Yeah, they're so much more fun. I always want to play the bad guy. Well, she doesn't strike you as unlikeable. She's very bewitching and she's the kind of character, the kind of person, that you feel like no-one else in the world exists when they're speaking to you. Meanwhile, we hear the story of Paul, whose parents are darling. Paul witnesses a horrible accident early on that changes who he is and the dynamic of his family. Thrust into an unfamiliar environment he is taken under the wing of the illiterate Daniel who serves as his protector from bullies, but at quite a social cost. So we come to the present. Knowing just that Paul is treated as a witness and not as an accomplice to the murder, which murder you ask, yes, I'll get to that. And he'll be getting sent to some place in the meantime until the Trial starts, and that place is where Louisa works, and also hides herself from the world. On the other hand, as soon as Louisa sees Paul returning she panics, as there are Adam's stuff lying around and she doesn't want Paul to see them and realize that Louisa loved him due to his resemblance with Adam. What does Louisa do, collect them at one place and burn that down.

Crucially, I also disliked the ending. Where I had related to the younger Karen so much, I found the older version's final actions impossible to sympathise with. Why is she hiding? Or more like WHAT is she hiding? We don't know. She has this weird ritual now and then, where she gets herself drunk and watches Adam's videos and listens to his songs and cries. Clearly he's dead, but why is she doing all of this? We don't know. Karen is ending her university years and has her future mapped out. But then she meets Biba, who opens doors to a world she's never seen before, and to the type of intense friendship that she's never experienced either. As Karen embarks on this friendship, she collects all kinds of new experiences along the way. At the start of that summer, she could never have predicted just how indelible the mark left by the friendship would turn out to be. Little did she know she's about to burn not just that but the entire place down. Taking hers and Paul's life along with it.Paul is in trouble with the police and he is going down for it, unless he reveals what happened and gives up his accomplice. After becoming the one thing you never do in a rough estate Paul is under protection and relocated where he meets Louisa. Louisa has a big secret in her past and keeps herself reserved, low key and interaction minimal, until Paul arrives. Paul reminds her of a past she would rather forget, they both have big secrets to hide however it could be the one thing that brings them together or puts them both at risk.

The Poison Tree is autobiographical with respect to its setting—like Karen and Biba, I turned twenty-one in the summer of 1997 and remember it like it was yesterday, and I was living in Highgate at the time. This was simply because I was daunted by the task of writing my first novel; there were so many unknowns that I wanted to root the action in a time and place I could be confident about describing. In terms of character, I probably resemble Karen the most; like her, I was a studious teenager, and I have been that girl who hides in a corner at the party, overawed and tongue-tied, more times than I care to remember! That said, Karen is more naïve than I have ever been, something I think we can attribute to her sheltered, provincial adolescence and the fact that she is, due to her precocity, always an academic year ahead of her classmates. As for Biba, while I would love her ability to beguile (and indeed her extensive wardrobe), she is definitely drawn from friends and acquaintances rather than my own experience.Is any part of this novel autobiographical, or is it wholly imagined? Would you say that you were—or are—more like Karen or Biba? At one point in the novel, Karen turns the tables on Alison Larch, a television journalist she suspects of investigating Rex, and interrogates her on her current roster of work. In what other ways did you draw upon your own experiences as a journalist? I loved the beautifully descriptive and poetic style of the narrative and the way it begins in the present and slowly reveals everything that has led up to this moment culminating with its twist at the end (although I must admit, I did see this coming a couple of chapters or so beforehand). Let's start from beginning. Paul and Louisa have their own past. Louisa likes a guy named Adam Glasslake, and that guy is basically her everything even though he acts all mysterious sometimes without even giving any valid reason why.