full of glamourous catwalk models, grisly clues hidden in walls and ceilings, doorways that lead to unexpected places and a character with a devastating secret.

What inspired House of Hollow?

House of Hollow came from a scrapbook of different ideas that eventually merged together. The first spark came to me when I was hiking in a remote part of Australia with my sister and I thought, “What if I turned around right now and she was just gone?” If there was no sound, no struggle, no one else around, and no trace of her – it was such a horrifying thought.

The story really started to percolate after I visited Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and saw “ghost doors” scattered around the forest – ruins where every part of a structure had fallen away except the stone doorframe. They felt at once inviting and dangerous, like fairy circles. I wanted to walk through one, but found myself afraid that if I did I might end up somewhere… else. Those two elements really drew me in and I started to build the story and characters and world around them.

Which character in the book is your favourite, and why?

Vivi and Grey were a lot of fun to write. They’re dream girls. They’re the women I wanted to be when I was growing up. Vivi is rough and wild and heavily tattooed. She’s borderline feral, a ball of walking chaos. Grey is the opposite. The height of glamour and the embodiment of utter control. I think Grey is the most morally grey (and appropriately named) character in the book, so I’ll say she’s my favourite.

What’s your favourite scene in House of Hollow and why?

Oh it’s hard to choose one! I really love writing scenes set in abandoned domestic spaces – the characters explore many different empty apartments and houses – because you can reveal so much about the inhabitants through the clues they leave behind in their homes. Other than that, it was a delight to luxuriate in the details: the smells, the textures, the creepiness of the sisters and the strange world they inhabit. House of Hollow is very rooted in scent. The milky smell of the girls’ skin, the stink of rot and smoke that seeps from the man that haunts them. Playing in the world of high fashion was also so much fun it didn’t feel like work. I spent a lot of time looking at designs by Alexander McQueen, Rodarte and Elie Saab to get a better idea of what Grey Hollow’s designs might look and feel like. As always, I was concerned that my Google search history might get me into trouble if anyone around me was killed, because I was constantly looking up things like “What does a dead body smell like?” and “How long does it take to burn a human corpse?”