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Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Kathryn Erskine

For Kathryn Erskine, art imitates life—deliberately. “I love reading and learning things from fiction,” she says, “and I figured others would, too.”

They certainly do: Her third novel, the 2010 National Book Award winner Mockingbird, features a fifth grader named Caitlin, who was inspired by Erskine’s daughter; both have Asperger’s syndrome.

In Erskine’s engaging new novel, The Absolute Value of Mike, the main character has a math-related learning disability that creates friction with his engineering-obsessed father. Once again, Erskine drew on the experiences of a family member—her son, who has a learning disability. The author says she’s learned a lot from him and wanted to incorporate those lessons in The Absolute Value of Mike. “I was a kid who got straight A’s, and thought that’s what you should do, that it meant you were smart,” she says by phone from her home in Charlottesville, Virginia. “My son does fine, but he’s not a straight-A kind of kid, and I realized he has all these life skills—he understands people, and he’s a problem-solver. I’ve learned great grades don’t guarantee success.”

The author wants kids to understand that, too. “I see children with learning disabilities or other issues who are down on themselves,” Erskine says. “I’d like them to take the message away that we all have something to contribute, and we need to follow whatever our passion is.”

Young readers will empathize with Mike’s frustration at his father’s insistence that math would be easier if he only tried harder—and they’ll share his trepidation when he’s sent to stay with relatives in rural Pennsylvania for the summer and work on an engineering project.

Mike becomes impatient with the project, but he is intrigued when he learns of a town-wide effort to raise money to adopt a little boy from Romania. Readers will be moved as Mike becomes part of something bigger than himself—and gains self-confidence in the process.

While a young Erskine wouldn’t have been daunted by a Pennsylvania trip (she lived in several countries as a child, thanks to her parents’ foreign-service jobs), she does know about international adoption—both her children are from Russia. “[Adoption] is something I thought others might not know that much about, but they’d be interested.”

Right now, Erskine is herself interested in a few different projects: an adult novel “for a change of pace”; a picture book “as an exercise to force myself to use very few words to get my point across”; and historical fiction for middle-grade readers.

“I don’t even want to use the h-word, because it turns kids off sometimes, but history is like a fantasy world—except it really happened!” Readers won’t need convincing. Thanks to books like Mockingbird and The Absolute Value of Mike, it’s clear that, if anyone can make learning an enjoyable experience, Erskine can.

For Kathryn Erskine, art imitates life—deliberately. “I love reading and learning things from fiction,” she says, “and I figured others would, too.”

They certainly do: Her third novel, the 2010 National Book Award winner Mockingbird, features a fifth grader named Caitlin, who was inspired by Erskine’s…

LiteratureArts & Culture

Michael Sims

While writing his delightful biography of E.B. White, The Story of Charlotte’s Web, Michael Sims gained a new appreciation for this childhood classic and its eccentric creator.

Do you remember reading Charlotte’s Web as a child?
Sadly, I didn’t read it in childhood, for two dumb reasons. First, I saw the cover and thought that it was about a girl and I wasn’t reading much about girls at the time. And second, I decided that I didn’t like the name Charlotte—although later my beautiful niece Charlotte changed my opinion of the name. So I was a teenager when I actually read Charlotte’s Web—and fell in love with it even at that late date.

I loved your vivid descriptions of young Elwyn’s adventures in barns and outdoors. What led you to write about his childhood in this almost novelistic way?
For me the theme of the book is the unpredictability of creativity. To recreate the unusual way that White’s imagination responded to the natural world, I had to take him out into it. His letters and essays provide all kinds of texture about his daily life, so I started with those. I also built on them from my other research and my own observations on numerous visits to Maine. For example, if White mentioned watching coots and loons on the cove, but didn’t describe them, it doesn’t matter; I’ve seen them there many times myself.

Your subtitle refers to E.B. White’s “eccentric life,” but he was a pretty successful writer and editor. What makes him so eccentric?
He was very successful, yes. I think that from early childhood White simply had to go his own way. The word eccentric comes from two Greek words meaning “off center,” and he was that way from birth. In young adulthood he was already nostalgic; he looked for nature in the city; he enjoyed being a husband and father and stepfather, but he spent most of his time in the company of animals. So by eccentric I mean, I think, that he was unconsciously original.

Why were Don Marquis’ stories about Archy and Mehitabel such a pivotal influence for White?
Marquis is at his best in these antic poems and sketches about a free-verse poet reincarnated as a cockroach in the Jazz Age. White read them when they were new, starting in 1916 when he was a teenager, and fell in love with Marquis’ combination of skepticism, humor and compassion. He kept reading them. Then in 1949 he was asked to write an introduction to them, and rereading the whole series helped kick-start Charlotte’s Web.

What was it like visiting the Whites’ farm in Maine? Did it look like Zuckerman’s barn?
Yes, it did. I found it surreal and thrilling. I enjoy literary pilgrimages; I’ve visited Green Gables and Darwin’s Down House and even the original Hundred Acre Wood. But walking through E.B. White’s barn, and hitting my head on the rope that Avery and Fern swing on, and seeing the barn cellar looking very much like Garth Williams’ illustrations of Wilbur’s home—those moments made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

E.B. White’s wife Katharine seems like an interesting and accomplished woman. Did she love farming and animals as he did, or was this something she tolerated in him?
Katharine White—she was Katharine Sergeant Angellwhen White met her, before her divorce—was a fascinating woman. At The New Yorker she was brilliant and formidable as editor of John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov and many other important writers. She liked animals and country life, but my general sense is that she agreed to move to the farm in Maine because she wanted her husband to be happy. Only later did he realize how much she sacrificed to move there.

I’m trying to imagine a connection between Charlotte’s Web and White’s The Elements of Style. Is there one?
Excellent question. Each represents White’s commitment to lucidity, to the elegance of simplicity, and demonstrates his argument that “style” is not a goal to be achieved but a side effect of a writer’s authenticity. Each book also began as a return to the past—to caring for animals in a barn as he had in the stable of his childhood; and to a favorite Cornell professor, William Strunk, whose homemade-style chapbook had come to White at an impressionable age, just as he became a busy undergraduate journalist on the Cornell paper.

You talk about the barnyard as “sacred space” for White. What can we learn from life in a barn?
White claimed that Charlotte’s Web is a straightforward report from the barn, but of course he himself was very sentimental about it as a place in which he had spent many great hours in contact with the most elemental aspects of life, with hunger and birth, with growth and death. He saw it as a miniature cosmos, but also as a place where he had always been innocently happy—on his own, nurturing an animal, minding his own business, thinking his own thoughts.

Is Charlotte’s Web still relevant for 21st-century children?
Very much so, I think. First, of course, it’s a wonderful story, a mix of humor and lyricism and heartbreak; and it was one of the first children’s books to deal with death, the great taboo for so long. But also, over most of the world, especially the United States, the second decade of the 21st century is far more urbanized than the mid-20th century, when the book was published. As I researched E.B. White’s drafts of Charlotte’s Web, I realized that as much as anything else he wanted to immortalize a sense of natural rhythms—days, seasons, birth, death. What could be more relevant for our nature-starved children nowadays?

 

While writing his delightful biography of E.B. White, The Story of Charlotte’s Web, Michael Sims gained a new appreciation for this childhood classic and its eccentric creator.

Do you remember reading Charlotte’s Web as a child?
Sadly, I didn’t read it in childhood, for two…

Fiction

Ann Patchett

We recently made a call to Ann Patchett at her favorite spot on the globe—the handsome red brick house she shares with her husband on a tree-lined street in Nashville. The first part of our conversation is taken up with talk of dogs; Rose, Patchett’s great love and the subject of several essays, is now 15 years old.

The author admits to carrying the dog in a baby sling on walks since the terrier mix lost the use of her back legs. “It makes me feel like an insane person, but I couldn’t do the stroller,” Patchett says with a laugh. We all have our limits. (Friend and fellow writer Donna Tartt, who has an ancient paraplegic pug, has been hugely supportive, offering empathy and advice on physical therapy.)

This world of charming homes and coddled pets could not be farther from the exotic one Patchett conjures up in her latest and possibly finest novel to date, State of Wonder.

A woman’s search for her mentor in the South American jungle leads to a shocking discovery.

Set deep in the heart of the Amazonian jungle, State of Wonder tells the story of Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist with a Minnesota pharmaceutical company dispatched to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson. The enigmatic and elusive Swenson, who has virtually disappeared while working on a potentially valuable new drug, does not, however, want to be found; the last person sent to look for her, Marina’s research partner and friend Anders Eckman, died in the process. Hoping to find clues about Anders’ death, Marina reluctantly sets out on a fact-finding mission that will alter the course of her life.

Patchett points out that she wrote State of Wonder “much, much more quickly” than any of her five previous novels. “When I finished Run, which was a book that took me for-bloody-ever, I didn’t have an idea for a book, and that’s really rare,” she says. A conversation with friends changed all that. In 2008, she and her husband were having dinner with Edgar Meyer, the acclaimed Nashville double bass player, and his wife. Patchett and Meyer were bemoaning the fact that they were spending too much time on the road and not enough time at the desk. Patchett recalls, “Edgar said, ‘You know, I had this revelation. I put a notebook at the door to my studio, and I clock in, and I clock out. I’ve discovered that the more hours I spend trying to write, the more I write.’ ” Patchett exclaims, with feigned amazement, “And I thought, wow! What a great idea! I’ve never done that . . . so I made a pledge to write every day and finished the book about a year later.”

At the outset, Patchett knew she wanted to explore a specific kind of relationship, though she wasn’t sure what it would look like. The jungle setting she opted for may be foreign, but relationships are familiar terrain for Patchett, an expert on the intimacies between people and the language of the heart. “I wanted to write about the relationship between a teacher and a student once they had grown up, a student who did everything in her life to please the teacher and to shape herself like the teacher, but the teacher has no idea who the student is, which is a very common scenario—it was a common scenario for me as a student and for me as a teacher. So that was the central relationship and then from there . . .”

Well, from there, let’s just say the narrative takes flight—like a big, scary and strangely beautiful insect you might find in the Amazon. The intricate plot lines twist and turn as the characters encounter poison arrows, anacondas and even a tribe of cannibals. The most threatening thing Singh confronts, however, might be Swenson herself—as formidable now in her 70s as she was during Singh’s student days at Johns Hopkins. The adventure reaches a fever pitch when she learns that Swenson’s initial assignment, to develop an antimalarial drug, has led to a discovery that could have a profound effect on Western society.

South America was also the setting for Bel Canto, Patchett’s most successful novel to date, which won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the UK’s Orange Prize in 2002 and has sold more than a million copies. Asked if that continent holds a certain allure for her, Patchett explains, “Malaria may be more obvious in Africa or India, but I couldn’t figure out a way to develop a drug in those places. I thought, oh, I can’t write another book set in South America because it would be seen as cashing in on Bel Canto. Then I thought, who cares? It’s a big continent. Plus, I never actually say in Bel Canto that it’s in South America.”

Her lush descriptions of the jungle are so finely wrought, you can almost feel the dense, humid air. Patchett says her research did lead her to visit part of South America—though not the area she recreates in the novel. She had planned to go to Manaus, where Singh lands before heading into the jungle, to see friend and celebrated soprano Renée Fleming perform at the opera house there, but the trip fell through when Fleming’s schedule changed. Instead she watched the opening scene of Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo “about 300 times” to familiarize herself with the Manaus opera house where a dramatic scene from the book takes place. In the movie, as in the novel, the opera house is “the only thing that’s keeping anybody sane,” she says.

Patchett writes so convincingly about the Lakashi, the tribe being studied by Dr. Swenson and her team, that one assumes they must actually exist. (They don’t. Elsewhere, Patchett has remarked that she named the tribe after her favorite cereal.) “People ask, where are the Lakashi? How did you find them? And I’m like, are you out of your mind?” she laughs.

Though many details in the book came from her own rich imaginings, Patchett did rely on her husband, Karl VanDevender, an internist, as well as other doctor friends, to make sure the pharmaceutical elements of the novel were scientifically accurate. “Karl and I talked about building that world . . . how can you be developing a drug and find another one in the process?” Patchett recalls. “That’s what we sit around and talk about in the evenings.”

Though the book is neither an indictment of the profit-driven drug industry nor a treatise on medical ethics, it raises profound questions about morality, life and death. Witnessing Swenson’s unorthodox approach and willingness to make extreme sacrifices in the name of science, Singh is forced to search her own heart for what truth lies there—as the reader is forced to recalibrate his or her own moral compass.

With these themes and narrative structure, comparisons to Heart of Darkness are inevitable. “It’s funny because when I wrote this book I was trying to do something modeled on The Ambassadors, my very favorite Henry James novel, which is about someone who goes to Paris to bring back the errant son of someone he works with,” Patchett says. “Somehow the lines crossed along the way, and I kept thinking, this is really seeming a lot more like Heart of Darkness than The Ambassadors. But you know, it’s one of those archetypal themes—character A is dispatched to bring back character B. . . . You’re going to find the other, but what you find is yourself.”

Of the book’s dramatic, somewhat cryptic conclusion, Patchett says, “One of my great goals in the book is to turn the reader out, to have an interactive story where you have to draw conclusions that will lead you forward. I want people to stretch.” Which is exactly what happens. This story lingers, uncoiling itself like a snake, its revelations coming days after the last page is turned. It is a journey into the heart of darkness, but one that offers a glimpse of what lies beyond.

Don't miss our video interview with Ann Patchett.

We recently made a call to Ann Patchett at her favorite spot on the globe—the handsome red brick house she shares with her husband on a tree-lined street in Nashville. The first part of our conversation is taken up with talk of dogs; Rose, Patchett’s…

NonfictionMemoirLiteratureArts & Culture

Nina Sankovitch

In October 2008, Nina Sankovitch launched a year-long project: She would read one book a day, every day, for a year. The idea was to give some structure to her life after the tragic death of her older sister. In addition to reading the books, Sankovitch also committed herself to reviewing each of them on a website she created, ReadAllDay. As word of her task spread, her audience grew—and, once the project was completed, Sankovitch wrote a book of her own about her experience, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, an "affectionate and inspiring paean to the power of books and reading." We had to ask Sankovitch a few questions about this ambitious project. Her answers just might inspire you to increase your reading goals!

Even people who read a lot might find the thought of reading a book a day daunting. How did you do it (and have any kind of life!)? 
By reading wherever and whenever I could! I'd started my year with a plan to read while the kids were away at school (treating my reading project like a job—the best job I could ever imagine!) but life quickly intervened in the form of sick children, needy cats, curious friends, and a few unexpected twists and turns. Then I realized that I could fit in so much reading by pushing out unnecessary preoccupations, like folding laundry (what's wrong with a clean pile for foraging?) or watching TV or going online (no need to change Facebook status: "reading" just about covered it). 

Reading a book a day didn't take away from "having a life"; it made my life better, richer, fuller, more satisfying. And there was never, ever a day never a day when I woke up and thought to myself, "Oh darn! I have to read a book today." On the contrary: I was eager to get out of bed every morning because I knew I had something new waiting for me: a new landscape to explore, new characters to meet, a new plot to lose myself in and new lessons to learn. 

Have you always been a reader? When did you fall in love with reading? 
I have always loved books. One of my earliest memories is of going to the local bookmobile: how the three steps up seemed so huge to me and how good it smelled when I got inside the cramped, dusty space crowded with books. I was too young to read but I could pick out books for myself and look through them on my own at home or have my mother or sisters read them to me. Once I started to read for myself, I always had books around me, next to my bed, piled on the kitchen counter, in my school bag—and I still live that way! I cannot imagine a day without reading or a home without books. 

What was your favorite read of the year? 
I read too many wonderful books to have one favorite out of 365 books read. On my Readallday site where I posted my daily reviews, I kept a list of "Great Books," books I'd particularly loved. By the end of the year, I had more than 90 books on that list. 

Was there a book you read–or reread—that surprised you?
Every book I read during my year was new to me—one of my self-imposed rules was no re-reads! But I read many books that surprised me because they were from authors I had not known before: it is such a lovely experience to discover books written by someone new, offering something different than anything I'd read before. Ruins by Achy Obejas, The Curriculum Vitae of Aurora Ortiz by Almudena Solana, The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa, The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal, The Sun Field by Heywood Braun are just some of the gems I discovered. 

How did you make your selections?
I went through the stacks of my local library or the stacks at book stores, and looked first for books about an inch or so thick, which translated to about 250 to 300 pages. That was the optimal number of pages for a day of good reading. Then I looked through the book, read the first few pages, and if everything clicked for me, I added it to the pile in my arms. Friends gave me books, visitors to my website offered recommendations, and even my kids chimed in with the books I "had" to read. 

On top of reading a book a day, you wrote a review of it. Did you enjoy writing the reviews?
I loved writing the reviews, although the more I'd enjoyed a certain book, the harder it was to write a review: how could I do justice to the beauty, the wit, the creativity of the author, or the magnificence of the book? Whenever I got stuck, I said to myself "What did you love about this book? Just be honest!" and the words would come. By writing about each book I was able to reach deeper into the book and into my own reactions about it, and thus I pulled out even more from the experience of reading. I also was sharing my reviews with other readers and getting responses back, further deepening both my understanding of the book and my experience of it. 

What did your family think of your reading obsession?
They saw how restorative the experience was for me, and how much I was flourishing under the daily reading and writing. It was such a pleasurable regime for me that the good feelings spread throughout our house, mellowing everyone and energizing us all, at the same time. 

What would you say to a person who tells you, "I don't have time to read."
Always carry a book with you and you will discover that there are moments that build into significant time for reading. And the more you find the time, the more you look for it, because reading is such a pleasure, a stimulation and an escape. 

Why should people make an effort to incorporate reading into their lives?
Because of all that books offer: wisdom, humor, company, comfort, and pleasure. My advice to people is that they find books they like to read—what is enjoyable for them, not what someone else dictates as a "must read"—and indulge in the pleasures found there. And don't worry about how many books you read or if the books are "important" enough: every book is worth reading if it brings pleasure, escape, comfort or wisdom, and the number of books matters less than the everyday experience of reading. 

Since completing the challenge of reading a book a day for a year, have your feelings toward reading and books changed at all?
Through my year of reading, I now understand how reading connects me to so many other people. I may read alone but in that reading I am in great company! I remember riding in a cab with a Nigerian driver during my year of reading. He and I began to discuss Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emechata, two writers I had just read. We had a great time talking and when the ride was over, we shook hands good-bye. Two strangers, from opposite sides of the world, and we connected over books. Those connections forged by reading have made me more addicted to reading than ever. The great thing about being addicted to books is that there is such an abundance of books! I will never run out of the stuff that feeds my need to read. I might run out of chocolate, but I can always find books on my shelves, new ones yet to discover or old favorites to enjoy.

 

In October 2008, Nina Sankovitch launched a year-long project: She would read one book a day, every day, for a year. The idea was to give some structure to her life after the tragic death of her older sister. In addition to reading the books,…

FictionWomen's FictionHistorical Fiction

Lisa See

The author of Shanghai Girls brings back three of her favorite characters in a new novel set during one of China’s darkest periods.

Dreams of Joy is a sequel to one of your previous novels, Shanghai Girls. What made you decide to revisit that story and its characters?
I didn’t plan to write a sequel. I thought the end of Shanghai Girls was a new beginning. Readers thought otherwise. Absolutely everyone, including my publisher, asked for a sequel. I loved spending more time with Pearl, Joy and May. I’ve now been thinking and writing about them for four years, so I know them really, really well. It was interesting to go even deeper emotionally with all of them.

This novel offers a vivid picture of the hardships endured by the Chinese people during Mao’s Great Leap Forward. How did you conduct your research and what obstacles did you encounter?
There are a handful of nonfiction books written about the Great Leap Forward, which helped me with the straight facts. When I was in China, I interviewed people in Huangcun Village who had lived through that time. I also talked to younger people in China to see what their impressions were of the Great Leap Forward and what their parents had gone through. The main obstacle I encountered, even with young, educated people, is the belief—after years of education—that the famine that occurred during the Great Leap Forward was caused by “three years of bad weather.”

All of your books are rooted in fact and real historical events, so why do you choose to write fiction rather than nonfiction?
What I love about books—as a reader myself—is opening the pages, stepping into another world, connecting to the characters, and by extension to larger things like an historical moment, the human condition, how women were treated and things like that. I’m willing to go on a journey and read about history if there are characters, relationships and emotions I can connect to. It’s those things that keep me turning the pages, and along the way I learn a lot. That’s what I love in the books I read, and that’s what I hope for readers of the books I write.

Your fiction has opened a new window on China and its people for many American readers. Do you feel that there are any stereotypes about China that continue to persist despite your efforts?
I actually think people are very confused about China. Is it an economic global superpower or a rigid Communist country known for its human rights violations? Is it one of the most advanced countries in the world in terms of gender equality or is it a place where people give up their daughters for adoption? Is it the country with the third largest number of millionaires and billionaires in the world or a country of dire poverty? On any given day, any stereotype can be accurate, even in this country.

The movie version of your novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan will premiere this summer. How does it feel to see your characters come to life on the screen?
It’s both wonderful and weird. The parts of the film that are true to the book are absolutely true—lifted word for word from the novel. But I’m sure that many readers of the book will be just as surprised as I was to see a singing and dancing Hugh Jackman.

Dreams of Joy makes plenty of references to the Chinese Zodiac: Dogs are likeable, Rabbits are friendly, Dragons are ferocious. Your Chinese zodiac sign is the Sheep; how well do you think you embody your sign?
A Sheep really loves home. I also love to be at home. It’s one of the reasons I became a writer. I can stay at home all day.

What is the most important thing you have learned about writing from your mother, novelist Carolyn See?
Her work habits. Write 1,000 words a day, plus one charming note or phone call.

Your Chinese heritage is obviously very important to you as a writer; are there any other Chinese (or Chinese-American) writers that you feel deserve wider readership?
I love Ha Jin and Yiyun Li. They’re both critically acclaimed, but they haven’t had the readership they deserve.

With bookstores closing and eBooks and self-publishing exploding, the literary world is in a period of rapid change. Are you concerned about what the future holds for books and reading?
Of course I’m concerned. Who isn’t? I love real books, but I also have a Kindle that I use on trips. As soon as I come home, though, I’m back to a real book.

 

The author of Shanghai Girls brings back three of her favorite characters in a new novel set during one of China’s darkest periods.

Dreams of Joy is a sequel to one of your previous novels, Shanghai Girls. What made you decide to revisit that story…

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Marcus Sakey

In The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes, Marcus Sakey has written a seriously good thriller. Really good. So of course we can’t tell you too much about it.

“It drives me crazy when people [he means reviewers] give away all the stuff I worked so hard to make surprises,” Sakey says during a call to his home in Chicago, where, he reports, “life is a little chaotic.” He and his wife g.g. just moved to new digs a mile and a half west of Wrigley Field two days before our call.

Chicago’s neighborhoods have been the setting for all four of Sakey’s previous novels, including the highly regarded The Blade Itself (2007) and Good People (2008), the film version of which will be produced by and star Tobey Maguire. It gives nothing away to say the new book is, therefore, a departure, opening in Maine and ending in Los Angeles, with a crazy sort of road trip in between. Nor will it deprive readers of the edge-of-the-seat, smack-to-the-forehead pleasures of every nasty twist and turn of the plot to let them know that the title character suffers from amnesia. When the man awakens to find himself lying naked on a desolate beach, he has no idea who he is or how he got there.

Sakey’s publishers are so happy with the new book that they are calling it “a breakthrough achievement.” Sakey himself sounds more circumspect. Despite the truly scary, brutal edges of some of the characters he imagines, Sakey seems like a good-humored guy you’d enjoy having a beer with. He says he likes calling into reading group discussions about his books. He admits to “pet peeves” rather than towering rages. One of his pet peeves, he says, is discourtesy. “I’m a big fan of courtesy. I think it’s basic human decency to be courteous to one another.”

So, is his latest thriller a breakthrough? “That’s a hard question to answer. I will say that I feel it’s my most ambitious book. And it was a monster to write. It’s the book I’ve thrown away the most of. I reached a point where I realized that what I was writing was kind of bleak and joyless. I wasn’t enjoying it and I didn’t think others would either. So I had to throw out probably 150 pages. Which is pretty much a call for martinis.”

One of the biggest challenges, Sakey says, was finding a way to make all the plot twists and thematic layers of his story work together. “I wanted to make them honest surprises, where each significant discovery Daniel makes takes the book in a different direction. . . . And—I hope this doesn’t sound pretentious; I don’t think I’m pretentious—I was really trying in the way I told the story to say something about memory and about what stories mean. I think memory is just a story we tell ourselves, and if that’s true, then our identity is always malleable. There’s no certainty in who we are; it’s just the choices we make.”

But themes and ideas, Sakey acknowledges, are a touchy subject when it comes to writing a thriller. “There’s this perception that, ‘oh, you’re a thriller writer,’ pat on the head. But if a book doesn’t have ideas, I don’t understand why you’d read the book, much less write it. Without that, it’s just run, run, chase, chase, shoot, shoot. That doesn’t give me anything to anchor to as a reader and certainly not as a writer.”

Sakey grounds his ideas and twisty plots in small, vivid details. “I’m a big fan of the pull-out detail that makes you feel it. I like the little bit of verisimilitude rather than two pages of explanation.” And that tendency extends to his scariest characters. “A lot of times when people try to make things scary, they go into this weird slasher-movie mode. Like the more ridiculous and bloody harm they can make a character do while laughing the better. I just don’t buy that. I get annoyed by authors who do that.”

Which prompts Sakey to talk about another of his pet peeves. “I’ll hear some authors say that they don’t read while they’re writing. I don’t understand. Because first of all I am writing all the time, so then when is it I’m allowed to read?”

Sakey says he reads widely in his genre—Elmore Leonard, Dennis Lehane, Richard Price, to name a few—“but I probably read more outside the genre than within it. My tastes run to David Foster Wallace, David Mitchell, Thomas Pynchon, Michael Ondaatje, Michael Chabon, Michael Cunningham. It’s like somebody once said: There are two kinds of writing, good writing and bad writing. I don’t really care what the genre is, I read the good stuff.”

You can put Sakey’s The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes right up there with the good stuff.

 

In The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes, Marcus Sakey has written a seriously good thriller. Really good. So of course we can’t tell you too much about it.

“It drives me crazy when people [he means reviewers] give away all the stuff I worked so hard to…

YA FictionYA

Lauren Kate

Being 17 and in love can be glorious, but what if the object of your affection is a fallen angel? And you’re both beset by an ancient curse? No wonder Lucinda “Luce” Price spends a lot of her time feeling confused and frustrated in Passion, the latest installment in the Fallen series by Lauren Kate.

If fan enthusiasm and sales figures are any indication, readers will thrill at re-entering the dark, dramatic world Kate has created, all the better to cheer on their beloved Luce as she sets out on a quest for clarity, safety and love. The first two books in the series, Fallen and Torment, were New York Times bestsellers, and Kate routinely gets eager crowds at book signings here and abroad.

In an interview from her home in Laurel Canyon, California, Kate says it was at her very first signing that a reader uttered the “best question [she’d] ever been asked.” The author recalled, “I read this really frustrating, annoying fight scene between [the characters], and their special love isn’t really visible if you read the scene alone. But an 11-year-old girl came up to me afterward—she waited until everyone was gone, and then asked quietly, ‘Do you really think a love that beautiful exists in the world?’ ” 

“It was amazing,” Kate recalls. “That she could see into it, and was open enough to imagine what lay beyond those pages, was really cool.” And yes, the author adds, “I do believe in that love very strongly. When Fallen came out, I’d been married for three months.” 

Nearly two years later, even Kate’s husband sometimes gets to feel the affection of fans: “We went to the Philippines for a book signing, and there was a long line. People went up to him, saying, ‘I’ll never get to the front, can I just take a picture with you?’” 

Kate’s belief in a “magical connection that’s gorgeous and attainable” resonates in her voice when she talks about her husband—and her characters, Luce and Daniel, who in Passion demonstrate their willingness to take all manner of risks in service of being together. 

In Fallen, Luce finds herself in reform school in Savannah, Georgia, where she meets Daniel and his friends, “and realizes she’s been swept up in a longstanding curse,” Kate says. Luce parts from Daniel and goes to California in Torment; “it’s a growing-pains book, an awakening book that prepares her for the excitement of discovering her past.”

And discover it, she does: In Passion, the boundaries of the U.S.—not to mention time and space—are roundly broken when Luce travels from Kentucky to England to China to Israel to Egypt, and from 2009 to the 1700s to 3100 BCE, among other locations and centuries. She and her friends (and enemies?) do so by way of Announcers, shadowy supernatural entities that serve as unusually swift, albeit unpredictable, modes of transportation. 

Luce’s and Daniel’s quest to understand and break the anti-love curse makes for an exciting pace, with plenty of surprises and humor to balance the agony and fear the two experience as they jump through time. They never know where they’ll surface (the bathtub? A war zone? The edge of a cliff?). Then there’s Bill the helpful gargoyle, who does a fabulous job as Luce’s stylist (he specializes in “un-Anachronizing”). Is he as nice as he seems?

Another big question: Is it the curse that’s keeping them apart, or is there some larger message about love between an angel and a mortal, and connections between the heavenly and the earthly? Such matters first pinged on Kate’s writerly radar in graduate school, when she took a course in the Bible as literature.

“I was kind of at a wall with another romance novel I was working on. It was just about these two people, and was insular in a confining way. I wanted to do something that would implicate a lot more people, even the entire world,” she says. 

References to angels in biblical texts piqued her interest, and she began to have regular conversations with her professor, who made a statement that became a turning point for the author. “I was struggling as I read different texts, with all these discrepancies [about angels]. I asked her what to do, and she smirked and said, what do you think Milton did? Just pick what’s relevant to you and the story—you’ll never find definitive answers for reasons that defy explanation.”

And with that, Kate’s writing took off. “It empowered me to say, this is my story. I will do research and pick the pieces that fit,” she says. 

One way of doing that: layers of references to other books she’s loved and learned from, particularly novels. For example, in preparation for writing about Milan, Kate read A Farewell to Arms; for Moscow, The Master and Margarita; and for 1600s London, she turned to her Shakespeare-scholar husband (he’s pursing a Ph.D. in poetry). “It was fun to look back and realize these incredible novels I already love are set in time periods I could explore in Passion, and my husband is probably one of my best readers.”

He’ll soon have more work to do, because Kate is in the midst of writing Rapture, the final book in the series (due out in 2012). Just as Passion elevates the series onto an even more dramatic and exciting plane, Rapture represents yet another new frontier. 

“At the beginning of the series, I wondered—am I going to go there, and have Lucifer and God be characters? It’s challenging . . . it feels strange to imagine your own version of heaven and put it on paper. And the godly force, the physical reality of God, I’m working on that. It’s a very delicate balance, still.”

There’s one area in which Kate is unwavering: She loves writing about 17-year-old girls. “That age is very inspiring to me. To be 17 holds so much gravity, so much possibility. So many fraught situations are going to be inevitable at that age, that liminal place between girlhood and adulthood.” 

It’s a time her readers know, or remember, well. And they’ll be happy to hear that Kate has no plans to shift her focus:  “I can see myself writing about this age forever.”

 

Being 17 and in love can be glorious, but what if the object of your affection is a fallen angel? And you’re both beset by an ancient curse? No wonder Lucinda “Luce” Price spends a lot of her time feeling confused and frustrated in Passion,…

Mystery & SuspenseFictionSuspense

Janet Evanovich

New York Times best-selling author Janet Evanovich is a busy lady, publishing at least a book a year (and usually more) in her mega-successful Stephanie Plum, Alex Barnaby and Diesel & Tucker series. The latest Plum adventure, Smokin’ Seventeen, is on sale in hardcover this month, and the last Plum novel, Sizzling Sixteen, is available in mass market paperback. Evanovich graciously chatted with BookPage about reading, writing and birthday cake. 

You have written romance novels, mystery novels, short stories and nonfiction. What’s your favorite kind of book to write? To read?
I like adventure novels with a little romantic comedy in the mix. 

You’ve turned your success into a family business, with your son keeping track of the financial matters and your daughter doing almost everything else at “Evanovich, Inc.” What do you say to people who think you shouldn’t mix family and business?
I suppose mixing family and business isn’t for everyone, but it works for us. We all have very different talents and we try not to step on each other’s toes. If there’s a choice to be made it’s family first and business second.

After 16 (and about to be 17!) books, Stephanie Plum has become an iconic figure in mystery fiction. Where did you get the inspiration for her character?
The initial inspiration was monetary. I needed a new roof on my house. 🙂 Truth is Stephanie is a mix of me and my daughter Alex plus a few traits that are pure fiction.

We last saw Stephanie Plum in Sizzling Sixteen. What do we have to look forward to in Smokin’ Seventeen? 
Stephanie gets romantic with the two men in her life and dead bodies keep turning up in the lot destined to house a new bail bonds office.

Plum will make her big screen debut in a film version of One for the Money, slated to hit theaters in 2012. Can you share any behind-the-scenes movie scoop?
Sorry, no behind-the-scenes scoops.

What’s next for Stephanie Plum?For you?
I’m currently working on Plum Eighteen and the next book in the new Diesel series.

Plum becomes a bounty hunter when she loses her job as a lingerie buyer. What would you do if you weren’t a writer?
I’d sell ebleskivers [Danish pancakes] out of a food truck.

We’ve heard you have a bit of a sweet tooth. If you had to choose just one dessert, would it be cake, pie or something chocolatey? 
Birthday cake!

New York Times best-selling author Janet Evanovich is a busy lady, publishing at least a book a year (and usually more) in her mega-successful Stephanie Plum, Alex Barnaby and Diesel & Tucker series. The latest Plum adventure, Smokin’ Seventeen, is on sale in hardcover this…

RomanceParanormal Romance

Jude Deveraux

With 40 New York Times bestsellers and 60 million copies of her books in print worldwide, romance author Jude Deveraux is a force to be reckoned with. She took time out of her busy schedule to talk with BookPage about inspiration, her writing process and whom she’d like to be stranded with on a desert island.

You are the best-selling author of both historical and contemporary romances. Where do you find your inspiration? How do you decide what type of novel you want to write next?
Everything I do, hear, see—I think, how can I use that in a book? Sometimes an event will inspire me, sometimes a personality trait will make me think of building a character around it. I often think, I’d like to write a book about . . . fill in the blank. As for time period, that’s chosen by the idea. When I find something I want to write about, it always has a time period attached to it. I read something about a man going into the wilds of Florida to paint the flora and fauna. That interested me so I thought I’d use it in a book. That it was to be historical was a given. It turned out to be The Scent of Jasmine.

What kind of research do you do for your historical novels? How do you keep all the characters in your Edilean Series straight? There are so many!
Whenever I do an historical, I usually spend about a month doing specific research on whatever is the basis for the novel. I buy several books about the subject and read them with note cards in my hands. I use a genealogy software to keep my Edilean characters straight. Since I’m not good with numbers, it’s difficult for me to figure out the dates of when people were born and had babies. But the software checks me on my dates and tells me when I have a couple of 10-year-olds as parents. I realized right away that unless my characters were to marry cousins I had to bring in newcomers. It’s nice for me to know about things like who owns the local grocery, whose ancestor was devious and whose was a hero.

In Scarlet Nights, an undercover investigator climbs through the trapdoor of Sara Shaw’s apartment—and sparks begin to fly. If you could choose any hero to show up at your house, who would it be?
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He was a Victorian explorer. I’ve read umpteen bios about him and am deeply in love with him. Just the mention of his name makes my heart flutter. That he lived over 100 years ago has never seemed to matter to me. A wonderful, intelligent, heroic man!

Do you have a favorite couple from literature, movies or life?
I like all the real-life couples I meet who have been married 30-some years and still like each other. I envy them so very much!

If you had to be stranded on a desert island with one fictional character, who would you want it to be?
I’m tempted to say, “A boat builder,” but that’s too easy. I recently wrote a book called The End of Summer, and the hero of it, Dr. Tristan Aldredge, is the nicest, sweetest man I’ve ever written about. I usually start out with people who have been hurt in some way. Working through their problems gives me a plot. But Tristan was just plain sweet. He inspired love in people wherever he went. It didn’t hurt that he was so beautiful that women drew in their breath when they saw him, but that was beside the point. Dr. Tris was funny, creative and gentle. I could stand to spend some time with him in real life.

What’s next for you?
I have a bit more to write on the second book of a trilogy set in Edilean. When these are finished, I’m going to start a new series. Funny things have happened with these three books. The father of my first heroine was just supposed to move the story forward, but Joe Layton turned out to be bigger than life. I’ve taken him into Book Two and given him someone to love. I had the hero for Book Three planned from the beginning, but the brother of the heroine of Book Two is so angry that I may give him Sophie to straighten him out. I would love to give the titles to these books but I don’t have any. I can write a book much, much easier than I can come up with a title. If any of you have title ideas, please go onto my website and tell me. If I use it, I’ll dedicate the book to you.

 

With 40 New York Times bestsellers and 60 million copies of her books in print worldwide, romance author Jude Deveraux is a force to be reckoned with. She took time out of her busy schedule to talk with BookPage about inspiration, her writing process and…

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Benjamin Black

Benjamin Black, the alter ego of Irish literary author John Banville, returns with A Death in Summer, his fourth detective novel featuring pathologist/amateur detective Garret Quirke.

You don’t hide the fact that Benjamin Black is a pseudonym. What does having a pen name afford a writer? How does having an alter ego affect your approach toward the crime series?
My decision to write crime fiction under a pseudonym arose out of the fear that if I published under Banville’s name, Banville’s readers would suspect I was working a postmodernist trick on them. I wanted readers to know this was a new venture I was embarked on, and that what they saw was what they got. BB writes entirely differently from JB—both in procedure and in the finished product. I haven’t yet decided what it means to have an alter ego. Nothing much, probably. We are all manifold selves, after all.

The book opens with the murder of a major newspaper tycoon, and his print empire looms over the rest of the story. You were an editor for The Irish Press; did that experience inform the book at all?
I think the only place where I consciously used my experience as a newspaper man was in a little scene early on in the book where a golf-playing news executive is dictating to his long-suffering secretary an editorial on the violent death of the newspaper’s proprietor. I enjoyed writing that.

While you’re clearly writing within the tradition of classic noir, your novels have a decidedly modern bent. What do you take from the genre and what do you make your own?
Have they a decidedly modern bent? They seem to me decidedly traditional, if perhaps a bit better-written than a lot of crime fiction. I like the genre, but on the other hand I dislike the notion of there being genres; to me, there are just good books and not so good books. Crime and Punishment is a crime novel, and The Postman Always Rings Twice is a piece of serious literature.

What kinds of liberties does writing about an “amateur” give you? Do you ever worry that your part-time sleuth is becoming a professional?
I wanted a protagonist who would be the direct opposite of a Sherlock Holmes or an Hercule Poirot, and certainly in Quirke that’s what I got. He’s just as slow and dull-witted as the rest of us are, and most of the time he gets things wrong, misses clues, falls over his own feet and will certainly never be a professional. Since the books are set in the 1950s it means I do not have to keep up with present-day forensic science and so on, which is a great relief, for I find the contemporary obsession with factuality a great bore. A pinch of imagination will tip the scales against a pound of research any day.

Why do you find the 1950s such an interesting time to write about?
The 1950s in Ireland was a horrible, soul-destroying, hidebound and mean-spirited time, but also absolutely fascinating, at this remove. Ireland was just like Eastern Europe, caught fast in the grip of an iron ideology and ruled over by half-crazed zealots who watched our every move to ensure we did not deviate from the party line. And then, life in Dublin in those days, as I vividly recall it, was pure noir: the fog, the furtive sexuality, the dirty secrets hidden deep. Banville gets quite jealous of BB, at times.

You’re particularly good at withholding information without leaving your readers feeling cheated. How do you decide which clues to reveal and when?
Will it dent your admiration if I say that, as in life, so in fiction, and that I just stumble along, making it up as I go? The essence of BB’s work, I like to think, is spontaneity, a sense of the contingent, of what Wallace Stevens calls “life’s nonsense” which “pierces us with strange relation.” From the start I determined to write crime fiction that would be true to life, as true to life as fiction can be. The jigsaw-puzzle crime novel does not interest me, which is not to say I don’t find, say, John Dixon Carr’s books breathtakingly ingenious. But his methods are not, could not be, mine.

When you start writing a crime novel, do you always know “who did it”? 
In some books I knew from the start, in some I wasn’t sure. I liked that uncertainty; it made me feel quite close to my poor, dumb protagonist as he treads on the evidence and falls in love with all the wrong people.

What are you most afraid of?
As a human being: death, insofar as death means the loss of everyone and all that I love dearly. As a writer: the illusion of success, than which there is nothing more dangerous. 

 

Benjamin Black, the alter ego of Irish literary author John Banville, returns with A Death in Summer, his fourth detective novel featuring pathologist/amateur…

NonfictionLifestylesArts & Culture

Elaine Sciolino

What do you think of when you hear the word "seduction"? Whatever it is, get ready to expand that definition after reading La Seduction, an insightful and timely exploration of French culture through its most enduring success strategy. New York Times Paris correspondant Elaine Sciolino has been living in France for nearly 10 years. She took time to answer a few of our questions about the way the concept of seduction informs just about every area of French life.

Your book is not the first to explore or explain French culture. How do you feel it fits alongside books like French Women Don't Get Fat and Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong? 
Don’t Get Fat is an impressionistic, light—and delightful—guide by a Frenchwoman to help other women become beautiful, thin and balanced in the French way. Sixty Million is a very solid, durable and readable primer on France and French life.

La Seduction is an examination of the importance of seduction in all aspects of French life. The tools of the seducer—anticipation, promise, allure—are powerful engines in French history and politics, culture and style, food and foreign policy, literature and manners. The book draws on years of reporting on and living in France. It includes interviews with Presidents and politicians; business executives and bureaucrats; writers, actors, students, professors, merchants, farmers, etc. My conclusion is that seduction is more than a game; it is an essential strategy for France’s survival as a country of influence.

One thing that struck me about the book is its even-handedness. What do you think America could learn from France's "seduction" strategy? what do you think that France could learn from America?
We Americans can learn to embrace what the French call plaisir—the art of creating and relishing pleasure of all kinds. The French are proud masters of it, for their own gratification and as a useful tool to seduce others. They have created and perfected pleasurable ways to pass the time: perfumes to sniff, gardens to wander in, wines to drink, objects of beauty to observe, conversations to carry on. They give themselves permission to fulfill a need for pleasure and leisure that America’s hardworking, supercapitalist, abstinent culture often does not allow. 

The French can learn American efficiency that leads to getting results. They can learn to acknowledge and embrace ethnic, religious and racial diversity.

"It is almost a civic duty to seduce." 

What is the biggest difference between the French and American worldviews?
The United States tends to resort to hard power, the use of force to resolve disputes—whether in Iraq or Afghanistan. The French were pioneers of soft power, the art of influencing others at the negotiating table and on the ground through attraction (translated into French as séduction). 

France’s capability to use force to subdue others disappeared long ago. It has had to rely more on powers of persuasion, learning how and when to woo the wider world. France is too weak an economic and military power to counterbalance the United States but too strong and too strong-willed to take orders from it. In a permanent wound to its pride, it has lost one of its most powerful weapons—the supremacy of the French language, which used to be the language of diplomacy and educated elites around the world. English is now the language of international business, the Internet and even diplomacy.

In recent months, however, the United States and France seem to have switched roles. Take Libya, for example. France took the lead in using military force to try to stop Colonel Kaddafi’s brutality against his citizens; it pushed through a strong resolution in the Security Council. The United States lagged behind.   

You write, "I'm convinced that American-style feminism has prevented me from easily absorbing" the reality of French culture. How would you describe French feminism? Do you think most Frenchwomen would call themselves feminists?
France is having its Anita Hill moment. When Anita Hill testified before a Senate committee in 1991 that her former boss Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her, he denied everything and was elevated to the Supreme Court. But the hearings were a turning point. Women suddenly said that the "Mad Men" style of behavior they had put up with for so long at work—the leering, the inappropriate touching, the sexual banter—was not acceptable. Legislatures expanded laws about sexual harassment, and businesses began enforcing strict codes of conduct covering sexual relations in the workplace.

France, where powerful men have traditionally treated sex as a right and used it as a weapon, is now embroiled in its own battle of the sexes, involving a powerful man who could have been President and a single mother who works as a hotel maid. Dominique Strauss-Kahn has denied the charges against him. But suddenly, some French women have begun to speak out about an atmosphere that condones sexual behavior that crosses the line and may even be criminal. Women in politics have been particularly vocal in deploring a culture that tends to treat women as objects. 

But the conversation will be long and torturous. The French tend to blur the line between what is acceptable—and even desirable—in the workplace and what is not. For them, flirtation and much that is forbidden in post-Anita Hill America, is part of ordinary interaction. And it doesn’t matter whether French women use the term “feminist” to describe themselves. 

Regarding appearance, you say that in France, "the sin is not the failure to meet a standard of perfection but an unwillingness to try." This sounds somewhat similar to the American obsession with physical perfection. How do the ideas about what is achievable differ in the two countries?
[In France] It is almost a civic duty to seduce—or if one cannot appear seductive, at least not to take a prominent spot on the public stage. By no means does everyone play along, but what is striking is how many people do. During the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in the United States, both men and women in France questioned Bill Clinton’s judgment. That he was sexually aroused by a woman other than his wife was less of a shock than the fact that Monica Lewinsky was not especially attractive—and seemed to lack style and elegance. Men in public life, too, may be judged on their physical appearance. One reason that Barack Obama appeals to the French is his beauty. I was surprised that men—straight and gay alike—appreciate his good looks even more than women do.

The paradox is that the American quest for perfect looks is often viewed with disdain in France. A too-put-together look is a turn-off, a sign that someone is insecure and has tried too hard.

After so many years as a Paris correspondent, do you consider yourself "seduced" by France?
It depends on the day! I still get exasperated by the rigidity of so much of French life—the demand for still another obscure document to complete a dossier, the   compartmentalization of jobs that may make it necessary to be visited by three different repairmen before an oven can be fixed; the inclination to i"t’s-not-my-jobism" rather than how do I get a job done.

But I never, ever have taken living in Paris for granted. There has never been a day when I haven’t reveled in its beauty, or felt fortunate to live here. So in a sense, perhaps I have been seduced. I love to quote a character in a play by the 19th-century poet and playwright Henri de Bornier: “Every man has two countries, his own and France.” 

In my years living here, I have tried to make the country our own, even though I know that will never entirely happen. I will never think like the French, never shed my Americanness. Nor do I want to. And like an elusive lover who clings to mystery, France will never completely reveal herself to me. Even now, when I walk around a corner I anticipate that something pleasurable might happen, the next act in a process of perpetual seduction.

 

 

What do you think of when you hear the word "seduction"? Whatever it is, get ready to expand that definition after reading La Seduction, an insightful and timely exploration of French culture through its most enduring success strategy. New York Times Paris correspondant Elaine Sciolino has…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan

It’s no secret—I’m a diehard fan of Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, who provide absolutely brilliant, side-splitting celeb fashion commentary on their website, GoFugYourself. Whether it’s sharing their love for Diet Coke, "Intern" George Clooney and Tilda Swinton, or writing in the voice of Britney Spears, these Los Angeleno women deliver one snappy pun after the next. And it doesn’t stop there. They regularly blog for New York Magazine’s website and are the authors of not one but two books.

When I heard that Heather and Jessica were writing their first young adult novel, Spoiled, to say I was excited is an understatement. I emailed every possible person I could to get a copy. When that didn’t work, I ended up "borrowing" my friend Stephen’s copy before he even had the chance to read it. Stephen, I’m sorry. I’ll get that back to you . . . eventually.

Spoiled follows two teenage girls who discover they’re half sisters: Molly Dix (small-town girl from Indiana) and Brooke Berlin (celebutante-in-training from Los Angeles). Were either of the sisters based (however loosely) on any current celebrities?
JESSICA: I wouldn't say that either of the girls is based on a current celebrity—especially Molly, who is really supposed to be The Every Girl, at any rate. Brooke, I think at one point we described to each other as, "Paris Hilton with a soul (and a brain)," but as we actually started writing the book, that sort of fell away. Brooke, actually, would be ENRAGED to be even mentioned in the same breath as Paris Hilton. So in the final analysis, I don't think either of them are actually based on a real person.

HEATHER: Yeah, with Brooke she started out sharing traits, at least conceptually, with people like that—the idea that she desperately wants notoriety. But I'm pleased to say she morphed into something much richer, to the point where I don't know that I could read her and think of anyone except Brooke Berlin. 

Since you’re both authors of the book, I’d love to know a little more about your writing process. Would you switch off on scenes? Collaborate while one dictated and the other wrote? Have Intern George take notes while you sunned by Chateau Marmont’s pool?
JESSICA: Ooh, I like that last idea. We should do that for the next one! Basically, we wrote a very detailed outline and then split up chapters and worked concurrently, then traded and edited the other's work. So we both ended up writing everything, more or less. But because we had an outline, that freed us up to be able to work ahead without worrying that, say, when we got the other person's chapters, half of the characters would be murdered or something.

HEATHER: We had such a tight deadline that we both always had to be pushing forward on it. That outline kept us from accidentally treading the same plot ground or double-covering any emotional beats. But from our years of working together, writing under one byline for New York Magazine's website and whatnot, we are used to starting something, then shipping it off to the other person, and tweaking it and refining and trimming. That part of it came pretty naturally—thank God we'd had the practice. We just innately know at this point that nothing is ever personal. Is what I wrote not quite working? I'd rather know than have Jessica be polite. It's like, "Awesome, PLEASE change it, then, and save me from myself." You just sometimes get so buried in trying to churn out copy that you can't take a step back and take a breath. Having a writing partner means that someone's fresh eyeballs are always on each part.

Most of this book is based in Los Angeles. I was super pleased to see how accurate your descriptions of the city were. Are you both from L.A.? Did you have opportunities to personally ‘scout’ locations (like the restaurant Campanile, where Molly and her father, famous actor Brick Berlin dined?)

JESSICA: We both live here, and I grew up here, so every place in the book (that is real) is a place we've been, including Campanile, although sadly we didn't think to pop over there to "research." While writing the book, I spent a lot of time, actually, picturing the way you'd have to drive to get places (like, "If Molly is going from the Berlin house to Teddy's house . . . yes, she has to turn left on Sunset") which is probably the ultimate sign of someone who grew up here—I was worried about people's traffic routes! It was actually really fun to write a book that's set in our own city, and because L.A. is almost a character itself in Spoiled, we wanted it to feel realistic. Now, I find myself places thinking, "This would be a great setting for a scene." We wanted to make sure our characters didn't spend ALL their time at the Berlin house, or school.

HEATHER: Some of the locations came to us naturally, from our own experiences. Like, Jess and I have been to Campanile for the Thursday Grilled Cheese night. I did fortify my own memories with a peek at photos on the website, though, and a look at the menu. The Internet makes that so nice. And The Getty is burned in my brain, because as much as I find the actual art collection underwhelming, that location is fabulous and hard to forget. I have NOT been to Nobu (again, hello, Internet pictures) but we probably should have gone and told ourselves it was a work expense, although I hate sushi so that might not have been so fun. I am essentially the only person in L.A .who hates sushi. It's how you know I'm not native. I grew up all over the place—my family moved a lot, so I was born in Texas, but did my formative years in England, then spent some time in Miami and Calgary, Canada, before college at Notre Dame and then living in Austin. I'm a total mutt. My L.A. is less ingrained in me than Jess' is, therefore—like, my impressions of it and the places I've been come from a much less deep pool of memories and experiences. However, I have personally scouted 405 traffic many times, and found it to be terrible.

I felt, when I got to the end of the novel (and I won’t reveal any spoilers here), that things were set-up for a sequel.
JESSICA: We are working on a follow-up—I wouldn't really call it a sequel, EXACTLY—called Messy! It comes out next spring sometime.

HEATHER: At the time we wrote Spoiled, we knew there would be a Book 2, but we didn't know exactly what it would be. We had several ideas, but all the scuttlebutt was that major cliffhanger endings weren't in vogue, so we decided to keep things light and yet not totally tied up in a neat little bow, so that we could figure out where the story would go next—and with whom.

So much of your job—whether on the site or in the novel—is observing and dissecting fashion. Are you fashionistas yourselves in your own closets? Can you name some designers or stores you love to frequent in Los Angeles?
JESSICA: The funny thing is, because we work from home, most of the time I'm wearing jeans and a tank top. And Los Angeles is so casual. So although I do really LIKE clothes, and I do love to shop, in my day-to-day life, I'm really casual. In terms of stores here in Los Angeles, I love Barney's for a splurge (like everyone else), and I have this great little consignment shop that I love, called Entre Nous, on 3rd near the Beverly Center. It is really great, you can always find something interesting in there. There's a little boutique in Venice called Principessa, which I LOVE. But in all honestly, I wear a lot of J. Crew. Like, A LOT.

HEATHER: I have never been a fashionista. I simply don't have the budget, and I've never been good at finding stores outside malls that sell interesting or well-made stuff. And now, I'm a mom of twin toddlers, so I don't have time. It's like, okay, I have two hours to shop—Bloomies, Banana, Gap, pit stop at Williams-Sonoma to ogle kitchen equipment I don't need, and . . . yep, out of time. I have a tough body to fit because my top half runs a size smaller than my lower half—SOMETIMES; naturally, my size is different depending on the designer—but I do find that if I catch the right sale, Diane von Furstenberg's dresses sometimes fit me decently. But I really can't have nice things. My children won't let that stand. They're like, "What THIS needs is a macaroni handprint on the front."

In 2008 you both wrote a fashion homage book, The Fug Awards, which was an extension of your site with all new material. What was more difficult to write, in your mind? Were you more nervous about that book or this one landing in bookstores? 

JESSICA: Well, they sort of feel like apples and oranges to me. The Fug Awards was known territory—it was so similar to what we did on the site that it didn't feel like a huge challenge in terms of the actual writing. That book was more challenging in that it was really hard to write without it becoming dated (in fact, I think impossible), and logistically it also had a lot more balls to juggle (legal issues, photo rights, etc). I think Spoiled was more daunting creatively, because we were creating a work out of whole cloth—but for that very reason, I found Spoiled to be exponentially more creatively satisfying. We're very, very proud of The Fug Awards—we worked really hard on it, and I think it's really funny—but fiction is much more exciting, for me. I think that makes Spoiled a bit more nerve-wracking, as well. It's so much more personal.

HEATHER: For me, Spoiled was a lot harder. I love riffing on found material, but creating something entirely fresh and new that lives and dies with you . . . that is hard, and that is scary, and that is where neuroses are born. So in that sense, the good response Spoiled has gotten feels that much more fantastic. We poured a lot of ourselves into both books, but the Fug Awards had the comfort zone of knowing that anyone who read GFY would probably love it and know exactly what they're getting into when buying it, whereas with Spoiled, it was, "Will our readers expect something different? Will new readers and teens think we're terrible and nerdy?" It was uncharted territory. And I am a homebody, so of course emotionally I'd rather hide under the covers and play Angry Birds.

You’ve received an accolade of awards for your website—from Entertainment Weekly to Time Magazine to The Guardian. Is there any award you’re most particularly proud of?
JESSICA: I know it sounds corny, but I am honestly totally thrilled any time we get ANY award. Though I know rationally that the site is successful, in my mind it's still this fun thing that I write with Heather that's read by people we like. (Which is still true—our readers are awesome.) So when we get an award or someone is excited to meet us, or whatever, I am always like, "NO WAY THANK YOU YAY!" Which I guess is good! Of all those, I would say that making the EW Must List for Fug Madness, our yearly tournament to determine which celeb was the fugliest of all in the past year, was the most thrilling: we didn't know it was coming! So that was awesome. We are really proud of all the Bloggies we won for writing, as well. But honestly, all of them are exciting and flattering.

HEATHER: Anything where readers vote is thrilling to me, just because they're so loyal and supportive and it really gets me emotional. In fact that's one reason the EW Must List mention makes me so happy, because it's a double-whammy: It was back when No. 10 on the list was always reader-nominated, and that's where we came in. So a reader felt THAT passionately about us that he/she submitted us, and EW apparently agreed enough that we got picked. Flattering and gratifying on both levels.

In terms of the site itself, do either of you get dibs on a certain celeb when an awesome photo comes in (I’m looking at you Kiki Dunst). Or is it that you’ve each assigned yourself to take on the voice of someone, and split up the randoms? (I’m thinking of you “Jenny” Lopez!)
JESSICA: For most celebs, it's first come, first serve, but there are a few that we do have dibs on. Heather ALWAYS writes J. Lo, and Karl Lagerfeld, and Kanye (and maybe a few others—Heather is great at creating an iconic GFY voice for someone), and I always do Britney Spears, and I also do our figure skating coverage. We also have celebs where one of us probably knows more about them than the other, like, I would be more likely to write about a Real Housewife, probably, because I watch all those shows religiously. But for the majority of celebs, it is just whoever gets to the pic first.

HEATHER: I'm not even sure how we split up those other celebs. I suspect it's because one of us happened to get to a picture first and did something with it, and then response was good, and so it became a pattern. Like, if I tried to write a Britney letter at this point, there would be a riot. And I wouldn't want to, because I loved what Jess did with the Britney pictures, and so like anyone else I'm always waiting to see what she'll do with the next one. There are definitely some people we sense the other will be able to cover more thoroughly in terms of adding context. Like, I can't deal with any of the Housewives—no idea what any of those wackos are doing—but give me a soap star and I'm ON IT.

Are there secret fashion weapons you cannot live without? Please tell me it’s gold sequined hotpants, underneath a kimono with matching fur turban.
JESSICA: You read my mind. I am wearing that RIGHT NOW. Actually, though, I do have a caftan that I like to wear around the house when I'm not ready to get dressed but I don't want to look totally schlumpy. It is RIDICULOUS and I love it. But my real—and possibly boring—fashion weapon is a good bra and a good pair of jeans. Good jeans are PRICELESS—at least in my life, where I wear them nearly daily.

HEATHER: I have never understood how people go braless. I also think one really seriously hot pair of heels is key, because they can dress up your jeans and make you feel fancy even if you otherwise are in a T-shirt. And they also obviously go with dressier clothes. But a hot shoe is my mood-lifter.

Have either of you had the chance to meet Intern George in person?
JESSICA: No and I worry I would pass out if this were to occur.

HEATHER: Can you imagine? I'd probably be all, "You're five years late to work," and he'd be like, 'SECURITY.'

 

Megan Fishmann is a publicist at Algonquin Books in North Carolina. 

It’s no secret—I’m a diehard fan of Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, who provide absolutely brilliant, side-splitting celeb fashion commentary on their website, GoFugYourself. Whether it’s sharing their love for Diet Coke, "Intern" George Clooney and…

Fiction

Josh Ritter

Josh Ritter is a writer’s writer, a singer-songwriter whose lyrics have always reflected a love of reading and enthusiasm for learning. So it wasn’t a surprise when the Idaho-born Ritter announced a book was in the works.

“Books have always been such a huge part of my life, and my own writing,” Ritter says during a telephone interview from his Brooklyn apartment. “Normally, when people ask me about my influences, they just always assume I’m influenced by other songwriters. That couldn’t be any further from the truth. It’s always been about writers of any kind. Aside from all the other things that happen in life, writers of any kind can influence.”

Just as Ritter’s inspiration is drawn from both books and music, the story that became his debut novel, Bright’s Passage, started with a song. While writing 2010’s So Runs the World Away, his sixth full-length studio album, Ritter began crafting a song about a man who occasionally heard an angel. “I’d been thinking about when angels show up. It’s often not an uncomplicated thing,” explains Ritter, who points out that much of literature softens angels’ appearances, while religious texts show them in more startling contexts.

“A novel, I always felt like it was something that could be unfolded from a song. You go through a door, and a novel is describing everything you find behind there.”

But the story wouldn’t stay within the bounds of a single song. “This song felt like there was more there than I could fit without the structure collapsing,” he says. So Ritter began to explore writing a novel. “As time went on, the song totally disappeared. It bore no relation to what I ended up with, but it was a good starting point.”

Henry Bright, the protagonist of Bright’s Passage, was followed home from World War I by an angel, which now speaks through Henry’s horse. After Henry’s wife dies in childbirth, the angel tells him to burn and leave his home before a neighbor tries to take away the child, whom the angel calls “the future king of heaven.” The novel follows Henry as he travels, on foot, away from both the ensuing wildfire and the neighbor.

It’s fitting that Bright’s Passage began life as a lyric; though his songs vary greatly in structure and subject matter, Ritter is a master of the story song. “The Temptation of Adam,” from 2007’s The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, and So Runs the World Away’s “The Curse,” among others, play like short stories set to music.

“I always had sort of blithely said—and believed, without really totally examining it—the idea that a good song should be able to be unfolded into a much larger story. I think a song is a tool. It’s a hallway. You’re building a hallway, and when we listen to a song, we can walk down a hallway into all the worlds of our own minds. There’s no directing traffic there, and at a certain point you’re off into your own thoughts. That’s an amazing, beautiful thing about a song,” Ritter says. “A novel, I always felt like it was something that could be unfolded from a song. You go through a door, and a novel is describing everything you find behind there.”

In Bright’s Passage, Henry spends a great deal of time on his own as he traverses West Virginia. During World War I flashbacks, Henry’s internal monologue remains the story’s engine, though he is surrounded by his fellow soldiers. During the two months Ritter spent writing the book’s first draft, and the subsequent year of editing, he was similarly surrounded by people on tour and isolated as he wrote. “On the road, you have some chunks of time that are best filled with that sort of thing, mornings or after sound check,” Ritter recalls. “In the end, [writing a book] is a more lonely process than writing songs or writing a record and recording. You’re by yourself.”

Ritter worked to create in Henry a character that was a blank, a person with the “thousand-yard stare” of someone focused on putting together a jigsaw puzzle, solving a problem on his own. The reader is left to puzzle out what happened to Henry to leave him with an angel guiding his life.

With the novel’s publication, Ritter will now sort through a labyrinth of overlapping book and concert tours, with summer dates scheduled across the United States and in Canada.

“I remember the first time I ever got a record back, and how nervous I was, and this was an equal level of nerves,” Ritter says. “At a certain point, you start to miss that nervous feeling, the nervousness of the idea that stuff could go totally wrong. This book has been a great reintroduction to that kind of excitement.”

 

Carla Jean Whitley writes about books, music and culture in Birmingham, Alabama.

Josh Ritter is a writer’s writer, a singer-songwriter whose lyrics have always reflected a love of reading and enthusiasm for learning. So it wasn’t a surprise when the Idaho-born Ritter announced a book was in the works.

“Books have always been such a huge part…

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