PAUL TREMBLAY

The American horror author on his emotional new infection novel

- Rosie Fletcher

IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY BIGGEST FEARS that I would live to see the end of everything,” says Paul Tremblay, speaking to SFX from his Massachusetts home in the middle of lockdown. It’s a singularly peculiar time and a peculiar interview for him to give, considering that his latest novel, Survivor Song, is set during the outbreak of a virulent and deadly virus. Conceived in the summer of 2018 and completed in October 2019, it’s a prescient novel which talks about the strain put on the medical staff, hospital overcrowding, and insufficient PPE.

Tremblay has always been preoccupied with the apocalypse: you can see this theme appear time and again in his short stories, and in his last novel, The Cabin At The End Of The World. “I think part of it comes from growing up in the ’80s, where my biggest fear was dying from nuclear war,” he explains. “I think that’s why the first few weeks of the quarantine was really hard to deal with: this book I just wrote, and one of my biggest fears, is happening.”

While it deals with an outbreak, Survivor Song was inspired by a different horror staple, though. “[Earlier book] Head Full Of Ghosts plays with the trope of exorcism and