Genevieve Marenghi: 'The comedy that I enjoy best is always entwined with darkness'
BY Maya Fernandes
16th Oct 2025
In this interview Genevieve Marenghi, author of the debut cosy crime No Oil Painting, shares her advice for writing about serious topics with humour.
'We’re all conflicted, so paint your protagonists with specific traits of light and shade that will resonate with readers.'
We caught up with Genevieve to discuss her time studying with us, the inspiration behind her debut novel and her top tips for writing complex characters.
In No Oil Painting, we follow Maureen, a bored septuagenarian who concocts a plan to steal a still life painting that is being moved from her local stately home. How did you develop Maureen as a character, and what advice would you give writers looking to make readers root for a complex, sometimes flawed, protagonist?
Maureen’s character had to be informed by plot: what on earth makes a law-abiding volunteer commit fine art theft? I needed to weave darkness and past trauma into her backstory to lend plausibility to her eve-of-life crisis. This also helps evoke reader empathy. I contrasted her acerbic interior monologue with unconditional love for her great-niece. Throw in her moggy, Pepys, and hopefully I’ve created a nuanced but likeable character. We’re all conflicted, so paint your protagonists with specific traits of light and shade that will resonate with readers.
You volunteered as a National Trust guide at Ham House, which went on to become the setting for No Oil Painting. What was it about the location that made you feel it was the perfect backdrop for this story?
Ham House is a Jacobean jewel on the Thames. It’s very special because it still contains most of its original contents. We know this because a former resident – the wily seventeenth-century Duchess of Lauderdale – kept a detailed inventory. (She also plays a key part in Maureen’s story.)
Readers enjoy being transported to unique locations, somewhere they may never have visited. And for those that have experienced the House’s magic, it’s not a place that you tire of. I also realised that, despite the National Trust being a huge British institution with over five million members, next to no contemporary fiction has been set at any of their properties.
The novel balances humour with more serious themes like grief and loneliness. How did you approach finding that tonal balance in your writing – and were there any challenges in getting it right?
The comedy that I enjoy best is always entwined with darkness. Maureen’s grief and loneliness provided powerful motivation for her carefully thought-out but unhinged plan. Her gang of fellow room guides often exchange near farcical dialogue, which provides light relief, as well as driving the plot forward. I originally made Maureen spikier but my agent at the time suggested that I soften her a little. An editor at Hodder & Stoughton also wanted more scenes of camaraderie with her accomplices. Their feedback was spot on!
From your time at the Weekend FT, you must be very used to deadlines. Do you impose similar deadlines to keep yourself on track when writing?
I find it hard not to procrastinate without a fixed deadline, but I’ve had M.E. for many years so my creativity can be hampered by fatigue and brain fog. However, one of the beauties of writing is its inherent flexibility; you can rock up to your keyboard whenever suits. In my case, usually in PJs. I feel like the Walking Dead most mornings, so veer towards Team Night Owl.
Fixed daily word counts don’t work for me. They make me itch to rearrange my bookshelves or catch up on Real Housewives. I prefer to tackle a scene or exchange of dialogue. The point is, do what feels right for you and sod everyone else!
Are there any crime novels on your ‘to be read’ pile that you’re really excited about?
Okay it’s more of a spy novel, but I’m reading Clown Town, the latest in Mick Herron’s Slough House series. Not only do his plots hurtle at breakneck speed, but I marvel at his seamless POV shifts, often multiple times within a chapter. He breaks all the writing ‘rules’ so deftly, and the deliciously obnoxious but brilliant Jackson Lamb is one of my favourite literary characters.
I’m also looking forward to immersing myself in some Outback Noir with Jane Harper’s Exiles. Otherwise, you’re always in safe hands with the queens of crime fiction – Dorothy Koomson and Val McDermid.
You studied with us on both Edit & Pitch Your Novel and Writing Fiction with Marian Keyes. How did your time with us shape your approach to writing?
Edit & Pitch Your Novel was a game changer. Not only because it honed my editing skills and taught me to finesse a query letter, but because it’s how I met my first tribe of writers. Many of us are still in regular contact today, cheerleading each other on through our highs and lending a shoulder for the lows.
Marian Keyes is one of my icons, so receiving her no-nonsense wisdom delivered with her trademark wit was utterly joyous. One of her tips that chimed was to give yourself permission to write badly; that your first attempts at a draft might be “utter crud,” but that you just keep going.
And finally, what’s next for your writing journey?
Currently, my time is taken up with promoting No Oil Painting, but I’m working on a second darker manuscript about coercive control, WhatsApp groups, a bondage affair and poisonings behind the plantation shutters of London’s leafy suburbs. I seem to have a penchant for older women behaving badly . . .
Get your hands on a copy of No Oil Painting, out now from Burton Mayers Books.
Genevieve was a student on our Edit & Pitch Your Novel course in 2021 and our Writing Fiction with Marian Keyes course in 2022. Her novel was longlisted for the inaugural Women’s Prize Discoveries Award in 2021.
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