Perth-based author Ajay Close was terrified of meeting Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe as a young woman.
Whenever she left the house alone she carried a frozen chicken around her native Sheffield.
Her Saltire Society prize-novel What Doesn’t Kill Us is set in that frightening era. When women had to consider how they would confront a murderer if they met him in the street.
“It’s hard to explain now,” she reflects on the period between 1975 and 1980. “How much the fact that there was a man out there killing women was part of my life.
“I mean you didn’t forget it for a moment. It was absolutely terrifying.”
“So many people were walking around with keys in their fist. Or knives; but the women who carried knives got arrested if they got caught by the police.
“They faced a carrying an offensive weapon charge.”
Ajay’s defence weapon of choice was a frozen chicken
Ajay’s solution was to take a frozen chicken in a carrier bag whenever she went out alone.
“I never had to use it and I never ate it obviously!” she laughs. “I would probably have got salmonella! But I used to take it out of the freezer, put it in the carrier bag, practice swinging it a bit…
“I didn’t think I could do terrible damage but I thought I might buy myself a few minutes to just run.”
Ajay’s prize-winning novel is a story that she has always been waiting to tell.
The book was inspired by her experiences as a young woman growing up under the spectre of serial-killer Peter Sutcliffe.
What Doesn’t Kill Us is fictional but draws heavily on her personal experience of that time.
By the time Sutcliffe was finally arrested in 1980 he had killed 13 women and attempted to murder countless more.
The site of his eventual arrest was less than a mile from Ajay’s home at the time.
Ajay Close is an accidental crime writer
Critics have described What Doesn’t Kill Us as a police procedural but it is much more than that. The work delves into the experience of women living and working in Britain in the late 1970s.
The National Book Awards judges lauded the novel’s; “brilliant characterisation, humour and a huge sense of tension from the ever-present threat of violence.”
Ajay has been delighted to take part in Tartan Noir events such as Bloody Scotland and Granite Noir but also admits that she may not write another crime novel.
“I suppose I have written a crime book this time,” she concedes. “But I don’t particularly anticipate writing another, and it’s so strange to see how greedy for crime books the reading public is.
“I quite like a crime book and but I wish all literary novels were as popular as crime, I have to say.”
At home in the north
Ajay grew up in Yorkshire in the 1970s but never developed a Sheffield accent because her mother sent her off for elocution lessons.
Today, her speech is certainly more received pronunciation than Northern lass but she retains a bit of Yorkshire intonation and the straight-talking sense of humour of her native north.
She has lived in Scotland since 1988. She worked as a journalist in Edinburgh and Glasgow before taking up a post as writer in residence at the William Soutar House in Perth.
When that post ended in 2005 she says: “We liked Perth so much that we bought a house just up the road from the Souter House where I’d been living.”
Winning the Fiction Book of the Year award
Conversely, the first book that Ajay hasn’t based in Scotland has won 2024 Fiction Book of the Year at Scotland’s National Book Awards.
The warm, straight-talking writer is clearly chuffed to have been embraced by Scotland’s literary community.
“I was absolutely delighted because if you look at the authors who’ve won that prize before, it’s a real who’s who of Scottish literature,” she enthuses.
“Kate Atkinson, Ali Smith, Muriel Spark, Alan Warner, Alastair Gray… so it is a tremendous honour.”
Does living in Perth make Ajay a Scottish Writer?
She says, “I do feel I’m a Scottish writer in many ways. I mean, I’ve lived more than half my life in Scotland and you know, all my friends are here. My roots are very firmly here in Scotland now.
“I think I think I see myself as a Scottish author in the sense that I see my books as part of the body of Scottish literature.”
She is aware that: “it’s always a tricky one to call yourself Scottish if you were born in England. I think that’s a bit presumptuous.
“I’m someone who was born in Yorkshire, who’s lived in Scotland more than half my life, who votes in Scottish elections. The news I read is Scottish news.
“I care about Scotland. It is the country I’m invested in most. But I mean, I don’t really know whether I could call myself Scottish.
“That’s really for other people to say.”
I don’t really know whether I could call myself Scottish. That’s really for other people to say.
Author Ajay Close
The author also points out that she receives invaluable support from Creative Scotland and The Scottish Book Trust.
That might be a grant to fund the writing of a book or a payment for taking part in a Live Literature Scheme event.
A karaoke Christmas for Ajay
With just Ajay and her partner at home, the festive season is typically a quiet affair. “It’s special because it gives my partner two weeks off work so it’s nice to have him here.
“We’ll be making a lot of fires. And reading and going for walks.
“On Christmas night, our best friends are having all their family around and we’ll be there too for a karaoke night.”
She’s taking the karaoke night seriously, saying, “I’m going to do some rehearsing. I’d be more comfortable singing something like old Cole Porter songs.
“I mean, I do like music made since the 1950s and 40s, but I think it is easier to hold those tunes.
“I’m certainly not going to be doing any Beyoncé covers!”
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