\u201cIt was the quiet before the storm of publication,\u201d Taylor says. \u201cThen it snowballed, and we ended up with nine meetings booked across different production companies, and the last one was three days before I gave birth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taylor, who lives in Brunswick, in Melbourne\u2019s inner north, found herself 39 weeks pregnant, juggling Zoom calls at all hours, watching her inbox ping with new pitches from different production companies. For Taylor, it offered comfort that her story, not yet on the shelves, was resonating with readers.<\/p>\n
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Novelist Amy Taylor has sold the screen rights to her novels The Ruins and Search History.Credit: Celeste Holm<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the best experience ever, especially in that period right before publication,\u201d Taylor says. \u201cI was in the stage where it\u2019s just radio silence in a way. So to be able to go on these calls with production companies and just have them say lovely things to me was such a treat in that period.\u201d<\/p>\n
The meetings and emails resumed a few days after Teddy was born before the rights went to Oscar-nominees Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman; Mission: Impossible \u2013 Dead Reckoning) and Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice; A Different Man), who will produce and star as the lead couple \u2013 freshly unemployed Emma and academic Julian \u2013 in the Miramax adaptation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was trying very hard to be cool for the first meeting. They introduced themselves and started talking, and I remember glancing at myself in the corner of the screen \u2013 my face was just like \u2026 And I thought I was being really cool,\u201d Taylor laughs.<\/p>\n
What convinced her ultimately wasn\u2019t the wattage, but their love for the novel. \u201cI was drawn to the genuine passion from everyone involved,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I got to hear from Vanessa and Sebastian as well about their connections to the work, which was very generous of them and something I really appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not difficult to see what drew them in (think Netflix\u2019s 2021 adaptation of Elena Ferrante\u2019s The Lost Daughter<\/a>, starring Olivia Colman, for the screen aesthetic). Ruins is a page-turner, glistening with the sweat, sunshine and spanakopita of Greece. Emma and Julian arrive in Athens to house-sit for a friend \u2013 and to recalibrate and reconnect \u2013 but tensions simmer, particularly over whether they want to try for a child. Meeting Lena, a charismatic local, tips the trip into disarray. The story resists postcard Greece \u2013 whitewashed villages and endless blue seas \u2013 in favour of something claustrophobic, charged and intimate. Relationships teeter on a knife-edge, complicated by class, history, and desire.<\/p>\n Vanessa Kirby is slated to play Emma in the film adaptation of The Ruins.Credit: AP<\/p>\n \u201cAthens has such a complex, turbulent history, and even in more recent times, with economic turbulence. It\u2019s not an easy place to live, and it\u2019s not an easy place to holiday even. I thought that atmosphere would make for a good setting for a novel where there was already an undertone of escalation of pressure,\u201d Taylor says.<\/p>\n Taylor first visited Athens in 2019. While many visitors breeze past on their way to island getaways, she was drawn to the layers of history. She returned for research trips, notebook in hand, but wrote most of the novel from Melbourne, where she moved in 2020, after growing up in Perth.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just absorbing as much as I could, as quickly as I could and walking around the streets so that when I came home, I could look at my Google Maps and recall where that was and what that looked like, so I could carry these characters through the city.\u201d<\/p>\n Greek mythology subtly shapes the book\u2019s architecture. Its three-act arc nods to classical drama: a chorus-like introduction, a rising complication, the \u201chand of God\u201d \u2013 a plot device where an unsolvable problem resolves unexpectedly \u2013 and the ever-present shadow of Medea, whose mythological influence threads through the story.<\/p>\n \u2018I was trying very hard to be cool for the first meeting.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"Vanessa](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/c38d123e89cb5ac45230e46b1eca39bdfedea81b.jpeg\")
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