Anna North on killing Sophie Stark

"There was a moment where I thought maybe she could just disappear, become a mystery, but then I realised for the story to work and the characters to make sense she had to die."

North is the author of one of this summer's most original books, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. There's no spoiler alert needed, says North, "The title does give it away."

Stark is a young indie filmmaker, misfit, genius, manipulator, making films about the people around her, for better and for worse. We see her rise from a high school outcast to an acclaimed artist, leaving a trail of destruction and betrayal along the way.

And we do see her, that's North's kicker here. We never hear from Stark herself, as the story is told from six varying perspectives of those around her. Allison, lover, actress, topic of her second movie. Robbie, her brother and camera guy, the person who thought he knew her best. Jacob, her eventual husband. Daniel, the boy she was obsessed with, the topic of her first film. A few others, a film reviewer, a producer. How much of our lives are actually just the perceptions of others?

"The most interesting thing about putting the book together," says North, "was the point of view aspect of it. Discovering that was quite freeing for me.

"I spent about a year of working on the book, a long time not really capturing Sophie at all, but I reached a point where I realised I could write from all these point of views, that's when it got going.

"Suddenly I was invested in each of the narrators as a character, not just someone who could speak of Sophie, I got right into their motivations and backstories and lives."

North says when she was working on her first novel America Pacifica, a dystopian quest in a new ice age, she had characters that would come in and out for brief periods and tell their stories.

"I wanted to experiment, in a way, with what might happen if these characters became part of the larger whole and told the story."

North is a rare novelist in that she also has a full-time writing job, working as a staff editor in the opinions section of the New York Times. She writes about reproductive rights, science and health, California.

"I'm originally from Los Angeles, I've lived here for about six years now, I feel at home in New York but I get still get homesick, still feel like a transplant. I go back to California and being able to look out the window and see where the sun is, it's so different."

North has always been writing in some form.

"Like a lot of fiction writers I've been writing stories forever. When I was little, I would dictate stories to my mum and my aunt before I could even put pen to paper myself."

After studying English and literature at Stanford University in San Francisco, North spent two years in Iowa at the Writers Workshop, graduating in 2009 and her work has appeared on Jezebel and BuzzFeed. She lives in Brooklyn, is recently married, and has a cat.

Does she, like Sophie Stark, ever draw on anything from her own life, for her art?

"Other people have lives much more interesting than mine," she says.

Would she and Stark be friends?

"She's not an easy person to be close to," North says.

"Being close to her has bad consequences for some people, and it's easy to focus on the bad things that happen, but for some characters there are good consequences.

"I would hope if she were real she would be friends with me but I would have to be careful."

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, by Anna North. Hachette. $29.99.