I read Lisa Marie Basile’s August 7, 2014 interview with Katie Crouch, author of Abroad. Basile said that although the novel is inspired, not based, on the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2007, Crouch “gives her characters autonomy from the real story and the prose is poetic and arresting.”
What I discovered when I met Crouch at the National Reading Group Month Event in San Francisco last Saturday, is that the narrator in her book is the deceased victim “telling her story from the grave”. Crouch said she chose that perspective because there have been several books written about Amanda Knox, both non-fiction and fiction. Crouch wanted her book to be different. The main focus wasn’t on Amanda Knox, but on the victim.
Interspersed throughout the novel are stories from Etruscan society where women are sacrificed to the Sun God and often flayed alive. Crouch saw her victim as a present day example of the sacrificing of a woman. Basile points out that Abroad “deals with the inner mechanisms of female relationships, the search for identity and the dark dimensions of desire.”
To read the full interview go to:
http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/36176/murder-and-magic-abroad-an-interview-with-katie-crouch.html
