What is the title of your latest release?
THE SPECTACLE
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
THE SPECTACLE is a social thriller about a powerful art dealer and his descent into the underworld. Nobody knows quite who Rudolph Sullivan is, or how he ascended so quickly to the glittering top of New York’s gallery scene. When struggling assistant Ingrid meets the charismatic dealer at a party, she falls fast - Rudolph offers her a seductive taste of luxury and an escape from her humdrum existence.
But Rudolph is hiding much more than his facade lets on. With insatiable tastes and a need to keep up appearances, his debts mount rapidly, and he turns to double dealing to stay afloat. As his adversaries close in, Rudolph realizes his fall from grace could cost him more than his reputation. Panicking, paranoid, and willing to sacrifice anyone to maintain his precarious foothold, he plans his most audacious gambit yet - and Ingrid is at the center of it.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
New York has a mystery that felt intrinsic to the book: a current of gritty instability, and an atmosphere of constant, almost self-destructive socializing. In many ways it felt like the center of America and also the Trump origin story. I was thinking about all these things in relation to the idea of a conman. It appeared to me as a city of paradox – dreams, beautiful art, aspiration, but also a real brutality in the way people talked about money all the time and could be extremely blunt. People gave no shits and were out for themselves in a way I didn’t really see in other places.
In my early twenties, I experienced a lot of the same things that THE SPECTACLE’s protagonist Ingrid did. I was working in New York, struggling to make a living, and really intimidated by the money, power and ambition I saw among striving art people. Their clients seemed to live beyond a veil. The foreignness of those lives fascinated me. I also had a lot of self-pity, like I thought my life was so awful. So I started to pour out my heart in little fragments – conversations, parties, surprises or jokes. Those loose bits took on their own identity.
Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
I would definitely hang out with Ingrid, the female protagonist in The Spectacle. Reading the book now, she seems to have a capacity for hope and excitement that is one of the wonderful things about youth. There is a looseness, a malleability and a willingness to change, whereas older characters – older people – are often more stuck in their ways. Would I hang out with Rudolph? Maybe not. He’s a manipulative person with a lot of inner darkness.
What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Rudolph: Slick, damaged, egotistical.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
How to write.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I edit continuously throughout. I’m an obsessive editor, and I doubt myself. I will go 20, 30 times through the same passage or sentence. It’s something I tried to do less of in my second book, actually, because it was difficult to progress, and you can lose the original thought or roundness. So I’ve been writing by hand now. There is a pleasure and instinct in handwriting that I love – your ear begins to naturally pick up the sound of a phrase with greater brevity. But the hand needs to develop a stronger musculature.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Chocolate.
Describe your writing space/office!
I have a little desk in a room with blue wallpaper.
Who is an author you admire?
Edgar Allen Poe. He approached each story with a symbolic method, submerging the mood he wanted to create in visual imagery. The horror in his stories comes from this combination of a mathematical precision with very vivid, emotional descriptions of animals and people and places. There’s a luxurious feeling to them, like you want to swim in his houses, even though they are so frightening.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Moby Dick by Hermann Melville. It’s a metaphysical journey into the soul as well as an adventure book. Melville was nuts and I love that about him. He brings you along for the ride. He can go from dark Biblical prophecies to an ecstatic scene of Ishmael covered in whale sperm in two seconds. It puts a fire into me as a reader.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was at home with my family for Christmas. My agent called. I was overjoyed.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I read a lot of biographies, poetry, translated fiction and also diaries. Recently I have been reading a lot of occult texts and 1960s confessional poetry by New England writers like Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton. Reading is like plunging into a labyrinth, I like to gather up new threads in the tunnels along the way.
What’s your favorite movie?
Queen Margot with Isabelle Adjani. It’s about the war between the French Catholics and Huguenots. Queen Margot was a romantic woman who carried her lover’s heart in a jar for the rest of her life after he was executed. Movies about religious battles are fascinating – the concept of being willing to die for one’s faith – a foreign concept to the Western world today.
What is your favorite season?
Fall.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Gifts.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I just got into Servant on Apple TV, directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It’s a slow burn but the shadowy sets, eerie humor, and the weirdness of it all really attracts me. It centers around a nanny taking care of an artificial doll.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Burgers.
What do you do when you have free time?
Read, write.
What can readers expect from you next?
A gothic novel about a woman investigating her dead aunt’s abandoned Cape Cod house.
A Novel
A powerful art dealer who presents a convincing portrait of international success pulls an idealistic young gallery assistant into his web of lies. This sharp, edgy social thriller explores the price of ambition in the decadent underbelly of the high-end art world.
Nobody knows quite who Rudolph Sullivan is, or how he ascended so quickly to the glittering top of New York’s art scene. When aspiring artist and struggling gallery assistant Ingrid meets the charismatic dealer at a party, she falls fast—Rudolph offers her a seductive taste of luxury and an escape from her humdrum existence.
But Rudolph is hiding much more than his dazzling facade lets on. With insatiable tastes and a need to keep up appearances, his debts mount rapidly, and he turns to double dealing to stay afloat. As his adversaries close in, Rudolph realizes his fall from grace could cost him more than his reputation. Panicking, paranoid, and willing to sacrifice anyone to maintain his precarious foothold, he plans his most audacious gambit yet—and Ingrid is at the center of it.
Thriller Political | Mystery | Literature and Fiction Literary [Union Square & Co., On Sale: July 8, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9781454960485 / eISBN: 9781454960492]
Anna Barrington has worked in galleries and auction houses in the art world for over five years. She received an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a BA from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Originally from Atlanta, she currently lives in London, where she worked at a leading international art gallery. This is her first novel.
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