In March 2025, Diana Reid, author of Love and Virtue, released her third novel, Signs of Damage. It follows the Kelly family on their idyllic French holiday, which is interrupted when Cass, their thirteen-year-old guest, goes missing. She is found alive and well several hours later, and those present dismiss the incident as a harmless blip. Sixteen years later, at a funeral for a member of the Kelly family, Cass collapses. As the past and the present begin to collide, secrets are brought to light and old doubts creep in. What really happened all those years ago, and could it reveal what is wrong with Cass now?

Set between two timelines, each with their own mystery, the novel investigates the difference between trying to explain other people and actually understanding them. I had the wonderful opportunity to ask Diana Reid some questions about this new book and her writing career.

Brooke Corkhill: I am such a fan of Signs of Damage! The ‘summer noir’ juxtaposition between dark events and idyllic settings is a powerful, eerie backdrop for the novel. Did you do any specific prep work to build this? What were your sources of inspiration?

Diana Reid: Thank you! My inspiration was novels and films that I love — all of which feature the eruption of violence in idyllic settings. It was only when I was halfway through writing Signs of Damage that I realised there was a term for it: summer noir. Those texts include the novels Swimming Home (Deborah Levy), Never Mind (Edward St Aubyn) and the French film The Swimming Pool, as well as Luca Guadanigno’s more recent remake, A Bigger Splash. 

In terms of specific prep, I didn’t actually go to the south of France, which I regret. (It’s subsequently been pointed out to me that I could’ve had a tax-deductible holiday!) But I did a lot of research online: there is a specific villa on Booking.com which is where I imagine the Kelly family spent their holiday. 

BC: The nuanced ensemble cast was so engaging to read! How did you create each character? Did you conceptualise their dynamics before their individual personalities?

DR: I never conceive of characters in isolation: the first germ of an idea is always a relationship between two people or groups of people. In this case, I thought about a wealthy family on an idyllic holiday with a few outsiders or ‘guests’ orbiting around them. Specifically, I started with the patriarch, Bruce Kelly, and his oldest friend, Harry: a single gay man. Thinking about characters in terms of dynamics — especially of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ — is always interesting to me because it enables you to explore their insecurities. Character, then, is not just about the surface-level of how people appear socially, but also about interiority; what they’re embarrassed by, what they’re trying to obscure, how they’d like to appear.

BC: The past and present timelines, each containing their own mystery, weave in and out of different perspectives. Did this pose some plotting challenges? Did you enjoy the process, particularly as it differs from the structure of your first two novels?

DR: ‘Enjoyed’ would be putting it too highly but I definitely found the process rewarding. Inspiration, for me, lives at the outer edge of my comfort zone. I never want to go to the desk and mechanically repeat what I’ve done before. I always want to feel a bit of fear: to wonder whether I can pull it off. So this more complicated narrative was stressful initially because, as you say, I’d never done it before and it certainly took a lot of wrangling. But then it’s very rewarding when you prove to yourself that you can do it. 

And it was also rewarding — not just in the ‘craft’ sense of expanding my skills as a writer — but also artistically, because I think this structure suits the story. In Signs of Damage, the characters are trying to understand the significance of a holiday they all shared 16 years ago. The events of that holiday are interwoven with the present-day. The reader, then, is undergoing the same process as the characters: they’re dipping in and out of the past, trying to identify patterns and draw connections between events. 

BC: What did you want to explore around the themes of voice and storytelling, particularly as you feature competing narrative voices in this book?

DR: Signs of Damage is a novel about storytelling — about the stories we tell ourselves in order to make sense of the world around us. So I always knew it wouldn’t have an omniscient narrator. Instead, I wanted to emphasise the limitations of an individual’s perspective: the impossibility of ever seeing the whole story. The bulk of the narrative is told in several competing perspectives in the third person, which allows the reader to decide who they believe. Then it’s framed (in a prologue and an epilogue) by one character’s first-person perspective. This was to deliberately frustrate the reader. I wanted to cast doubt on the “truth” of the whole story. Is it, perhaps, a projection told by one character? Does that matter? Does this story — does any story — need to be true to have emotional resonance? 

BC: Your Guardian article, “The trauma plot: how did culture get addicted to tragic backstories?” is a powerful extension of your novel. I was struck by your question “why do we keep looking to trauma as shorthand to better understand character, when it invariably proves such an unsatisfactory tool, one that flattens and obscures where we rely on it to clarify and complicate?” Do you have any theories about this? What made you want to explore and subvert the trauma plot?

DR: No doubt the ‘trauma plot’ has gained so much cultural purchase because it is a useful tool for understanding other people. Most people are shaped, in some capacity, by negative experiences and learning about these experiences can provide deep psychological insight. However, if I have a theory, it’s that being able to tell our own story about our lives — to decide for ourselves the significance of certain events, be they positive or negative — is the cornerstone of autonomy. This was also a big theme in my first book, Love & Virtue, so it’s clearly a preoccupation of mine. I see curiosity about people’s core wounds or formative traumas as very natural — even, empathetic. But I’m interested in the point at which that curiosity becomes a fixation. To my mind, that shift occurs when we stop listening to someone else’s story and start imposing our own, taking the events of their life and fitting them into narratives that we’re familiar with, like the trauma plot.

BC: Do you practice any other art besides writing? If so, does that art ever tie into your writing, or is it entirely separate?

DR: It’s hardly an art because I have no flair with it, but I do love to cook. I think of it almost as an antidote to writing. When you’ve spent a whole day labouring over words that you might hate and delete in the morning, it’s nice to get to dinner time and ‘create’ something to completion. 

BC: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

DR: I always wanted to be an actor. Writing for theatre was actually my first experience of creative writing: I wrote plays and sketches at university. In fact, I took a gap year after university and deferred a graduate job in corporate law to try to make a career in theatre work. That was in 2020 so lockdown put an end to those plans and I wrote Love & Virtue instead. I realised then that a lot of what I loved about acting (wondering what it’s like to be someone else; the rhythm of good dialogue, etc.) could be found in fiction. 

BC: If you could give any advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?

DR: Don’t worry about whether it’s any good! If you just write it, you can always go back and edit it later. But if you let perfectionism or the fear of what other people might think paralyse you, then you’ll never write anything.

Signs of Damage is out now and certainly worth a read, if you’re looking for a suspenseful, nuanced thriller.