Bella Mackie: Americans romanticise posh Brits

Bella Mackie pictured in 2023 at the Women's Prize for Fiction Awards

As the age-old saying goes, if it ain't broke don't fix it - which is something author Bella Mackie has certainly stuck by.

After the success of her debut novel How To Kill Your Family, she is back with another deep dive into the lives of the super-rich.

What A Way To Go is both a dark and humorous look at wealth, class and society's fascination with people's deaths.

Mackie, 41, says her inspiration for the novel came from the way "British people are obsessed with class" but not really with money.

Two of the central narrators in the book - millionaire Anthony Wistern and his wife Olivia - are in constant conflict, with Anthony's working-class upbringing often clashing with Olivia's upper class roots.

'Ghost citizens'

"The British society mechanism never seems to change and it doesn't allow people to move up or down," Mackie tells the BBC.

"We understand it in a weirdly unspoken way that other countries don't."

It is easy to imagine these two characters as real-life individuals.

Anthony seems like someone who could appear as one of the millionaire investors on Dragon's Den, whilst in the book itself, Olivia is referenced as someone who frequents the pages of glossy high society magazine Tatler.

Mackie herself has spoken about her obsession with these publications when she was growing up, and how they have shaped her interest in the lives of the upper classes - or as she calls them "ghost citizens".

"We can never fully see them, it's kind of a new phenomenon because there have always been super-rich people who can do whatever they want, but there is a new kind of 1%," she says.

"They can get away with whatever they want because they're not really conforming to the same rules or standards as everyone else".

Mackie says "because we can't see [them], I've tried to imagine it".

Bella Mackie with her husband Greg James, who hosts the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show

Another central theme of the book is its true-crime element, as a local citizen journalist, or sleuther, investigates whether Anthony Wistern's death should be considered murder.

Mackie, who herself is a journalist who has worked for The Guardian and Vice, says this storyline was inspired by the case of Nicola Bulley.

Bulley disappeared in a small Lancashire village in 2023, promoting social media users to show up, speculating that she had been murdered.

A coroner later ruled that her death was accidental.

The app TikTok was one of the biggest drivers of interest in the case.

"I was just aghast at what was happening, the misinformation about her was just ridiculous," Mackie says.

"People seem to have stepped over boundaries that previously they might not have crossed.

"Contacting someone's family or accusing a victim of being involved - maybe without the internet you wouldn't think these were acceptable things to do," she adds.

From novel to Netflix

Mackie's debut novel, How to Kill Your Family, is currently being adapted by Netflix into an eight-part series.

The book, which sold more than a million copies, sees protagonist Grace take revenge on her billionaire dad and the wealthy family members who rejected her.

After the success of the film Saltburn, which takes a playful, if slightly absurd look at the British upper classes, Mackie says she is intrigued to see how her 2021 bestseller is written for the small screen.

"The conversation [around Saltburn] was more about the class structures in the film than the plot," she says.

"I think Americans saw that in the way they love Downton Abbey, they probably thought 'wow that house is beautiful, what an amazing life'.

"I wonder whether they fully understood the darkness of it."

She adds that there is definitely "a romanticisation of posh British people from Americans".

'Keep it authentic'

Mackie says "it would be a shame" if the adaption of her book was tailored to an American audience as "a lot of the humour is quite British".

The author hasn't had any involvement in the screenwriting process, so says she will be "watching along for the first time with everyone else".

She points to Netflix shows like Sex Education, which "felt British, but not fully - it felt like it could have been [set] anywhere".

But despite not being involved in the screenwriting process, she says she is confident in the abilities of production company Sid Gentle Films, who were also behind the hugely successful Killing Eve.

"The writers are British and Irish so they'll probably try and keep it as [authentic] as possible.

"And I think that works for other audiences who are looking at us and thinking what a ridiculous country we are" she adds.