Saltaire novelist Sophie Hannah is one of the new faces for the Millennium. With the publication of her first book, Gripless, on Thursday, she forms part of a crop of rising young British talent heading your way very soon. Isobel Fox met her and discovered the highs and lows of creative writing in the Nineties

WHEN SOPHIE was promoted, she decided to leave her job as an envelope-stuffer.

Unable to stand the thought of ordering the other stuffers around, she resolved to leave the theatre she'd worked in since leaving school and do "the expected thing" - go to university and get a degree.

Even then things nearly went off track when, hating her French and Spanish course, she was on the brink of leaving after the first year.

But she was persuaded to change her course, and in a sense, by doing so she changed her life.

Now, at the age of just 27, Sophie is a published poet and on Thursday, readers will be able to get to grips with Gripless, her first novel about love, lust and the way that both emotions cause people to loose their grip on reality.

The 354-page book centres on Belinda, a writer at a drama school, who has an affair with a 17-year-old to distract herself from the lust she feels for a young delinquent foisted on the school by social services. She later throws herself on the delinquent all the same, and her life descends into a spiral of lustful mayhem.

The idea for the book, says Sophie, seemed to come to her all at once one summer day in Cambridge in 1997.

By this time, she had completed a degree in Combined Studies and Creative Writing and had gone on to get an MA in Novel Writing.

Having discovered a talent for poetry while at university, she had had two of her collections published, but demands on her time as a poet were beginning to mean that her job as a secretary was suffering.

"People started asking me to do readings and the more things I was offered, the less secretarial work I could do, and eventually I was just going in to work to use the computer," said Sophie.

"This didn't go down too well. It was when I was struggling to be a poet and a secretary that I got a letter from Cambridge University, offering me a two-year post as Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts at Trinity College."

Sophie jumped at the offer and immediately took up a temping job for a residential and commercial property firm in Cambridge to tide her over for the summer until her job began that September.

"I remember, it was during one of my lunch hours that I thought I wanted to write this novel," said Sophie.

"That afternoon I didn't do any work but sat down and wrote a synopsis of all the chapters and by the end of the day, the entire world of my novel had been committed to paper."

For the next couple of months, Sophie wrote obsessively, and by late summer, the first draft of the book had been completed. After a re-write and a third revision, the final draft was finally completed in April the following year.

"It was an enormous sense of achievement," said Sophie.

"When I was first sent a published version, I didn't go anywhere without it and I just kept getting it out and looking at it.

"The other day I went into Waterstones and I saw a table full of my novels and I wanted to take them home and look after them. It's a great feeling."

According to Sophie, bits of her novels are drawn from the characters and experiences she's had in her own life.

"I'm quite rebellious and don't like doing things I'm expected to do, which is very much like the main character in Gripless," she said.

"But I'm never really entirely sure where the inspiration for other ideas come from. Things I've experienced like settings, buildings and comments other people have made are all sources I draw from."

Now part-based in Saltaire and Cambridge, Sophie has already written her second novel, Cordial and Corrosive, and has formed the idea for a third - a far cry from her days as an envelope-stuffer at a Manchester theatre.

"At that time, I wanted to leave school and have a job like normal people

"Stuffing envelopes was ideal - you got to sit down and chat to people."

But, she added: "I really love writing and it would never occur to me to give it up.

"Now I see my job as writing novels which are fun, accessible, easy read but with a serious side too."

l Gripless is published by Arrow and is priced £5.99.

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