After her debut with Instinct, that could count on rave reviews, Ivonne Wilken, originally from Emmen, is launching a new thriller. The title is Tangled up, a book with a Scandinavian edge, in which she can express her great fascination for the dark side of life.
And that Scandinavian edge is very explainable. She has lived there for fifteen years, between the fjords. Because in 2007 Wilken, now 51, went after her Greek boyfriend to Norway, who got a high position at the university there, she says in the Radio Drenthe program. Cassata.
Wilken had meanwhile been forced to resign from her job. Because while working as an anthropologist and criminologist, where she often spoke with criminals such as people smugglers, prostitutes and street robbers, she got serious RSI complaints, making work impossible. Because processing reports in the computer was no longer possible. “That’s why I said goodbye to my work. You fall into a deep hole, and have no activities. That’s frustrating.”
Help from computer
In Tromsø, high up in Norway, the writer’s bug got her. And the discovery of a speech computer worked wonders, because that was her great help in putting a book together. She had to record sentences, after which the computer converted them into text.
“Slowly, all the individual sentences become flowing pieces together. And those pieces are then made complete into one exciting book. You may not be able to do much if you are unable to write down the text yourself due to such a disability, but you can keep thinking. So if I had taken a mountain hike and come back, sometimes I would have created a whole new scene.”
Fluent sentence in head
However, according to Wilken, it is important to prepare the sentences well and to pronounce them clearly, otherwise the work with the computer is doomed to fail. “You have to have a fluent sentence in your head. If you’re going to stutter, mistakes will come in.”
In a few years time, this has led to a new thriller, which may be just like her debut Instinct storms the book market. One that was nominated last year for The best women’s thriller in the Netherlands. “The reviews were very positive. You read about it: ‘five big fat stars’ Or: ‘A new thriller talent entering the book market’, they wrote. That feels very nice.”
Fascination with the dark side
By the way, she has always had a penchant for chilling stories, especially from successful Scandinavian writers. It can’t really be dark enough for Wilken. This also explains her earlier choice of study for anthropology and criminology.
Writing dark thrillers myself has always been a big wish. “I studied journalism, so I do have a thing for writing. And I’m very fascinated why people do something terrible, why they cross a line. There are certain push factors for that. But what is that?”
But that does not immediately fill an entire book. “You get all the freedom to write, but on the other hand you can also say so much in a few sentences. How am I supposed to fill an entire page, I sometimes think?”, she emphasizes the continuous struggle to eventually reach an exciting story that is captivating to the end.
no spoilers
About the content of her brand new Scandinavian thriller Tangled up doesn’t want to tell Ivonne Wilken too much. “Then I quickly tell the plot, and that is a spoiler. People should be able to read the book without prejudice.”
It will certainly be dark, she reveals as a tip of the veil. The story revolves around a 70-year-old woman, living alone by the fjords of Oslofjord, with no other residents. Just a college student who unexpectedly becomes her new roommate. “Why does she want to continue living there? And the interaction between the two: that’s how the story comes about.”
The fictional story is partly based on a piece of Norwegian reality. “I heard from the man who takes the ferry to the islands that a 90-year-old woman lives on a certain island, all by herself. Then I quickly wonder, what does such a woman do there alone? There’s probably a special story behind that, and that’s how the foundation was finally laid for Tangled up.”