Each time Diana Reid opens a blank Word document, she’s determined to fill it with something entirely new. Time and again, she finds herself pulled toward the lives of women—friends, strangers, sisters. “I am helpless to resist” she says. Her most recent project, writing the screenplay for a Sense and Sensibility adaptation starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, feels like a natural evolution of that pull.
Reid wrote her first book, Love & Virtue, in her early twenties. It’s a fictional story where answers emerge through fragments of a turbulent friendship, an evolving power dynamic, and the complications of coming of age. In her second novel, Seeing Other People, she probed female relationships a little further, interrogating what happens when two sisters fall in love with the same woman. And now with her latest work, Signs of Damage, despite trying to resist this trope (in fact, she started out with the intention of writing about two middle-aged men), Reid found herself circling back to the novelties of women once more.
Beyond the page, Reid’s storytelling continues to evolve. Her latest project adapting Sense and Sensibility for screen sees her stepping into the world of Jane Austen, reimagining the emotional architecture of Elinor (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Marianne.
And as for her own reading habits? You’ll find Reid returning to the skilled restraint of Ian McEwan, the timeless clarity of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and the incomparable Helen Garner.
Here, we speak to Diana Reid about her latest novel, writing habits, themes she returns to in her writing, and authors she looks up to.
Across Love & Virtue, Seeing Other People, and now your latest Signs of Damage, your novels explore the sticky emotional terrain between women, friends, sisters, strangers. What draws you back to female relationships?
Every time I write a novel, I open a blank Word document and I’m determined to fill it with something I’ve never done before. My first novel was about a toxic female friendship at university, and my second was about two sisters who fall in love with the same woman so when I sat down to write Signs of Damage, I was like: this will be my first book that’s not about women. In fact, I set out to write a book about two middle-aged men. Needless to say, when I’d finished it, I read it back and discovered that it was, yet again, a novel about women. So I really can’t say what draws me back to the theme of female friendship. I can only confirm that (despite my best efforts!) I am helpless to resist.
In your work, families, and especially sisters, are both safe havens and pressure cookers. What is it about the sibling dynamic that makes it such vast terrain for exploring identity and morality?
I’m always interested in subjectivity: the way we tell the story of our own lives, and the drama that can erupt when our story clashes with someone else’s. Sibling dynamics provide one of the most ubiquitous examples of this clash. How often do people, who were raised in the exact same household, grow up to have different narratives about their childhood and the people who were part of it?
You have acknowledged your constant comparison to authors like Sally Rooney. Who do you like to read while you write?
Haha, yes the Sally Rooney comparison has been thrown around a lot since I published my first novel in 2021. Poor Rooney, if she ever finds out who I am, I can only imagine she’ll be mortified. But I’m not complaining! I think she’s a genius. In terms of what I read when I’m drafting, though, I keep coming back to Ian McEwan, who is the best writer I know for balancing a propulsive plot with precise, beautiful sentences. He always says exactly what he means. I think it’s achieved by maintaining a healthy respect for the reader’s intelligence (i.e. not shying away from complex or technical language) while being confident in your own intelligence (i.e. not showing off).
On your bedside table currently, what are you reading?
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes.
What is your favourite book of all time?
Middlemarch (George Eliot) is the novel that I can see myself returning to the most. I’ve read it twice so far, and both times I finished it, I felt changed as if by an actual life experience. I feel like you can’t ask more of a novel.
Is there a literary character that you most identify with?
What I like about reading is how it expands our sympathies; how it enables us to identify more widely than we would dare to in real life. Some of the characters I most identify with are people who are comically unlike me. They’re the last people I’d think of as “relatable” and then, by the end of the novel, I’m like, this is my kindred soul. For example, I identify with Stevens in The Remains of the Day, who is a middle-aged butler in a grand country estate in 1930s England. I find his commitment to his work and his fumbling attempts at self-criticism almost unbearably poignant.
What is a book that changed your life?
I’m not sure I would have attempted to write my first novel, Love & Virtue, if I hadn’t come across The First Stone by Helen Garner. Prior to reading it, I thought that you couldn’t write unless you had something to say. Without a thesis statement, a blank page felt too daunting. But The First Stone taught me that it is enough to start with a question.
The book I would give as a gift is …
The first novel in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones series is a guaranteed good time. And even though the film adaptation is perfect, the book is still full of its own unique joys.
Growing up, the best book on my bookshelf was …
I was born in the late 90s, so I will never be as excited about a book (or any piece of art, or anything, really) as I was when the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out.
Who do you admire the most as a writer?
Zadie Smith for how effortlessly she braids contemporary observations with classic influences.
A book everyone should read at least once is…
The Secret History by Donna Tartt is the most fun a literary novel can possibly be, while also being deeply thought-provoking.
My favourite reading spot is…
I’m in the very fortunate position of reading for a living so a lot of my reading is done at a desk. When I can do it at the beach, that’s pure pleasure.
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