Lauren Bufferd

FictionLiterary Fiction

Zadie Smith

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

When people talk about multicultural fiction, Zadie Smith’s name is usually first up. The British author burst onto the scene at the tender age of 24 with the brilliant novel White Teeth, a multigenerational story of two London families—one Bengali, one British and Jamaican. In three novels and countless essays since, Smith has explored identity, race, gender and class, and has proven herself  one of the most readable and thought-provoking writers of her generation.

In Smith’s sophisticated and ambitious new page-turner, Swing Time, an unnamed narrator tries to make sense of her life and choices after being fired from her job as a personal assistant to a world-famous pop star, seeking answers in memories of a pivotal childhood friendship gone awry. 

“When I talk to women, childhood friendships are dominant in their minds and their imaginations. I didn’t have such a friend myself and I don’t have a sister, so part of this is curiosity . . . it is a part of life I missed out on,” Smith explains during a call to her Greenwich Village apartment, where she and her family—husband and fellow writer Nick Laird and their two children—live during the school year. 

The narrator meets Tracey at dance school in the early 1980s. Both girls are biracial, both are keen on dance and both are brought to class by their mothers. Tracey’s sassy white mother is content with vicariously living through her gifted daughter, while the narrator’s intellectual Jamaican mother betters herself with books and night classes. The girls supplement their classes by learning dance steps from music videos and VHS copies of old musicals. Smith, who admits to a “love-hate relationship with musicals,” says with a chuckle, “The passions in this book are definitely autobiographical.”

Tracey is the more dominant of the two, and through the ups and downs of their relationship, the narrator remains enthralled by Tracey’s physical grace and unshakable self-confidence, things she herself lacks. Yet as the girls grow older, they drift apart. Tracey attends a dance high school and books chorus roles in West End musicals, while the narrator goes to university and becomes a personal assistant to Aimee, an Australian pop star (think Madonna meets Angelina Jolie) whose celebrity and wealth extends to various do-gooder projects in an unnamed West African country.

The title Swing Time refers to the 1936 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie, a favorite of the narrator’s. But it also refers to the rhythms of the novel itself, where the action swings from London to New York to the African village where Aimee hopes to build a school for girls, and across the narrator’s relationships with Tracey, her mother and her employer, each echoing the complex power dynamic of the one before. 

Swing Time is Smith’s first book to be narrated in the first person. “I didn’t really understand the first-person form, but I was curious about it,” says Smith. “It’s really a new way of looking at other people. 

“People want to control how they are perceived,” Smith continues, growing passionate as she makes her point. “On Facebook or Instagram, you show others what you want them to see. My experience, though, is there is a lot more going on in the interior. You find out who you are by the things that you do, and it’s not always a pleasant discovery.”

Swing Time also features a change of tone from Smith’s previous work. “It’s as if all black life were squished into one story,” she says, explaining the novel’s almost parable-like feel. “I wanted it to be open that way, to feel very specific but almost as if when you were reading it, you could convince yourself that you were that person, that these things happened to you, that you too were having these childhood memories.” 

In adulthood, Tracey’s wasted potential leads her to become increasingly paranoid and interested in conspiracy theories, a plot thread that was inspired by Smith’s volunteer work at a London homeless shelter. She found many of the people she encountered there to “be very intelligent, very knowledgeable, but what can happen to smart people when their minds aren’t formally trained is that the mind goes elsewhere,” Smith says.

"Novels are about trying to swim in a certain mental climate and depict and understand it.”

“Almost every conversation I had would end up [being] about conspiracies, the illuminati. Instead of dismissing it, I wanted to know what it was about that concept that was so engaging. Novels are not about showing how people are wrong or right—novels are about trying to swim in a certain mental climate and depict and understand it.”

Smith’s writing has often sought to bring this sort of understanding to characters whose backgrounds are far from her own, such as Alex-Li Tandem in The Autograph Man, Howard Belsey in On Beauty and the African villagers in Swing Time. She is aware that doing so is a risk—one that can carry a cost.

“The first time I read from White Teeth, a man came up to me with a letter from ‘The Bengali People’ and it was a long list of things I’d got wrong in the novel,” she says. “I’m sure there were many, many things. But I just don’t believe there is a kind of expertise in a people. There are costs, no doubt. But I’m hoping the gain is there as well.”

The gain is certainly there for the reader. Like Smith’s earlier novels, Swing Time is rich with ideas. Her intellectual fearlessness keeps the story moving forward, even as the novel jumps back and forth in time. A deeply literary story of friendship and identity, Swing Time is the satisfying work of a seasoned author.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In Smith’s sophisticated and ambitious new page-turner, Swing Time, an unnamed narrator tries to make sense of her life and choices after being fired from her job as a personal assistant to a world-famous pop star, seeking answers in memories of a pivotal childhood friendship gone awry.

FictionWorld Fiction

Jane Harper

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

A taut, suspenseful novel of small-town secrets set during a drought in rural Australia, The Dry follows federal agent Aaron Falk who is called back to the town where he grew up and asked to investigate the murder-suicide of his best friend from high school. Falk, who has his own secrets, soon finds there is more to these deaths than meets the eye. Jane Harper’s debut thriller has already been optioned for film by Reese Witherspoon—we asked the first-time author and former journalist a few questions about what success feels like.   

The manner in which The Dry came about and was discovered is almost as exciting as the mystery itself. Can you share with our readers what that experience was like?
I wrote the manuscript that would become The Dry as part of a 12-week online novel-writing course in late 2014, and at that time had no real expectation that it would ever be published. At times when it wasn’t going well, I remember telling myself that it was OK for this to be a “practice novel” and simply try to finish and treat it as a learning exercise.

I’ve always worked best to deadlines, so for motivation I set a goal of entering the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, which runs every year in my state. My main aim was just to get the novel finished and to a standard that I felt I could begin to share it, and maybe get some feedback from the judges. I entered the award in April 2015 and to my surprise found out the following month that I had won!

That was a huge boost and the real catalyst to publication for The Dry. On the back of the award, the novel was sold in separate three-book deals to Flatiron Books in the U.S., Pan Macmillan in Australia and Little, Brown in the U.K., as well as being sold for translation in more than 20 territories.

It was an absolute dream run for the novel and I feel so lucky to have had the exposure that came from winning the award. I really couldn’t have asked for more and I still can’t believe it sometimes!

Was this your first work of fiction?
I’d worked full-time as a journalist on newspapers in the U.K. and Australia for 13 years before writing the novel, so I was used to writing hundreds of words a day on all kinds of topics. I’d always hoped that one day I would write a book, but I just never seemed to have the time or discipline to sit down and seriously try. Finally I realized that I was going to have to make the time, and I wrote a short story that got published in the fiction edition of a magazine. That was really exciting and encouraged me to finally attempt a novel. It helped a lot having the external pressure of a writing course and the expectation from the teacher and other students that I would work on the manuscript as required.

How do you feel your experiences as a journalist informed your novel?
Working as a journalist helped me write The Dry in so many ways. It gave me the opportunity over the years to speak to people facing a range of issues in many different Australian communities (although none as dysfunctional as the town in The Dry!) It was through talking and listening to people in small towns that I started to get a sense of just how closely tied their lives can be, and how strongly they rely on the community and each other, for better or worse.

In practical writing terms, I still draw on my journalism experience every day. It has taught me the discipline to write regularly and at a reasonable speed, to write for the reader rather than for myself, and not to let myself feel too nervous about blank page!

You are originally from Britain. What brought you to Australia?
I was born in the U.K., but lived in Australia with my family between the ages of 8 and 14 and acquired dual citizenship. We returned to the U.K. and I finished high school and university there and worked for several years on newspapers in Yorkshire. In 2008, I felt like a change and thought it would be exciting to get some experience working in Australia. I applied and got a job on a newspaper in Victoria, and decided to come out for a couple of years. I must have enjoyed it because eight years later, I’m still here, married to an Australian man and with a baby daughter!

The small town in The Dry is so richly described. What inspired this aspect of the novel?
For the physical description, I wanted to give readers enough detail to picture the scene, but not so much that it slowed down the story. I tried to really focus on specific aspects that brought that Australian setting to life and set the town apart from anywhere else in the world.

In terms of the relationships within the community, I think they are much more universal and I was inspired by a lot of places I’ve been over the years, not just small towns and not even just in Australia. I think all communities have their own specific problems that put pressure on the residents. I hope that the feeling of neighbors knowing more about you than you’d like, or the sense of being tied to a community that you have outgrown strike a chord with readers in many places in the world.

How does Australia influence your writing? Do you think of yourself as an Australian writer?
Yes, I do think of myself as both Australian and an Australian writer and I wanted to write a book set here because I really do feel it is my home. But I think having been born overseas does give me the advantage of being able to view it with the eye of an outsider. It is such a wonderful and unique country with some really interesting people and scenarios, so it was easy to be inspired by life here.

I read that you were working on another book with the character of Aaron Falk. How do you see him developing? What do you think he learned in The Dry that will make him a better detective?
The second book sees Aaron Falk return in a different setting, but again facing a mystery with a few twists and turns in a remote Australian location. I feel the events of The Dry forced him to confront aspects of his past and his personality that he had chosen to keep buried, and that in turn will encourage him to re-evaluate some choices he has made in his life. I enjoyed the opportunity to see him develop as a character, but he still has some way to go to resolve all his issues so it’s not all smooth sailing for him yet!

As a new author, what kind of advice would you give to other writers just starting out?
I found taking part in a reputable and structured course was a huge help. I really wanted to write a novel, but honestly felt like I had no idea how to actually start and, more importantly, finish! Even with the advantage I had of writing professionally for newspapers, a novel seemed like an overwhelming task, so I found a course was a big motivation. I also got a lot of benefit from the feedback. If writing on your own, I find it helps me a lot to write regularly to develop a habit, and rather than focus on a strict word count every day, I break the plot down into scenes and tackle one scene each time I sit down to write.

Are you going to continue balancing your work as a journalist with your fiction writing?
No, I was lucky enough to be able to live the dream and quit my day job! It was a hard decision because I really loved being a journalist, but I love writing novels even more so I felt I had to take the opportunity to do that seriously and dedicate the time it needs.

The movie rights have already been purchased and by Reese Witherspoon! Congratulations! Any thoughts about who you’d like to see play Aaron and Gretchen?
I get asked this a lot and I never have a good answer! I did have a picture of them both in my head when I started writing, but their characters actually developed in ways I didn’t fully expect and my image of them has changed. I’m always more interested to hear who other people think would play the roles because I love getting a sense of how they see the characters.

Were you a big reader as a kid? What kinds of books did you like?
Yes, definitely. Reading was, and still is, my favorite thing to do. I was fortunate that my parents were both big readers and encouraged it from an early age. As a child I loved all the usual children’s authors, in particular an Australian writer called Paul Jennings who wrote pretty outrageous short stories for kids that we all found shocking and hilarious. As I grew older I started reading what my parents read, which were often crime and mystery novels, so that’s where I got a taste for that genre.

Who are some of your favorite mystery writers?
I always enjoy seeking out new writers, but I’ve got a few long-term favourites including Val McDermid, Michael Robotham, and Nicci French. I’m a big fan of Lee Child and David Baldacci, even if their books wouldn’t strictly be classified as mystery. But I enjoy anything that keeps me guessing, and being surprised at the end of a novel is my absolute favorite way for a book to finish!

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of The Dry.

Author photo by Nicholas Purcell.

A taut, suspenseful novel of small-town secrets set during a drought in rural Australia, The Dry follows federal agent Aaron Falk who is called back to the town where he grew up and asked to investigate the murder-suicide of his best friend from high school. Jane Harper’s debut thriller has already been optioned for film by Reese Witherspoon—we asked the first-time author and former journalist a few questions about what success feels like.   

FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

Mary Gordon

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

In her latest novel, Mary Gordon explores faith, family and war through dual narratives: that of a woman who joins the forces fighting Franco in late-1930s Spain, and of her granddaughter in 2009. There Your Heart Lies displays tremendous historical depth and emotional resonance.

Where does the title of the novel come from?
From the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is telling people not to covet material possessions and says, “For where your treasure is, there also does your heart lie.”

What inspired this novel?
I have been fascinated by the Spanish Civil War. I was brought up in a very politically conservative Catholic environment, which saw Franco as the Savior of Western civilization, particularly the Catholic Church. When the words “Spanish Civil War” were spoken, they were always followed by, “nuns were raped, priests were killed.” I went to Barnard in 1967, the first non-Catholic institution I had ever been attached to, and there I heard that no nuns were ever raped, no priests were ever killed and that either 1) the Lincoln Brigade were all heroes of the people or 2) those influenced by Orwell insisting that the Anarchists were all heroes of the people destroyed by the Stalinists.

But what brought it all together was my reading of Simone Weil and Georges Bernanos. Simone Weil went to Spain to fight with the anarchists, but was appalled by their blood lust. Bernanos, a devout Catholic, was originally pro-Franco, his son was a Falangist, but he was so appalled by the brutality of the Francoists in the name of God and the church that he wrote an impassioned book condemning them. Both Weil and Bernanos wrote their impressions, she for the left-wing press, he for the right. She wrote to him, saying “I am an anarchist. You are a royalist. I thought you were my enemy, but you are my brother.”

In short, what fascinated me was the evidence of such conflicting narratives that only the two great writers could see through, or see clearly, that in such horror, there was only the tragedy of blood. That being said, everything I have read and thought insists that I believe that the Francoists, armed by Mussolini and Hitler, and acting in the name of and with the support of the Church, were the greatest monsters.

Some of the stories in The Liar’s Wife (2014) were also explorations of American innocence and European experience. Do you see these themes in There Your Heart Lies?
Yes, I do. Of course, there is the great ghost of Henry James who has gone there before me, with a greatness I could never approach.

“Fiction is the opposite of the Tweet: It insists on itself, its opposite and something in between. A complexity of thought that is the only weapon against tyranny.”

Reading a novel with such deep political and religious themes is interesting in today’s current political climate. How do you think fiction adds to our understanding of current affairs?
I think that fiction is the only way we an try to make sense of the conflicting and confounding barrage of information that makes us despair, otherwise, of making meaning. Fiction is the opposite of the Tweet: It insists on itself, its opposite and something in between. A complexity of thought that is the only weapon against tyranny.

Faith has been a significant part of all of your books, and it’s certainly a factor in this one. Do you think of yourself as a Catholic writer?
Well—in that I was formed by that imagination, those images, those habits of mind. But I don’t identify strongly with other “Catholic” writers; they have never been my models. Even Flannery O’Connor, whom I deeply admire, has not been important to my work in the way that Virginia Woolf, Turgenev, Ford Madox Ford, Katherine Anne Porter have been.

You have taught at Barnard since 1988. What are some of the things that keep you in the classroom?
The wonderful sense that young people are excited and passionate about the same things about which I was excited and passionate when I was young.

What book(s) is/are on your nightstand now?
Elena Ferrante’s Frantumgaglia. Margaret Drabble’s The Dark Flood Rises. Ivan Turgenev’s A House of Gentlefolk. The Collected Poems of W.H. Auden.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of There Your Heart Lies.

Author photo © Christopher Greenleaf. 

In her latest novel, Mary Gordon explores faith, family and war through dual narratives: that of a woman who joins the forces fighting Franco in late-1930s Spain, and of her granddaughter in 2009. There Your Heart Lies displays tremendous historical depth and emotional resonance.

FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

Janet Benton

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

In Janet Benton’s fictional debut, Lilli de Jong, a young woman finds herself pregnant and alone in 19th-century Philadelphia. Lilli’s decision to keep her baby leads her to a charity for unwed mothers, a job as a wet nurse and, briefly but most alarmingly, the perilous urban streets. A historical saga and a romance, Lilli de Jong is both a scathing indictment of societal biases and a testament to the redemptive strength of a mother’s love. With the same grace and thoughtfulness displayed in her novel, Benton answers questions about women’s reproductive rights, then and now, the Quaker faith and the power of motherhood.

You have worked as an editor and a writer of nonfiction for several decades. What about this subject made you want to explore it in fictional form?
I’ve written fiction since I was very young, and I have an MFA in fiction writing. But Lilli de Jong is the first novel I’ve finished. The voice I heard from the beginning was that of Lilli telling her story. I didn’t choose how to explore the story; it never struck me as a subject area, but rather as an embodied and urgent tale. I hear a voice for nonfiction, too, but it’s my voice—that of a person with a body and a history that are already established. When writing in a fictional voice, there’s a sense of being an actor—of taking on a role, trying on a new position in life, a new time and place and set of concerns. I loved doing that with Lilli. She was such an interesting person to inhabit, and I cared deeply for her and her baby, Charlotte.

I also loved pretending to live in Philadelphia in the 1880s, which is not so hard to do, since the city is a living history museum. I feel a thrill when I see places Lilli goes in the book. Driving on Broad Street in downtown Philadelphia, which is lined with tall, old edifices, I’m moved to see the grand City Hall looming ahead, partly because Lilli and Charlotte spent a lot of time nearby while City Hall was being built. As I move through the city, I recall scenes from the novel, imagining the two of them traveling the same streets. It’s a strange, thrilling sensation.

What kinds of historical resources did you use? How did the research shape the narrative?
Oh, many kinds. Some favorites were from the 19th century: records from an institution that sheltered unwed mothers, a pamphlet on the care and feeding of babies, newspaper articles (which were written in a very dramatic style then), travel guides, doctors’ accounts of life at Blockley Almshouse, a guide to doing charity work with the poor, accounts of underpaid working women, home health-care manuals (most health care took place in the home, and detailed guides were written for mothers) and so much else. I was also inspired by countless books, including Janet Golden’s A Social History of Wet Nursing in America, Ann Fessler’s The Girls Who Went Away, Howard Brinton’s Quaker Journals. The research and the narrative shaped each other.

What wonderful historical tidbit did you have to leave out?
I don’t know if it qualifies as wonderful, but in one scene, Lilli takes refuge in a park. As I was writing that diary entry set in June 1883, I decided that Lilli would pick up a newspaper and encounter some actual news of the time. I did an online search. An article came up from a New Zealand newspaper about stories reported in The World, a Philadelphia paper. Called “Horrible Disclosures at Philadelphia,” the article told of a man who’d performed abortions, which were illegal and thus done in dangerous circumstances, who’d been arrested when his wife charged him with brutal assault. Neighbors said that many women went into his house and never left. Found in his Philadelphia home were “the bodies of several children, and a large number of adult human bodies.” Skulls were found in the cellar, and there were vicious, lustrous-coated dogs living down there. The man’s accomplice reported that some bodies were cremated in the stove on which the family’s meals were prepared; others were likely fed to the dogs.

On reading this, Lilli feels a great kinship with the murdered women. If she had sought to end her pregnancy, she might have gone to this man. I wrote the scene and kept it a while, but I knew it knocked the story in too gruesome a direction. I didn’t need to go to such extremes in order to create a portrait of meaningful suffering.

Lilli is a woman of great faith. How did her being Quaker shape her experience?
I think her faith enables her to do as she does, and here’s why. The founding principle of the Society of Friends is that God sends guidance directly to those who are open and willing. The Quaker practice of silent worship is meant to allow one to perceive this voice. This is likely one reason that Quakers have a long tradition of defying injustices, including slavery and war; the practice of listening to one’s inner voice can create a sense of rightness and the bravery to act. So Lilli’s faith tradition helps her to act as she does. It was important to me, too, that Lilli wouldn’t accept society’s view of her—that she wouldn’t consider herself a sinner and be ashamed. This tired view supports prejudice, and she needs self-respect to act with strength. So what religious background might have given an unwed mother the ability to decide for herself about her own experience? All religions, clearly, can foster courageous people and rebels. But in Philadelphia in the 1880s, I thought most likely she would be a Quaker. Her family and community wouldn’t have seen her as virtuous, but Lilli fights for what she believes is right, regardless of what others say. She was, in fact, raised by her Quaker mother and elders to do just that. Yet she has to stay away from her family and community in order to live as she does. I see Lilli and her companions, by the end of the book, as living on the brink of modernity. They find their places in a society that’s changing fast due to industrial growth, immigration, greater ease of travel, etcetera. There’s room for people like them there.

“This is likely one reason that Quakers have a long tradition of defying injustices, including slavery and war; the practice of listening to one’s inner voice can create a sense of rightness and the bravery to act.”

I read Lilli de Jong the week my oldest turned 21 and was reminded of the tremendously physical work of nursing and caring for an infant. Some things really haven’t changed much. How did your own experience as a mother inform the novel?
I drew on my experience a lot for these aspects of the novel. Like Lilli, I nursed my daughter most of the day and night at first, and I barely slept. Like Charlotte, my daughter was highly alert at birth and developed quickly. I wrote in a diary about my daughter and used bits from that to describe Charlotte. Like Charlotte, my daughter smiled at first feeling the wind. I adored the dearness of her face as she nursed. She was and is unutterably dear to me. But the big picture was wholly different. I was and am married, my baby was not going hungry, I didn’t grow up as Lilli did, my mother is alive and well, and so on.

I’m glad you were reminded of the physical work of mothering. I aimed for readers to feel those things up close.

You are a writing mentor—what exactly does that entail?
I work privately with people who are writing books, usually novels or memoirs. At intervals of their choosing, I read, comment on and discuss their pages, sharing what I’ve learned through decades of working as a writer, editor and teacher in many professional settings. My aim is to help them craft powerful stories. It’s a very effective way to work.

You wrote this at a time when women’s reproductive health was once again making headlines, as was the value of women’s work outside the home. Within this climate, what does this book mean to you, and what do you hope readers will take away?
It’s hard to recall a time when women’s reproductive lives didn’t make headlines and women’s work inside and outside the home wasn’t contested, isn’t it? The same was true in Lilli’s day; the Harper’s article that Clementina talks about with Albert, in which a man describes the proper education of women (very little), was common to the time. At least now, in the United States, we can take for granted that girls go to school, women vote, and married women own property and keep their wages.

Lilli’s story, I hope, has the power of fiction. Fiction, by being concrete and affecting the senses, can break down barriers and generate compassion. I hope readers will take away a felt experience of mothering under duress. I hope they’ll understand more about the difficult, irreplaceable work of mothers. I hope they’ll care more about children, who need loving care. Beyond this, I’ll leave the reader alone and state my own views: that most mothers in the world must struggle far too hard to provide for their children, and that this country needs to create policies and paid-leave programs that support the fundamental, future-building work of parenting.

Lilli de Jong is about tenacity and the tremendous bond between parent and child, but there are times when the going gets pretty rough. What did you do to keep your spirits up as you were writing?
I might have watered the garden, walked, talked on the phone, made a cup of something hot—but mostly I plowed through. I didn’t have time to hesitate. I did cry, while writing the first several drafts especially. I needed to immerse myself in what I was putting Lilli and Charlotte through, to raise up my own feelings, in order to write a genuine account. Over time, the work became more a matter of paring and puttering to achieve effects, rather than taking on the story’s full weight. Still, every time I edited it, I aimed to listen carefully to Lilli’s voice on the page and to concentrate deeply, so I wouldn’t damage it. I hope I haven’t damaged it. I’m an endless editor. The only reason it’s done is because it has to be.

What are you working on next?
I have three novels at various stages of development. I look forward to the moment when one of them refuses to let me go!

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Lilli de Jong.

Author photo credit Steve Ladner.

In Janet Benton’s fictional debut, Lilli de Jong, a young woman finds herself pregnant and alone in 19th-century Philadelphia. Lilli’s decision to keep her baby leads her to a charity for unwed mothers, a job as a wet nurse and, briefly but most alarmingly, the perilous urban streets. A historical saga and a romance, Lilli de Jong is both a scathing indictment of societal biases and a testament to the redemptive strength of a mother’s love. With the same grace and thoughtfulness displayed in her novel, Benton answers questions about women’s reproductive rights, then and now, the Quaker faith and the power of motherhood.

FictionLiterary FictionFamily Saga

A timely exchange between novel and reader from author Kamila Shamsie

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire brings Sophocles’ Antigone to present-day London, weaving a remarkably timely tale of two British Muslim families with differing ideas about bigotry, belief and loyalty.

With the proposed ban on Muslim travel and the most recent attacks in London, your novel could not be more timely. How do you think fiction can help us make sense of political crises?
I can’t say I’m finding much sense in today’s political crises myself, but one of fiction’s gifts—and discomforts—is its ability to put us in the perspectives of people from whose lives we usually feel very removed. But having said that, reading is about an exchange that occurs between the novel and the reader, so you need readers with a willingness to be placed within those perspectives.

Your books often have multiple narrative threads. Home Fire is no exception. What does that format offers you as a writer?
The answer to that probably lies in John Berger’s wonderful and oft-quoted line: Never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one.

What is your family like? You mother is also a writer, isn’t she?
She is, and so is my sister. You know how Tolstoy said all happy families are alike? If he’s right about that (and who am to argue with Tolstoy), then my family is like all other happy families.

What kind of research did you do for Home Fire?
Different kinds of research. There was the book kind: reading a number of different translations of Antigone, since the novel draws heavily on it. The wandering kind: going around areas of London in which parts of the book were set, and talking to people there or just taking in the physical details. The drawing on memory kind: Most of the Massachusetts section required nothing more than thinking back to my grad school days at UMass Amherst, and subsequent visits. The taking from someone else kind: When I was starting the novel, the writer Gillian Slovo was working on a verbatim play called Another World: How we lost our children to Islamic State, and she did copious research and let me have whichever bits of it I wanted. The will-this-get-me-into-trouble kind: There was quite a lot I had to find out about life in Raqqa under Islamic State, for which I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder while online, hyper-conscious of our world of internet surveillance. That hyper-consciousness worked its way into the novel, so perhaps I can consider it a form of research.

You have lived in Pakistan, the U.S. and England. How have those different countries influenced your writing?
I really don’t know how to point to a particular country and say, x or y aspect of my writing comes from there, but perhaps my interest in multiple narratives comes from moving between places of overlapping histories that see those histories from such different perspectives.

Home Fire features all the current modes of social media communication, such as Skype, Twitter and, of course, email. What are some of the challenges of depicting our very up-to-the minute modern forms of communication?
Honestly? The biggest challenge was to get over my dislike of using brand names in my novels. It feels too much like product placement, and also feels as though it’s the part of the novel most likely to start seeming outdated well before any other part of it does.

Who are some of your favorite contemporary writers?
Ali Smith, Michael Ondaatje, Nadeem Aslam, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Tahmima Anam, Elena Ferrante, Hisham Matar, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson.

You have a very lyrical style. Do you write any poetry?
No, but one of my earliest influences was the poet Agha Shahid Ali, so I’m happy to think he’s still to be found somewhere in my work.

Do you think of yourself as a political novelist?
I’m a writer. How I should be described more specifically is something that’s probably more relevant to those on the outside than to me. I like to think that every novel I write contains many different elements to it. Having said that, I am absolutely not someone who thinks that politics is separate from the most intimate details of people’s lives—from wars to visa regulations to health care, our lives are constantly coming into contact with, and being changed by, decisions made “on high.” My novels reflect this way of seeing the world.

What do you like to do when you are not writing?
Most writing days are followed by evenings with close friends, so I suppose that’s top of the list. Though the thing most likely to turn my writing day into a nonwriting day is the Pakistan cricket team (trust me, cricket is a far more thrilling sport than most noncricket fans realize).

Read our review of Home Fire.

Author photo credit Zain Mustafa.

“I am absolutely not someone who thinks that politics is separate from the most intimate details of people’s lives.”
FictionSpeculative Fiction

Naomi Alderman

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

In Naomi Alderman’s The Power, girls all over the world develop the power to transmit electricity from their fingertips. What starts out as a trick soon becomes a means of self-defense and then a way to inflict pain, maim and even kill. Already the winner of the U.K.’s prestigious Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, The Power is an inventive, destabilizing work of fiction that has the pace of a thriller and the depth of social commentary.

This is a novel about the progression of one singular idea: What would happen if women developed a physical strength that could easily overpower men? Where did the initial idea for this premise come from?
Novels have lots of different starting points, so there are many different answers to this question. One is: A few years ago I heard a man I very much admire answer the interview question, “Why does the patriarchy exist?” He answered that he thinks that men are jealous of women’s ability to give birth. I heard this and thought: Oh honey, no, it’s because they can. Men are physically more powerful than women, on average, stronger and taller and more muscular. So more men can physically overpower women than the other way around. And you don’t need all men—or even most men, or even more than one in 100 men—to ever, ever do that for all women to be afraid all the time.

That was my thought, anyway. But a novel for me can be a series of explorations and thought experiments. I worked out a power I could give women—based on what electric eels do—that would tip the playing field in the other direction. And then I didn’t really know what would happen. I wanted to see how far I could convince myself that things would change.

The novel begins and ends with an exchange of letters between two writers, a man and a woman. What do you think the frame adds to the story?
It’s hard to say too much without revealing a little twist in there. But I did want to have a little bit of conversation about the kinds of things one hears these days—as in the recent Google memo—sexist stories dressed up as evolutionary psychology “science,” history altered and erased to make it fit with our sexist ideas today. And they made me laugh, those letters. I felt like maybe my readers could do with a laugh after some of the book.

Gender violence, restrictive regimes, Brexit, the election of Donald Trump—what was it like to write this novel during this particular time, and how do you think current politics have shaped the critical reaction to the novel?
The novel was all finished by the start of 2016. That is, before Brexit, before Donald Trump was elected. It was published in the U.K. a couple of weeks before U.S. election day last year. So it’s been a slow unfolding horror of, “Oh shit, I didn’t actually want to be this right.” The critical response has been lovely from the start, which is great, and the U.K. reviews were in before Trump was elected, although I’m sure these events have given the book a new feeling of urgency for readers.

But you know. I’m a woman who works in video games. We’ve been the canary in the coal mine for years. In 2012 Anita Sarkeesian started receiving rape and death threats because she wanted to make a series of videos exploring a feminist perspective on video games. So it’s horrible that the violent, misogynist forces that have always existed in the world are currently so much in the ascendancy—but it’s not a tremendous shocker if one has been paying attention, I think.

You worked with Margaret Atwood through the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. What was that experience like, and how to you think it impacted your work as a novelist?
It’s been a huge and unexpected blessing. Margaret has been tremendously kind to me. I’ve travelled with her to Cuba, to Panama, to the Arctic. We’ve talked about the natural world, about religion and history, science and the inner workings of people. She has made me braver about taking a big idea and running with it. She’s also given me a good schooling in the vital importance of saying “no.” That is: The world will always have more demands than one can meet. To make mental space for one’s writing, one must learn how to say no to a million wonderful good-natured worthwhile projects in order to meet the blank page every morning.

Clearly, role-reversal is not the way to achieve gender equality. Any ideas about how to move in that direction?
I’m hoping that thinking, talking, debating, writing, persuading will do it. They’re what’s done it so far. People sometimes say to me after reading the novel, “So do you think violence is the only answer?” And I say, “Well no, otherwise I wouldn’t have written a novel.” I believe in the power of reasoned debate to—eventually, in the long run—change hearts and minds. I hope my book is part of that long conversation and process, revealing where some of the roots of the gender divide come from, and asking how we feel about allowing the potential for violence to determine our life trajectories. Let’s never forget that women were given the vote all over the world by democratic votes by houses of representatives entirely composed of men. The feminist revolution has been the most successful bloodless revolution of modern times. I am proud to be part of it. We have to not lose hope in the power of rational argument and conversation.

What makes you feel powerful?
I felt pretty bloody powerful writing this book, let me tell you. Some days I felt like I could punch a hole through reality and turn it inside out. I hope it gives women who read it that same taste of feeling powerful.

Your first novel (Disobedience) is being made into a movie with Rachel Weisz and Rachel MacAdams. Has there been similar interest in The Power?
Even more! We had more than a dozen TV and movie offers for The Power before it was published in the U.K.—and more keep coming! We’ve sold the option to Sister Pictures, whose CEO Jane Featherstone is incredibly experienced, talented and skillful in making great TV. I’m on as lead writer, and we’re working on the pilot now. I really want it to be one of those high-production-value transatlantic shows: Ten episodes a season, several seasons, is what I’m hoping for. There’s so much more world to explore and so many more stories to tell than I had room for in the book.

You co-created a smartphone fitness app called Zombies, Run!, as well as other online games. How did that come about, and how (if at all) does that work influence your novels?
I’ve been working in video games for about as long as I’ve been seriously writing novels. My first game, Perplex City, began to be released in 2005, and my first novel was published in 2006. I’d always been a games-player—although sometimes an isolated one, without a gaming community I felt comfortable in. Zombies, Run! came about from a conversation with my friend Adrian Hon, who runs a small London games company, Six to Start. He’s a very keen runner, and wanted to make a game that would make running more fun. I am a reluctant exerciser—I know I need to exercise but I never do have that feeling that I want to. So we came up with the idea of a game where you’d be the hero in a zombie apocalypse story—and you have to keep running to collect supplies, spy on your enemies and of course get away from the zombies. I don’t think I knew on the afternoon that we had the idea that it’d be a hit—but here we are, about to embark on season seven of this game!

For one thing, it’s taught me is how to leave room for your reader and your player in your work. Room for them to co-create meaning in the story with you, room for their interpretations and ideas. I’ve a little tendency to want to stand over the reader’s shoulder and tell them what they should be thinking at every point in the story. So I think the explicit “there must be a space for the player in this story” discipline of games writing has been good for me.

What other speculative or science-fiction writers do you like?
Ah, so many. Iain M. Banks, Zen Cho, Samuel Delaney, Marge Piercy, Ted Chiang, Octavia Butler, Joanna Russ, Douglas Adams, John Wyndham. And the writers of children’s books who never get listed as speculative fiction writers but they really are: Lucy Boston, Susan Cooper, Joan Aiken, Margaret Storey, Elizabeth Goudge, Madeleine L’Engle, Diana Wynne-Jones.

But if you want one thing to start with that you can read in the next hour and it might change your life, read the short story “The Matter of Seggri” by Ursula Le Guin. You can thank me later.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Power.

“I felt pretty bloody powerful writing this book, let me tell you. Some days I felt like I could punch a hole through reality and turn it inside out.”
FictionLiterary Fiction

Meg Wolitzer

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

Meg Wolitzer is the mentor we’ve always wanted. Since 1982, her novels and short stories have explored friendship, romantic love, sex, money, feminism, family and just about every emotion you can name.

Her 10th novel, The Female Persuasion, is an absorbing story of ideals and ideas, betrayal and loyalty. It’s a tapestry of relationships: parents and children, employers and employees, husbands and wives. But at the novel’s core are the winding paths etched by close friendships. “The maxim is to write what you know,” muses Wolitzer from her New York apartment. “But for me, it’s write about what obsesses you. I am so absorbed by my friendships—they have been the sources of such deep, deep pleasure and meaning in my life, how could I not write about it?”

The star of The Female Persuasion, Greer Kadetsky, is a shy freshman when Faith Frank comes to speak at her college in 2006. Frank has been a pillar of the women’s movement since the 1960s and created the Loci Foundation, a speaker’s forum dedicated to sharing women’s stories. During a chance encounter in a restroom, Greer introduces herself to Frank, who, much to Greer’s surprise, responds warmly. Their encounter sets Greer on a new path, and a few years after graduation, she is offered a job working with Frank. As Greer starts to establish her own voice as a speaker and a writer, she grows distant from her boyfriend and comes face-to-face with her ambitions.

For Greer, working for Frank signifies the first time she’s felt both seen and heard. Like her young protagonist, Wolitzer benefited significantly from adults taking an early interest in her creativity.

“I’ve always looked up to certain older people who knew what they were doing, who I admired,” Wolitzer says. “I don’t think I thought of them as mentors at the moment, but of course they were.”

She found one of her earliest mentors at home: her mother, the novelist Hilma Wolitzer, who encouraged Wolitzer to take chances without worrying about the outcome. With her mother’s support, Wolitzer began writing at a young age.

“I just always wanted to be a writer,” she says. “There was a brief moment when I wanted to be a psychiatrist, but given that my math and science skills were subpar, it probably wasn’t something I should have pursued.”

When she was 12, she sold a story to Kids, a national magazine for young writers. “I even went into their offices in the city to be a guest editor,” she says. “It was so exciting to be taken seriously.”

From grade school through college, she continued to benefit from the positive ways in which women influence and mentor one another. The Female Persuasion is dedicated to a group of such women, one of whom was her English teacher, Mrs. Kidder. “She treated the students with deep intellectual respect,” Wolitzer says. “It turned out later that her son was Tracy Kidder, the [Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction] writer. It is wonderful to see that as she was nurturing her students, she was nurturing a writer right at home.”

In college, Wolitzer studied writing under John Hawkes, John Irving and Mary Gordon. She later encountered writer and filmmaker Nora Ephron, who directed an adaptation of Wolitzer’s book This Is Your Life. “Nora invited me into the process,” Wolitzer says. “I went to casting sessions with her, and we went to comedy clubs to hear women comics around the city. I saw the way Nora took such care and love for what she did.”

“Fiction allows you to ask more questions and not have the answer, to . . . move away from the fire of the burning moment.”

Mentorship is not the only hot-button topic in The Female Persuasion, which shines a gentle, probing light on ambition and power—and on the question of when to walk away. But these are not new issues for Wolitzer, whose earlier novels The Wife and The Ten-Year Nap touch on many of the same themes. “I have been struggling with questions about power, gender and misogyny for a very long time, both as a writer and as a person,” she says.

The novel’s opening chapter deals with an assault on a college campus, a topic that feels as if it’s taken from today’s headlines. But as Wolitzer is quick to point out, “A novel is not written in a 24-hour news cycle. It’s more like a three- to five-year news cycle. I was writing, and the world was moving fast. . . . Fiction allows you to ask more questions and not have the answer, to listen to people and move away from the fire of the burning moment.”

Although Wolitzer has focused on women’s lives before, the characters of Faith and Greer offer thoughtful insights into second- and third-wave feminism, and the intersectionality that continues to positively influence the women’s movement today. The introduction of Kay, a skeptical but spirited teenager, at the end of the novel is a reminder that political movements remain meaningful only when allowed to evolve.

When asked if different generations of feminists can learn from one another or are destined to battle it out, Wolitzer chooses to embrace the former vision. “I think the media embellishes the idea of a constant catfight between women. Yes, there are differences, but when I look, I see commonality, overlapping issues and a genuine desire to work for a fairer, more equitable world.”

Wolitzer’s novel acknowledges that people are working together to find unity and fuel change.

“One of the things that I loved about writing this book was that I could stand on my own little rock and look at the world through the eyes of the older generation and the younger generation. . . . I am genuinely moved by people who legitimately want things to be better, even if they are going about it in different ways. I wanted to capture that in my novel no matter what age my characters are.”

 

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by Nina Subin.

Meg Wolitzer is the mentor we’ve always wanted. Since 1982, her novels and short stories have explored friendship, romantic love, sex, money, feminism, family and just about every emotion you can name.

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

David Chariandy

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

David Chariandy is a Canadian novelist whose two novels explore the Afro-Caribbean experience in Toronto, and both have been listed for multiple awards and prizes. His first novel to be published in the U.S., Brother, tells the story of Michael and his older sibling, Francis, who live with their mother in a housing complex just outside of Toronto. Michael narrates the story of their childhood and adolescence, of their developing interests in girls and music—and of the act of violence that eventually tears their small family apart.

There is a 10-year gap between your first novel, Soucouyant: A Novel of Forgetting, and Brother. You have probably been asked this a lot, but why such a long time between books?
I’d like to think of myself as a very careful writer. I want each word to count, and that takes time. But the structure of Brother is additionally challenging in that it’s necessarily nonlinear. Writing it, I wanted each piece of the plot to be in the right place. Finally, I also felt that the issues confronted in the book needed to be respected and thought through very carefully.

Your visibility as a writer has really increased in the last year. Brother was short-listed for the Giller Prize and was chosen by the London Library for the One Book, One London read for 2018. What does this increased exposure mean for you?
I do feel very lucky about the increased exposure, especially internationally. For me, the most important opportunity offered by increased exposure is the chance to focus with greater faith and intensity upon the hard work of writing.

What was your inspiration for Brother?
I’m often inspired by the everyday beauty and resilience of black and brown families caught up in deeply challenging circumstances. I wanted to capture this ordinary beauty in its variations and intensity.

As you were writing Brother, the shooting of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were making headlines. Did those events impact the novel at all?
I feel it’s crucial to acknowledge that the shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown only made headlines because black people, particularly activists, forced journalists and the broader public to notice. Such acts of state and police violence also have a woefully long legacy throughout the Americas, not just in the U.S. Brother is set in the Canada of the early ’90s, and I started writing it before the latest acts of injustice within the U.S. were brought to broader public consciousness. But of course, as an author of black and also brown heritage, I can’t help but be aware of, and influenced by, such high-profile injustices and brave social struggles.

Our readers are used to seeing bigotry and police brutality as very American problems. But Brother changes that. Not only is there an increased police presence in the housing complex as the boys grow up, but they are also mistreated by other adults in authority positions—not just police, but teachers and music promoters. What does Brother add to our understanding of these social issues?
I appreciate your question, but I’m also not sure if the sole point of literature is to illuminate or diagnose social maladies. As I’ve suggested, revealing beauty and enduring life—particularly the beauty and enduring life of those readily ignored—is another way of signaling the importance of literature. But I guess my novel might help to show how a broader racist gaze permeates society as a whole, and that this gaze has multiple and “stacked” consequences. It’s especially frightening realizing that those who have state-sanctioned authority to take your life may hold racist beliefs. But others with racist beliefs in positions of authority may also affect one’s life quite drastically.

Michael and Francis are raised by a single mother from Trinidad whom Michael refers to as “one of those Black mothers.” What does he mean?
The narrator is winking at the reader, I think. We all know “those Black mothers” who work incredibly hard not only to provide for their children but also to maintain dignity and cultivate hope in tough circumstances. “Those Black mothers” are everywhere—ordinary and absolutely extraordinary in our lives. My own mother, for instance.

The brothers often visit the Rouge Valley, a green oasis that serves as a respite, where they are free to imagine their futures. Did you have a place like that as a child?
Yes, I was lucky enough to have a similar green space in my childhood. I wish more kids did.

Music is an important part of the novel, and it’s a way that Francis connects to the wider Black Diaspora that reaches outside of Canada. If you were making a soundtrack for the book, what would it include?
That’s easy. A very talented artist named DJ Agile compiled a mixtape! You can check it out here. I’d also maybe throw in some Nina Simone for good measure.

Brother is about a biological family, but it is also about community and kinship. Without giving too much away, the resolution of the novel suggests that there is the possibility for the creation of a new family. How do you see literature’s place in exploring the connections between the microcosm of family and the larger issues of kinship?
I really like this question! I do think that kinship in the novel reveals itself as fluid, beginning with family, but expanding to include those with similar experiences, hopes and values.

Do you think this is a hopeful novel?
I honestly don’t know if novelists always need to provide hope. I think novelists need to provide art and deeper glimpses of truth. But I do, again, want to believe my novel is about the enduring beauty of life, especially among people who are discrepantly confronted with the prospect of death.

Were you a voracious reader as a child? What kinds of books did you like?
I began by reading a lot of fantasy. I also liked science, particularly astronomy. In both cases, through either wild fiction or cosmic facts, I think I was trying to find alternatives to the often dissatisfying realities the world seemed to present me as the child of working-class immigrant parents.

There is a rich history of Afro-Caribbean Canadian writers. Who are some of your favorites?
There certainly is! Austin Clarke was a beloved mentor who supported my writing a whole lot, but who passed away before I could publish Brother. I ended up dedicating my novel to him. Dionne Brand is also someone I’m so lucky to be close to. I consider her one of the greatest living writers. There are many talented newcomers too: Canisia Lubrin and Ian Williams, for instance. The list goes on . . .

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Brother.

David Chariandy’s first novel to be published in the U.S., Brother, tells the story of Michael and his older sibling, Francis, who live with their mother in a housing complex just outside of Toronto. Michael narrates the story of their childhood and adolescence, of their developing interests in girls and music—and of the act of violence that eventually tears their small family apart.

FictionSatire

Oyinkan Braithwaite

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

The darkly comic events of Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel unfold as briskly as a classic noir, but with a contemporary tone in a setting unfamiliar to many American readers: modern-day Lagos, Nigeria.

Our narrator is the prickly Korede, a highly regarded but unpopular nurse at a Lagos hospital. Lonely, she confides her dreams and secrets to a coma patient in her ward. But one of her secrets could have dangerous repercussions: Korede’s charming younger sister, Ayoola, has murdered three of her boyfriends. She hasn’t been caught—yet—because Korede meticulously cleans up after her. After they dispose of the most recent victim, Ayoola drops by Korede’s hospital for a visit. When Korede’s doctor crush, Tade, is instantly smitten by her sister’s beauty, Korede must decide what to do. Should she intervene? Or let her sister’s madness take Tade’s life as well?

Unassuming, self-assured and with an infectious laugh, Braithwaite explains her style in a call to her home in Lagos. “I’ve always been drawn to dark subject matter,” she says. “One of my first stories took place in the woods and was told from the point of view of the trees and plants, observing as a girl wandered into a clearing and then killed herself. To me, it was a wildly romantic tale of nature and a beautiful stranger walking to her death. But my parents were concerned and thought maybe I’d experienced a trauma they didn’t know about. I was completely oblivious to what was upsetting them—I thought something was wrong with them!”

For My Sister, the Serial Killer, it’s no surprise Braithwaite had a “black widow” motif on her mind. “I’ve always been fascinated by black widow spiders and the idea of women killing their mates,” she says. This darkness is balanced by Korede’s matter-of-fact, almost deadpan observations and the author’s sly, skillful wit—but it is the interdependence of the two sisters that brings a more sinister tone. The reader learns about the sisters’ childhood, their abusive, now deceased father and the mother who failed to protect them. It’s easy to wonder if the sisters’ twisted connection has roots in their father’s brutality and to speculate over what really caused his untimely death. But Braithwaite keeps some things a secret—even from herself. “It’s fun to keep it as much a mystery to me as it is to the reader,” she says. “I’ve come to terms with what I think happened, but I don’t know for sure.”

The sisters’ relationship is so complex that readers may wonder which sister is the heroine and which the villain—or if it’s even possible to discern between the two. Like femme fatales in a noir thriller, their machinations are so wild and engaging that it becomes easy to cheer them on. Braithwaite agrees, stating with her characteristic laugh, “I suppose they are villains, I mean, they are killers. But honestly, I just found them adorable.”

The novel is also notable for its melding of the thriller genre with satirical commentary on beauty and femininity. “This may be a Nigerian thing, but people are very outspoken here about looks,” Braithwaite says.

“With my sister and I, people feel free to let us know which of the two of us they think is more attractive all the time, saying, ‘Oh, you were the fine one before, I don’t know what happened, but your sister is the more attractive one now.’ I imagine Korede and Ayoola and how after years of hearing something like this, they couldn’t help but be affected by it.”

“I’ve always been fascinated by black widow spiders and the idea of women killing their mates.”

In a novel filled with references to Instagram and social media, Braithwaite also drew inspiration from internet culture—and the way “beautiful people” are treated both in real life and online. “Did you ever hear about ‘Prison Bae’?” the author asks, referring to Jeremy Meeks, a convicted felon whose mug shot went viral on Facebook. “People were going crazy about him because he was so good-looking. . . . I don’t think people even cared what crimes he committed. People were willing to excuse anything because of his good looks.”

The disconnect between the chaos of real life and the online presentation of an attractive, curated life gives the novel a crisp, up-to-the minute appeal. “I am fascinated by the facetiousness of social media,” Braithwaite admits. “It almost feels like people go out of their way to create an online life that isn’t even remotely true. I think it’s dangerous.”

So is the case with the two sisters. Some of the novel’s most humorous moments are when Ayoola needs to be constantly reminded to not post selfies with her new boyfriend immediately after her previous boyfriend (deceased and disposed of) has disappeared.

Braithwaite’s references to social media are so seamless that it’s a surprise to know she grappled with including them. “It felt so new and different,” she says. “I was hesitant at first. I grew up on the great books—my favorite novel is Jane Eyre, and obviously none of [those books] had social media in them. I don’t know, it almost seemed unrefined. But once I got into it, I realized how well it helped tell the story.”

With the movie rights already sold, My Sister, the Serial Killer is poised to be a big hit, but Braithwaite is quick to admit that a skyrocketing career was not what she was expecting. “I always wanted to be an author, and there were so many ways I imagined it would go,” she says. “I was a little bit scared when things started to happen so quickly with this book. It doesn’t seem quite right, almost like I skipped a few steps. But I’m so grateful at the way everything has turned out.”

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by Studio 24.

The darkly comic events of Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel unfold as briskly as a classic noir, but with a contemporary tone in a setting unfamiliar to many American readers: modern-day Lagos, Nigeria.

FictionLiterary Fiction

Tessa Hadley

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

Alexandr and Christine, Zachary and Lydia have been friends since they first met after college. Thirty years later, Alexandr and Christine are spending a quiet night at home when they receive a life-changing call from Lydia. She is at the hospital, and Zachary is dead. Over the next year, the loss destroys the friends’ easy camaraderie, exposing old wounds and exacerbating grievances. With Late in the Day, our Top Pick in Fiction for January 2019, author Tessa Hadley explores some of our deepest feelings—lust, jealousy, despair—with visceral perception and emotional resonance.

Your novels and stories have been published in the United States, but I think our readers may not know much about you. What can you tell us about yourself?
I was born in 1956 in Bristol, England. My father was a schoolteacher and then much later had a shop, selling first jazz and pop records, then ironmongery. (I’m not sure what you call that in the U.S.—paraffin and nails and brushes and kettles and a thousand more things you didn’t know you needed until you saw them.) He also played jazz trumpet. My mother was a dressmaker and a housewife, elegant and arty, went to art school and drew and worked in pastels. I have one brother. I was painfully shy, very bookish, but happy as a child—at least until I was 11 and went to a rather bleakly academic school, which intruded too far into my private thoughts. I studied literature at university, but I’ve never completely fitted inside formal education, though I enjoyed it more later, when I came back to it in my 40s. I’ve been married for nearly 40 years and have three sons and three stepsons, all grown men now—and an accompanying crop of daughters-in-law and grandchildren. Big family, sociable, close, maddening, essential.

You didn’t start to publish until your mid-40s. Was there something that stopped you from sharing your work, and if so, how did you overcome that obstacle?
It wasn’t the sharing that was the problem, it was the work. I was always writing. I’ve never been able to do anything much else. But I was writing the wrong books. I think I was always an impressionable person, molding myself to be like other people I admired. In the long run, this is a form of imagination, and perhaps it stands a writer in good stead eventually. But in the beginning it means you don’t write out of your own perceptions with sufficient force. So I was a pale imitation of the writers I adored. I can’t explain why it got better eventually. Middle age? Working through all those imitations? Taking a writing course, getting competitive? At any rate, when it happened, it felt like coming home with the right key and letting myself into my own house. What joy.

Did you write as a child?
Yes, always. I can remember the physical delight of learning to make a letter “a.” And I remember my uncle, who was only 10 years older than I was, telling me that it was not a good idea to begin every sentence with “and.” My first lesson in style. For some reason, as soon as I read books, I got the idea that I could also make books of my own, to my own desires. Then I learned that between the wish and the execution there are oceans of difficulty. Still, it was always a joy—each fresh new vision, which then got bogged down after a while in lifelessness. There seemed to be a connection between the stories I wrote and the imaginary games we played as children—actually, these games seemed richer, more freely inventive, wholly satisfying. Whereas I knew that the books I wrote weren’t quite the real thing.

Late in the Day is about two marriages, two couples who are intimately connected and what happens when one of the partners dies. What lead you to that subject?
First of all, I wanted to write about long marriages. Marriages last longer than they’ve ever done in history, because we live so long. It’s extraordinary to hang on to the same individual through youth, middle age, beyond. My parents have been married over 60 years. There’s such a lot of story in that idea. So my first idea was to follow my two couples chronologically through time and see them change, watch them getting together, swapping partners, having children and so on. There an element of comic accident in how our lives end up, with whom we spend them. Of course there’s choice, but there’s also change, and unintended consequence, and error. I’m not romantic, I think. I believe in love, but not true love, not the one and only one. I think the comedy of accidents, the friendliness of adjusting to circumstances, is more interesting in the long run than single-minded adoration and fixation. But still I weep over Jane Eyre when I read it.

The novel moves back and forth in time, from the moment of Zachary’s death to decades before when the couples were still young and just beginning to connect. What lead you to choose that over a more straightforward chronology?
I thought at first that Zachary’s death would come fairly late on in the story. But then as soon as I knew he was going to die, his death swamped everything else. I didn’t even know whether I could make it work, structurally, if I suddenly sprang this death on readers after they’d got very used to his being alive. The finality of his death, if it was a sheer surprise, might have torn fatally through the fabric of the book, changed its tone too entirely. So I realized I needed to begin from that—everything begins from his death, and is seen in the light of the knowledge that it’s going to happen.

Christine is a successful contemporary artist. Do you have a sense of what her work looks like? Did you have to research the London art world at all?
I thought I would have to research it. But I always want to write first, research afterwards. Guess first, correct afterwards: It’s more likely to feel alive. And then while I was writing, I soaked up without thinking everything I read or came across to do with the visual arts. I do love paintings, and I used bits of detail from here and there about careers and prizes and attitudes, and actually when I’d finished I thought I’d done my research without noticing it. I had to dream what it would feel like, to need to express yourself in images instead of words. I’m not sure you could research that—you have to imagine it. I think I know what Christine’s work looks like, but in a groping kind of way that it would take an actual artist to fulfill and embody in visual art form.

Place is such a vital part of your fiction. Your last novel, The Past, was set in the country; Late in the Day takes place mostly in London and Venice. How does landscape shape and alter your storytelling?
I think we are porous animals, intensely responsive to our surroundings, taking our cue from them in terms of mood, action, imagination. We don’t stop at the edge of our skin: Our sensibility encompasses sky, surround-sound, cultural suggestion, built environment, music. So if I take my contemporary middle-class English arty types and put them down in Venice, something happens to them. They soften and blur around the edges in response to some dream of the place they’re in. The beauty of the streets and buildings, the warm sun and light on the water—this makes them dreamy, too. And they’re sophisticated and aware of the whole history of tourism and Venice and art, and some of the awfulness of it, and all this complex positioning stretches them and strains at their ordinary selves, makes rash things possible, makes it possible for them to act themselves differently, at least for an hour or an afternoon, or a week. Everyone who knows about Venice or London or New York or the Sahara desert, and feels it, has a little bit of its sensibility inside them—even if they never go there. Imagination is a rich map of possibilities, light and dark. It’s a terrain, an inner landscape, whether we visit in actuality or not. Sometimes I think we ought not.

Your novels bubble over with details of relationships, of intimacies, thoughts, places, the natural and the sensual world. How do you keep the plot moving forward?
Writing a novel, you have to be aware of two very different drives working at the same time. At one level, sentence by sentence, you are following every unexpected development and suggestiveness, very few of which you will have imagined in advance. You know approximately what Lydia is like, but you don’t know what she’ll do—you don’t know the sequence of her thoughts and gestures, you don’t know her embodiment, her movements and appearance—in a given scene, until you’re writing it. That’s the joy and freshness of the daily writing. But behind this energy of the “present” of the novel, with all its cornucopia of possibility, the writer feels the deep hum of the engine down below: The story inches its way forward; certain inevitable developments are preparing themselves. (I’m making it almost sound like Thomas Hardy’s Titanic and the iceberg here.) The writer is probably more aware of the story driving forward below the surface than the reader is, if everything’s working well. Then it’s a nice surprise for the reader, when something unexpected happens, takes everything to a new place.

You look at your characters without judgment, even when they act in petty ways or commit acts of selfishness or unkindness. The four people in Late in the Day hurt each other in terrible ways, and yet, they aren’t bad people, are they?
I’m so glad you say that. That’s what I feel, though I know already from some early readers that they are angry with Alex. I keep on writing this kind of man: clever and attractive and rather arrogant, very free, very separate from conventional forms and roles. Often right, but not always, and not invariably kind. I have a feeling this kind of man cast spells over my generation, young in the ’70s—and that this is no longer the case, men aren’t made like that any more. Probably a good thing. Whenever you find yourself writing the sentences that close down on judgment of your characters, those sentences read less well, they’re less interesting stylistically—which is a really difficult conundrum. Because it can’t mean that novels don’t judge what’s right and wrong, can it? They begin at least from a premise that right and wrong are real; all the novels I’ve ever cared for begin from that. But they begin from it and work from there. They watch the unfolding of right and wrong, which is often opaque, though not always. They describe its coming about, they don’t arbitrate or preach. It’s not the Day of Judgement, it’s the Garden of Earthly Delights, with all the devils in it.

Without giving anything away, I felt that Late in the Day was really about a middle-aged woman committing to her identity as an artist. Would you agree?
Yes, that’s what I think. My heart was in that last chapter, those last pages.

You write from the point of view of so many characters and so many generations in this and in earlier novels like The Past and Clever Girl. Is there any age that you aren’t comfortable inhabiting?
I can’t remember ever writing from the point of view of someone in their 70s or 80s. It’s a time of life particularly bedeviled, in representation, with stereotypes and clichés. Takes a strong push to write past them, I suspect. I feel rather ashamed, now I come to think of it, that I haven’t tried. My own parents are in their late 80s now. I’m learning a lot about it.

What books are on your bedside table?
A biography of Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister who oversaw the extraordinary transformation of Britain into a welfare state after the Second World War. It’s good time to be remembering him and that inspired undertaking. Four sublime novellas by Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg: Valentino, Sagittarius, Family and Borghesi. One of the books about physics I perennially buy and fail to finish. But I dip into the universe from time to time, uncomprehending.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a review of Late in the Day.

Author photo by Mark Vessey

Author Tessa Hadley explores some of our deepest feelings—lust, jealousy, despair—with visceral perception and emotional resonance.

Fiction

Into the wild with Peter Heller

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

Peter Heller finds success once again in The River, a riveting story of wilderness survival. Things are bleak enough when Wynn and Jack’s idyllic camping trip is interrupted by a forest fire. But when they find an abandoned, badly injured woman, does this mean they are also being tracked by a would-be killer? Heller shares insight into his new novel and a look at his reading list.

The River has so many strong visual elements. Did you start with an image in mind?
I usually begin with music—the cadence and notes of a first line. I just love how the music of the language can carry one straight to a strong visual image and strong emotion, and how, if one lets it run, it can also bring characters alive and lead straight into a story. It’s the magic of writing fiction. So The River began with the first line about smelling smoke and a string of lakes and led to a vivid image of the distant glow of a giant forest fire breathing at nightfall. It still raises the hair on the back of my neck.

When you began to write The River, how much did you know about what was going to happen to Wynn and Jack?
I had no clue about anything. There were these two best friends in a canoe, and a forest fire upwind, and then a couple of shady men camping on an island. I love to be as surprised as my readers. I write in a coffee shop, and as stuff happened I’d find myself shaking my head as if to clear it, and just stopping to breathe. I kept murmuring, “Whoa!” “Gaw!” It was thrilling.

You’ve been very up front that Celine was inspired by your mother. Are Wynn and Jack based on anyone you know?
Yes. I didn’t mean to, but it usually happens that way. As I wrote, and as Jack and Wynn became clear, I realized that Jack was a lot like me. Not that I was raised on a ranch, or ever decked a guy in a bar, but that he was like me in his responses and feelings, and the way he thought about things. And Wynn was a lot like one of my oldest and dearest friends, an ephemeral artist in Vermont who is also a gentle giant and a supremely competent outdoorsman. Jay and I have shared a lot of trips together, and I realized that the boys were acting a lot like us, and that their friendship was just as sweet and based on a lot of the same loves. The scene where the boys meet each other came straight from my first week knowing Jay.

In your own adventures as an outdoorsman, have you ever had any experiences as harrowing as what you write about here? Or maybe not as harrowing, but close? If so, what did that teach you?
Yes. I used to do a lot of expedition paddling in far-flung places. I have been on a kayak expedition, on a first-descent steep creek in the Pamirs, and run out of food and had to paddle very difficult water on a sourball a day for several days. And in the morning found wolf tracks on the sand of the beach. I’ve had another river runner die in my arms. And I’ve wondered at times if I would survive the day. These experiences always drove home that the only way through is to look out for each other. I think it’s a lesson that applies to the rest of life.

I love that Wynn is an artist. You’ve written about the art world before—is there a place where the natural world and the artifice of the gallery naturally meet?
They meet in every good painter’s heart. In the spirit of every good sculptor. I love great art because it makes the natural world intimate in ways that surprise us, and that move us deeply with a knowledge and immediacy and love of the world that is fresh and novel. We can experience nature, in the broadest sense, through another’s eyes and heart. How curious and wonderful.

What nature writers do you admire?
I grew up loving Joseph Conrad and Hemingway. Emily Dickinson slayed me. I admire the music of Derek Walcott and how he writes about the sea. My favorites, though, are the ancient Chinese poets of the Tang Dynasty. In just two lines, the great ones—Li Po, Wang Wei, Tu Fu, Li Shang Yin, Xue Tao—can put you knee deep in a mountain torrent or an autumn lake.

There have been some mystery and thriller elements in your last two books. What crime writers do you like?
I don’t read a lot of crime. My mother, the private eye, had stacks of Dick Francis and Sue Grafton on her bed table. The one crime writer I devour, and whose books I can’t wait for, is James Lee Burke. He’s a wonderful writer, and he has a crazy good series about a Cajun detective in southwest Louisiana named Dave Robicheaux.

Were you a big reader as a kid? What kinds of books did you like?
I read nonstop. I carried a book always, and when I got out of school and was an itinerant kayak instructor I always carried a milk crate full of books, mostly poetry. I loved Faulkner and Wallace Stevens, John McPhee and Eudora Welty; Yeats, Basho, Flannery O’Connor and Gary Snyder. I was very eclectic.

Why did you transition from writing nonfiction to novels?
I wanted to write fiction since I was a kid. After college I had to make a living, so I began writing for magazines, and that led to a slew of nonfiction books. And then it was time. . . . Writing fiction was like coming home.

Do you have any writing rituals?
Yes! Two mugs of coffee and then a double-shot latte. A thousand words a day, every day, and I always stop in the middle of a scene or a compelling train of thought. I read that Graham Greene did that—he wrote 500 words a day, every day of his life, and he’d stop in the middle of a sentence in the middle of a love scene. Most writers I know write through a scene. But if you think about it, that’s stopping at a transition, a double-return, white space. That’s what you face the next morning; it’s almost like starting the book fresh. If you stop in the middle, you can’t wait to continue the next day.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The River.

Author photo by John Burcham

“The only way through is to look out for each other.”
FictionLiterary Fiction

Kiley Reid

Interview by Lauren Bufferd

Kiley Reid wants you to know three things before reading her debut novel, Such a Fun Age.

First, the author says during a phone call amid a very busy book touring schedule, she loves talking about money, class and “all those gauche, awkward things that people don’t want to talk about.”

Second, she’s interested in how memory works and how people can have different views of the same event.

And third, she loves dialogue, especially when people are saying one thing but mean something else.

These all come together in Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid’s smart stunner of a social novel. It’s a will-she-won’t-she page turner about an underemployed African American woman and the wealthy white family that hires her as a babysitter. Never has reading about benefits negotiations been so exciting.

Emira Tucker, a recent graduate from Temple University, is eking out a financially precarious living, cobbling together jobs and dreading her 26th birthday, when she will be dropped from her parents’ health insurance. Her employers, Alix and Peter Chamberlain, have recently relocated from New York to Philadelphia, where Peter is an anchor on a local news show and Alix attempts to turn her lifestyle blog into a book. They hire Emira to take care of toddler Briar and new baby Catherine.

“Do I think she’s a villain? No, not at all. But she can still cause just as much damage.”

Reid wastes no time getting to the heart of things. The novel opens late one night when Emira is at a friend’s birthday party. The Chamberlains ask her to come to the house; a rock has been thrown through the window, and the police are expected. Briar is awake and disconcerted, and the parents ask Emira to take the 2-year-old away from the chaotic scene. Emira chooses an upscale neighborhood grocery store, but is confronted by the store’s security guard, who accuses her of kidnapping Briar. The scene quickly escalates. Kelley Copeland, a well-meaning white bystander, begins to film the encounter on his phone. The Chamberlains are called in, and the ugly incident is diffused—but not without laying the groundwork for future damage.

“I love novels that start with something that really pulls me in,” Reid says. “That’s why I started with the grocery store incident. I wanted to explore these instances of racial biases that don’t end in violence as a way of highlighting those moments that we don’t see on the news but still exist every day.”

Kelley encourages Emira to post the video on social media or send it in to the local news. She refuses, but when they run into each other a few weeks later, they begin dating. Meanwhile, Alix, embarrassed at how little she knows about her babysitter, shows a new curiosity in Emira’s life, even sneaking peeks at her phone and asking to meet the new boyfriend. After Kelley and Alix discover that they went to high school together, Alix’s meddling increases, and Emira becomes uncomfortable with Kelley’s ultimatum that she quit her job.

“I wanted to write about a triangle of people who know each other but don’t really know each other, other than ‘I used to date you back in the day, but I don’t really know you anymore,’” Reid says, “or ‘I pay you to work for me, but I don’t really know you.’ I wanted three people to have that awkward connection to each other, to let the attitudes of the characters lead in terms of how they reveal themselves on the page.”

Reid is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently living in Philadelphia, where she is adapting Such a Fun Age into a screenplay. (Lena Waithe’s production team, Hillman Grad Productions, bought the rights to develop the novel last August, when Reid was still finishing up her degree in Iowa.) During the writing of the novel, which took nearly five years, Freddie Gray died after being held in police custody in Baltimore, and Philando Castile was shot by police in Minnesota. ‘‘Smaller, more domestic incidents were happening constantly,” Reid remembers. “There wasn’t one I was trying to re-create, but I was absolutely inspired by the everyday terror. In fact, my book was being shopped when the two African American men were arrested at the Starbucks in Philadelphia. These kinds of incidents are real. I wanted to focus on the fact that for Emira, this doesn’t go away.”

In lesser hands, the meddling Alix would be the villain of the story. But Reid doesn’t see it that way. “Alix has many great qualities—she’s quick, creative, funny. I’ve definitely experienced what Alix has experienced, in having little friend-crushes on someone,” Reid says. “I see her bad qualities as more of a symptom of a broken system. Like a lot of us, she wants to feel good and like she’s doing good. So she thinks giving Emira a bottle of wine is going to solve something, when what Emira needs is health insurance and to be able to pay her rent on time. Do I think she’s a villain? No, not at all. But she can still cause just as much damage.”

Just as Alix isn’t the bad guy, neither is Emira a hero, though her actions at times and her love for Briar are heroic in their way. (One of the core strengths of the novel is the fierce attachment Emira feels for Briar, even as she acknowledges that their relationship is part of, as Reid puts it, “an exchange of emotional goods.”)

“I wanted to write about a character who doesn’t know what she wants to do and is in a very vulnerable emotional and financial situation,” Reid explains. “Emira has a college education, she’s smart, she has good friends, but things are still very difficult for her, especially as her health insurance is ending.” Worst of all, she blames herself for being underemployed, especially as all her friends are more gainfully employed with their own apartments and benefits.

Like the novel’s principal characters, the supporting cast is unforgettable, from the precocious Briar to Peter’s conventional but take-charge co-anchor. Reid’s skill with character and dialogue keeps the action moving forward at a brisk clip, most visibly at the Chamberlain Thanksgiving table. The scene is a masterpiece of discomfort and revelation, with all the awkwardness that could possibly occur when a volatile mix of friends, former lovers and employers get together in one room. 

“To have that many people in the room has been one of my favorite writing challenges, and it took me about six to eight weeks to get a rough draft,” recalls Reid with a laugh. “I am not great at math, so I had to map out where everyone sat or moved so I could keep track of them. Honestly, I kept losing the babies, forgetting whose laps they were sitting on or if they were even at the table. This is my favorite kind of puzzle game—to create questions that I can then answer. What recipe would this person make? If there was an awkward moment, who would jump in and save the day? Who would make it worse?”

The timeliness of Such a Fun Age is reinforced by the robust presence of social media, which Reid seamlessly integrates into her story. But true to form, there is a message behind the technique. “Social media allows people to see racism play out in real time, in really terrifying ways,” Reid says. “I wanted to include that panic from the onlooker, that point where you are wondering, ‘What am I seeing, do I need to pull out my phone?’ Social media is also the way people brand themselves, which Alix does very successfully, even pretending to her followers that she still lives in New York City. Emira doesn’t use Instagram or Facebook, because she doesn’t really know who she is.”

Back to the things Riley wants you to know. Money, guilt, the emotional cost of a transactional economy and unrecognized white privilege are at the heart of Such a Fun Age. But make no mistake, it’s also a blast to read, and you will laugh out loud. 

“I have no pretense to pretend that this is anything other than a novel, and for me, a novel is meant to entertain,” says Reid. “That being said, I wrote a story about a young woman who is about to come to the end of her health insurance, and that affects her greatly. I want someone to say, ‘Well, why doesn’t she have insurance? She’s a wonderful employee, a hard worker. What would our world look like if that wasn’t an issue?’ Now, that would be a great reaction.” 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Such a Fun Age.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly named Lena Waithe’s production company. It also called baby Catherine the wrong name.

Author photo © David Goddard

Kiley Reid wants you to know three things before reading her debut novel, Such a Fun Age.

FictionLiterary Fiction

The Orchard

Review by Lauren Bufferd

David Hopen’s ambitious debut novel combines the religiously observant world of Chaim Potok’s books with the academic hothouse of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observations of the rich and privileged.

The Orchard follows a year in the life of 17-year-old Aryeh Eden after his family moves from an insular Orthodox community in Brooklyn to a wealthy Florida suburb. A senior in high school and completely unprepared for the process of college applications, Aryeh enrolls at an elite Jewish school with a student body so entitled that his classmates plan to drive their luxury cars straight to their preferred Ivy League campuses. Aryeh is befriended by golden boy Noah and his group of privileged friends, including stoner Oliver and competitive Amir. Their constant drug use, partying and sexual activity is as alluring to Aryeh as it is disturbing. Aryeh is especially drawn to Sophia, whose sad-eyed glamour holds a myriad of secrets, not least of which involve her old boyfriend Evan, a charismatic bad boy whose transgressions are constantly overlooked by the school even when his antics escalate and become life-threatening.

Weekly meetings with school headmaster Rabbi Bloom offers opportunities for the thoughtful Aryeh to explore deeper issues in Jewish scripture and philosophy, but it doesn’t compare with the secular pleasures on offer, and he finds himself repeatedly drawn in to dangerous situations.

Though Hopen is tuned in to Aryeh’s toxic mix of advanced intellectual abilities and low self-esteem, the novel suffers from underdeveloped female characters who exist as unattainable objects rather than individuals with plans and dreams of their own. In addition, the thorny philosophical debates held by Aryeh and his male friends lack the subtlety needed to make fictional events seem possible.

Acknowledging these considerable shortcomings, The Orchard is still a suspenseful novel with a brisk pace and a surprising outcome. Thoughtful depictions of the range of religious experience and practice make it a singular addition to the world of Jewish fiction as well as a notable variation on the classic campus novel.

David Hopen’s ambitious debut combines the religiously observant world of Chaim Potok’s books with the academic hothouse of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observations of the rich and privileged.

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