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WORK TITLE: Exhibit Alexandra
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: London
STATE:
COUNTRY: England
NATIONALITY: British
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Attended University of York; University of Chicago, M.A. (humanities); Goldsmiths, University of London, M.A. (creative writing).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and novelist. Worked as a projectionist.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Natasha Bell grew up in Somerset, England, and studied in both England and the United States. In her debut novel, Exhibit Alexandra, Bell presents Alexandra “Alex” Southward, a woman who seemed to be living an average and relatively happy life until she is kidnapped. Alex and her husband, Marc, have been married for thirteen years and have two lovely daughters, Charlotte and Lizzie. Alex, however, does not come home one night, leading Marc to contact the North Yorkshire Police. Initially, the police think that Alex is just out on a lark and will return home. Then they discover pieces of her bloody clothing. Their subsequent investigation turns up aspects of Alex’s life that Marc knew nothing about. Shocked, Marc decides to look into the matter on his own.
It turns out that Alex has been kidnapped. As the narrator of the story, Alex begins by trying to imagine what her husband and children are going through. Then her kidnappers start to show her news clips about her disappearance and Marc’s appeals for information. Based on her intimate knowledge of her husband, Alex makes it clear in her narration of the story the anguish of what Marc is going through. She also has heard a recording of Marc’s phone call to the police. In addition, her narration includes flashbacks to her past.
Bell has explained where she got the idea for her story. She was twenty-three years old and living in York, England, when noted University of York chef Claudia Lawrence suddenly disappeared. The press covered the investigation and wrote about a possible secret life. No one ever found out what happened to Lawrence. “What lodged in my brain during that time was not so much the mystery of what had happened to Claudia Lawrence, but the impossibility of what those left behind had to deal with,” Bell commented in a Mystery Tribune website article, adding: “Her father, in particular, was often on the news and seen pleading and campaigning, appealing for information about his daughter’s whereabouts.” Bell went on in the Mystery Tribune to note that, in addition to exploring a family’s trauma when someone they love goes missing, she “also wanted to play with the stories we tell ourselves, especially about our relationships.”
In the novel, police begin by focusing most of their attention on Marc, questioning him about the rumors that their relationship is troubled and about Alex’s missing passport. In addition to Alex’s narration, part of the story is told via letters from an old friend, a performance artist named Amelia Heldt. The letters indicate that Alex and Amelia had an extremely close relationship. It turns out that Alex had been a promising artist herself. She was accepted into an elite art program in Chicago but decided to stay in York, England, with Marc instead. From that time on, she focused on her relationship with Marc and the raising of her children. “Bell paints a convincing portrait of a woman struggling with society’s tendency to put a man’s needs and desires over those of women and the guilt that accompanies a mother’s longing for fulfillment” beyond the family, wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor.
As the novel continues, Marc learns more and more about his wife, her disappointments, and her longing to pursue an art career. As a result, he begins to question just how happy Alex has been in the marriage. At the same time, Marc must cope with his two young daughters, trying to keep life as normal for them as possible. “On one level a gripping page-turner and on another a disturbing exploration of identity, art, and decency,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Christine Tran, writing in Booklist, called Exhibit Alexandra “a moody, gut-wrenching tale of domestic ennui, feminism, and identity.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 2018, Christine Tran, review of Exhibit Alexandra, p. 32.
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2018, review of Exhibit Alexandra.
Publishers Weekly, January 8, 2018, review of Exhibit Alexandra, p. 40.
Xpress Reviews, March 2, 2018, Lisa O’Hara, review of Exhibit Alexandra.
ONLINE
Mystery Tribune, https://www.mysterytribune.com/ (March 5, 2018), “Natasha Bell Reflects on Writing Exhibit Alexandra; (March 26, 2018), “A Conversation with Natasha Bell, Author of Exhibit Alexandra.“
Peters Fraser + Dunlop Website, https://www.petersfraserdunlop.com/ (June 9, 2018), author profile.
Natasha Bell
Photo of Natasha Bell
Photo: © Natasha Bell
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NATASHA BELL grew up in Somerset and studied English literature at the University of York. She holds an MA in the humanities from the University of Chicago and an MA in creative writing from Goldsmiths. She lives in southeast London.
NATASHA BELL
Natasha grew up in Somerset and studied English Literature at the University of York. She holds an MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago and is currently studying Creative Writing at Goldsmiths.
She lives in south-east London and splits her time between writing and working as a projectionist.
Her debut novel, Exhibit Alexandra, will be published in Spring 2018 by Michael Joseph in the UK and Crown in the US.
A Conversation with Natasha Bell Author of “Exhibit Alexandra”
BY : MYSTERY TRIBUNE March 26, 2018
A Conversation with Natasha Bell Author of Exhibit Alexandra
Natasha Bell grew up in Somerset and studied English literature at the University of York. She holds an MA in the humanities from the University of Chicago and an MA in creative writing from Goldsmiths. She lives in southeast London. Her debut mystery novel Exhibit Alexandra was released earlier this month by Crown.
Note: For our other coverage of this novel, read “Natasha Bell Reflects On Writing Exhibit Alexandra.”
*****
Q. In the novel, you explore the dynamics of relationships, specifically that of a husband and wife. Can you speak more to this?
A. I feel like whatever else we do with our lives, the one constant is that we’re all continuously trying to work ourselves and others out. So in writing Exhibit Alexandra, I was trying to explore the edges of my understanding about love and marriage. What really interested me is this idea that two people can truly love each other, but that love still might not be enough to make them happy. Books and movies and fairy tales tell us at such a young age that love is everything and when you find the right person you’ll live happily ever after, but real life is much more complex. What do you do when you’re simultaneously happy and unhappy? What do you do when your relationship requires a compromise, when you have to choose between the person you love and yourself?
Q. Art plays a major role throughout the novel. Are you an artist? What inspired you to choose this particular form of artistic expression to advance the themes of the novel?
A. I’m not an artist, alas. I used to be quite involved in theater and I did an MA in my early twenties with a visual and performance art component. For a while after that I did want to be a performance artist, but I think I was more interested in it conceptually than in practically figuring out how and where to make works happen. So, as lazy as it makes me, I think I chose to write about art rather than make it, because writing could be done at home, in pajamas, without having to talk to anyone.
For Alex and Amelia, though, performance art seemed like a natural fit. The novel explores the ways we’re all constantly creating ourselves, writing and rewriting the stories of our lives and our relationships. So, by making Amelia an artist, I got to examine those themes on a larger scale and look at the ethics of those private acts of creation when they’re made public.
Q. Alexandra once aspired to be a world renowned artist but marriage and motherhood would become her priority. Without giving too much away, can you tell us about the questions of gender expectations and motherhood you are exploring in the novel?
A. Even in 2018, I think the subject of what women sacrifice for marriage and motherhood is a really important issue. It’s not, obviously, the same issue that it was decades ago when those sacrifices were enormously tangible and often hugely oppressive, or the same issue that it is in other places and cultures around the world.
However, there are still subtle and un-talked-about ways where women in perfectly supportive and seemingly equal relationships are still doing the majority of the emotional labor and still making self-sacrificing decisions to preserve their relationships and families. I think we need to look at what we’re teaching girls and boys at a really young age about gender and relationships and ambition.
Q. The novel features twists and turns that leave readers guessing the fate of its characters. Did you know from the outset how you wanted their destinies to unfold, or did the plot reveal itself as the characters developed?
A. I’ve been working on Exhibit Alexandra for almost eight years now, but the one constant from the first to the last draft has been the plot. I knew from the outset what had happened to Alexandra and what Marc would need to go through to find out. The hard part was figuring out how to tell the story and some of that was about finding the right genre and realizing the necessity of those twists and turns.
Q. The novel alternates between flashbacks of Alexandra and Marc’s early romance and their tragic present-day reality. Why did you choose to structure the story this way?
A. Because I think any couple’s present-day reality only exists in the context of their past. The main story of Exhibit Alexandra is that Alex is missing and Marc needs to find her, but to understand what that really means and who they both are we need to go back to their beginning.
Alex says of her parents’ divorce that the saddest thing was that their breakup had to eraszy as it makes me, I think I chose to write about art rather than make it, because writing could be done at home, in pajamas, without having to talk to anyone.
For Alex and Amelia, though, performance art seemed like a natural fit. The novel explores the ways we’re all constantly creating ourselves, writing and rewriting the stories of our lives and our relationships. So, by making Amelia an artist, I got to examine those themes on a larger scale and look at the ethics of those private acts of creation when they’re made public.
Q. Alexandra once aspired to be a world renowned artist but marriage and motherhood would become her priority. Without giving too much away, can you tell us about the questions of gender expectations and motherhood you are exploring in the novel?
A. Even in 2018, I think the subject of what women sacrifice for marriage and motherhood is a really important issue. It’s not, obviously, the same issue that it was decades ago when those sacrifices were enormously tangible and often hugely oppressive, or the same issue that it is in other places and cultures around the world.
However, there are still subtle and un-talked-about ways where women in perfectly supportive and seemingly equal relationships are still doing the majority of the emotional labor and still making self-sacrificing decisions to preserve their relationships and families. I think we need to look at what we’re teaching girls and boys at a really young age about gender and relationships and ambition.
Q. The novel features twists and turns that leave readers guessing the fate of its characters. Did you know from the outset how you wanted their destinies to unfold, or did the plot reveal itself as the characters developed?
A. I’ve been working on Exhibit Alexandra for almost eight years now, but the one constant from the first to the last draft has been the plot. I knew from the outset what had happened to Alexandra and what Marc would need to go through to find out. The hard part was figuring out how to tell the story and some of that was about finding the right genre and realizing the necessity of those twists and turns.
Q. The novel alternates between flashbacks of Alexandra and Marc’s early romance and their tragic present-day reality. Why did you choose to structure the story this way?
A. Because I think any couple’s present-day reality only exists in the context of their past. The main story of Exhibit Alexandra is that Alex is missing and Marc needs to find her, but to understand what that really means and who they both are we need to go back to their beginning.
Alex says of her parents’ divorce that the saddest thing was that their breakup had to erase everything that had gone before—I think that’s so often the case: we fail to see relationships as whole narratives and only focus on what’s going on in the present.
Q. Exhibit Alexandra explores a variety of themes, from motherhood and gender roles to artistic integrity. What do you hope readers take away from the novel?
A. I hope different people find different things in Exhibit Alexandra, but mostly I want people to consider the gray areas. None of these topics are black and white and I don’t think there are any definitive answers, but I do think they’re worth talking about.
Natasha Bell Reflects On Writing “Exhibit Alexandra”
BY : MYSTERY TRIBUNE March 5, 2018
Natasha Bell grew up in Somerset and studied English literature at the University of York. She holds an MA in the humanities from the University of Chicago and an MA in creative writing from Goldsmiths. She lives in southeast London. Her debut mystery novel Exhibit Alexandra is scheduled for release later this month by Crown.
***
Exhibit Alexandra is the story of a woman who disappears on her way home from work one day, vanishing from her seemingly perfect life. Narrated by Alexandra from where she’s being held, the narrative follows her husband Marc and their two daughters as they struggle through their new reality: a limbo state of loss without closure. As Marc tries to understand what has happened to his wife, he unearths things about their early relationship and Alexandra’s life before she met him that twists the narrative away from a standard missing person story and into a meditation of love, loss, creativity, gender and identity.
That’s about all I can say without giving too much away, which is somewhat frustrating given it’s the topics tangled into the twists and the ending of the book that drove me to write it. I’ve spent eight years with this novel and I’m excited about the conversations that I hope it will spark. But, as is the nature of this genre, a lot of those conversations can only be had once people have read the book.
There used to be an advert in the UK for Marmite that showed people in supermarkets trying the weird salty spread and either grinning or pulling a face. The tag line was: Marmite – you either love it or hate it. Alexandra, I think, is a Marmite character. Some people will love her, they’ll understand her, they’ll ‘get’ her; others will not.
I started writing this book at the age of twenty-three. I was living in York, with a partner, negotiating that weird transition phase from passionate, optimistic student to practical adulthood. Life was hedonistic and joyful, but also not quite as large, creative or full of potential as I’d once imagined it would be. Learning how to be in one’s early twenties is, I think, a process of simultaneous expansion and narrowing.
Something happened in York around that time that was impossible for anyone living there not to be affected by. The University of York chef Claudia Lawrence went missing. She failed to turn up for an early morning shift and a major investigation was launched, unearthing suspicions of a secret life and raking through her privacy, but never discovering what happened to her.
It feels crass and a little mercenary to admit the impact the Claudia Lawrence case had on the writing of Exhibit Alexandra. Is it okay for authors to steal from life? To borrow inspiration from strangers, from the suffering and from the bereaved? I fear it is probably not, and yet, it’s what almost all of us do. The things we see and experience, read about and feel, are all deposited on the compost heap of our imaginations. They’re left there to squash and ripen until one day the mulch we come back to is an indecipherable mixture of ourselves and the world around us, of truth and fiction.
What lodged in my brain during that time was not so much the mystery of what had happened to Claudia Lawrence, but the impossibility of what those left behind had to deal with. Her father, in particular, was often on the news and seen pleading and campaigning, appealing for information about his daughter’s whereabouts.
250,000 people go missing in the UK every year. This is what I learnt when, prompted by Peter Lawrence’s appeals, I started researching missing people and what it was like to wake up one day to find a loved one gone. “It’s a life in limbo,” many said. Those with long-term missing family members, I realised, are thrust into a strange situation where the hope they feel that their loved one might one day return must outweigh the shameful but obvious truth that their loss would be much easier to deal with and move on from if the person had died.
So I came to my first draft of Exhibit Alexandra wanting to explore what it would be like for Marc and their daughters to cope with Alexandra’s absence; to wake up day after day not knowing where she was or what had happened to her. But I also wanted to play with the stories we tell ourselves, especially about our relationships. I wanted Marc to comb through his memories of Alexandra and discover many of the things he took to be truths were entirely subjective.
This is where the mulch comes in. Alongside the snippets of information about the Claudia Lawrence case, the bits of research I’d done about missing people and the odd things I’d been studying a couple of years previously and hadn’t quite let go of, were the potato peelings of my first serious relationship. I was navigating commitment and companionship, domesticity and compromise. I was in love with a person who was entirely other than me and trying to get my head around what that meant to my sense of self, my identity.
By telling the story through Alexandra’s voice rather than Marc’s, another layer of subjectivity is added. Alexandra is missing. She is gone. Thus, she is not there to witness the events she narrates. The version of Marc she offers us is based on thirteen years of marriage and the extreme intimacy that entails. This is perhaps the closest any of us can get to truly knowing another person, but it is not the truth. Alexandra’s story is no more real than Marc’s rose-tinted version of her, so it’s up to the reader to work out what’s actually going on.
How well can we really know another person? How often do we even try? Perhaps we only ever look hard enough to see our own reflection. Whether you love Alexandra or you hate her, I hope the book makes you pause and wonder if it’s possible the person you lie next to every night has an entirely different narrative running through their head.
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Print Marked Items
Bell, Natasha: EXHIBIT ALEXANDRA
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Bell, Natasha EXHIBIT ALEXANDRA Crown (Adult Fiction) $26.00 3, 13 ISBN: 978-1-5247-6107-3
A husband, horrified at his beloved wife's disappearance, begins to question their entire marriage, and his
very reality, in Bell's assured debut.
Alexandra and Marc Southwood have a wonderful marriage of 13 years and two beautiful little girls,
Charlotte and Lizzie. When Alex doesn't come home one night, Marc is flummoxed. The North Yorkshire
Police aren't immediately concerned, but when she hasn't returned a day later and they uncover her bloody
clothing, Marc fears the worst. As the police investigate, they turn up shocking things that Marc never knew
about Alex, leading him to do some investigating of his own. The book is narrated entirely by Alex: she
makes it clear that what she's writing, presumably while in captivity, are guesses about Marc's actions based
on how well she knows him as well as her access to things like a recording of Marc's phone call to the
police and his credit card statement; she also gives us glimpses into the early days of their marriage.
Interspersed with Alex's narration are letters from Amelia Heldt, an old friend and performance artist in
New York who expresses an undeniable yearning for Alex. Bell paints a convincing portrait of a woman
struggling with society's tendency to put a man's needs and desires over those of women and the guilt that
accompanies a mother's longing for fulfillment outside of marriage and children. Alex is passionate and
complex, and her almost aggressive idealism can grow tiresome, but her yearning to be something "more" is
palpable, leading her to blur the lines between life and art. For readers into controversial performance art,
which Alex especially admires, and art in general, there's a lot to chew on, but even if not, the truth behind
Alex's disappearance is a doozy, and the finale is satisfying while offering plenty of food for thought. Is
Alex an unreliable narrator? Of course she is, but this is no bait and switch. Bell gives us all the clues and
dares us to follow them to the shocking end.
This smart, mirror maze of a thriller bristles with sharp edges, twisting familiar Gone Girl themes into Bell's
own intense creation.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Bell, Natasha: EXHIBIT ALEXANDRA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520735840/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bca43f17.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
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Exhibit Alexandra
Christine Tran
Booklist.
114.11 (Feb. 1, 2018): p32.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Exhibit Alexandra. By Natasha Bell. Mar. 2018.304p. Crown, $26 (9781524761073); e-book, $13.99
(9781524761097).
Marc Southwood, along with his two young daughters, is devastated when his wife, Alexandra, vanishes
during her evening commute. Marc's insistence that Alexandra is in danger is confirmed when police find
her blood-soaked belongings abandoned on a riverbank. Responding to rumors of Alexandra's marital
discontent, and questioning the absence of her passport, detectives focus suspicion on Marc. In contrast,
Alexandra's interspersed accounts of what happened support Marc's claims that the Southwoods remain
deeply in love. But their story begins to prickle with hints of resentment as Bell gradually chronicles the
couple's life together, from Alexandra's impulsive abandonment of her spot in an elite Chicago art program
to remain with Marc in York, England, to the dramas of their growing family. Furthering the growing sense
of unease, letters from Alexandra's friend Amelia, a famous performance artist, reveal Marc's desperation
for Alexandra's attention and her unsettling pathological determination to cross any lines to further her art.
A moody, gut-wrenching tale of domestic ennui, feminism, and identity, recommended for literary-thriller
devotees and book groups.--Christine Tran
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Tran, Christine. "Exhibit Alexandra." Booklist, 1 Feb. 2018, p. 32. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527771836/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=baa9f0dc.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527771836
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Exhibit Alexandra
Publishers Weekly.
265.2 (Jan. 8, 2018): p40+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Exhibit Alexandra
Natasha Bell. Crown, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-15247-6107-3
"A lot of what I'm writing almost definitely never happened. I wasn't there, obviously. I was missing." So
says Alexandra Southwood, a University of York art history lecturer who has vanished. Early on, British
author Bell signals that her provocative debut thriller--centering on Alexandra and Marc, her husband, who
refuses to stop searching for her--isn't going to be just another missing person mystery. But the full extent of
her audacity only becomes evident toward the end of this ingenious optical illusion, which may leave some
readers gasping in admiration and others angry at being played. The more the devastated Marc learns about
the woman to whom he's been married for years, all the while struggling to comfort and maintain some
semblance of normalcy for the couple's two young daughters, the more he's forced to face the stomachchurning
prospect that he may never really have known her at all. On one level a gripping page-turner and
on another a disturbing exploration of identity, art, and decency, Bell's daring performance can't be ignored.
Agent: Marilia Sawides, Peters Fraser & Dunlop (U.K.). (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Exhibit Alexandra." Publishers Weekly, 8 Jan. 2018, p. 40+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A524502963/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2ad7b6b9.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A524502963
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Bell, Natasha. Exhibit Alexandra
Lisa O'Hara
Xpress Reviews.
(Mar. 2, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Full Text:
[STAR]Bell, Natasha. Exhibit Alexandra. Crown. Mar. 2018. 320p. ISBN 9781524761073. $27; ebk. ISBN
9781524761097. THRILLER
[DEBUT] From the opening page of this debut thriller, Bell grabs readers' attention. Marc's wife Alexandra
hasn't returned from work, and he's called the police because this is so out of character for her. But
Alexandra is narrating the story--how does she know? Is she dead? Back home with her family? In the
clutches of a kidnapper? As the story of their marriage and Alexandra's disappearance is revealed, the
reader is drawn deeper into the mystery that is Alexandra until the final plot twist reveals all.
Verdict Bell's psychological thriller explores some big questions about relationships and art while being
absolutely impossible to put down. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 9/27/17.]--Lisa O'Hara, Univ.
of Manitoba Libs., Winnipeg
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
O'Hara, Lisa. "Bell, Natasha. Exhibit Alexandra." Xpress Reviews, 2 Mar. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532075555/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=79081af4.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532075555