All Interviews

YA FictionYA

Kody Keplinger

For those who don’t spend much time around high schoolers, “Duff” is short for “designated ugly fat friend”—what über-hot Wesley Rush calls Bianca Piper as compared to her two beautiful best friends. But in a moment of lapsed judgment, Bianca kisses Wesley, and then the two start surreptitiously hooking up—an escape for Bianca from conflict at home.

Although The Duff contains steamy scenes and a love triangle sure to keep the pages turning, author Kody Keplinger addresses more serious themes, too: body image, alcoholism and the sacrifices of friendship. She also has a knack for writing in an authentic teen voice.

No wonder, considering she wrote The Duff when she was 17 years old. (She is now a 19-year-old student at Ithaca College.)

Keplinger’s youth piqued our interest in this much buzzed-about teen novel, but the quality of her writing compelled us to keep reading and ask the author a few questions.

Bianca eventually comes to the realization that every girl feels like a “label” at some point: prude, tease, ditz, Duff, etc. Do you think this is true?
Oh, yes, I definitely think so. I have never met a girl who didn’t feel labeled as something, even if the label was only in her head. Sometimes there are multiple labels—I’ve felt like the “Duff” so many times, but on top of that I’ve felt like the “party pooper” or the “drama queen,” too. Both because I was called these things and because, at other times, I just convinced myself it was true. I think every girl has been there. Sometimes others label us, and sometimes we label ourselves. It’s sad and frustrating, but I think that’s one thing we all have in common.

A high point in the story is when Bianca and her friends start referring to themselves as Duffs in casual conversation.
I’m a big fan of that scene myself, because it’s something my friends and I actually do now. One of us will say, “Looks like I’m the Duff tonight, but next week, you better let me have the spotlight.” It’s a joke, and having the word reclaimed and reused in a non-hurtful way is so empowering.

I think it’s important for girls to reclaim these labels and turn them into something else for many reasons. One is that by reclaiming the word, it makes it harder for others to use it in a cruel way. “Drama Queen” is a label that was originally meant to be hurtful. Meant for a girl who starts too much drama or is overdramatic. Now, I hear girls use it in other ways, and many girls admit to being “drama queens.” Now it’s a weak insult, so I feel like the phrase has really been reclaimed.

If we take them back for ourselves, the words can’t be used to hurt us anymore. The labels may never go away, but we can change their meanings.

Bianca comes to terms with her various relationships as she’s reading Wuthering Heights. Are teens today interested in classics as well as contemporary YA?
You know, I didn’t even consider that as I was writing The Duff. When I wrote the book, it was for fun, with no idea that it would wind up getting published. But all throughout high school, I was obsessed with the classics. Particularly anything by Jane Austen. So allusions to classics in contemporary fiction always made me smile.

I was taking AP Lit when I wrote The Duff and in that class we read both The Scarlet Letter and Wuthering Heights. I’d read both before, but they meant so much more to me at 17 than they had when I first read them at 14. I worked both of them into The Duff because, if I was reading these books and finally understanding them as a senior, I figured Bianca may be, too.

Also, I’m seeing so many YA books out there right now with allusions to classics. Even Twilight has some classic lit references, so I think some of these famous stories that are commonly read in high school are prime material for the characters in—and readers of—young adult literature to relate to.

One of the major plot points in the novel is a love triangle. Did you know from the beginning who Bianca would end up with? Do you think she made the right choice?
I absolutely did not know who Bianca would end up with. I wrote The Duff without any sort of outline or plan. At first, I just knew that I wanted to have an “enemies with benefits” relationship. I knew that my “Duff” character would be tough and cynical. I hadn’t even planned on a love triangle forming, but my characters surprised me. I wrote blindly, but by the time I was halfway into the book, I knew who Bianca had to choose. Her choice didn’t really shock me—it shocked me more that I hadn’t realized from page one who she would have to choose. Do I think she made the right choice? Absolutely, and I hope readers will agree. (Though, I admit, I do love the other boy involved.)

When did you start working on The Duff? Was it difficult to balance writing with being a full-time student?
I started writing The Duff in January of 2009, when I was halfway through my senior year of high school. Honestly, I didn’t see writing as a challenge with being a student. Probably because I was always writing. I’ve been writing since I can remember—for fun more than anything—so I just knew how to make time for it. Add that in with not having cable or internet at home, and writing became my chief form of entertainment. I did school work, and then spent the rest of my time writing. Usually, I’d write while watching TV—one of our five channels—so I had some background noise. That’s how I do homework, too. So I can honestly say that about half of The Duff was written while I was on my living room floor watching “Gossip Girl.”

Do you think teens are more inclined to read books written by their peers?
You know, I really don’t know. A lot of books I read as a teenager, I had no idea how old the author was. The only book I ever read already knowing the author had been a teen when she wrote it was The Outsiders, and that was a classic in its own right already. Had I known of other teen authors at the time—I say at the time because now I just read everything that comes into my path—I might have jumped on it. But during high school, I didn’t ever look up or see the need to look up an author’s age.

In the end it’s going to depend on how much a reader actually cares about what they are reading. Some readers are the types to research books online or in the library and find out facts like that—I was never one. I just took recommendations from my librarian, and usually info on the author never came up. I think in some cases teens will be more likely to read books by other teens, but in a lot of cases, a teenager may not even know the author is a teenager unless they read the “About the Author.” Everyone is different on how they decide what to read, I think.

Are there any other books or authors that inspired your writing?
I think I was most inspired by Sarah Dessen and Judy Blume. Blume’s honesty and Dessen’s prose were always things I loved. But I drew a lot of inspiration from television and movies, too. I don’t know if I ever would have written The Duff had I not watched “Gossip Girl” obsessively during my senior year—and, um, still. There are a few references to the “Gossip Girl” TV show within the book, even, because it captivated me so much. I knew I wanted to write something that conveyed the tension and chemistry some of those characters had.

I’m reading so much more now, and I continually draw inspiration from new things. Books that make me go “Whoa, I want to know how they did that!” Elizabeth Scott, Simone Elkeles, Stephanie Kuehnert, Carolyn Mackler and Lauren Oliver have really inspired me as of late. I’m reading their books obsessively and hoping that one day my writing will be as enthralling.

What are you working on now?
I’m working on a few things! I find my problem is that I have too many ideas and not enough time to write them—which is actually saying something because I do tend to write first drafts pretty fast. But I’ll have another book out in Fall 2011. It hasn’t been titled yet, and I don’t want to give anything away, but it takes place in the same town that The Duff took place in, as many of my newer projects do. I just can’t seem to leave Hamilton High School behind.

For those who don’t spend much time around high schoolers, “Duff” is short for “designated ugly fat friend”—what über-hot Wesley Rush calls Bianca Piper as compared to her two beautiful best friends. But in a moment of lapsed judgment, Bianca kisses Wesley, and then the…

Kate Braestrup

Memoirist and chaplain Kate Braestrup is the author of Here If You Need Me, a beloved memoir about losing a loved one and life after tragedy: Braestrup was a young mother of four when her husband, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident.

Marriage and Other Acts of Charity, her second memoir, is another BookPage favorite; when it came out in January, reviewer Linda Stankard called it a “richly enlightening first-person narrative . . . And what a story it is!”

In a feature exclusive to BookPageXTRA, Braestrup answers questions about her favorite memoirs, the popularity of the genre and Beginner’s Grace, her new book out in November.

What qualities do you believe make a successful memoir?
The easiest answer is that interesting lives make for interesting memoirs, but that isn’t really true. When bad things happen to good writers, any writer can recognize a story even in the midst of her suffering, and the temptation is to write the book too soon. Writing about one’s unusual, bizarre or traumatic experience may be therapeutic, but it won’t necessarily yield a work that satisfies a reader.

In a memoir (as in any other form of creative literature) the task of the writer is to tell an individual tale with such precision, clarity and specificity that the reader can experience the universal through it. A memoir is, by definition, “about me,” but the best memoirs succeed by being about us.

What are your favorite memoirs?
I first read Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals and Birds, Beasts and Relatives when I was nine. He combined a passion for animals and the natural world with an obvious affection for the rich (and funny!) possibilities of the English language, and I found his books irresistible. Hugues de Montalembert’s 2009 Invisible is a wonder: It is the brief, spare, compelling story of an artist attacked in a random crime and permanently blinded: de Montalembert’s story is, in itself, sufficiently sensational but was, thankfully, written by one who allowed time to pass before he shared it.

What is it about writing memoirs that you find compelling? Your first book, the novel Onion, was followed by two memoirs. Do you think you’ll ever return to writing fiction?
My first memoir, Here If You Need Me, is subtitled “A True Story,” but in it, a reader will not be told all the facts of my life. No genealogical data, no date or place of birth, few of the sorts of hard facts considered obligatory in an autobiography. The fascinating challenge of a memoir lies in the form’s demand for complete honesty without complete, exhaustive (and exhausting!) detail.

Oddly enough, it’s easy to describe evil in a novel. Even really outrageous evil strikes the modern reader as entirely believable. It is genuine virtue that seems to us implausible, and thus requires an explicit assertion of factuality: “Yes,” I find myself saying. “People really are generous, brave, routinely compassionate!”

I don’t come across a lot of genuine evil in my personal life, which is the only life I am authorized to really thoroughly exploit. I see the deluded, ignorant and pathetic at times, but seldom the wicked. When writing fiction, I don’t have to stick to real life: In fiction, one is allowed and even encouraged to lie as lavishly as the tale demands, which can be a great deal of fun even if, in the end, the untrue story asserts its own, dour demand for both truthfulness and careful editing. So I’m looking forward to getting back to fiction once I’ve finished with the present set of projects.

Why do you think it is so fascinating to read about other people’s relationships?
We’re all a bunch of voyeurs and gossips . . . or perhaps I should say that we are instinctively driven to try to extract wisdom from the successes and failures of others. In the dark, Darwinian struggles we call our “relationships,” the genes of the nosy must surely prevail over those of the uninquisitive. How inefficient would it be, after all, if every single soul was required to re-invent every single emotional wheel? We construct what we know of life and love not only from our relatives and friends, but from the grander tribulations of Abraham and Sarah, Bill and Hilary or—what the heck—from Brangelina.

Has the process of writing about your own life, relationships and beliefs changed the way you think about any of them?
My husband, a teacher for many years, claims you always teach best what you need to learn most. If nothing else, writing compels the formal organization, composition and consideration of ideas that might otherwise disguise themselves prettily as my personal intuition or unique cleverness. Pinned and humbled on the page, these are either revealed as half-baked foolishness or as the same reasonable conclusions that other human souls have arrived at, again and again, since the days when we were scratching in the dust with sticks. As a reader, I love the feeling I get when a familiar but elusive thought has been named, at last, by an author, and my favorite comments from readers describe the same communion.

Both of your memoirs are as much about the Maine game wardens you work with as about yourself. What have been the wardens’ reactions to being written about?
They have been very encouraging and generous all the way around. I think some good things have happened as a result of my writing: More people now know and understand what game wardens do, and are moved to express gratitude when they encounter a warden in the woods or—quite often—in the grocery store or diner! Since law enforcement officers often feel misunderstood and unappreciated by the communities they serve, this has been a good and healthy thing. The hardest part of having an author for a chaplain is simply that my responsibilities to my publisher and readers take me away from Maine, so I am 'Not Here If You Need Me' more often than before.

Tell us about your new book, Beginner’s Grace, out in November. What’s it about? Why did you decide to write it?
Beginner’s Grace was first imagined as a practical guide to prayer for people who were drawn to the idea of prayer, but didn’t really know how to go about doing it. As I worked on the book, however, I realized that the first question I had to answer (for myself, if for no one else) was “why pray at all? What’s the point?” Funnily enough, I realized that I had never been given an adequate answer to this question. I grew up in a secular family that did not pray, and went to Seminary with people who presumed I already knew not only why and how, but what to expect in the way of an answer. Beginner’s Grace turned out to be a much more interesting book than the one I thought I was going to write! It’s still a practical guide to prayer (theory is fine, but I need action!) but it also offers anecdotes, jokes and meditations that illustrate why and how a sane, reasonably rational, 21st century person can include the ancient practice of prayer in her life.

Author photo by Kelly Campbell.

Memoirist and chaplain Kate Braestrup is the author of Here If You Need Me, a beloved memoir about losing a loved one and life after tragedy: Braestrup was a young mother of four when her husband, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a…

Fiction

Jonathan Franzen

Nine years have passed since the publication of Jonathan Franzen’s monumental novel The Corrections. That book, a National Book Award winner, remains one of the best and most popular American works of literary fiction of this new century. And it casts a long shadow over any piece of fiction Franzen subsequently chooses to write.

“The disorientations of going from relative obscurity to relative well-knownness were obviously daunting,” the author acknowledges during a call to his home in Santa Cruz, California. Franzen “got involved with a Santa Cruz girl,” the writer Kathy Chetkovich. As a result, each year the pair spend a month in the winter and most of the summer on the West Coast. In New York, Franzen writes in a small, sparsely furnished studio apartment. In Santa Cruz, while school is out of session, UC Santa Cruz offered him office space.

“I have the kind of nature that needs to prove that it wasn’t any fluke, that I can do it again.”

Addressing the personal impact of the success of The Corrections, Franzen says, “I have the kind of nature that needs to prove that it wasn’t any fluke, that I can do it again. So the pressure from the outside was combined with an enormous internal pressure.”

The pressure has served Franzen extremely well. His new novel, Freedom, is different from The Corrections but is, in its own way, as good as its predecessor. The novel concerns the travails of the Berglunds, a seemingly perfect, progressive, middle-class family whose lives fall apart shortly after 9/11.

Freedom is a sort of contemporary epic, part tragedy and part comedy, whose basic story is swiftly outlined in the novel’s pitch-perfect opening section, “Good Neighbors,” part of which appeared in the New Yorker. There we meet the young Berglunds, early gentrifiers of the Ramsey Hill section of St. Paul, Minnesota. Patty, a former college basketball star, is a self-deprecating, “sunny carrier of sociocultural pollen,” so devoted to parenting her children Jessica and Joey as to excite envy among her neighbors. Walter, a “generous and smiling” young lawyer who rides a commuter bike to work and spends weekends rehabbing the family’s Victorian, is thought by neighbors to be “greener than Greenpeace.”

The first fissure in the family façade develops as their entrepreneurial and surprisingly self-possessed son Joey rebels against his father’s authority, then falls in love with the girl next door, the daughter of a jilted mistress of a local politician, and finally moves out of the Berglund household and into the considerably more conservative and lower-class home of his girlfriend. By the time Joey finally heads off to college, the family is in tatters. They leave St. Paul and head to Washington, D.C., where Walter has taken a job with a foundation devoted to saving the habitat of the Cerulean Warbler, whose sole funding comes from an energy magnate named Vin Haven—who is, as it turns out, a close associate of Vice President Dick Cheney.

The remainder of the novel drills deeper into the family’s frustrations, competitions and betrayals, and the moral and political compromises that divide these family members and their friends and lovers. Franzen’s characters are not entirely likable people, and there is more than enough sadness and disappointment to make Freedom a difficult book to read. And yet, through the sheer force of Franzen’s abilities—his mastery of tone and voice, his sharp understanding of family dynamics and his subtle sense of humor—Freedom rings with meaning and pulses with recognizable contemporary life. In the end, the novel is oddly and surprisingly uplifting.

In conversation, Franzen is extremely reluctant to speak about his weighty novel’s multiple levels of meaning. It’s as if he doesn’t want to intrude upon a reader’s freedom to decide for herself. Asked what he’d like readers to think about when they finish reading Freedom, he demurs, saying, “I’m just hoping people have an experience with the book. I want the pages to turn without effort. I think that’s probably more important than ever. Because we are competing with so many other media, the challenge is to try to do something interesting and halfway serious, within the context of easily distracted people. I mean, I am an easily distracted reader. If the book’s not doing it, there are a lot of other things I could be doing.”

On the other hand, Franzen is astonishingly, even courageously forthcoming about the personal demons that at some subterranean level inform 

Freedom. “Even though The Corrections drew directly on some experiences I had when my father was dying,” Franzen says, “it didn’t get into the real stuff with me and my parents, and it steered entirely clear of my rather long marriage. Even though there’s nothing in the new book that actually happened to me—there’s not a scene, there’s not an incident that is from my own life—to go a little way into the shameful heart of my fraught relationship with my mom, to go a little way into the kind of things, again shameful, that happen in a long marriage, was really the core adventure.

“And I might also say that not having kids was something I was dealing with in the years when the book was coming together. Specifically it manifested itself in a kind of rage against young people that I was feeling some years ago. So it was important for me to try to create a young character [Joey] who I could love and forgive—if only to be rid of an anger that I knew really had nothing to do with its object.”

Then there is the thread of Franzen’s political and environmental anger. “I’m an old environmental writer,” Franzen says “Yet the environment is just about the hardest thing there is to write about. The news is bad, and your rhetorical options are either to shrilly and unrealistically decry what other people are doing, or to guiltily and despairingly acknowledge what is happening. Neither of those make for good fiction. So I wanted a character [Walter] who might be lovable for other reasons, who could also embody some of the environmentalist rage that I was certainly feeling during the Bush years and am certainly feeling now with what’s happening in the Gulf.”

Yet the wily, manipulative energy baron Vin Haven is, in Franzen’s characterization, a pretty good guy. “It’s very hard to make fiction out of political anger,” he explains. “When you’re speaking politically, you really can’t allow in the possibility that you are the problem. But of course we are all the problem. The flip side of that is that the people we see as the problem in our political way of thinking are also people too.”

Franzen’s adherence to the dictates of good fiction at the expense of ideology is embodied in a set of psychologically, morally and, yes, politically complex characters. The novel, he says, “only took a year to actually write the pages. The eight years preceding that were spent coming up with interesting, difficult characters who I could nonetheless love.”

Whether readers will also love these characters remains to be seen, but they will certainly appreciate Franzen’s ability to transmute the dross of contemporary American life into the gold of Freedom.

Want more on Freedom? Check out Alden Mudge's 'behind the interview' blog post.

Nine years have passed since the publication of Jonathan Franzen’s monumental novel The Corrections. That book, a National Book Award winner, remains one of the best and most popular American works of literary fiction of this new century. And it casts a long shadow over any…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Kathe Koja

Under the Poppy takes place in the 1870s—was there anything in particular about that decade that specifically ignited your fire to tell this story?
I came to historical fiction the way I pretty much come to all my novels: led by strong images and intrigued by the varied places these images may eventually take the story.  Though I can never really pinpoint the absolute genesis of any of my novels, each has a sparking-point, and I remember very well writing a sticky note that said "les mecs," as I saw in my mind's eye the four puppets who come to the Poppy: lovely Miss Lucinda, the solemn Bishop, the ultra-bawdy Chevalier, and the ur-provocateur Pan Loudermilk. And with the mecs I saw Istvan, and . . . away we go.

This novel is filled with so much drama! There are brothels, love triangles and puppet shows, just to mention some of the elements. Was it hard writing a novel with so many lively elements?
It was a BLAST.  It was like a fantastic, long-running, multimedia show, and I got to see it all from backstage, so to speak.

Brussels is well known for its history of puppet shows—have you ever had the opportunity to visit the city and perhaps take in a show?
Not yet—I would love to go there, and to Prague as well. The history of European puppetry is a magnificent one and it would be fantastic to see some of it  firsthand.

And speaking of puppets: It's interesting that to call a human being a "puppet" means to imply that that person is weak, controlled by someone else's power. But what I found in my research was that a real puppet is unpredictable, funny, mysterious and always slightly dangerous—or more than slightly. I find puppets' inherent lawlessness to be very appealing. And they make fearless actors, of course, if you let them. 

Alongside all of the interpersonal excitement that occurs in the novel, there’s also a good deal of historical drama that acts as a backdrop (and sometimes a catalyst) to the personal struggles of the characters. Do you think there are certain common pitfalls that are part and parcel of historical fiction?
Being new to the genre, I can only hope there are common mistakes I didn't make!  What was exciting for me as a writer was having that panorama of the past, the politics, the fashion, the language, the little daily details that make up so much of the bedrock of life, available for my wonderment, learning, and use. And the social attitudes that are so different from our own: For one quick example, there's a moment when the character Lucy catches a little boy smoking in the theatre.  Instead of being horrified that he's smoking at all, she boxes his ears for putting the props at risk! 

Seeing the world in this novel through that scrim of history, an imaginative recreation of what that time, the feel and smell and texture of those days, might have been like to those who lived there, was fascinating. What I tried not to do was put in every single buttonhook and chamber pot—it's a real temptation, because hey, I wouldn't be writing about this world if I wasn't interested in it, and I'm interested in all of it.  But I tried to keep only what the story demanded.

One striking element of this novel is the fact that along with an omniscient narrator, there are also several first-person accounts scattered throughout. What was it like inhabiting so many characters and giving them all distinct voices?
In a word, fun. I had a tremendous amount of fun writing this book—being able to tell the story from so many different angles, through so many sensibilities, was a great treat. We see the world we inhabit through others' eyes as well as—and sometimes better, more clearly than!—our own, and I hope this multiple-viewpoint narrative enhances not only the story itself but the reader's experience of the story, too. 

When you strip back the many layers in this novel, what do you feel was the core story that you were trying to get at with Under the Poppy?
Love and faithfulness, what it means to really be true: to a person, a vocation, through tremendous struggle and unavoidable pain. Under the Poppy is at its deepest heart the love story of Rupert and Istvan.

You’ve long been an enthusiastic proponent of writer workshops, citing the Clarion Workshop as the real turning point in your career as an author. Some people have been rather pessimistic about sessions and programs aimed at those who dream of writing and being published. To you, what makes these programs so valuable?
For me Clarion was an experience of recognition: other writers, both my peers and the workshop's professional writers-in-residence, accepted me as a writer, took me seriously as a writer, treated me like a writer, and that dispelled any chance for self-doubt.  And once I saw myself as a real writer, recognized that I belonged there, reading, writing, critiquing—I started to act like one.  Being known for what you really are is a very powerful thing. Now, when I teach workshops, especially for young writers, I bring this mindset and this memory, and establish at once that we are all colleagues, and we must treat each other accordingly.

That said, certainly not every workshop is equally valuable to every writer, or to any writer.  The ones that seem to work best are ones that are seriously respectful and seriously honest in equal measures: being told that your work is good, if it is good, is one thing, but being assured that your mediocre work is peachy-keen helps nobody and sets you up for severe disappointment later on. 

Prior to this novel, readers may be most familiar with you in terms of Young Adult (YA) fiction. However, lately it seems like many YA titles are showing a lot of cross-generational appeal. Do you think that this is a function of certain elements within the genre changing, or would you say that readers are simply becoming more open-minded? In your mind, is there a clear division between YA fiction and that meant for an older audience?
I'd hope that every reader would come to every book with an open mind, but it's true that the genre label is sometimes used as a way to pigeonhole a book and so pass it completely by.  Though we each have our individual tastes in fiction, it's beneficial to keep adding delicious new stuff new to the menu.  And who doesn't love finding a new writer, a new voice, to enjoy? 

Life of Pi is a great example of a book that works well cross-generationally, and I would hope some of my own YA fiction—books like Going Under and Headlong and Talk—could make that leap to older readers, too. 

Your previous books have been published by a variety of publishers, such as Farrar, Straus & Giroux as well as Bantam Dell. What was it like working with Small Beer Press this time around?
As everyone who reads knows, publishing is a fairly fraught arena these days, so having the chance to work with an editor and publisher who are as passionate about making books as Kelly Link and Gavin Grant was both a comfort and a thrill.  I knew from day one that my vision for Under the Poppy was shared and respected, and I've had the satisfaction of watching the novel go from file to real live book in the best company possible.  Gavin and Kelly are true writers' publishers and there is no higher compliment than that. 

Under the Poppy has one of the best book trailers I’ve seen in a long while. The trailer really seems to capture the seductive energy of the novel as well as its aesthetic vibe. Did you play any part in the creation of the trailer? What do you think about book trailers as an element of book promotion?
They've become quite necessary, I think, a direct and immediate way for a reader to get a taste of a book, especially online, and so I'm justifiably proud of the creative team I assembled to make the trailer for Under the Poppy: director Diane Cheklich, puppeteer/compositor Al Bogdan, motion graphics artist Aaron Mustamaa, and musician/composer Joe Stacey—superlative artists and superlative work. (A shout-out to our human actors Madison, Julanne, and Jon, and Fred and Randy, our auxiliary puppeteers!) I was involved in the making-of in a few ways—from getting the team together to storyboard assistance to helping out with the puppets (I'm no good at all with an X-Acto knife, but I do OK with a rod-puppet).

And this seems like the right place to note that Under the Poppy is also making the leap to the stage: I've adapted the novel for an immersive presentation involving live actors, live music, film, and, yes, puppetry, that will be mounted at the Chrysler Black Box Theatre at the Detroit Opera House in 2011.  Diane Cheklich, Aaron Mustamaa and Joe Stacey are already involved in that project, as is designer Monika Essen, and we're having a marvelous time reimagining the story in 3D. 

If a reader loves Under the Poppy and can’t wait for your next novel, do you have any suggestions for other authors or titles they might want to seek out?
Two books I'd suggest at once are Sarah Waters' Affinity and Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford: engrossing historical novels (Victorian and Elizabethan eras respectively), passionate narratives, and both tremendously, gorgeously well-written.  Do yourself a huge favor and get them both. 

Under the Poppy takes place in the 1870s—was there anything in particular about that decade that specifically ignited your fire to tell this story?
I came to historical fiction the way I pretty much come to all my novels: led by strong images and intrigued by…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Norton Juster

Take two insanely talented (and wry) octogenarians, throw in decades of combined artistic skill and add one previous collaboration for good measure. The result—50 years in the making—is The Odious Ogre, a new fairy tale picture book written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer.

It’s their first professional reunion since their classic and revered children’s novel, The Phantom Tollbooth, was first published in 1961. The long gap in collaboration didn’t come about because the two artists lost touch. Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, says simply that an opportunity never presented itself for the duo to work together, until now.

“This one seemed absolutely right for me,” he says.

When readers meet the Ogre, he is doing what ogres typically do—rampaging through a village and terrorizing innocent citizens (many of whom—including the local librarian!—eventually get eaten). This is one mean, merciless, gnarly and BIG galumph of an ogre.

“My ambition was to do the biggest ogre in the history of children’s books and move him around a lot,” Feiffer says. “I just looked up ogres from other books and made notes . . . [and] played around with the character.”

“Illustrating a kids’ book is a little like being the director of a play or movie. . . . What is going to make the best story? What are they wearing, what’s their body language? Accidentally I hit on one I want.”

In fact, readers learn much about the Ogre through Feiffer’s watercolor brush stroke and colored marker illustrations. “I worked in forms I haven’t worked with before,” he says. “The whole thing was like playing in a sandbox.”

While readers do get a sense of the Ogre’s demeanor immediately through his carriage, colors and sheer size, they never see his face until almost halfway through the book. That, Feiffer says, was intentional.

“I didn’t want to give away the Ogre’s look on the cover,” he says. “There were endless initial covers.” The final one, designed by Steve Scott, simply features the enormous hand of the Ogre dangling a frantic villager.

Likewise in the story’s text, Juster fully realizes this ogre’s personality—he may be nasty, but nonetheless, he’s surprisingly articulate. In his own language, the nameless Ogre calls himself, “invulnerable, impregnable, insuperable, indefatigable, insurmountable.”

The Ogre’s impressive vocabulary continues throughout the book, something Juster was very cognizant of. “We sort of underestimate kids,” he says. “Kids love words.”

“Even as a kid, I would read books that were well beyond what I could understand. . . . It was almost like you were reading the lyrics to a song,” Juster says. “It’s not just a love of language. It’s a connection to the language of the world.”

SUMMER CAMP INSPIRATION
Juster says the character of the Ogre had been stirring in his mind for about 20 years. “I don’t know where it came from. It just intrigued me.”

He did, however, provide some clues to the Ogre’s possible conception. At age 10, Juster attended summer camp and was berated and “beaten up” by the “bunk bully.” When the bully issued a challenge, “I felt so humiliated,” Juster recalls.

“He proceeded to wipe up the whole place with me; it was not one of those happy ending things.” Juster says he later started thinking about what would happen if you opposed the bully—and a germ of an odious ogre may have been subliminally hatched.

As the Ogre continues on his rampages, he encounters a young lass who, oblivious to the Ogre’s apparent reputation, doesn’t fear him. Rather, she is the first of the villagers to show him kindness—even offering him tea and muffins.

Flummoxed, the Ogre puts on his action-packed dance of terror—which is spectacularly captured on a wordless double spread. Feiffer was especially pleased with these illustrations, since he could draw on his skills used in his decades of drawing cartoons for The Village Voice.

“As a lifelong illustrator of dancers, it was irresistible—a macho ballet,” he says.

Exhausted and overwhelmed by the lass’ response, the Ogre is “confounded, overcome, and undone.” The tale ends with a satisfying (to some) and thought-provoking (to all) twist.

“What is in that story is what you find in it,” Juster says. “There is no one way, there is no lesson; there is no moral that doesn’t occur to you.”

TEAMWORK IN TANDEM
All those years ago, Juster and Feiffer’s collaboration on The Phantom Tollbooth was a bit of an accident. The two native New Yorkers, then in their 30s, were neighboring apartment dwellers in Brooklyn Heights, and they met, interestingly enough, taking out the trash.

Through a series of serendipitous events, Juster’s manuscript and Feiffer’s sketches made it to a publisher (Random House)—and the book about Milo and his fantastic tollbooth journey went on to sell more than three million copies and was later made into a film.

Juster, a trained architect, says writing children’s books was a “total accident” for him, and he says he and Feiffer were “astounded” by the novel’s success. “You just have to do what you think is right,” he says.

Feiffer initially had no interest in children’s books. When he did Phantom Tollbooth, he says, he was “simply illustrating a children’s book for a friend.”

“If I didn’t have three children, there would have been no children’s books,” says Feiffer, who has written and illustrated several children’s books, including Bark, George.

“It didn’t mean anything to me until I had kids of my own and began making up stories for them . . . and began to realize what an important form this is.”

For Odious Ogre, the pairing seemed obvious, especially to editor Michael di Capua, who has edited both men’s work over the years—including Juster’s first picture book, The Hello, Goodbye Window. The book won the 2006 Caldecott Medal for illustrator Chris Raschka.

Juster says that although he had ideas for what the Ogre might looks like, he trusted his good friend Feiffer to come through with the perfect embodiment of the character.

“You never have a precise idea,” Juster says. “You have sort of a series of abstractions in your head. What you look for is the spirit of it.”

And that’s what Feiffer delivered even though the duo never worked in direct contact with each other; rather, they worked through their editor. “We went back and forth that way,” Feiffer says.

WHAT'S NEXT
Now both in their early 80s, Juster and Feiffer remain engaged in work—although Juster does admit to “doing a lot of loafing” these days.

Juster, who is known for his work as an architect on such projects as the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Massachusetts, has more children’s books in the works, including a reissue of his Alberic the Wise.

Feiffer, also a noted playwright and screenwriter, teaches humor writing at Stony Brook Southhampton and says, “My schedule is now more busy than it ever has been.” Having just completed illustrating another book, he will soon embark on a graphic novel and is considering doing another play.

Both men joke that perhaps in another 50 years they’ll team up again—but who knows what the project will be. What they do know is that it will boil down to the key element that has made their previous collaboration—and hopefully this new one—successful.

As Juster notes, “It’s all about storytelling, in the pictures and the art.”

Take two insanely talented (and wry) octogenarians, throw in decades of combined artistic skill and add one previous collaboration for good measure. The result—50 years in the making—is The Odious Ogre, a new fairy tale picture book written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules…

FictionAudio

Julia Glass

Fans of Julia Glass’ beloved Three Junes will feel a sense of familiarity when they dive into The Widower’s Tale, the author’s fourth novel. The stories share similar plot points: in both, the matriarch of a family dies young, leaving a husband and children behind. In both, a widower unexpectedly falls for another woman. In both, Glass creates a slowly unfolding, yet fully rendered, portrait of a family.

But don’t think this book is just a rehash of past work. The tone is more satiric—you can look forward to amusing passages on everything from freeganism to “books as bytes.” And the protagonist, 70-year-old Percy Darling, is distinct from Paul McLeod, the widower of Three Junes.

“There's a way in which you cannot create good fiction without inflicting pain on your characters.”

In a telephone conversation from her home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Glass said, “When I started writing The Widower’s Tale, I was trying to describe Percy’s character, and I said he’s like a cross between Paul McLeod and Malachy Burns. He has that razor edge to his wit.” Never matter if you haven’t read Glass’s National Book Award-winning debut from 2002—although if you have, you’ll understand why that combination will be a delight to fans. Paul, an elderly Scottish newspaper publisher, is a bit hapless. Music critic Malachy is cranky and clever.

Glass “always begins a story with a character,” and she says her best ones are pulled from some corner of her soul.

In this story, Percy was that character. He is also the center of the tale, which chronologically begins when his wife, Poppy, drowns in a pond. Percy is left to raise his two daughters, Clover and Trudy, who grew up to be very different women. As an adult 30 years after her mother’s death, Clover has a free spirit and big heart, although she’s also troubled, having walked out on her husband and two children during a breakdown. Trudy is chief of breast oncology at a major hospital and is organized and serious.

Percy was born out of several of Glass’ experiences—one being a consciousness of her “resistance to the modern world.” (“I’m like the only writer on the planet who doesn’t have a website and refuses to join Facebook,” she says.) She also drew from her move to Massachusetts, her home state and the setting for The Widower’s Tale, after years of living in New York.

When she returned to her hometown, Glass at first felt like the place hadn’t changed—“very rural, quite privileged, but with a kind of faux-rustic liberal quality to it.” In the time she lived there, she discovered that it had become more affluent than it was during her childhood. “There were certain . . . I call them millennial attitudes that had taken hold,” she said. “I found myself disturbed that this very hallowed place in my life had changed.” Percy is similarly disturbed by the changes in Matlock, his fictional town—or “enclave,” as he quips in the book.

In Glass’ words, her novel is about “the fear of change as juxtaposed against the yearning for change.” For Percy, a retired Harvard librarian, the impetus for change in his life is the opening of Elves & Fairies, a progressive preschool that moves into the barn in his backyard. When the preschool moves in, Percy’s solitary life is disturbed and he falls in love with the mother of a student. Percy’s world is further rocked when the woman is diagnosed with cancer.

Because Glass didn’t want to write about only “looking at the world as this relentlessly changing place from the point of view of someone old and curmudgeonly,” she asked herself, what is the flip side of that coin?

“Whether you’re talking about global warming or pollution or the ocean or automotive technology, the sense that we must change or we’re doomed seems to me far stronger than it has been at any other time in my life,” she said.

The character who embodies this attitude is Robert, Trudy’s 20-year-old son. Robert is a pre-med student at Harvard and becomes involved with a radical environmental group. By the end of the novel, his life is completely altered. Without giving too much away, Glass explains, “Sometimes bad things happen to good characters, and Robert is a good character. He suffers a very benign character flaw, which is that he’s easily drawn in by other people’s passion.”

Like in each of Glass’ three previous novels, The Widower’s Tale is told from multiple perspectives, including Percy’s and Robert’s. Though Glass considered telling the story from a sister’s voice, she ultimately decided that much of the book is about “the absence of a woman in Percy’s life.” So, there are no female narrators.

Parts of the story are also told by Ira, a gay man who teaches at Elves & Fairies, and by Celestino, an illegal immigrant who does yard work in Matlock. Both of these characters become intertwined with Percy’s family and home, and both face discrimination and heartbreak.

When asked about forcing Percy and the people in his universe to suffer, Glass joked that “characters are like voodoo dolls.” She explained: “You stick in the pins, maybe you take the pins out. But there’s a way in which you cannot create good fiction without inflicting pain on your characters.”

That said, The Widower’s Tale ends hopefully. “That’s important to me,” said Glass. “This novel has ultimately less darkness and tragedy than a couple of my other books. I think it’s more comic. But even the best comic novels include sorrow and heartbreak; that’s what gives a kind of pungent edge to the humor.”

______

Want more on The Widower's Tale? Check out Eliza Borné's 'behind the interview' blog post.

Author photo by Dennis Cowley.

Fans of Julia Glass’ beloved Three Junes will feel a sense of familiarity when they dive into The Widower’s Tale, the author’s fourth novel. The stories share similar plot points: in both, the matriarch of a family dies young, leaving a husband and children…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Rosemary Wells

Rosemary Wells is one busy lady. Her prolific career as a children’s author has spanned more than 40 years and produced at least 120 books that are cherished by children around the world. However, her latest novel, On the Blue Comet, took a bit longer than most to complete—30 years, to be precise.

Three decades ago, Wells created the book’s hero, Oscar, an 11-year-old who lives in Cairo, Illinois, in the 1930s. She wrote several chapters, only to reach a moment when Oscar comes close to being killed in a bank robbery. That’s when he somehow ends up on a train—and not just any train: a Lionel electric train.

The creator of Max and Ruby turns her talents to a time-travel adventure that doubles as a history lesson.

At that point, Wells was stuck. Very stuck. “I knew that he had jumped onto the train, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. I didn’t know that it was a time-travel book,” she remembers.

That changed three years ago, when a revelation about Oscar came to her in the shower. “It occurred to me, and I immediately went to the computer and rewrote the whole thing. I just wrote it out flat,” Wells says by phone from Connecticut, where she lives, writes, illustrates and makes creative sparks fly.

On the Blue Comet was well worth the wait. This thrilling adventure and takes young readers across the country in the 1930s and ’40s. “It’s about Oscar, it’s about the Midwest, and it’s about how we were during the Depression, and how people lived through it,” Wells explains. “It’s about history and the war coming.”

She adds, "Although I was born during the war, in 1943, I still had enough contact, as most of us did back then, to know the Depression age, and to connect with the first half of the twentieth century pretty easily."

Wells, whose books include the novels Lincoln and His Boys and Red Moon at Sharpsburg, loves to dig deep into history. "There are all kinds of guessing games in the book," she says of On The Blue Comet. "There are, I think, 15 presidents mentioned. I had a lot of fun having an 11-year-old John Kennedy appear."

After Oscar’s mother dies, he and his father immerse themselves in creating elaborate Lionel train layouts. However, when his father loses his job, they are forced to sell their house and beloved trains. Dad heads to California to find work, leaving Oscar in the care of his fussy aunt and prissy cousin. The boy’s salvation comes from a kind stranger he meets, an encounter that eventually leads him to the bank on the day of the robbery. Once launched on his page-turning adventure, Oscar meets many more strangers, including Alfred Hitchcock and a kindhearted young actor nicknamed Dutch.

Of Dutch, Wells exclaims: “Oh my goodness, that’s Ronald Reagan! He was a friend of my father’s and was the head of the actor’s union in Hollywood for a number of years. My father was a playwright, and was his co-chairman, and knew him well.”

Well draws an intriguing comparison between the stage and screen and the creative process she taps into each day: "A writer has to create is an entirely different world from the reality of their own life, and enter it much as an actor has to. It's like being in a completely different world, one that's made up by yourself, and that could end also in madness. There are people who do this and . . . end up completely insane, and it is hoped that doesn't happen. Writers really create entire worlds and then walk into them and illuminate them."

That's pretty heady stuff coming from a children's author who's beloved for bringing to life such characters as Max and Ruby, Noisy Nora, McDuff and Yoko, as well as entire kindergarten classrooms. What draws all her characters and books together? Emotional content, Wells says. “It’s the center of my writing. And this is why it works. I have to make sure that the emotional content is valid, and something that is wholesome and worthwhile, even if noncompliant.”

Noncompliant?

“All my heroes are noncompliant in one way or another,” she responds. “I’m a very noncompliant person, but with very conservative standards. I have the belief system of a typical person born in 1943. As far as kids go, I believe in good citizenship, good behavior, kindness to others, no time spent in front of the television, and all kinds of things like that.”

When creating her cheerful, colorful illustrations, she works with pastels, color pencils, ink, watercolor, gouache—all kinds of different media, she says, except acrylics and oil. However, Wells wasn't about to tackle the more complicated illustrations planned for On the Blue Comet, which were done in full color and wondrous, glowing detail by Bagram Ibatoulline.

"Oh heavens, I can't do that!" Wells says. "Bagram Ibatoulline is a fabulous illustrator. I can't draw stuff like that anymore than you could. I draw Max and Ruby, but just because I'm an illustrator doesn't mean I can do all kinds of illustrations, and this required something very different from what I do."

The artist's directive was to make Oscar's world look like one drawn by Norman Rockwell. "Everybody who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s would wait on Saturday afternoon for the Saturday Evening Post to come and see if Rockwell had a cover,” Wells says. “I would sit looking at the cover for an hour, because it was the age of high-definition, representational art that was done by real artists, not from photographs, and it was wonderful."

Years ago, in an essay called "The Well-Tempered Children's Book," Wells wrote: "I believe that all stories and plays and paintings and songs and dances come from a palpable but unseen space in the cosmos."

Wells notes: "I said those things when I was 30, and now I'm 67 and they're still true." I'm not an original thinking brain, but I do have this window that I can open. So I use that all the time."

Wells looks back fondly on what she calls the “Golden Age of Childhood,” from about 1920 to 1968: “I think there was a time there when children were taught better manners, there was very little sense of entitlement, they were expected to behave themselves and work. They were also greatly loved, and everybody had more time. I think there’s a lack of time now that marks childhood in the Western world.”

Rosemary Wells—the extremely talented, noncompliant and inexhaustible children’s author—sums up her ongoing career with eloquence: “I do my best to contribute to what I consider to be the only legitimate part of American childhood culture left, which is books.”

Rosemary Wells is one busy lady. Her prolific career as a children’s author has spanned more than 40 years and produced at least 120 books that are cherished by children around the world. However, her latest novel, On the Blue Comet, took a bit longer…

Fiction

Nicole Krauss

The line between fact and fiction sometimes blurs in unusual ways, something acclaimed author Nicole Krauss discovered when working on her much-anticipated third novel, Great House.

Krauss’ own workstation wound up performing double duty as both the platform and the unwitting muse for the new novel about a seemingly disparate group of characters linked by a mysterious desk.

“What ultimately became the first half of the first chapter of Great House was initially published as ‘From the Desk of Daniel Varsky’ in the 2008 volume of The Best American Short Stories,” Krauss says by phone from Tel Aviv, Israel, where she has stayed for several months as part of a writers residency program.

It is a novel about the connections between people, which Krauss terms "one of the deepest existential questions there is."

“I had to write a blurb to accompany the story about the inspiration [behind it], and I legitimately had no idea what I would say, but I sat down to write in my office. I looked down at my writing desk and it was almost the same as the desk that I had described in the story!”

Interestingly, the desk in question is not one Krauss selected but one she inherited from the previous owners of her family’s home in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. According to Krauss, the desk in question is “so huge and very masculine. It’s really overburdening, but we’d have to cut it into pieces to get it out. The previous owners had a painted panel that they had removed with them, so now this desk has a gaping hole that I can’t fill.”

For Krauss, this is why the desk that has such an important place in her life also has such prominence in the book. “It’s not a book about a desk, obviously,” she muses. “It was more about the idea of the desk; it became a symbol, in a way, about what passes from person to person and generation to generation. Its material existence was really beside the point, although I did make it very large with all these drawers. I was really trying to take this very daunting, abstract idea and give it physicality.”

Great House is perhaps best thought of as a series of vignettes centering on four characters whose lives gradually intersect as the novel progresses. Initially the most striking link between these people is a large and imposing desk, which each has owned at some point. This remarkable piece of furniture is the source of both agony and inspiration for each character, acting as an embodiment of sublimated disappointments and desires. Shuttling across time and space, the lives of writers, parents and lovers are gradually revealed, their superficial layers slowly stripped away, until all that remains are the cores upon which identity is based.

While the desk may have offered Krauss a tangible symbol during the early stages of the writing process, there was something even stronger motivating her. In recent interviews, her husband, novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, admitted that much of the impetus for his first work of nonfiction, Eating Animals, came from the birth of his first child and the quandary he faced regarding what to feed his son. For Krauss, becoming a parent also clearly had an important impact.

“I started Great House about a year after having my first child,” she says. “I started to think about what parents pass on to their children genetically, but also the transference that goes beyond that, such as personality and fears. I was connected to my son through the umbilical cord and so much was going into him whether I liked it or not, and it made me think about myself as a child and what things my son would inherit from me. As I continued to write the book, the phrase ‘the burden of inheritance’ began to haunt me.”

Krauss is very clear, however, that just as Great House is a novel composed of many characters, it is also one of many ideas. It is a novel about the connections between people, something Krauss has explored in her two earlier novels, and something that she claims is “one of the deepest existential questions there is.” But it is also a novel that more deeply explores Krauss’ own Jewish roots. “I was raised Jewish,” she says, “but what interests me most is not faith, which I’ve never had, but the tradition of argument, dissent, dissatisfaction and questioning that is so central to Judaism. Perhaps the best word to use is ‘doubt.’ In Great House, almost every character in the book grapples with uncertainty, whether it’s existential, or moral, or has to do with the limits of how fully known we can ever be to one another, how often we must live unknown and unknowing.”

About one thing there is no doubt: There’s a lot riding on this new novel. Krauss’ deeply moving and intensely personal 2005 novel, The History of Love, captivated readers worldwide and was a bona fide publishing phenomenon. The news that her follow-up would be published this month was accompanied by rumblings of excitement in the literary world. Adding to the hubbub was Krauss’ recent inclusion on the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list, which highlights young authors worth watching.

It is the rare author who can acknowledge such fervent accolades from both critics and readers alike, but not allow the hype to infect her work. When asked if she worries about whether her new novel will live up to the hopes many have pinned on it, she answers candidly. “I’m aware my books ask a lot from my readers, and I love the dedication of those readers who stay with [my books] and come through the other side,” she replies. “Ultimately, I write from a mindset where I have to please myself first. I feel that I wrote a better book here [than The History of Love?], and I think I’m becoming a better writer.”

But what of those folks at the New Yorker for whom 40 is the cutoff for a young author to make an impression? At 36, Krauss’ time on the venerable list is limited, but she’s not too worried about inspiration running dry; if there’s such a thing as a pragmatic poet, Krauss is it. “Life is a progression of questions,” she says. “Each question evolves and expands, and as your life changes, the questions do too. The work of a writer is not necessarily answering the questions, but exploring. . . . In my mind, when I’m past 40, I always expect and hope that I will continue to write books and get closer to the book I am meant to write. One always hopes one’s getting a little closer.”

If Great House is any indication, Krauss must be very close indeed. Surely if there is one book each author is meant to write, then there might also be one book each reader is meant to read. For plenty of Krauss’ fans out there, Great House just might be that book.

The line between fact and fiction sometimes blurs in unusual ways, something acclaimed author Nicole Krauss discovered when working on her much-anticipated third novel, Great House.

Krauss’ own workstation wound up performing double duty as both the platform and the unwitting muse for the new novel…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Ken Follett

To complete his hugely ambitious trilogy of historical novels about the 20th century, Ken Follett has set himself a punishing writing schedule. Lucky for us. Because readers who compulsively turn all 985 pages of Fall of Giants, the gripping first book in the Century Trilogy, will not want to wait long for its sequel.

“If at all possible, I want to publish these books at two-year intervals,” Follett says. “So I work six days a week, and for the first draft I try to write six pages a day, which is 1,500 words a day.”

That means Follett hardly has time to enjoy his beach house in Antigua, where he is taking the call from BookPage, he says, in his library, “a white room with white bookshelves and very large open windows that look out onto the beach.”

“You get a different kind of understanding through your imagination, with the help of the author's imagination, of why people did the things they did."

Follett is there with his wife Barbara, who was for 13 years a member of Parliament and was also the minister for culture in the recently defeated Labour government of Gordon Brown. Back in England, the couple has a townhouse in London and a larger house, a converted rectory, 30 miles north of London, where they can host a tribe of children, stepchildren and grandchildren. Each of those houses also has a library where Follett writes.

“I do find it pleasant to be surrounded by books,” Follett says. “It’s very nice just to be able to reach out for the dictionary or the encyclopedia or something I use quite a lot—a reference book about costume at different periods of history so that I can describe people’s clothing. Books also remind me of the enormous culture to which I owe most of what I know and understand.”

The library in the country house, Follett says, pays special tribute to that cultural debt. In addition to books, its walls are lined with drawings and illustrations of well-known writers, among them a Picasso print of Balzac, which has pride of place over the fireplace. “I like the robustness of Balzac’s writing,” Follett says. “He’s not afraid to confront the dark sides of human nature. Obviously my work is not perceptibly affected by the Modernism of Joyce or Proust. However, I’m not unusual in this. Almost all the books you see on the bestseller list are basically novels in the Victorian tradition, stories with plot, character, and conflict and resolution.”

Perhaps. But not many of those bestsellers match the epic scale of conflict and resolution Follett deployed in his bestsellers about seminal events in England during the Middle Ages, The Pillars of the Earth (1989) and World Without End (2007). If anything, the Century Trilogy is even grander in conception than these fictional predecessors. The trilogy will follow the intertwined fates of five families—American, English, German, Russian and Welsh—through the tumult of the 20th century. Fall of Giants opens in June 1911 with the crowning of King George V of Britain. On that same day, 13-year-old Billy Williams, who along with his sister Ethel will become one of the most stirring characters in the book, begins his first day of work in a coal mine in Wales. The novel closes in 1924 after the reader has experienced World War I, the Russian Revolution, the beginnings of the women’s suffrage movement and the collapse of an antiquated class system, not to mention the emotional, spiritual and political ups and downs of the book’s central characters. In fact, by page 985, Follett has brought the reader into contact—sometimes glancingly, but more often at some depth—with roughly 125 characters, more than 20 of whom are actual historical figures.

“The research and effort at authenticity is more difficult when you’re writing about history that is within living memory,” Follett says. “One of the features of writing about the Middle Ages is that from time to time you ask yourself or you ask your advisors a question and nobody knows the answer. So then of course, as an author, you’re entitled to make it up. But with the 20th century, if you want to put, say, Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary at the outbreak of World War I, at a social event on a particular day in July 1914, you really have to find out where he was on that day. You can’t make it up. Because somebody somewhere knows where he was every day.”

For a book with the international reach of Fall of Giants, Follett, who takes pride in the accuracy of his historical fiction, hired eight historians to read the first draft. These included experts on America, Russia and Germany.

Initially, Follett says, history drove the conception of the book. But as the work progressed, he drew on other sources. A story he heard years ago from a friend whose mother had emigrated to the U.S. from Russia in 1913 underlies Follett’s conception of the Vyalovs, a Russian émigré family in Buffalo whose rise to political power will be important in the trilogy’s second book. And Follett’s own boyhood in Wales informs his portrait of the fictional mining town of Aberowen and the boyhood of Billy Williams.

“My mother’s family lived in a town called Mountain Ash, which is very like Aberowen. We were there probably every other weekend when I was a little boy to visit my grandparents. . . . My descriptions of the steep streets and gray houses that snake along the hillsides and also the way people talk and the comic nicknames people have, that’s all Mountain Ash.”

Follett also credits his mother with his interest in stories and storytelling. “I think my mother was a very imaginative woman. She told me stories and nursery rhymes and sang me songs when I was a baby. I was the first child. First children always get a bit more attention, don’t they? I think my interest in the imaginative life comes from her.”

And it’s that interest in the imaginative life that makes Follett a historical novelist rather than a historian. “If you want to understand the Russian Revolution, one way to do it is to read the writings of Lenin and Trotsky and of analysts and so on,” he says. “But in a novel you try to imagine what it was like to be a factory worker in St. Petersburg, why he would want a revolution, why he would pick up a rifle and start shooting. That doesn’t happen in a history book. You get a different kind of understanding through your imagination, with the help of the author’s imagination, of why people did the things they did.”

Fall of Giants, Follett says, is about a period of history that “people find baffling. Most people don’t know why we had the First World War. They know that it started with an assassination in Sarajevo but they don’t know what caused the war. I want readers to understand it, but I didn’t want to give a history lesson. My mantra while writing Fall of Giants was ‘they don’t want a history lesson.’ So I had to find ways in which all of these developments were part of the lives of characters in the story. That was probably the major challenge of the book.”

It is a challenge Follett has met—and surpassed.

To complete his hugely ambitious trilogy of historical novels about the 20th century, Ken Follett has set himself a punishing writing schedule. Lucky for us. Because readers who compulsively turn all 985 pages of Fall of Giants, the gripping first book in the Century Trilogy,…

FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

Bruce Machart

In his powerful debut novel, Bruce Machart has created characters who are as unforgiving as the blazing heat in which they toil. A father who works his sons like horses. A husband who lies and cheats on his wife while she’s giving birth to their first son. Brothers who defend each other, but not their youngest brother.

Set in the harsh landscape of south Texas in the early 1900s, Machart’s The Wake of Forgiveness has drawn critical praise (and comparisons to the work of Cormac McCarthy) for its evocative portrayal of a man coming to grips with his family’s great divide. Karel Skala’s mother dies on the novel’s first page, while giving birth to Karel, her fourth son. The boy endures life without a mother, and under the painful rule of a Czech-immigrant father who is so distraught by his wife’s death that he’s never able to show his youngest son any affection. The story skips through time, unveiling bits of Karel’s past and insight into his present with each vignette.

A compelling part of that past is the split between Karel and his brothers, which comes to a head after a high-stakes horse race, described in thrilling detail. After the race, Karel’s brothers are promised in marriage to the daughters of a wealthy Mexican, while Karel is left to fend for himself—and ultimately, to come to terms with his self-imposed isolation.

Reached at his office at Lone Star College in Houston, where he teaches writing, Machart says that while in graduate school in the late ’90s, he began work on a novella that he never could seem to finish. The story focused on young male characters with a rift between them that he simply couldn’t figure out.

“What was at the root of this animosity or this conflict between these two boys? I just started imagining going backward in time. I arrived at a moment where a father was heartbroken, and for a certain kind of man in a certain place with a certain upbringing and a certain culture, it seems to me easier to share violence or easier to share meanness or easier to basically not share than it is to share grief.”

The author, on the other hand, is a self-declared mama’s boy who grew up in a family of demonstrative, loving men. “I believe in writing what you want to know, rather than writing what you know,” Machart explains.

“Writing fiction gives us the opportunity to live somebody else’s life, to gain a new layer of empathy. That’s the writer’s first job, to find empathy for characters unlike him- or herself.”

Even so, Machart did find inspiration in his own family and the Texas country they call home. Though the author is a Houston native, Machart’s father was raised on a cash-crop farm by a stern, but loving, Czech father. Machart has always harbored a connection with the rural area where his father was raised and where the extended family remained. He traveled to an area very much like The Wake of Forgiveness’ Lavaca County for every Easter, Christmas and family reunion.

 

“Writing fiction gives us the opportunity to live somebody else’s life, to gain a new layer of empathy. That’s the writer’s first job, to find empathy for characters unlike him- or herself.”

 

“I think the place had a hold on me because that country setting and those ranching and farming endeavors and that way of speaking, the idiom and the social sensibilities, were so very different from what I experienced growing up,” he says. “We lived in the big city. I felt kind of an outsider in my own extended family. That seemed like something worthy of investigation.”

Although Machart’s grandfather ruled the farm, Machart recalls that his grandmother couldn’t get much rest at family reunions as her husband twirled her across the dance floor. “They had this beautiful, loving relationship, even though he did have a little bit of the devil in him.” 

The father of the novel, Vaclav Skala, is in some ways an imagined foil for Machart’s grandfather. “What would’ve happened to my grandpa if there hadn’t been a grandma?” he muses.

Although the female characters in the testosterone-fueled novel rarely grace the book’s pages, Machart took care to create an emotional landscape colored by the presence (or absence) of women.

“I wanted to use some of the conventions of Western or Southwestern writing,” Machart says. “But I didn’t want to write one of these novels you stumble upon every now and then where there’s just not a strong female character in the whole thing.”

Karel chooses a strong, self-possessed woman in his wife, Sophie. Even when Karel’s demons lead him away from his home life, Sophie knows how to confront her husband. “She knows she’s married a wounded man,” the author says. “But she’s seen the part of him that needs her. Even the slightest tenderness on his part is an affirmation of a kind of love.” And in Machart’s riveting first novel, Sophie’s steady patience allows Karel the freedom to come to terms with his past.

 

In his powerful debut novel, Bruce Machart has created characters who are as unforgiving as the blazing heat in which they toil. A father who works his sons like horses. A husband who lies and cheats on his wife while she’s giving birth to their…

YA FictionYA

Jennifer Donnelly

Jennifer Donnelly’s 2003 young adult novel, A Northern Light, told the true story of Grace Brown’s 1906 murder from the point of view of fictional Mattie Gokey. By intertwining the two young women’s stories, Donnelly created a complex and emotionally resonant tale that won critical accolades, several awards (including a Michael L. Printz Honor and the UK’s Carnegie Medal) and, most importantly, the adoration of legions of readers. Now she returns with Revolution, a story that again explores the connection between two young women—this time across the span of hundreds of years. Using the French Revolution as a historical backdrop, Donnelly brings together Andi, a 21st-century teenager grieving the death of her brother, and Alexandrine, who was a companion to the last dauphin of France.

In an interview with BookPage, Donnelly gives us some insight into her characters, the artists that inspire her and the tragic true story at the heart of Revolution.

It’s been seven years since the publication of your first young adult novel, A Northern Light. In the meantime, you’ve published two adult novels. Why return to YA now?
Ha! You flatter me extremely by assuming any professional decision I’ve ever made has been thought out. I’m driven very much by ideas that grab hold of me and won’t let go, and characters who take up residence in my head and won’t leave until I’ve gotten their stories down. The problem is, those characters don’t always willingly relinquish their stories. It takes a great deal of time to understand people like Andi and Alex, the main characters in Revolution, and to do them justice.

Andi is a complicated and, at times, not particularly likable heroine. Was she a challenging character to write?
She was challenging to write. Not because she’s not likable—I happen to like her very much—but because she is in such great pain and I very much felt her pain. She’s also a thousand times cooler than I am, and probably wouldn’t hang out with me if I hadn’t created her, so I kind of had to rise to that.

Both Andi and Alexandrine have vivid, lively voices. How did you go about creating distinctive, believable voices for these two girls living hundreds of years and thousands of miles apart?
Thank you. That’s a huge compliment. They just came, these girls. I realize that’s kind of a lame answer, but I don’t know how to explain it any better. Andi and I sat in the same room together for years and got to know each other quite well. Alex was walking down a cobbled Paris street and turned and beckoned to me, and I followed.

What drew you to writing about the French Revolution?
A story I read in the New York Times about 10 years ago: “Geneticists’ Latest Probe: The Heart of the Dauphin.” It showed a picture of a glass urn with a small human heart in it. The article said that the heart, which had been kept in the Basilica of St. Denis, in Paris, had just undergone DNA testing and had been found to be the heart of Louis-Charles, the lost king of France, the youngest son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

The article explained that after the execution of the king, Louis Charles was taken from his mother—at the age of eight—to be re-educated in the ways of the revolution. The child was brutalized, and as threats to the revolution grew, he was locked away in solitary confinement. He was kept in terrible conditions, grew ill, lost his mind and eventually died—at the age of 10.

I was horrified and moved to tears by this. I wondered how the idealism of the revolution—Liberty, Fraternity and Equality; the best, most noble human aspirations—devolved into such cruelty. I wondered what kind of world allowed it, and still allows it. And I wondered how are we supposed to live in such a world. I was very tortured by these questions and needed an answer, so I set about trying to get one the only way I know how—by writing a story.

Is it difficult, when writing a historical novel, to balance truth and fiction?
It’s not so difficult to balance the two. As Robespierre said, history is fiction. Ask three people for an account of an event, and you’ll get three different accounts. What Andi, and the reader, gets is Alex’s account. She exists within a factual historical timeline, of course, and must conform to it, but her thoughts and opinions on what is happening during that timeline are entirely her own. She, like her uncle, is not so thrilled by the Revolution. She’s not inspired. She’s pissed off. The revolution is going to make her free, yes . . . but free to do what? Free to go back to Paris and starve after she’s been living well at Versailles?

What kind of research did you do for this book?
I did a great deal of academic research—reading Schama and Carlyle and many other historians of the Revolution, for example. Looking up old maps in Paris archives to reconstruct the streets my characters walked down. Reading texts of letters from prisoners condemned to the guillotine. Viewing as much art and as many artifacts from the period as I could.

I also did a lot of non-academic research. I visited Paris and sat in the courtyard of the Palais-Royal at night, hoping for a glimpse of Orleans’ ghost. I tooled around in the catacombs. Went to Versailles. Spent time in grocery stores and market stalls. I sat by the Seine and in cafes and parks and at the Louvre, and watched Parisians for hours, studying their faces and gestures, observing the way they eat and talk, absorbing the attitude.

Did any of your own ideas about the Revolution change after researching it?
I would say that many of my political ideas hardened. The violence and bloodshed of the Revolution is staggering to me, and after studying the rise and fall of the various revolutionary factions, particularly Robespierre and the Jacobins, I believe more strongly than ever that power corrupts and that often those who most want power are the ones who should least have it.

I also grew to have sympathy for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. They were foolish and callous rulers. They made dreadful mistakes and refused to learn from them—and ultimately paid very dearly for them. The price wasn’t loss of power and wealth, or even their lives. The price was going to the guillotine knowing that their defenseless children were in the hands of brutal, ruthless people, and that they could do nothing to protect them.

For readers who are inspired to learn more about the French Revolution, where would you recommend they go next?
I would start out with Simon Schama’s most excellent Citizens and Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution: A History. If you’ve got some time on your hands, that is. Mark Steel’s Vive la Revolution: A Stand-up History of the French Revolution, is a quicker read, and a whole lot funnier.

Music plays a huge role in the novel. Do you listen to music for inspiration or while you write?
Music inspires me greatly. I listen for inspiration, and comfort, and to be astonished and delighted. While I was working on Revolution, I listened to Segovia, Radiohead, Beethoven, the Beatles, Nada Surf, Pink Floyd, the Decemberists, Mozart, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bach, Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed and many more.

Andi’s new Parisian friend is clearly named after Dante’s guide to the underworld, the poet Virgil, and parts of the novel are named after sections of The Divine Comedy. Did that poem inform the book in other ways?
The Divine Comedy is one of my favorite poems. Dante is depressed, and on the verge of ending it all, and then along comes Virgil, the writer he most admires, and says, “Come on, Dante, man up. We’re going on a road trip. We’re going to get you out of this.” I mean, imagine it . . . you’re at your lowest point and the artist you most admire takes you by the hand and leads you through Hell, and when you come out, you can “rebehold the stars.” Amazing. I wanted Andi—led into the underworld by her own Virgil—to travel on much the same journey. For better or worse, I went along with them; getting this book written was at times an emotionally crushing experience. But like Andi and Dante before her, when it was over, I could finally once again see the stars.

I love the idea of reaching back to our artistic ancestors, like Dante and Virgil, for help and comfort and guidance. I’ve been sustained by the work of other writers my entire life. Andi is sustained by generations of musicians, stretching from Johnny Greenwood all the way back to Malherbeau. If there’s one thing I really want to get across to readers, especially teenage readers, it’s that this priceless legacy—be it music, or paintings, or books—exists. And it exists for you. If things are bad, reach for it, hold on to it, and let it carry you.

Jennifer Donnelly’s 2003 young adult novel, A Northern Light, told the true story of Grace Brown’s 1906 murder from the point of view of fictional Mattie Gokey. By intertwining the two young women’s stories, Donnelly created a complex and emotionally resonant tale that won critical…

RomanceHistorical Romance

Gwyn Cready

What's the best writing advice you've ever gotten?
From Nora Roberts, though she didn't give it to me personally. She said when she hears writers talking about their creative muse, she wants to bitch slap them. The only method that works, she says, is the "ass in chair" method. I agree with her wholly, though in my case you'd have to extend it to be the "ass in chair, fingers on keyboard, logged off of Facebook and Gmail" method.

Of all the characters you've every written, which one is your favorite?
I have a real soft spot for Drum, the captain of the privateer in Tumbling Through Time. Maybe it's because he looks like Colin Firth (never hurts.) Maybe it's because he is such a natural seaman. Maybe it's because he ends up yearning for the heroine but not getting her. I think there are more stories ahead for Drum. 

What was the proudest moment of your career so far?
Oh, winning the RITA. Hands down. I think it even eclipsed getting the call that my first book sold. What made the night so special, apart from winning, of course, was that not only was my husband there, but four very close friends had come in to attend as well. It was great to share the night with them. That day was also my younger sister Claire's birthday. It had been Claire's unexpected death twelve years earlier that spurred me to become a writer. I know she was watching that night. In fact, if I know Claire, she was the one who made it happen.

Name one book you think everyone should read (besides your own!).
Any of Patrick O'Brian's 20-book Aubrey/Maturin series, but, heck, why not start with the first, Master and Commander. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the books follow the adventures of a British naval captain and his closest friend, the ship's surgeon who is also a British agent. The relationship the two characters share is extraordinary, and O'Brian is capable of deeply entertaining his readers while also teaching them about the natural world, geography, sea-going life, naval practices and politics, which to me is the best sort of writing. The New York Times called O'Brian's work "the best historical fiction ever written." It's certainly the best I've read. And it is safe to say my sea captain heroes owe much of their genetic makeup to Captain Jack Aubrey.

What book are you embarrassed NOT to have read?
The Bible. Sadly for me, the musical Godspell is pretty much the full extent of what I know.

How would you earn a living if you weren't a writer?
As an expert in brand management, which is how I spent the first 25 years of my working life.

What are you working on now? I'm working on my fifth novel. In it, a snobby book critic at a New York City magazine screws up at work, and her punishment is to write an in-depth article about why women love romances. She's never read one, considering them to be the literary equivalent of Word Search puzzles, and has no idea why anyone would read one . . . that is, until the photographer assigned to the piece—her ex-boyfriend, who has his own reasons for wanting the article to be a success—starts feeding her reading recommendations from his older sister, a romance-reading fiend. When his sister mentions offhandedly that she doesn't know why more men don't use romances as guidebooks for getting women in bed, the photographer finds himself as engaged a reader as his ex-girlfriend.

The working title is A Novel Seduction. It's my first non-time-travel romance, but since the books the hero and heroine read are so good at sweeping them in, the story still has a real magical feel to it. In January, I start on my sixth book, which will be a return to time travel with a nobleman, a bastard son and a librarian struggling to keep her library afloat. Timely, eh?

Author photo by Garen DiBartolomeo.

 

What's the best writing advice you've ever gotten?
From Nora Roberts, though she didn't give it to me personally. She said when she hears writers talking about their creative muse, she wants to bitch slap them. The only method that works, she says,…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Jeff Kinney

One night last summer, author Jeff Kinney was astounded to see that the upcoming book in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, The Ugly Truth, was number two on Amazon’s bestseller list.

“I didn’t even know what ‘The Ugly Truth’ was yet,” he remembers. “They’re printing five million of these things, and I hadn’t even decided.”

His series chronicling the adventures of middle school student Greg Heffley is definitely a publishing phenomenon, having sold more than 37 million copies in the U.S. and millions more in 30 countries around the world, inspired a movie and eagerly anticipated sequel (for which he is executive producer) and catapulted this quiet cartoonist to sudden fame.

“It feels like I go off and pretend to be an author, and pretend to make movies, and then come back to my normal life.”

“It’s been a strange life so far,” Kinney says.

And no doubt getting stranger. On November 8, the day before The Ugly Truth goes on sale, Kinney will share the podium with Laura Bush and Condoleezza Rice at Barbara Bush’s “Celebration of Reading” in Dallas. Later in the month he’ll watch a Wimpy Kid balloon float by in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.

All of this might not have happened had not a savvy editor, Charles Kochman of Abrams, recognized his talent. While a student at the University of Maryland, Kinney cartooned for the campus newspaper and studied (of all things) computer science and criminal justice. He planned to become a federal law enforcement agent until a hiring freeze squashed that idea. While trying to break into syndicate cartooning, he collected several years’ worth of what he calls “soul-crushing” rejection letters.

The problem was his drawing style: “I could never get a consistent line,” Kinney says. “My hand would never obey what my mind wanted it to do. And still, it’s very hard for me to draw.” That’s why he draws Greg as a middle schooler, although he originally had an adult audience in mind. After Kochman saw Kinney’s work at Comic-Con in 2006, Abrams decided to publish Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a children’s book, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The resulting hoopla feels “make-believe,” Kinney says, adding, “It feels like I go off and pretend to be an author, and pretend to make movies, and then come back to my normal life.”

His normal life takes place on a quiet street in Plainville, Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and two sons, ages five and seven. From there Kinney heads off to a day job as executive producer and creative director of a website called Poptropica, and returns to be assistant soccer coach for his son’s team.

Through it all, Kinney remains remarkably grounded, seeming as if he has all the time in the world, despite the fact that a film crew from CNN would soon arrive on the cloudy autumn day when we talked. At times, however, the balancing act is worrisome. “If I were throwing the football with my son and hurt my hand, then that would really send everything upside down,” Kinney says.

Now that he’s finished writing, what is The Ugly Truth?

“If I said that, it would blow the ending,” Kinney says, “but I’ll say that this book is about growing up. The book is sort of a metaphor for my decision on whether or not to move forward. . . . Is Greg going to move on, or is he going to stay in a state of arrested development forever?”

Will there be more Wimpy Kid books?

“I truly haven’t decided that,” Kinney says. “I’m trying to take a few weeks to really think about this. These books look like you could put them together in a day or two, but they take about nine months of really hard work.”

The work takes place in his small upstairs office, usually at night or on weekends. The walls are purposely bare to minimize distraction, and Kinney’s concentration method is decidedly unconventional.

“I sit right here,” he says, pointing to a corner of a small couch. “I usually put a blanket over my head.”

A blanket?

“Sensory deprivation,” he explains. “I’ve tried all sorts of different things . . . to help get my mind into a thinking mode. To make a good book I need maybe 700 ideas, so it’s about four hours a night of just thinking, for about four months. Most of the time I fall asleep.”

Kinney next labels each idea A, B or C, depending on how he judges its worth. He tries to throw out all of the “C” ideas, and then strings the rest together. Finally, he’s ready to draw, necessitating another four months of 8- to 12-hour days, and sometimes 13- and 14-hour days. He listens to books on tape, usually history or historical fiction, or sometimes political books about the CIA and terrorism. “It’s very strange,” he notes of his selections. “It doesn’t really compute with what I’m drawing.”

“I do all of my drawings on that tablet,” he says, pointing to a device that links to his computer. “I just draw like mad. In fact, my eyes still can’t focus even though it’s been about 10 days since I drew my last drawing [for The Ugly Truth].”

The merging of text and drawings comes late in the process, much like a giant puzzle, Kinney says. “A drawing might end up falling halfway on one page and half on the other, so sometimes you’ll change the story itself just to make the drawings fit.”

After a tour to promote the new book, Kinney looks forward to getting back to his daily routine, putting his sons on the school bus each morning, and waiting for them when they get off.

“I’m happiest when I’m leading a normal life,” he says. “That’s what I strive for.”

One night last summer, author Jeff Kinney was astounded to see that the upcoming book in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, The Ugly Truth, was number two on Amazon’s bestseller list.

“I didn’t even know what ‘The Ugly Truth’ was yet,” he remembers.…

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