Books with a Twist: Carrion Crow by Heather Parry

Having a martini with Heather Parry at The Lower Third, Denmark Street

Tucked between the guitar shops and recording studios of Soho’s historic Denmark Street, you’ll find a cocktail bar and live music venue called The Lower Third.

The menu is relatively modest, with just six house and six classic cocktails on offer, but the ‘snack packs’ turn my head: half a beer, a mini cocktail and a shot for £16. You might chase a shot of tequila with half a Stiegl Grapefruit Radler, and then sip on a mini margarita, for example, or you might juggle half a Guinness with a baby Guinness and a mini old fashioned. I’m really enthusiastic about this concept, because I love novelty, double-fisting and having everything at once.

We have three martinis to choose between: classic, espresso, and a house martini described as ‘elegant […] with a kiss of apple.’ I kick things off with a classic dirty martini, mixed with gin and served on the wet side with a generous 15-25ml of Noilly Prat. Its signature filthy edge comes from a handful of green olives muddled in the shaker, which gives the cocktail a milky finish – not my preference, but not bad for a tenner on the edge of Soho.

I’m here to meet Heather Parry, editor of lit mag Extra Teeth and author of the novel Orpheus Builds a Girl, short story collection This Is My Body, Given For You, and non-fic Electric Dreams: On Sex Robots and the Failed Promises of Capitalism.

Her latest literary offering is Carrion Crow – a gothic exploration of class, sexual liberty and autonomy set in Victorian London. It introduces Marguerite Périgord, a young woman on the cusp of marriage, who’s locked in the attic of her family home with nothing but a copy of Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management for company. As we learn more about Marguerite, her mother Cécile, and the circumstances that lead to mother incarcerating daughter, Carrion Crow lingers on the granular details of the body: scabs are picked, sputum is spat, tonsil stones are worked loose, all to be consumed in toe-curling detail. It’s a brilliant, claustrophobic book that explores the dichotomy of the interior versus the exterior, the private versus the public, desire versus duty, personal autonomy versus societal expectations.

We’re at The Lower Third to discuss Carrion Crow and rate the martinis but, like a true maverick, Heather orders a negroni.

Here at Books with a Twist, we’re a broad church, so I lean into this bitter Campari-spiked curveball and ask: how’s the negroni?

As you know, I’m a negroni connoisseur these days, and I’d say this is very good. It’s more complex [than others], which I think is down to the vermouth.

How do you usually take your negroni?

Directly to my face. I don’t make them at home, because I think a negroni is all down to the quality of the alcohol. Again, it’s the vermouth. I don’t understand vermouth as a thing. So I can have Campari, which is just Campari, and I can have good gin, but I don’t know what I like in a vermouth yet. We’ve got three different vermouths at my house, but I will still never make [a negroni] at home.

Do you dislike martinis?

I’ve never had a martini I enjoyed. And here are my issues: I don’t like straight vodka, and I don’t really like straight gin, so as you can see, there are two major barriers and I don’t know how to get over them. I feel like I have slight PTSD from dating a Ukrainian for six years, who had an incredibly Russian dad, who would just get a bottle of room temp Stolichnaya out at lunch, and you’d have to do a double shot before every meal, or anytime anyone came up. I would be like, I’m going to die. This doesn’t taste good to me. Anyway I really want to [enjoy martinis] because it’s classy – you look classy.

Thank you.

I keep saving olive juice – I save the fucking Perelló olive juice every single time – and we save pickle juice to make martinis, but we’ll never do it! I don’t like them!

Now, which of your characters from Carrion Crow would you most like to have a cocktail with?

I think I’d most like to have a cocktail with Cécile’s husband, who’s a louche, bohemian prick. He’s very much like, the black sheep in the family, a complete arsehole … but he believes in the good life. I think he’d be charming. I think he’d be one of those men that lights up the room with a really viscous charisma. Do you know what I mean? And he’d probably order really good champagne, which I’m always up for. Awful person. Awful. Deep down, you hate him, but you like to see him in a bar.

And he’s picking up the tab.

He’s getting the tab! Cos he’s got all the fucking money in the world.

And who would you least like to have a drink with from Carrion Crow?

Hmmm. By the end of it, Margueritte would be in a fucking state. I mean, it would be interesting, but she’d stink.

Which book stirred you the most in 2024?

Oh man. Probably The Blackwater Saga, which I’d never heard of. It’s by Michael McDowell, and my editor sent me the first three books as they’ve just been reissued. They’re like if One Hundred Years of Solitude was set in an Alabama logging town, and a water monster comes into town in the shape of a woman. It’s a really slow-burn horror, and I read all six books in the series – which I never do, I don’t think I’ve ever read a series, ever – in like six weeks. And it’s also like, subtly gay.

I’m in my reissue era. I’ve been reading a lot of great mid-century shit.

Same. I actually read Rosemary’s Baby over the summer, and Stepford Wives – both by the same guy, and I was just like, I can’t believe how good these fucking books are. They’re not messing around, they’re doing exactly what they’re meant to be doing, and they’re doing it perfectly.

Okay, now that you’re feeling loose after a couple of sips of negroni, which element of publishing has shaken you the most?

Oh, that is such a controversial question. I think it’s the realisation that the best authors and the best books don’t get the most money. And I don’t mean that from the perspective of myself – I don’t think I’m writing the best books. You see people, or you know people, who you consider to be geniuses, and they’ve got full time jobs, or they’re living on the breadline. They might win major awards, but they’re not getting a lot of money for their books. And like, no one thinks the world is a meritocracy, right? No one in their thirties, anyway. But yeah – it just sucks.

My final question: what’s the most frank advice you’d give a debut author after a few too many cocktails?

Write a novel and throw it away. You can’t learn to do it without doing it. You can write one novel and get really fucking obsessed with it. I’ve known people to write one novel, never been able to do anything with it, and never move past it. And I feel like if you need to write that story again, you’ll write it again but better, because you’ll know what you’re doing. And if you don’t write that story again, but you write something else, that something else will be better. And so few people – some do – but so few people publish the first novel they’ve written. Once you get over that hump, and realise you can produce something else, you’ve got a career. But if you just do one, and you sit on it, and you let it demoralise you, you’re not going anywhere. It’s not really talent, it’s tenacity that makes a writing career. I say that to students and they hate it, cos they’re like, No – I will write my first novel, and it will be genius, and I’ll get a million pounds, and it’s like…

You have to move on from The One, because you’re not going to write The One. You’re not going to be Harper Lee.

Exactly.

Visit The Lower Third

Pre-order Carrion Crow

If you enjoyed this conversation, I’ll be chatting to Heather at Libreria, just off Brick Lane, on March 5th. Tickets are free and you can register for one here.