Stephenie Harrison

Featuring an enchanted manuscript and a forbidden relationship between a witch and a vampire, Deborah Harkness’ debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, is sure to cast a spell over readers worldwide.

A Discovery of Witches has been described as everything from “paranormal romance” to “a magical romp through academia.” How do you think of it?

I don’t think it’s easy to categorize this novel. In some ways, I think it’s a book mystery; it’s a book about books. I love books like Possession, Shadow of the Wind and The Club Dumas, so in my mind, A Discovery of Witches is really about this search for a book that might answer all of our questions—Ashmole 782. Everything else that happens is in some ways just orbiting around this very important book.

Between working as a professor of history and blogging about wine—how did you manage to find the time to write such a huge novel?

[laughing] When I think back on it, I can’t quite put all the pieces together! I was teaching full time, and I kept trying to blog, so honestly I just tried to write in the first couple of hours each day. You know, the time before the phone starts ringing and West Coast email starts leaking in. Somewhere in the back of my mind as I would go through the rest of the day I would think about it and sometimes I’d get a second wind in the evening, but really it was written just a few hours in the morning every day. For me it was a good day if I got two or three pages done. Sometimes if I was on vacation I would write 12 pages in a day, but I just pushed through it one page at a time and it got done! It took 20 months from the first idea to the delivery of the manuscript into the copyeditor’s hands.

You’ve stated that your jumping-off point for the novel was the question of what vampires would do for a living if they really existed. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

What was really behind the question was the notion that it really must be quite difficult to be someone who lives while everyone they love around them dies and while the world that they know changes over and over and over again. For me, my job gives me an enormous amount of joy—I love being a historian, I love teaching, I love the research—but to me, what I’d never seen was a vampire who had that kind of purpose to anchor themselves in. How would you think of something you could do not just for this one life, but conceivably for hundreds or thousands of years?

Did you feel that since vampires are in fact historians of world history that would be a bit of a cheat?

Yes, definitely. I knew that vampires would not want to be historians; it would be too close to home and would offer them no respite from what their whole lives were, which is remembering.

When I started to think about who vampires would spend their time with, I realized that human beings wouldn’t be very interesting to them, so that’s how I stumbled upon the idea of witches and daemons. I realized very quickly that it would be witches who would the historians and the anthropologists. They were the record keepers because of the traditions they have maintained and upheld.

In many ways your own research is very similar to Diana’s—have you also been interested in the supernatural?

I’ve been fascinated with it in terms of how, for so long, the supernatural was just part of the natural. Now we have a very strong divide where we think, there’s the world, and then there’s this supernatural stuff, but that has not been true for most of history. . . . I was really interested in the idea that for such a long time people would think “well, that happened because a witch made it happen,” because there really wasn’t a better explanation.

I always tell my students to try to imagine what people from the 16th century would think if they saw us walk over to a wall and flip a switch and a light on the other side of the room turned on. I couldn’t draw you an electric diagram of how that works, so on some level we take science on faith and that’s our explanation today. In some sense, science is the new magic, especially for those of us who aren’t actively involved in science.

Speaking of science, one of the things that is so refreshing about this novel is the way you create a genetic explanation for the paranormal.

For me, the world of this book really needed to be a world that would make sense. I tried to figure out a way for this world to exist in our world. I realized that modern genetic research would be a problem—for these different species, who we used to differentiate because they could make certain things happen or based on what they ate, suddenly the prospect of having a car accident and having your blood tested and having it revealed that it was different in some significant way, this struck me as being both enormously frightening as well as offering up the prospect of real understanding.

I did a ton of reading about genetics and different theories about chromosomal change and [read] the great studies of spontaneous chromosomal mutations due to pathogen bombardments. It seemed to me that there were all kinds of wonderful possible explanations in the scientific world, so that’s the explanation I went with.

As an aside, I think that alchemy is actually really helpful in terms of trying to marry the fantastical with the real world because alchemy is a scientific discipline where there is a belief that substances change fundamentally from one thing to another. Alchemy has a rich set of images and beliefs about how a seed can turn into a plant, or lead can turn into gold, or the mortal can change into the immortal. So I began to think well, how is neuroscience like magic, or neutron bombardment like alchemy? Those were really fun days when pieces like that began to fall into place.

Diana is such a compelling character. She’s so strong and independent, it was surprising to discover that she wasn’t the starting point for the novel.

Well, Diana was actually the first character name that I wrote down. So, while the questions about the book may have started with vampires—after all, the world was pretty obsessed with vampires in the Fall of 2008!—it all very quickly became about this world, and some of the very first things I wrote down about the book were about witches and daemons. Pretty much as soon as I figured out that witches were the historians, then I began focusing more on them and that element of the story.

Diana’s name came to me very quickly through a combination of thinking about vampires as hunters, since Diana is the goddess of the hunt, but also thinking about some of the first families that were victims of the witch hunts in Salem in 1692 here in America.

It was important to me that Diana be really smart and really independent, but also somebody who was ultimately appealing. I think that a lot of women that I’ve talked to really empathize with some of her struggles about being independent. I think it’s good for fiction to deal with those issues, not necessarily as one of the central things, but as something that gets worked out in the course of the plot.

It sounds like there are quite a few striking parallels between Diana and yourself.

Certainly the fact that she is a historian and working at the Bodleian was something I knew, though I must say what historians actually do in a day is not always how it seems in books. A lot of it just came from tracking situations and thinking what someone with her background and characteristics would do. From that perspective, she often does things that I would never do, because she is not me. In some ways it was almost wish fulfillment of what I’d like more heroines in literature to be, that appealing mix of vulnerable and intelligent that I think most women are in real life.

The sexual tension you develop between Diana and Matthew is incredibly intense. Sex scenes and convincing love stories may be the hardest things to write, so do you have a particular philosophy regarding these elements in writing?

I think the best sex scenes are the ones that leave a lot to the imagination. We’re very unique individuals, so when people are very good they can suggest in a word or a phrase what’s really going on.

I also think sex should be about joy; it shouldn’t be about pain or angst. It should be one of the most joyful things that happens! I wanted their romance to involve some tension, but also lots of laughter and lots of mutual respect and give and take, so that’s what I tried to put in those scenes.

I know there have been some people who have wanted to know where the real sex is, but it’s only been 40 days! These are people with PhDs, and they haven’t picked each other up at a bar for a one-night stand. I wanted it to be realistic about what these two characters would do in these incredibly fraught situations, so I just wouldn’t have bought it as a reader if they had been spending these long days in bed. They need to wait for the right moment, which will happen.

Given the current fervor for vampires, were you worried people would be burnt out?

When I started writing the story, I really started writing it for me. . . . I had spent six or eight weeks on it and had nine chapters completed before I even told anyone else that I was working on something. I didn’t really know exactly what I was doing, so the larger issue of how my writing would fit into the world wasn’t even something I was thinking about. I told the story that I wanted to tell and that I couldn’t keep from telling. Whether it had vampires or witches, whether it would be published or anyone would read it, that wasn’t the issue to me. What did motivate me is that there are so many books out there that draw on history, secret books and alchemy, so I wanted to see if I could put all those pieces together again in a way that seemed more plausible or possible to me as a historian.

Why do you think we just can’t quit vampires? What about them is so appealing?

Because I don’t have children of my own, I was largely oblivious to the more recent young-adult fervor over supernatural and paranormal romances. I mean, you can’t go through an airport or turn on the television without knowing about Twilight, but I hadn’t read those books.

However, I grew up with Anne Rice, so vampires are not a new thing! I am really fascinated with the cycles that these topics go through, because they are useful symbols for us to think about life through.

I think we have a very complicated relationship to creatures and people who aren’t like us. On the one hand, we are enormously attracted to them, we are fascinated by them and want to know more. There is also some fear and drawing back from people who aren’t like us. I think the vampire is an extreme example of that attraction and withdrawal mechanism. Witches serve similar but not identical purposes.

Throughout history there has been some kind of human sense of some people not being like us and struggling with how to explain that. Some of the most enduring ways [of explaining the unknown] in literature have been about people with paranormal abilities. Interestingly, in most western countries, vampires in their current form are rather late to the party!

Who are some of your favorite fictional vampires (or witches)?

I always go back to Anne Rice. Those are really the witch and vampire books that made the biggest impression on me as a young adult growing up. The Mayfair witches that she wrote about in The Witching Hour and the characters she created in The Vampire Chronicles really made a big impression [on me]. I was always a big fan of Louis in Interview with the Vampire, more so than Lestat.

I also have to say that I have an enormous fondness for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s vampires. I was an Angel girl for a very long time, but by the end I was with Spike all the way. I also really loved Drusilla, who was wonderful. I loved the humor in Joss Whedon’s vampires. They took themselves so seriously while they were in the moment but then realized their actions were huge clichés.

So far, the response to the book and the pre-publication buzz has been overwhelmingly positive. Did you ever expect your book would garner this kind of response?

No! I am a history professor so this was very unexpected! The first responses from foreign publishers were so wonderful because they knew very early on that they wanted to translate it and make it available to readers. I think that was my first sign that people would embrace the book, but you never know whether people are going to adopt your characters and bring them into their homes and have them become part of their imaginative lives.

I’ve really loved having readers write me and tell me that they love some of the more minor characters other than Matthew and Diana, because they all seem so real to me. In the end, I think getting that kind of response is really what it’s about for an author. I’m just so happy the book has been getting this kind of response as I hope it helps it find itself into the hands of other readers who will enjoy it. When you write non-fiction, you don’t have that same kind of emotional impact on your readers!

A Discovery of Witches will be published in more than 30 translated editions. Is there a particular version you’re especially excited to see?

Oh gosh! I think that I will have a very special place in my heart for the French edition because it will be in Matthew’s language. It’s also one of the languages I’m slightly more adept at . . . I’m not sure how I’ll fare with the Czech version!

Really, it’s just so astonishing it’s going to go into so many languages that on some level every single one is just such a kick. I’ve had the pleasure of being in contact with some of the translators and they’re all just so smart and the care that they’re taking with this book to get it right is amazing.

When you’re not busy writing, teaching and researching, what do you like to read? Are there any particular authors or works that inspire you as a writer?

Honestly, the thing I read most is nonfiction because of my work. I really read an eclectic blend of things when I’m not reading nonfiction. I love poetry. I certainly have a real soft spot for Diana Gabaldon and her Outlander series. I think I’m drawn to big, thick chunky books regardless of the genre. I like being caught up in a story and getting lost in it for more than just a day or two. From there it can be straight fiction, romance, fantasy or mystery. I love Elizabeth George! For me it’s about loving the characters and being able to go visit friends again. When I go on trips I usually take a book that I already have read because I know I will love it so re-reading is a big treat for me.

With popular books it always seems like the next step is Hollywood. Do you have any plans or aspirations to turn your books into movies? Have you had any thoughts on who you’d like to play Diana or Matthew?

I think it would be an enormous treat to see what a really smart filmmaker would do with this book. Film is an adaptation of the book, not word-for-word, but so that it conveys the right meaning and tone. That said, if it doesn’t happen, I’m absolutely fine with having every reader make that movie in their own head, since that’s what we all do anyway.

I can say with all honesty that I can think of absolutely no one I have seen who can play Matthew! If a filmmaker can come up with that, more power to them, but I can’t say I can picture that individual.

The novel ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. Did you know from the outset that you’d be writing more than one book?

When I thought about the story, I always thought of it in three distinct movements and this was always the first movement. It was sold as a stand-alone book so it needed to stand on its own merits and there needed to be some kind of closure at the end, but for me the story has always been three. I actually wrote the first chapter of the first book and the last chapter of the last book, so these bookend chapters were the first two things I wrote.

Are all the books written then?

No. I know a lot more about how they get from point A to point B than I used to, and I am actively working on the second one right now, which presents new challenges and is proving to be a great learning experience. So that’s my focus right now, the next stage of the adventure.

Matthew and Diana’s relationship will continue to evolve and truly the best is yet to come. I think we often do not pay enough attention to sustaining relationships, so I think people often go into the world with some strange ideas and it’s no wonder so many people are disappointed all the time! The really challenge and the real beauty of a relationship is building something that can really last, so that’s what we’ll be seeing a little bit more of.

Stephenie Harrison writes from Nashville, where she studies science at Vanderbilt University and blogs about books at Steph & Tony Investigate!

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BookPage got the scoop on what a history professor is doing writing fiction, the current craze for vampires and where her heroes are headed next.

Fiction

Fiction

Jennifer Haigh

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

Jennifer Haigh’s fourth novel focuses on a complicated Boston family struggling to come to terms with secrets they would rather not face. The Irish-American McGann clan have always been close, but when oldest brother Art, a priest, is accused of improper behavior by a parishioner, their mother and his two siblings find their close relationships torn apart. Combining a ripped-from-the-headlines plot with Haigh’s trademark emotionally elegant writing, Faith is a gripping and honest novel that will keep readers turning pages.

The word “faith” means a lot of different things to different people. What exactly does “faith” mean to you? Why did you choose it as the title of your book?

The novel deals with religious faith, of course—the story revolves around a priest accused of sexual abuse, and many of the characters are observant Catholics. In a broader sense, the events of the story make all the characters reevaluate what they believe about themselves and each other.

Many authors take inspiration from their own lives—your second novel, Baker Towers, was set in a western Pennsylvania coal town much like the place where you were born. Where did the idea for Faith come from?

When I moved to Boston from Iowa in 2002, the city was reeling from revelations that Catholic priests had molested children, and that the Archdiocese had covered up the abuse. I was reeling too: I was raised in a Catholic family, spent 12 years in parochial schools and had extremely fond memories of my interactions with Catholic clergy. It’s no exaggeration to say that nuns and priests were the heroes of my childhood. Like many people, I was horrified by what had happened in Boston—and, as later became clear, in Catholic dioceses across the country. Faith was my attempt to explain the inexplicable, to understand what I couldn’t make sense of in any other way.

What is it about family dynamics that makes them such a literary touchstone for you?

You know, I wouldn’t say I have a particular interest in writing about families. In fact I’m just trying to write complex, realistic, well-developed characters—and to do that, I need to consider where my characters came from, what their early years were like, what sorts of people brought them into the world.

Faith revolves around what happens when a young priest is accused of sexual misconduct with a young boy. Was it difficult for you to tackle such a sensitive subject?

Starting any book is difficult. I approached Faith the way I have approached all my novels: by thinking my way into the characters, and knowing them from the inside.

One of the things that is so impressive about your novels is how atmospheric they are. Faith takes place in Boston, which is where you currently live—if you could travel and settle anywhere with the intention of some day setting a book there, where would you choose to go?

Hm. Is someone else buying my plane ticket?

Your novels are very emotionally investing for readers, so they must demand a lot from you as a writer. What do you do when you need to unwind from all the drama you create on the page?!

I like to take a walk, or maybe cook something.

You graduated with an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2002—what is the most important thing that you learned during your time there?

Iowa was a formative experience for me. I grew a great deal as a writer, and learned values and habits I use every day of my writing life. It’s hard to single out one particular lesson. I will say that Frank Conroy was a man who honored the sentence, and I try to do that too.

Along with novels you also write short stories—do you find one format more rewarding or challenging than the other?

Different rewards, different challenges. I enjoy both and struggle with both. If pressed I’d say I prefer the novel, mostly because I hate starting and finishing. Breaking ground on a new project terrifies me, and finishing one is profoundly depressing, if only because I know I’ll soon have to start all over again. My favorite part is the long, boring middle stage of writing a novel, when the end is still distant, and the next beginning even more so.

Recently there has been a lot of attention devoted to gender bias in the publishing industry. Your previous works have won some rather prestigious awards, but as a female author, do you feel like you have a harder time reaching a broad readership?

No—in fact, just the opposite. Reaching a broad audience isn’t the problem. If anything, female writers have an edge in that regard, since the vast majority of fiction readers are women. The real issue is that female writers are far less likely to be reviewed, which creates the impression that their work is less serious. This is a persistent and vexing problem, but because I can’t do anything about it, I try to put it out of my mind.

With so many other modern innovations and ways to spend our time, why is it important for people to still read books?

I can only respond with the reasons I still read books: It’s the most powerful way I know to augment the experience of living. Reading a great novel opens an entire world to me; it lets me inhabit another person’s skin. Of course, movies tell stories too; but as a viewer you’re a passive recipient of the experience; your own imagination has no hand in creating it.

Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction Historical Fiction

Lisa See

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Self-Help

Self-Help

Charles Duhigg

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

In his breakthrough bestseller, The Power of Habit, New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg uses science to pull back the curtain on some of our most mystifying behaviors—and reveals how we can change them.

When you get down to it, it seems like a lot of the time we're pretty oblivious about why we do the things we do! Why do you think this is?

When a habit takes hold, something interesting happens within our brain: activity moves from the prefrontal cortex (where decision-making occurs) to the basal ganglia (one of the oldest parts of the brain, where automatic patterns are stored). In a sense, we stop thinking when we're in the grip of a habit—and so as a result, it often feels like we're acting without realizing what is going on.

Yet that doesn't mean that these behaviors are out of our control. In the last 15 years, scientists have learned an enormous amount about how habits work. Once you understand how to take a habit apart, how to fiddle with its gears, you learn how to design behavioral patterns and take control of these automatic habits.

You say there are certain "keystone habits" that, if changed, can change a person's life. How do you identify these habits?

Keystone habits influence how we work, eat, play, live, spend and communicate. They start a process that, over time, transforms everything. Identifying keystone habits, however, is tricky. Most keystone habits create daily victories—what are known within psychology as the “science of small wins.” So to identify the keystone habits in your life, look for those patterns that give you numerous, small senses of victory; places where momentum can start to build.

"No matter how old someone is, or how ingrained the behavior, it can be shifted once they start analyzing the cues and rewards."

You cite evidence that the brains of people who suffer from certain purportedly uncontrollable habits (e.g., gambling or alcoholism) differ from those who don't. Many people would likely say that our brains determine behavior, but to what extent do you think behavior can change the brain?

The brain is incredibly plastic—it is constantly changing as we expose ourselves to different stimuli and engage in different behaviors. One of the things that we've learned from laboratory experiments is that no habit is destiny. Every behavioral pattern can be changed. No matter how old someone is, or how ingrained the behavior, it can be shifted once they start analyzing the cues and rewards. And once we start behaving differently, our brains start to shift.

Your book explains how companies have used insight into the ways habits work to exploit target markets. Is awareness of things like Target's couponing strategies enough, or are there other techniques shoppers can use in order to make sure they're only buying what they need/want?

I don't know if awareness is sufficient protection, but it's a great place to start. One of the defenses that companies offer is that by studying habits, they can anticipate their customers' needs better. Indeed, when I was reporting on Target's use of habit studies to predict which customers were pregnant, my wife and I were expecting our second child. Lo and behold, we started receiving coupons for diapers and formula and a crib. And I was overjoyed: I really needed a crib! It was great to get a coupon that was so useful!

So, awareness is a great defense—but so is appreciating the usefulness of companies understanding our habits. From one perspective, it might be an invasion of privacy. From another, it’s helping me get the coupons I need at just the right time.

When you get down to it, it seems like a lot of…

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

Elizabeth Haynes

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

British author Elizabeth Haynes started a novel one November, little suspecting that her story of a young woman who falls in love with the wrong man would eventually become a big bestseller—and Amazon U.K.'s reader-selected Best Book of 2011. With a movie adaptation and the book's U.S. publication date on the horizon, Haynes took some time out to answer our questions about this chilling first novel.

Into the Darkest Corner began as a National Novel Writing Month project. What was it about NaNoWriMo that worked so well for you?
I wouldn’t have completed a novel (and so never have been published) without NaNoWriMo. It’s very difficult to find time to write while working, being a mum and a wife and a daughter, and so having one month a year when I could prioritise writing was a complete gift. More than anything, in November writing is such great fun that it’s surprisingly easy to get carried away with the story. I still find it very difficult to write at other times of the year, so the first draft of all my books is written in November and I will carry on doing this.

Your book deals with heavy topics such as domestic abuse and mental illness, particularly PTSD and OCD. How much research did you do into these topics, and to what extent do you think writing fiction requires thorough background research?
I think research is pretty essential. There’s nothing that ruins a story more than some glaring inaccuracy or improbability, and besides that I think if you are going to write about something that, for real people all over the world, is a condition they have to live with day to day, the least you can do as an author is paint a reasonable picture of what it is they go through. Whatever I read, I like to learn something, and my expectation as a reader even from fiction is that what’s presented is reliable. For Into the Darkest Corner, after I’d finished the first draft I spoke at some length to a close friend who is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist—she was able to explain what would happen when Cathy sought help with her condition, and she recommended some great books which really helped to get a feel for how people live with OCD. More importantly, she recognised that the way I’d written Cathy’s symptoms showed that it was likely she had elements of PTSD as well, which led to further research.

There are some graphic scenes of sexual violence in Into the Darkest Corner that are truly terrifying. Were you ever surprised or scared that you were able to take your characters to such dark places?
It was scary writing some of those scenes so I hope that feeling comes across for the readers, too. The more time I spent with the traumatised Catherine, the more I realised that I was building up to writing the scene detailing what actually happened to her, and that it was going to have to be bad. By the time I got there it had become very difficult to write, not only because having got to know these characters so well it’s hard to put them in that dark, terrible place, but also because I was aware in writing it that this sort of thing does happen to real people, every day. So yes, it was difficult but it had to be done, and I think if I’d turned away from that scene or glossed over it, I would have done a disservice to the people who have survived assaults like that, and worse.

Fear makes everything in life unnecessarily harder to deal with.

It’s fairly safe to say that Cathy, your heroine, has experienced one of the worst boyfriends and breakups that one could ever imagine. Care to share your own worst breakup story?
I’ve never experienced physical violence or aggression in a relationship, but I have had relationships that have been controlling. For a while in my late 20s I behaved pretty much as Catherine did before she met Lee. When I was writing Into the Darkest Corner I was very aware that the relationship she falls into is something that could have happened to me and I was very lucky to have come out of what I recognise now as a crazy and reckless time unscathed. I learned a lot from it; perhaps most of all that it’s important to make your intentions clear, and to consider the other person’s point of view. I had a relationship with a guy that I believed was a casual one, since I often didn’t see him for weeks or months at a time, and was based around whether I happened to see him when I was out with friends—so when I went into a serious relationship I didn’t really consider that he might not be happy with our association coming to an end. He called me out of the blue hoping to meet up and I told him I wasn’t free; the next few nights I kept getting calls from strangers and it turned out that my name and phone number had been posted on a singles website. I assume it was his revenge.

One of the scariest things about this book is that it paints a very convincing picture of just how easy it can be to get trapped in an abusive relationship; initially, Lee really does seem like the perfect boyfriend. In the work you’ve done as an intelligence analyst for the police, you’ve come across hundreds of cases involving domestic abuse, so are there any particular warning signs you think women should be on the look out for when embarking on a new relationship?
Controlling behaviour is easy to spot in someone else’s relationship, but very difficult to see in your own, because emotions get in the way. This is why I think close friends and family have such a responsibility to look out for you, and also why trying to isolate you from the people who care about you, controlling who you can see and when, is a big warning sign for a potentially abusive relationship. It’s portrayed by the abuser as a sign of their love for you, that they need you, that your friends don’t care about you in the same way—and once you are focused on that, you end up isolating yourself still further.

As hard as it is, I think one of the best defences against a relationship like this is the ability to remain objective about it—if this was happening to a friend, what advice would you give: put up with it, or get out? Being honest with yourself is so important—but so difficult to do when emotions are involved.

Quite understandably, Cathy has a slew of fears that plague her on a daily basis. One thing she winds up finding quite helpful is ranking them in order of most to least threatening. If you had to name your biggest fear, what would it be?
My biggest fear is probably the same one that most people have—something happening to my loved ones. Most of the time, though, I make a conscious effort not to be afraid. Fear makes everything in life unnecessarily harder to deal with. When I was pregnant with my son, I read a lot about how fear reduces your pain threshold and so I really tried not to be afraid of labour and childbirth. Admittedly I was lucky and everything went well, but I still went through nearly 24 hours of labour with no pain relief stronger than two Advil. He was 9lbs 3oz.

One of my favourite books is Susan Jeffers’ Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway which I first read in my early 20s. It taught me a lot about how any fear at all is at its most basic level a fear of loss of control, or of not being able to handle a situation. Once you recognise that and consider what, realistically, will happen, everything becomes much easier.

Prior to writing your own thriller, were you a big fan of the genre? Are there any authors that your particularly admire?
I’ve been a fan of the thriller genre since I first read Agatha Christie as a teenager. I love police procedurals although having worked in the police environment some of them are now difficult to read because they are quite unrealistic. An exception to this, however, is John Harvey—his books, as well as being brilliant, have a great note of authenticity. I am a big fan of Ruth Rendell, Nicci French and Mo Hayder, each for different reasons: Rendell is a genius at unpicking the most disturbing threads of the human psyche; French explores narrative structure in each book, making for an intriguing and fresh read every time; and Hayder is not afraid to tackle violence as it often is, dirty, grim, painful—even when this makes for an uncomfortable read.

How did you celebrate when you found out that Into the Darkest Corner had been named Amazon UK’s Best Book of 2011?
I found out almost by accident! I knew the results of the Rising Star of the Year were going to be announced and I was checking the page regularly. As this is based on the number of positive reviews, I was aware that Into the Darkest Corner was marginally in the lead, so it was wonderful but not a massive surprise when I saw the announcement that it had won. Then I noticed the phrase “click here to see why this is our book of the year” and I clicked the link to the Amazon Best Book of 2011 chart, showing Into the Darkest Corner as the number one. This was so completely unexpected that I genuinely thought it was a mistake. The next day at work I got someone to check the list on their smartphone to see if I’d misunderstood it somehow. Even when I knew it was real, I still had no idea what a big deal it was and how much it would change things for me and for the books—if I had, I think I would have celebrated a whole lot more than I did!

Each step of the publication process has been amazing for me—if you look on my Facebook page there are some pictures of me watching the first print run being bound into books at the printers, and it’s quite clear that I’m practically delirious with excitement. I don’t take anything for granted, because I still can’t quite believe all the things I’ve dreamed of my whole life are coming true.

There are plans to turn Into the Darkest Corner into a film. How involved are you going to be in bringing your novel to the screen? If you had your way, who would you love to see playing Cathy, Lee and Stuart?
I’ve been immensely lucky here, too: the director of the film version of Into the Darkest Corner is Tinge Krishnan, and she is also writing the script. We’ve had plenty of in-depth discussions about the plot and the characters and she has even met up with some of my police colleagues to get a proper “feel” for Lee and his environment. I believe the way Tinge has allowed me to be involved like this is quite unusual but it’s worked well for us—she completely understands what I was trying to bring across with the book. I recently got the chance to read an early draft of the script, and it just blew my mind. Tinge is such a genius. It felt to me like she had taken the characters I’d described in black and white, and coloured them in.

As to the cast . . . well, I had some clear ideas when I was writing the story, but these have changed completely since reading the script—and will no doubt change again when the casting gets underway!

Now that you’ve published one novel to such great acclaim are you writing full time or have you still kept your “day job” working for the police?
I’ve just started a two year career break, so although I’m still in touch with the organisation but I have a fantastic opportunity to write and see where it takes me.

It was a hard decision to make because it was a fantastic job, and I worked with a really great team of people. I’m still in touch with a lot of them and they’ve been very supportive of my writing, for which I am eternally grateful. I miss them all—but who knows? Maybe I will be back in a couple of years if there is still room for me!

RELATED CONTENT
Read our review of Into the Darkest Corner.

Debut Fiction, Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction Debut Fiction

Hanya Yanagihara

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

In her spellbinding debut novel, The People in the Trees, Hanya Yanagihara drew on her life as a well traveled woman and editor at Conde Nast Traveler to compose stunning, visual descriptions of place. In these fictional memoirs of a scientist who has fallen from grace, readers find themselves seduced by a remote jungle setting and all the mysteries it holds. BookPage spoke with Yanagihara about her experiences as a travel writer, the love of reading and the joy of exploration.

The story that you’ve woven is utterly captivating, but one of the things that truly makes The People in the Trees shine is the writing. How have you developed your craft? Are there any authors that you turn to for inspiration or that have been particularly influential for you in terms of shaping your own authorial voice?

Thank you for the kind words. I don’t know that I’ve done anything to consciously develop my voice, but some of my favorite living fiction writers are John Banville, Jonathan Coe, Hilary Mantel, Jennifer Egan, J.M. Coetzee, Anita Brookner, Margaret Atwood, Paul Theroux, Aatish Taseer, Mohsin Hamid, Rose Tremain, Peter Rock, Anne Tyler, Steven Millhauser, David Mitchell, Kazuo Ishiguro, Zoë Heller, Michael Cunningham . . . and, well, I know I’m forgetting lots of people.

Prior to writing The People in the Trees, you worked as a travel writer. If your next assignment saw you heading off to Ivu’ivu, what would be the three items you’d be sure to pack?

I actually still am an editor at Conde Nast Traveler (unasked-for tip to first-time novelists: For a variety of reasons, don’t quit your day job); I’m on the road about a fourth to a third of the year, but the rest of my time is spent in our offices in Times Square, assigning and editing pieces. But if I were going off to Ivu’ivu—hmm. I actually think the characters do a pretty good job of packing. So I’d bring a knife (to kill one of the turtles); a cooler (to bring back orchid cuttings); and a wider diversity of food than I allowed my characters.

"Travelers, like readers, are united by our sense of curiosity, as well as a willingness to have our most closely held notions—of a people, of a place, of human behavior—be dispelled, sometimes crushingly."

As someone who has primarily written nonfiction previously, what prompted you to shift your focus to literary fiction? Do you feel that your previous experience as a travel writer was a natural stepping-stone to writing novels?

I don’t really consider myself a nonfiction writer: I mean, I do it for work, but that’s a very specific type of writing—less essayistic and more practical, and more about the whats and wheres (as opposed to the hows and whys) of a given destination. I worked on this book for so long—I was in book publishing, not magazines at all, when I began it—that I can honestly say that the writing I do at work is something I was simply lucky enough to tumble into.

However, I can also say that working as a magazine editor has helped me enormously as a writer. When you’re publishing a magazine story, the editor has the final say. When you’re publishing a book, the author has the final say. Being a magazine editor has taught me to be more ruthless about my own writing—it’s made me more aware of repetition, for example, and the importance of pacing—but it’s also taught me when and how to not compromise, which is an underrated skill but one every writer must develop.

Given all that you’ve seen throughout the world, do you believe the old adage that “truth is stranger than fiction”?

It always is. In fact, there’s only one specific incident in the book that I took from my own life—and, of course, it was the one incident that my editor found unconvincing. But I kept it anyway.

After finishing your book, many readers will wonder whether places like Ivu’ivu truly exist. Based on your own rather extensive travels through Asia, what destinations would you offer up as real-world substitutes for those with a taste for untouched paradise?

Although much of Ivu’ivu’s history—from discovery through the ruins of Christian colonization—is borrowed from the history of Hawaii, I found its physical contours in Angra dos Reis, which is an archipelago off the coast of southern Brazil. When I went there for work—this was probably in 2008—I was still trying to decide how I wanted Ivu’ivu to look and feel. I knew I wanted it to be densely, lushly tropical, but Hawaii itself wasn’t quite florid enough for my imaginings to be an appropriate visual reference. But when I stepped onto my first island in Angra, I knew that this was Ivu’ivu: I had never before been to a square of land so intimidatingly green, so suffocatingly overgrown.

I stayed at a hotel on one of the islands, but the next day I took a speedboat and did some island-hopping, including to a number of rocks that’ve remained untouched by construction and are still as wild and untamed as they probably were a thousand years ago.

Would you say that travelers tend to be pretty voracious readers? If so, why do you think this might be?

Travelers, like readers, are united by our sense of curiosity, as well as a willingness to have our most closely held notions—of a people, of a place, of human behavior—be dispelled, sometimes crushingly.

There’s also something about the act of travel itself, its sense of suspension, that pairs beautifully with the sense of suspension that reading, especially reading fiction, encourages. One of the most exhilarating states of being is to find yourself in a strange place, surrounded by strange scenery, reading about places both familiar and not. Whenever I travel, I like to take a book that’s set in a location far different than the one I’ll be in, so that the foreignness of one experience plays against the foreignness of the other: it makes every sensation seem sharper and more vivid. I’ll always associate the Nigeria of Half of a Yellow Sun or the Mumbai of Maximum City with Tokyo, for example, which is where I read them.

When you travel, do you go paper or digital when it comes to your reading material?

Only paper. Last year, I took a 51-day trip through Asia for work and brought along 27 books: galleys, mostly, so I could discard them as I went (I like the idea of someone coming across a book I’ve left behind in a hotel room night table drawer and being drawn to it as they lie awake with jetlag). I always figure a book per every two days, plus a book for every 15-hour-plus long-haul flight.

What are you working on next?

Last month I finished a novel about male friendship that spans 30 years. Unlike The People in the Trees, which took almost 16 years [to write], this one took 18 months; but it was a book I’d had plotted in my head—down to the last lines—for years. And that period between selling your first book and its actual publication is, I learned, a wonderful, singular year and a half or so in which to write: you have all the validation you need, and none of the disappointments.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The People in the Trees.

Debut Fiction, Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction Debut Fiction

Mary Miller

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

The Last Days of California centers on a family preparing for the end of world. If you knew you had one week left on earth, how (and where) would you spend it?
I would need more details. Am I sick? Is a meteor about to crash into the earth, i.e. are there a bunch of really great parties going on? I wouldn’t want to spend any of that precious time hungover, though. I’d stay close to home, maybe take a quick trip down to New Orleans. I’d eat whatever I wanted, see the people I love most in the world and tell them how much I love them. Things I would not do: worry, read, watch TV, remain a vegetarian. If the world’s going to end, I’d definitely want a cheeseburger.

This is your first novel, but you have previously written and published short stories, including the collection Big World. What made you make the leap to longer fiction and did you find that the transition presented you with new challenges as a writer?
I’ve tried to write novels in the past, but The Last Days of California is the only one I’ve completed. This book surprised me. I drafted it quickly, over the course of one summer, and it was fun and fairly easy to write, as I was interested in the characters and what would happen to them. I didn’t know if they’d make it to California, or if the rapture would occur, so I wrote my way toward these things.

"If the world’s going to end, I’d definitely want a cheeseburger."

Because it’s a road-trip novel that takes place over the course of four days, the structure was inherently more manageable than the other novels I’ve attempted. When the story begins, the family has already fallen behind schedule, so there was an immediate tension. They have to keep moving! They must push on! And I felt that push, as well.

There are a lot of pop culture references in this novel that very concretely ground it in the present era and current moment—did you ever worry that by so explicitly dating your novel might also give it an expiration date?
I don’t think I could have written a road-trip story without using these references, and I have a feeling that we’ll have Targets, Taco Bells, and Burger Kings for a long time to come. Same with snack foods—I don't see the Snickers bar going anywhere. Of course, there are also a lot of TV, movie and pop cultural references that will date it. My goal was to try to fully capture a time and place—to ground the novel in the everydayness of these characters’ lives.

Is it possible for a work of art to be unambiguously of a time as well as timeless?
That’s an excellent question—I think so. I really appreciate specificity in fiction, whether the book is set in 1890, 1955 or 2013. I want to know what they’re reading, what they’re eating, what their home décor is like. I want to know everything because these details allow me to fully inhabit someone else’s world, and this makes for timeless literature.

Tolstoy famously wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” To what extent do you think this is true? Is there room in modern fiction to explore the domestic family life through a lens unmarred by dysfunction and melancholy?
All families, even the happy ones, are unhappy in certain ways. Whenever you have a bunch of people living together in a house, there are going to be problems, tensions. There’s just no way around this. As beautiful as Tolstoy’s sentence is, it’s a flawed idea. Every happy family is unhappy in its own way. And most unhappy families have many happy moments. Maybe I’m too cynical, but I believe there will always be some level of dysfunction and sadness within the family unit. As a writer, this is a good thing; domestic fiction would be very dull, otherwise.

Like Jess, you grew up and lived most of your life in the South, an area of the country with an incredibly rich and distinct literary tradition. In your opinion, does Southern fiction have its roots in a physical state (or group of states) or is it defined more by a state of mind? To what extent do you feel like living there has shaped your authorial voice?
I don’t think the physical place can be separated from the state of mind. I’ve spent the majority of my life in Mississippi, and there are still parts of it that remain virtually untouched by modern life. As a largely rural and sparsely populated state, we don’t get many visitors and almost no one moves here unless it’s for the military. I once dated a man who came to Jackson from California to run his family’s business. Everywhere we went, people asked where he was from. He couldn’t walk into a gas station without someone asking him this question. We’re also constantly reminded of our history here. As a teenager, my friends and I used to drink daiquiris while running the hills of Vicksburg’s National Military Park. My mother and father grew up in a place where blacks and whites couldn’t eat together at a lunch counter, couldn’t drink from the same water fountain at the zoo. There’s so much to remember here, things and people we can’t forget: James Meredith, Emmett Till, “Freedom Summer.”

Except for a year in Nashville and three-and-a-half in Austin, my life has been spent in Mississippi. The people I know and the culture I know are integral to who I am. It’s also hard for me to describe what this culture is like—how it’s different from other places. My father hunts and fishes; there’s always deer sausage in the freezer. My parents go to church every Sunday. There is meat in all of the vegetables (except the corn). We say y’all. Growing up, we sang “Dixie” in choir. As an undergraduate at Mississippi State, we rang cowbells at footballs games. It’s nearly impossible to get a direct flight anywhere. How many of these things are typical of the South and how many are simply a part of rural life?

It’s fair to say that about as much goes wrong as it does right during the course of the Metcalfs’ road trip—what are your top tips for guaranteed success on long haul car journeys?
Travel with people you like, preferably non-family members. Make sure your AAA membership is active. Stay in a decent hotel at least one night if you can afford it, and eat six-dollar mini-cans of Pringles. It’s also nice to have some audiobooks to distract you—nothing overly literary—think suspense, horror, crime.

Writing wise, what’s next for you: another novel, more short fiction or something else entirely?
I’m currently working on short fiction and essays. This past summer, I started another novel—a historical novel loosely based on the story of Typhoid Mary—and I liked the idea of it, but had no idea what I was doing. When the time came to make some major decisions, I balked. I was scared to mess it up, or that it wasn’t good enough, or I had forgotten what story I wanted to tell. I’m not sure. I’m definitely going to revisit it at some point; perhaps I just need to spend a few months researching communicable diseases and islands in order to become inspired again.

author photo by Doris Ulmer

Former BookPage intern Stephenie Harrison is currently writing from Asia. She blogs at 20 Years Hence.

RELATED CONTENT
Read our review of The Last Days of California.

Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction

Maggie Shipstead

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

California-born author Maggie Shipstead returns with a dazzling second novel, Astonish Me. The story of a ballerina that spans decades, it's as sharply observed as it is entertaining—and was our April 2014 Top Pick in Fiction. We asked Shipstead a few questions about the book.

Where did the inspiration for this book come from? Do you have a personal history with ballet?
I’m not a dancer, but I’ve been going to the ballet since I was five. My mom, who’s a lifelong ballet fan, took me about four times a year until I left for college, and now I go whenever I have the chance. Back in 2010, I wrote a short story about a disappointed ballet dancer and her academically gifted son and their conflicts with their next-door neighbors. It jumped through 20 years in short sections and didn’t really work. I liked writing about dance, though, and as I tinkered with revising the story, it seemed to want to expand. So I just kind of went with it, and once I came up with the defector character of Arslan Ruskov, the shape of a book started to become clear.

Given that Astonish Me focuses on the world of ballet, did you ever worry that your subject matter might get the book prematurely dismissed by readers?
You’d think I would have learned my lesson after writing a first novel set at a wedding. The short answer is yes, although the whole conversation about what is and is not chick lit is unappealingly thorny and fraught and difficult to engage in without trashing other writers. Inevitably, lots of people will assume Astonish Me is a fluffier book than it is. I had to work pretty hard to keep a woman in a bathing suit off the jacket of Seating Arrangements (a book that’s primarily about a 59-year-old man), and even so, there were newspaper reviews that started out “I thought this would be chick lit, but . . .” which was honestly really galling. It’s an old chorus, but I think male authors get the benefit of an assumption of seriousness that their female counterparts don’t.

"I think male authors get the benefit of an assumption of seriousness that their female counterparts don’t."

For me, writing a novel is such an epic grind that, in order not to be miserable, I have to write about what fascinates and moves me, even if that brings me to subjects and settings that aren’t immediately identifiable as weighty. And, of course, subject matter doesn’t determine the value of a piece of fiction. You can write about something as heavy as, say, the horrors of war without necessarily generating any worthwhile prose or thought. In the end, all I (or anyone else) can do is try to build a story and characters I find compelling and write as attentively and thoughtfully as possible and revise my face off and hope for the best.

There is a lot of discussion in the novel about how ballerinas are vessels for creativity—do you feel this is also true for authors? Are there any other parallels you would draw between dancers and writers?
I’m fascinated by the practices of artists of all kinds and by the relationships they have with their own talents and limitations. The idea in the Astonish Me of a dancer as a vessel has to do with how a choreographer will make a dance “on” a dancer or dancers and use the bodies of others to explore and realize a personal vision. Dancers, I think, have vastly different lives than writers. Their medium is the body and their work is dynamic and almost always collaborative, while writing is solitary and rooted in the mind and is, unless I’ve been going about things all wrong, best done while stationary. Dancers peak when they’re very young; writers have at least the possibility of continuing to work into old age. But I think there’s a common experience among writers and dancers (and probably most artists) of what it’s like to spend all your time trying to do something that’s extremely difficult, something that requires a massive amount of practice and dedication and might give you a rush of satisfaction one day and then leave you feeling utterly defeated the next. It’s a precarious way to live.

"Dancers, I think, have vastly different lives than writers. Their medium is the body and their work is dynamic and almost always collaborative, while writing is solitary and rooted in the mind and is, unless I’ve been going about things all wrong, best done while stationary."

What made you decide to tell this story in a linear, but recursive, way?
The early drafts were actually slightly weirder, structurally, than the final version. The narrative jumped forward and back in time according to an internal logic I thought made sense but that my editor gently informed me was confusing. So I eventually had to simplify somewhat by not skipping around so much, combining some sections, sticking with particular arcs longer. The book is written in present tense, but covers almost 30 years, from 1973 to 2002, and isn’t quite sequential. The earliest years fall in the middle of the book. From the beginning, I knew I wanted a structure that let me dip in and out of the story, creating questions and then answering them. The book is meant to have a strong sense of movement and, in some ways, to mimic the feel of a ballet, how small vignettes come together and build toward a dramatic, even breathless, ending.

It seems like a lot of younger authors today hold advanced degrees in creative writing. How did your own time at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop shape you as a writer, and what is the best lesson you learned there?
Before I went to Iowa I had no idea that I could be a writer. I’d taken a couple writing workshops in college but didn’t think fiction was at all a viable career. Then I graduated and was having a hard time coming up with any better ideas as far as viable careers, and I applied to Iowa as a shot in the dark. Being there—being exposed to those teachers and all the writers who come through and being part of a community of people who all care passionately about words—that’s what made me get serious. Learning how to write confidently, and how to fake it when necessary, was probably my most important takeaway. The endless debate about whether or not MFAs are worthwhile honestly baffles me. Of course not every writer needs or should want a graduate degree, and no program is perfect, but, for me, going to Iowa was a no-brainer. It meant time and money to try to become a better writer. What’s the downside?

Many of the characters in this novel are on a never-ending quest for perfection, a plight that seems to afflict many artists. As a writer, are you concerned with achieving perfection or is there some other goal that motivates you?
It’s funny—I was definitely one of those little kids whose elementary school teachers are always like, “Maggie, do you know what a perfectionist is?” I’m very competitive; I don’t like making mistakes. But, perhaps oddly, I’m also pretty accepting of the inherent imperfection of my writing. I’m concerned with writing the best book I can squeeze out of myself at any given time. If I held out for a perfect book, I’d never publish, and I’d be miserable. I do wish my books were better—nothing I write down will ever quite be what I want it to be—but when I’m done, I’m done. And then I move on. The prospect of starting something new is actually a big source of motivation for me. Maybe it’s that my impatience is stronger than my perfectionism.

"I’m concerned with writing the best book I can squeeze out of myself at any given time."

Readers who have read your first novel will likely remark that Astonish Me is very different. As an author, were you consciously trying to push yourself with this new novel? Is there anything that you feel like you did more successfully here than in your previous book?
I’ve published maybe 12 or 13 short stories, and I tend to write about wildly disparate things from one to the next. Like I have a Montana cowboy story and a story set on a guano-mining Pacific atoll in the 1910s and one about an actress who marries into a Hollywood cult and one about a couple honeymooning in Romania in the early 70s. So, to me, it seems natural to seek novelty in my novels. I’m also not starting from an autobiographical place and then branching out: the WASPy world of Seating Arrangements interested me but wasn’t any more my world than ballet is. I hope I always try to push myself. I think I would be bored if I didn’t. Because my two novels are so different, though, it’s difficult to compare them. Astonish Me is a more compressed book as far as length but ranges more broadly in terms of time and geography and variety of characters. It also has more momentum than Seating Arrangements, I think, and that momentum builds over the course of the book, which is hopefully a good thing.

Even readers who don’t have an interest in ballet will probably find themselves utterly engrossed by this book if they give it a chance—have you ever found yourself astonished by a book, initially assuming it wouldn’t appeal only to find yourself incapable of putting it down?
That happened to me all the time as a child. I would read more or less at random. I’d find myself up late with my flashlight under the covers reading something unlikely like, say, a novel about aerial combat in World War I. I was never put off by being a little confused. I think I was a very trusting reader, too. I had the idea that all books were good, and if I didn’t like one, it was my fault. These days my reading is more constrained by time and by the need to do research for what I’m writing or to read galleys or to keep up with books my friends publish. I’m also less game than I used to be because I’ve become critical. Still, sometimes I’ll get talked into reading something I’d been resisting (usually for no good reason) and love it. That happened with The Art of Fielding, actually. I hadn’t read it because, paradoxically, I’d heard too many good things and didn’t think it could measure up. Then someone gave me a copy when I was traveling alone, and it became my new best friend.

In Astonish Me, one of the characters posits that if you really connect with a story, it is possible for things to be true even if they never really happened. Would you say that this is the goal of fiction, to take universal truths and make them personal?
I don’t really know if there are universal truths, but I do think fiction can absolutely be true while also being entirely invented. When I read, I’m after that feeling of recognition, like, “Yes, that’s exactly how it is.” Which I might get just from an especially apt word or incisive sentence or which might come from a character who’s particularly alive or a plot that feels entirely unforced and organic to the characters. Fiction doesn’t have to mimic exactly how life is, but spectacular things happen when fiction captures how life seems. I also believe, as does the character you mentioned, that if a story is important to you and feels real to you and alters how you see the world in some small way, it’s immaterial that it didn’t really happen. We dwell in our imaginations more than we realize, I think. Unreality helps us process reality.

"We dwell in our imaginations more than we realize, I think. Unreality helps us process reality."

What is your favorite part of the writing process: starting a new project or finishing one?
Far and away finishing one. Starting can be exciting and full of high hopes, but the early stages are also fraught with anxiety, especially since I don’t outline. I start with a vaguely formed idea and cross my fingers that the rest will follow. I don’t get comfortable until I’m midway through a draft.

What are you working on next?
I have a handful of stories I’d like to finish, and I’ve started a third novel.

Photo of Maggie Shipstead by Michelle Legro

California-born author Maggie Shipstead returns to fiction with a dazzling second novel, Astonish Me. The story of a ballerina that spans decades, it's as sharply observed as it is entertaining—and was our April 2014 Top Pick in Fiction. We asked Shipstead a few questions about the book.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Francine Prose

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

Francine Prose has written more than 20 books, including the National Book Award finalist Blue Angel, so the term “breakout book” doesn’t really apply. But her new historical novel, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, is poised to become her biggest hit yet. Told from various perspectives, the novel pieces together the life of Lou Villars—auto racer, cross-dresser and eventual Nazi sympathizer—against the turbulent backdrop of Jazz Age Paris. We asked Prose a few questions about the new book. Read on to find out about her own double identity and why she writes for readers like herself.

One thing that makes this novel so compelling is the masterful way you blend fact with fiction—it’s not always clear exactly how much of the story is real and how much you have made up.
To be perfectly honest, by the time I got through writing the novel—five years—I was no longer precisely sure how much was “real” and how much I’d made up. Yes, history is a narrative, like fiction, but the one thing I wanted to avoid was what I mostly dislike about the sort of “historical fiction” that puts so much emphasis put on period details that it detracts from the characters—who, I hope, are central in this novel. I see the book as a contemporary novel that happens to be set in the past.

"I see the book as a contemporary novel that happens to be set in the past."

From the title alone, it’s made clear that sex and romance will play a large part in this story, but one of the really exciting things about this novel is its straightforward (and some might feel, quite modern) approach to sexuality and gender politics. Can you talk a about where your inspiration for the Chameleon Club and its little coterie of outcasts and lovers came from?
The inspiration came from a photo by the great Hungarian-French photographer, Brassai, and then a series of photos. Brassai took a lot of pictures at a club called Le Monocle in Paris. Most of its customers were cross-dressers, mostly women. Just lately, I was reading a biography of Jane Bowles, and I found out that during a trip to Paris she’d hung out at Le Monocle. That was very exciting to me: I hadn’t known.

Villain or not, Lou Villars is really the star—she’s complicated, confused, the antithesis of boring, and definitely an enigma. Perhaps most striking, in a book filled with so many voices, she’s also the one main character who doesn’t get to speak for herself. What was the motivation behind that decision?
Lou was by far the hardest character to write, and I tried writing her sections many different ways—first person, second person, in letters, etc., etc. And nothing quite worked. It wasn’t until I hit upon the device of the “biography” that I was able to do it, partly because I was able to pass my problems along: my problems with, and confusions about, such a deeply conflicted and complex character became the biographer’s problems. And her understanding of Lou helped me understand her.

As any book about World War II must, yours takes on the character of Hitler. What was it like to tackle such a prominent, infamous figure within the scope of fiction?
I can’t tell you how much fun it was to write a dinner party scene that included Hitler, and to capture something about the way people describe being in his presence. There’s a book called Hitler’s Table Talk—a transcription of his dinner table monologues—that was very helpful. Hannah Arendt created an enduring controversy when she wrote about the banality of evil, but Hitler was a living example: profoundly evil, shockingly banal.

"I can’t tell you how much fun it was to write a dinner party scene that included Hitler."

One particularly lovely passage is when Gabor, a photographer, talks about how he has cultivated his eye for detail by pounding the pavement and increasing his likelihood of observing the miraculous. Is there a writer’s corollary for those who attempt to capture the world through words rather than pictures?
Same process: pounding the pavement. You just keep looking at the world, overhearing, watching and trying to figure things out.

There’s something about the 1920s and '30s—and definitely about Paris—that people today find endlessly romantic, even with the knowledge of what will historically follow. Why do you think that is?
So much was happening then—in art, in music, in writing. Just to list the artists at work during that period in Paris is stunning. People were finally freeing themselves from the restraints of the 19th century and trying to lead lives that were creative, interesting, adventurous and rewarding.

If you could travel back in time to spend one decade in one city, when and where would you go and why?
Obviously, I’d like to have been in Paris in the 1920s and ‘30s—that’s partly why I had to write a novel in which I could imagine myself back there.

At one point in the novel, a character posits that each of us leads a double life. If this is indeed true, what two lives do you lead?
I’m a writer (being a novelist implies a certain amount of control) and a total slave to my beloved granddaughters.

One bookish tome you have written is entitled Reading Like a Writer. If we were to flip that title, what would you say it means to write like a reader?
Readers (I’m using myself as an example) want to read writing that’s original and persuasive and perhaps even beautiful, and to keep interested in what they’re reading. That’s the reader I write for: the one with the intense interest in prose style and the short attention span.

What resources did you draw upon to write this book? For readers who are interested in learning more about Paris leading up to and during World War II, are there any books you would recommend?
I read a great deal and then forgot almost all of it. There are many fascinating memoirs of the period such as John Glassco’s Memoirs of Montparnasse, as well as history books, especially about Paris between the wars and during the Occupation. Many heroes and heroines of French Resistance have written memoirs. I watched Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympiad for its footage of the Berlin Olympics, and Marcel Ophuls’ The Sorrow and the Pity for its marvelous portrayal of France during the war: the collaborationists and the resistance. Two of the most helpful books were And the Show Went On by Alan Riding, and Bad Faith by Carmen Callil.

What are you currently working on?
I’m beginning to think about a new novel—and also writing a brief biography of Peggy Guggenheim, who knew many of the historical figures in my novel; I’m obviously not ready to let go of that time.

RELATED IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of this book.

Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fiction

Deborah Harkness

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

For most mere mortals, a position as a full-time historian and tenured professor at the University of Southern California would be sufficiently demanding. But not for Deborah Harkness, who has also managed to squeeze “best-selling novelist” onto her list of already impressive credentials.

In an apt parallel to the alchemists she studies in her scholastic life, Harkness appears to have created literary gold from an unlikely mixture of ingredients. The All Souls Trilogy is an addictive blend of history, science, romance and fantasy that chronicles the complicated relationship between a witch named Diana Bishop and a vampire named Matthew de Clairmont. The two embark on a quest for Ashmole 782, an enchanted manuscript believed to contain the secrets of their species’ origins.

The first book in the series, A Discovery of Witches, was published in more than 30 languages; its sequel, Shadow of Night, was even more popular and debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

“I don’t know if you can even imagine what it’s like if you haven’t done it—to make stuff up and for people to take it into their hearts.”

For someone whose prior experience with the publishing world was limited to academic works, the success of the series has been astounding. “I don’t know if you can even imagine what it’s like if you haven’t done it—to make stuff up and for people to take it into their hearts,” Harkness tells BookPage from her home in Los Angeles. “When I write scholarship, people take it into their heads. With this [series], I had a woman in her 80s say to me, ‘I had better not die before I find out what happened to my friends!’ That was amazing for me.”

Happily, fans need wait no longer to discover the thrilling fate of their friends. With The Book of Life, Matthew and Diana return to the present day after the time-travel adventures of Shadow of Night for the last leg of their fraught journey to uncover the secrets of Ashmole 782.

For readers who have spent the past few years living in the All Souls universe, this end of the series is highly anticipated, but also heralds the end of an era. Harkness herself has mixed emotions about closing the book on Matthew and Diana after six years in their company.
“It’s a bit strange, actually. I really have been living with [these characters and books] for a while, and it is kind of strange to wake up in the morning and to not immediately start thinking about [them],” she reflects. “But at the same time, I’m really pleased that we managed to deliver three books in a fairly reasonable timeframe.”

Sticking to her three-book goal wasn’t simple, however. “As it turns out, a trilogy is not an easy thing to write!” Harkness says. “When you set out to write a series, you are able to keep pursuing new plotlines and new characters and just let it organically resolve. But when you set out to write a trilogy, you have to be fairly disciplined. There were moments when I got frustrated because I wanted to introduce a new character or develop a side plot, but couldn’t. I had to be really mindful about tying things up.”

Not that she hasn’t had the space to do so. The Book of Life is the shortest installment of the trilogy, but at 576 pages, it’s still no lightweight. At a time when attention spans are dwindling and even the most dedicated readers have countless demands upon them, it’s a bold move to offer up such a hearty book. Yet Harkness insists that the length of her novels is actually part of their allure.

“You can curl up inside the world. They are so lush, so rich, and they don’t spare details,” she explains.

“There’s nothing like knowing all day that after dinner you get to go back to bed with your big book.”

It’s safe to say that fans of the series agree, and the sparks that fly between Harkness’ prickly protagonists have proven to be particularly captivating. Despite their otherworldly allegiances, their relationship is “real in all of those emotional ways that aren’t really handled in mainstream fiction,” as Harkness puts it.

“I have always found the traditional ‘will they, won’t they?’ arc really boring,” she confides. “Obviously they’re going to get together. So why not just cut to the chase and then say, ‘OK, now what?’ That’s when it gets complicated.”

That question of “now what?” will surely plague fans after they’ve raced to the end of The Book of Life. When pushed as to whether this is truly the end for this universe, Harkness says, “Whatever else may happen with the world of the Bishops and the de Clairmonts, we’re certainly not going to be returning to Diana and Matthew falling in love and establishing a family. That story is now told and I’m happy that that’s the case.”

Disappointing news for some, certainly, but take heart: Harkness won’t be disappearing from bookstores. Although it’s too early for her to divulge the details, she assures us that she has ideas for at least five different projects. “People can count on seeing new titles come out from me. Maybe not in six months, but certainly soon. Right now I don’t have any plans other than to sleep!”

With a book tour on the horizon, sleep may have to wait. Lucky for Harkness, once The Book of Life hits bookstores, she’ll be in good company—more than a few readers will be pulling all-nighters to find out whether Diana and Matthew live happily ever after.

Canadian writer Stephenie Harrison blogs at 20 Years Hence.

This article was originally published in the July 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Fiction, Popular Fiction

Fiction Popular Fiction

Charlie Lovett

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

In his latest novel, First Impressions, Lovett again combines antiquarian intrigue and a literary mystery—and this time, Jane Austen herself is at the center. We asked Lovett a few questions about books, collecting and, of course, Jane.

Can you talk a little bit about where the idea for First Impressions came from? What made you choose Jane Austen and Pride & Prejudice as the “real world” literary connection for this novel?
One of the working titles for my first novel, The Bookman’s Tale, was The First Folio. As I worked on editing that book and began to think toward my next project, I thought—if The First Folio, then why not The Second . . . something. As a book collector, the obvious continuation of the phrase was “The Second Edition,” so I began to imagine a book that would be worthless in its first edition, but priceless in its second edition (it’s more likely to be the other way around). My father had taught English Literature for 40 years, with a specialty in Jane Austen and the 18th Century. When I added the “second edition” idea to what I knew about Austen and her creative process, the idea for First Impressions began to gel.

It must be an interesting challenge to take real people and weave fictional stories around them. How do you approach this task, and in the case of Jane Austen, was there any specific research you did (or didn’t!) do?
It’s important to remember as a novelist that I am treating a real person as a fictional character; I want to be respectful to the facts of Jane Austen’s life, while at the same time being true to the fictional story I am telling in which she is a character. To understand the basic facts of her life, I used as my primary source an early biography written by family members—Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters by William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh. But to write Jane as a character, I went straight to her novels. I wanted my Jane to be the sort of person I imagine could have written those books. I re-read the novels and came up with a character who is bright, witty, bold, loyal and quietly revolutionary.

For a Jane Austen fan, First Impressions has a rather incendiary central mystery. Did you ever worry that such a scandalous premise might alienate Austen fans? What would you say to urge them to give the book a chance?
To me the central question of the novel is not “Did Jane Austen plagiarize Pride and Prejudice?” but “How can Sophie Collingwood prove that Jane Austen didn’t plagiarize Pride and Prejudice?” Because Sophie believes so strongly in Jane, I think Austen fans will relate to her. And I hope that the portrayal of both Jane and Sophie will leave readers rooting for these two heroines, born 200 years apart.

There’s a good deal of talk in this novel about the importance of opening lines, with the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice being held up as one of the gold standards. As an author, what do you believe makes a great opener, and what’s one of the best ones (other than P&P) that you’ve ever read?
I think the best opening lines are both simple and intriguing. In that sense, the opening to The Hobbit is one of the best: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” You can’t get much simpler than that. But what the heck is a hobbit (the reader of 1937 would ask)? And why does it, or he, live in a hole in the ground? I like a line that is both completely straightforward yet totally mysterious at the same time.

Every Austen fan has to make this difficult choice at some point: Of all her novels, which is your favorite and why?
I love all the novels for different reasons, but if I had to pick one, it would probably be Sense and Sensibility. Why? Well, Pride and Prejudice is too obvious a choice. And I love the relationship between Eleanor and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility. I like to think it is something like the relationship Jane had with her sister, Cassandra. I love the twist at the end when the reader discovers something about the identity of Mr. Ferrars. It’s a great bit of plotting that I didn’t see coming the first time I read the novel.

Finally, there is the fact that I am so fond of Austen’s sense of humor, and that is so wonderfully evident in the first conversation between Fanny and Mr. John Dashwood.

One of your book-loving characters in First Impressions says, “A good book is like a good friend. It will stay with you for the rest of your life.” What’s one book that has been a constant companion over the course of your lifetime?
There have been many. I used to listen to a recording of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a child, and I now have a collection of hundreds of editions and many other works by Lewis Carroll, about whom I have written several books. So, I suppose that is the most obvious answer. But there are books that I read at important times in my life that I like going back to again and again: The Hobbit, which I used to read every summer as a teenager (along with Huck Finn); The World According to Garp, which I read the first time while backpacking through Europe. I can remember our school librarian reading us From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a book I loved reading to my children and will soon be reading to nieces and nephews.

Back in the 1980s and1990s, you owned your own antiquarian bookstore and you’re still an avid book collector. In First Impressions, your heroine Sophie is on the hunt for the first draft of Pride and Prejudice; in real life, what is your most exciting literary find?
I was called out to do the appraisal for an estate one time. The house was little more than a shack in the woods and I was thinking I had wasted my time, but inside were about 6000 books—mostly 20th-century and mostly in excellent condition. I ended up buying most of the library, which included first editions of books like The Catcher in the Rye, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Road, and many other highlights of American literature. The owner had not been a book collector per se. He simply bought books when they came out and took good care of them. We didn’t sell paperbacks in our shop, and I was about to toss a pair of paperbacks into our front porch bargain bin when I realized they were the Paris-published first edition of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I sold the book the next day for a lot more than the 25¢ bargain price.

As a former bookseller, how do you feel about the increased digitalization of books and literature? In your opinion, what are the advantages of physical books over eBooks?
I think eBooks are great at storing text, but there is a lot more to a physical book than just a text container. The Bookman’s Tale begins when Peter Byerly finds an old watercolor pressed between the pages of a book—something that couldn’t happen with an eReader. Some of our earliest experiences with books (pop-ups, board books, etc.) are multi-sensory and go well beyond interacting with the text alone. To me a perfect reading experience is a three-way interaction of reader, text, and physical book. I do use an eReader when I am travelling and I think they can be great in many situations, but given the choice I still prefer a physical book. And it may seem counterintuitive, but a printed book will probably last a lot longer. A well-made hardcover book that I take good care of can be read by my great-great-great grandchildren more than a century from now with ease. The same probably won’t be true of my eBooks, which are really just licenses to read the text in electronic format and are unlikely to transfer through multiple generations

You own property in England and have traveled extensively around the U.K. Have you visited any places during your travels that have any interesting literary connections?
Absolutely. In the late 1990s I wrote a book called Lewis Carroll’s England about the places around England associated with Carroll and his life. We visited places all over England for that book. In preparing to write First Impressions, I visited Steventon, where Jane Austen was born and spent the first 25 years of her life. Even though we were only there for an hour or less, it was extremely helpful to me. I like to feel a strong sense of place when I am writing, and since most of my Jane Austen chapters are set in or near Steventon, it helped to soak up the atmosphere. We also had a lovely tour recently of a village that I have run through on many occasions, as it is only about three miles from our cottage.

Adlestrop was the home of Jane Austen’s maternal cousins, and she visited there on three occasions. We had a nice tromp round the village with Victoria Huxley (grand-niece of Aldous Huxley) who wrote a book about Jane Austen and Adlestrop. I am always on the lookout for literary connections as we travel around Britain. Last year I happened into the church in Norwich where Robert Greene (a minor Elizabethan writer and character in my novel The Bookman’s Tale) was baptized. We had no idea there was any literary connection until we started reading plaques.

You’ve now tackled both Jane Austen & William Shakespeare in fiction—are there other authors you would like to feature in future novels?
The novel I’m writing at the moment is in the early stages, so I won’t say much about it except to say that I think it will appeal to fans of mysteries about old books. I’m often asked if I will write a novel about Lewis Carroll and I think probably not. I have so many fictional versions of him on my shelves that I can’t see my way to adding another. But there are many other authors that intrigue me, especially the greats of English literature like Dickens and the Brontës. I have a Christmas book coming out next year that, while not strictly about Dickens, is a sequel to A Christmas Carol in the style of Dickens. There are lots of ways to incorporate great writers into stories. Austen is a major character in First Impressions, Shakespeare (though he makes a brief appearance in person) is present more through his literary reputation in The Bookman’s Tale, and Dickens is the authorial voice of The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of First Impressions.

A version of this article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

North Carolina author Charlie Lovett has always had a passion for books and writers—his father was an English professor, and Lovett is an expert on the Victorian writer Lewis Carroll and a former antiquarian bookseller. His 2013 novel The Bookman’s Tale combined these interests to create a compelling story about a bookseller who uncovers a mystery in a used bookstore. In his latest novel, First Impressions, Lovett again combines antiquarian intrigue and a literary mystery—and this time, Jane Austen herself is at the center. We asked Lovett a few questions about books, collecting and, of course, Jane.

Debut Fiction, Fiction

Fiction Debut Fiction

Krassi Zourkova

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

Lawyer-turned-author Krassi Zourkova mines the traditions of her Bulgarian childhood in a magical debut, Wildalone. When Thea leaves Bulgaria to study at Princeton, she becomes entwined with two sexy brothers as she works to uncover a long-hidden familiy secret. We asked Zourkova a few questions about love triangles, the literature that inspires her and the appeal of the alpha male.

Like your heroine, Thea, you are Bulgarian born, Princeton educated, and something of a musician—are there any other similarities between the two of you? What’s one way in which the two of you are absolutely not alike?
I hope we are similar, as she is quite the girl! Joking aside, there is a softness and innocence to Thea that I have tried to preserve in myself, no matter how life unfolds. It gets tricky at times, both for me and for her, as these qualities are often misperceived as weakness or naïveté, when in fact they are anything but. True strength doesn’t beg to be loudly manifested.

The main difference between us is that I didn’t grow up in a family damaged by prior loss of a child. My parents were quite strict, and this certainly kept me in check. But they also gave me freedom to make my own choices without the burden of guilt. It was wonderfully liberating.

Wildalone is an enchanting mix and fascinating intersection of both Bulgarian and Greek mythology—can you tell us a little bit about your personal history with these kind of stories? What made you decide to incorporate these specific myths into your first novel?
I grew up in a tiny town in the Balkan mountains where, if you opened the window at night, you would hear crickets and frogs. It was magical. I think that’s when my fascination with Bulgarian folk tales began. The wildalones, in particular, are extraordinary creatures who are vicious by nature but are also susceptible to falling in love, like all of us. They have haunted my imagination for years. I even wrote a poem about them, back in 2001, which a friend of mine liked so much he’s kept it framed on his living room wall ever since. Was that a sign from the universe? Who knows. Maybe the book was asking to be written.

The Greek myths have been another fascination of mine since childhood, but I didn’t set out to write about them. It so happened that, as I delved deeper into the story and its mysticism, the parallels became apparent.

You actually studied law at Harvard and have worked as a lawyer for some time. When did you find the time and inspiration to write?
We hear a lot about the corporate culture on Wall Street and how, in just a few years, it sucks one’s soul out. This hasn’t been my experience, so let me give the world of finance a good name. I’ve had my share of grueling hours (who hasn’t?), but I have also been lucky to work with people whose souls are definitely preserved. My first boss was an extraordinary woman, a mentor in the truest sense of the word. When I signed up for a poetry writing workshop at the New York Public Library, she sat me down and said, “Krassi, when 5pm on Tuesday hits each week, I want you out of here. I’ll cover any fire drills myself. If poetry is what you love, no job should stand in the way.” She has since passed away, but continues to be my role model. The book is partially dedicated to her memory.

You’ve built a smoldering love triangle with Thea and her two suitors. As an author, what do you feel is the key to writing a successful love triangle?
To me, a love triangle is best when it carries no obvious mark of a happy ending. Desiring the impossible—there is a beautiful madness to it. Sartre wrote a smash-hit play about one such doomed triangle: A man falls for a lesbian who falls for another woman who, in turn, falls for the man. It is smoldering gone terribly wrong, to become—quite literally—an infernal flame (the play depicts Sartre’s vision of hell). Not surprisingly, the title is No Exit. And this, I think, is the key: to give the trio no way out.

Love rivalry charges a story with tension early on, but if this is all you have, eventually the reader will yawn. So, I thought, why not give the rivals a reason to be fiercely loyal to each other? Make them best friends. Or even better—brothers. That’s when the real tension kicks in. The most fascinating struggles in literature aren’t between a character and his opponent, but between a character and himself.

If you were in Thea’s shoes, would you choose Jake or Rhys (and why)?
Jake, for sure. He can match Rhys in every respect, but he also has humility. To me, this is one of the sexiest things a man can be. And the lack of it is a nonstarter.

There has been a real resurgence of the “alpha male” in popular fiction and Wildalone’s Rhys joins that list. What do you believe is the allure of such a dominant (and dominating) love interest?
You mean, what is the allure of a man who takes on the world, loves like a hurricane, and has depth to boot?! Unfortunately, being an “alpha male” is often equated with arrogance, but that misses the point. An arrogant man can be (and often is) a coward. A true alpha man is fearless. He is a creature of impetus and intent. He has vision. While all the “beta” boys cower in a corner, he compels momentum, forcing the universe to accelerate. So it’s no surprise that, in response, something in a woman’s DNA tingles.

"A true alpha man is fearless. He is a creature of impetus and intent. . . . it’s no surprise that, in response, something in a woman’s DNA tingles."

Can readers and writers still be good feminists while enjoying these types of relationships in their fiction?
Absolutely. And not only in fiction. Dominance and submission are a rite of heightened intimacy; a consensual role play which, at its best, has the complexity and nuance of an art form. For a woman who is independent and confident, surrendering control this way can be an incredible turn-on. Of course, this shouldn’t be confused with needing to be “saved” by a man—emotionally, financially, socially. Unless there is absolute free choice, dominance falls on the abuse spectrum. But barring that, if you want to explore those sides of yourself (and aren’t forced or coaxed into it), by all means surrender away!

How would you say growing up in Bulgaria—particularly during times of heavy Communist censorship—influenced your approach to storytelling, writing and books?
The censorship was much less heavy than people here were led to believe. No books were banned when I was growing up. One that I recall as being kept out of print was Gone with the Wind, and this had nothing to do with Communist propaganda per se, but with the novel’s supposedly favorable portrayal of slavery. Everything else was published—in smaller print runs for the foreign titles, making them a hot commodity sort of like the Super Bowl tickets here in the U.S.—and very widely read. You could be on a crowded bus, and two out of three people would be reading a book.

I was lucky to grow up in such an environment. The thing about a centralized economy is, there is no corporate pressure on the bottom line. No strategic advertising. No budget boosts to “brand” a product and inflate demand. Instead, there was a genuine obsession with merit. Everyone, writers included, had to stand his or her ground. For me personally, this translated into a compulsive disregard for formula. When a story works, it works.

Many authors report having a “soundtrack” to which they write their novels; given the huge role that music plays in this book, were there any songs or pieces of music that you found yourself listening to while you wrote?
Yes. I listened to a lot of music, and chose for the story those pieces that I thought would affect people most viscerally. I still have the entire soundtrack mapped out in my work files. I even had a fantasy that a multimedia eBook device would allow the reader to click and listen to each piece right after its description in the text. I have no idea whether technology has come that far. As a fallback, I wrote the story with specific references, so all the music can be found online. My personal nod goes to the French pianist Alexandre Tharaud, whose Chopin I am in awe of. His “Journal intime” on YouTube starts with a nocturne that is also the last thing Rhys plays in the book. Look at his hands, his face—he doesn’t just play the music, he lives it.

As a first-time novelist, did you encounter any unexpected challenges while writing?
Way too many to list. You read a good book, and it tricks you into believing that writing can be effortless. Someone obviously had talent, so the story just poured out, right? It doesn’t work that way. At least for me it didn’t. Rewarding as the process was, I also found it to be isolating, consuming, and so fraught with hoping against the odds, that I often had to re-examine my own sanity.

What shocked me most were the random acts of cruelty or kindness. I remember one agent’s rejection in particular, saying there was no way those first 50 pages could ever keep a reader’s interest. A personalized sting from a complete stranger, meant to damage and linger. It was hard to go back to writing after that. Then there were also people who were incredibly generous with their time and advice, and whose attention was kept—in the 50 pages and beyond. Which is what makes this universe of ours a beautiful place: There’s room under the sun for everyone.

"The most fascinating struggles in literature aren’t between a character and his opponent, but between a character and himself."

What is the best piece of advice you have received that has influenced you as an author?
That perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. The man who said it wrote one of the most unforgettable—and shortest—gems of literature, The Little Prince. So much wisdom and heart are packed into that book, it could easily have been 500 pages. But it’s tiny. And that’s part of the magic of it.

When we read, language often stands in the way. It demands effort, which ruins the intimacy. So, every word must earn its place. I didn’t want to write a 500-page book, and I deleted obsessively, to a point where I wouldn’t allow myself even the natural “he said/she said” in dialogue. This probably has to do with my background in poetry too, but to me the white space on the page is as important as the text. It belongs to the readers; they are the ones who get to fill it in. As a writer, I am still learning the art of not claiming that space. I think of Hemingway, who squeezed his own 500-page book into a six-word short story: “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.” Now try to top that!

Your book has been compared to everything from Twilight to Jane Eyre, and is a truly fascinating mash-up of genres. What books or writers have influenced you that you would urge them to check out?Ironically, perhaps, the biggest influence on me while writing this novel has been the theater. I say “ironically,” because there isn’t apparent connection of genres or themes. “What’s hard isn’t writing,” the saying goes, “but writing what you mean.” And, as a writer, I love to watch live theater and learn from it, from its unforgiving economy of language, time, and setting.

My top list? Beckett, who seduces us into dwelling for hours on a single word. Ibsen, who turns his frail, baby-doll heroines into the kind of women hurricanes are named after. Lorca’s poetic reveries of love and revenge. And, of course, Chekhov, in whose hands the human heart becomes a force of nature. So, if you aren’t a theater buff already, check out your local stages—these plays are classic staples, and the performances are often stunning. Or rent them on DVD. Or read them. The spell carries through, I promise!

In terms of fiction, I was influenced by the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez (and what to me remains the ultimate love story, Love in the Time of Cholera); the fairy tales and fantasies of Hermann Hesse; the unapologetic eroticism of Anaïs Nin and Marguerite Duras; the mysticism of Paulo Coelho. And Nabokov. Don’t get me started on Nabokov.

The story isn't neatly tied up by novel’s end, suggesting a sequel is in the works. Is that what you’re working on next and, if so, how long will we have to wait to read the next installment of Thea’s tale?
Hopefully, not very long! This book took five years, although most of that time was spent learning how not to write. As for the story itself, it came to me within a week, back in 2009, and it ran through my mind with surprising clarity like a film reel, big-bang ending and all. But it had a much longer plot arc, which scared me. I felt that, if given enough space, Thea’s tale could turn into a saga. So I made a deal with myself: Write the first part, and if people react well to it—do the rest. It was a stroke of luck to be able to work on this book and know where the characters were headed in the long run. And since nobody writes about witches without being a bit of one, I planted a few clues of what’s coming next. You know, for good luck.

Stephenie Harrison writes for BookPage from around the world. Follow her journey on her blog, 20 Years Hence.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of Wildalone.

Lawyer-turned-author Krassi Zourkova mines the traditions of her Bulgarian childhood in a magical debut, Wildalone. When Thea leaves Bulgaria to study at Princeton, her life becomes entwined with those of two sexy brothers as she works to uncover a long-hidden familiy secret. We asked Zourkova a few questions about love triangles, the literature that inspires her and the appeal of the alpha male.

Debut Fiction, Fiction

Fiction Debut Fiction

Leslie Parry

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

The carnival scene in Gilded Age New York City forms the colorful backdrop of Leslie Parry's remarkable first novel, Church of Marvels. Here, the Chicago-based writer opens up about the inspiration behind this high-wire act of historical fiction, reveals her dream sideshow act and shares her instant cure for writer's block.

Church of Marvels takes place in and around New York City at the end of the 19th century—what about this setting appealed to you as a writer?
The Gilded Age was a time of such extremes—unprecedented wealth and abject poverty, sumptuous mansions and teeming slums, booming industry and westward expansion and an unprecedented wave of immigration. And nowhere was that more visible than in New York City, hub of both robber barons and rag-ships. It’s a world in which a dizzying number of cultures and subcultures co-existed, often within the same square feet. I was curious about those people who had perhaps slipped away from history, who had disappeared among all that color and noise. What did they fight for; how did the live? Not only is the city in the late 19th century a spectacular sensory experience to imagine as a writer, but the stakes would also be very high for its denizens. I wanted to feel what it might be like to walk those streets with a sense of urgency and desire.

"I was curious about those people who had perhaps slipped away from history, who had disappeared among all that color and noise."

Prior to writing Church of Marvels, you focused largely on short stories. Did you approach writing a novel in the same way as you would a short story?
It’s interesting. I wrote the first pages of what would become this novel early on, before I’d ever really written—let alone published—a short story. And I grew quickly overwhelmed. I set the project aside (for years!), uncertain what it was or how to proceed. During that time I wrote only short fiction—a form I wasn’t completely comfortable with, but it afforded me the discipline that I needed and craved. It required a kind of hyper-focus, a distillation, a strong sense of scene. I was able to concentrate on specific tasks: characterization, mood, setting, the building of tension, etc. I think I built up my individual muscles during those years (in terms of confidence and discipline, if nothing else). Then I was ready to run.

Writing the novel was a little more freeing. It was gleefully sloppier. I went down all sorts of divergent pathways and colorful loop-de-loops. It was challenging to keep the tone consistent, the characters curious and active, and the momentum up (both on the page and in life). In the end I felt supremely exhausted—but vital, too.

One of the impressive things about Church of Marvels is how meticulously it is plotted and how cleverly the various storylines flow together. How much of the novel did you have planned out before you sat down to write it, and how did you approach the writing process?
I pretty much knew nothing about the book when I began to write it—except that these four people intrigued me, and I wanted to know who they were and how they lived. Gradually I developed a loose outline, but left enough room for discovery and improvisation. At one point I tried to write the novel in discrete blocks, character by character, but that was short-lived. I would lose the thread of the plot, or the overall tone and voice; I’d forget the rhythm. Writing sequentially had its challenges, but overall it worked far better for me—and when I got stuck with one character, I just ran off with another. Instant cure for writer’s block!

Did you do any specific research in preparation for writing this book? If so, what was the weirdest bit of information that you stumbled upon (and did you include it in the book)?
I did read a lot—mostly out of curiosity, just to get a sense of the world these characters lived in. While it’s very tempting to cram everything in—there is so much fascinating stuff—I tried to use only what was relevant to the world of the novel. And the great joy of historical fiction (in my mind, anyway), isn’t analysis or even accuracy, but imaginative interpretation. Some details I had to invent—either because I couldn’t unearth all the morsels of information I wanted, or because the imagined details were truer to the characters’ situations and inner lives.

The weirdest bit of information, which I didn’t use in the novel, was the concept of dentistry as a sideshow act. I read about it in a book on dime museums and medicine shows. People would gather to watch these very real, very bloody tooth extractions, replete with costumes and props (sometimes performed by actual dentists, sometimes not). One hustler, who went by the moniker of Painless Parker, became so successful that he started his own Dental Circus and entered the show on the back of an elephant.

Sylvan is particularly intriguing by virtue of the fact that in a novel populated largely by women, he is a man. What was your thought process involving this character, and was it a conscious choice on your part that the action of the novel revolves nearly exclusively around women?
That’s a good question. It wasn’t a conscious choice, although I’ve always been intrigued by women who don’t conform to the expectations of their era (not because they have a specific desire to outrage or rebel, but because their own lifestyle is normal to them—and true). Sylvan was the character who came to me first, actually, years ago. I had an image of a man finding a newborn in an outhouse. I wonder what that story would be? I remember thinking. Even though Sylvan is independent, self-sufficient and muscular—qualities we associate with masculinity—I don’t think of those as his greatest strengths. I was interested in the side that he was kind of frightened of showing: his compassion, his nurturing, his need for love, for family, a sense of belonging—as much as those impulses might scare him at times, as much as he might try to dismiss or conceal them. I think it’s his sensitivity that keeps him grounded, that humanizes him in a world that doesn’t always see him as worthy or capable of much. How do you hold on to that bit of vulnerability, I wondered, especially in a world that leaves you so hardened, where your own preservation is paramount?

"I’ve always been intrigued by women who don’t conform to the expectations of their era."

Sexuality plays an important role throughout this novel, and at times make what is a historical story feel very current and modern. Can you talk a bit about the gender politics of Church of Marvels and what you hope readers will take away from it?
Sexuality and gender were obviously discussed and understood differently in 1895 (as were things we take for granted now: psychology, biology, codes of masculinity and femininity, sexual drive and desire). But that doesn’t mean homosexual or “androgyne” subcultures didn’t exist, or (in certain circles) even thrive. It may be easy to forget—especially in an era that favors speed, access and instant phenomena (the flipside of which is instant amnesia)—that there’s a long, vibrant history to what seems like a modern issue. And I hope that gives some people comfort, and others perspective. Language may change, circumstances may change, politics and social spheres may change—but the heart remains familiar and constant.

It may be impolitic to pick favorites, but if forced to choose, which of the characters in this novel do you relate to the most? Which character was the most challenging for you to “crack”?
All the characters have traits I relate to: Sylvan’s solitary nature and occasional prickliness, Odile’s stubbornness and loyalty, Alphie’s romantic sensibility. Initially Alphie was the most challenging character, because she’s clever in many ways, but also naïve. She doesn’t think of herself as savvy or particularly strong, and yet she’s forced to be cunning, often out of sheer desperation. That was a difficult—but rewarding—conflict to explore.

Two of the characters in this novel are performers in a sideshow and perform incredible feats. If you could have your own act in a sideshow, what would it be and why?
Great question! I would be a snake-charmer. The L.A. Zoo had a two-headed snake when I was a kid. I was absolutely terrified of it—and also transfixed.

There are some really incredible twists and surprises throughout this novel—what’s one novel that you recommend to readers who like a mystery that keeps them on their toes?
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.

Now that you have your first novel under you belt, what are you working on next?
I have a few projects underway—another novel, a play. I’m curious to see what takes shape. Otherwise I’ll have to go join the circus.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of Church of Marvels.

The carnival scene in Gilded Age New York City forms the colorful backdrop of Leslie Parry's remarkable first novel, Church of Marvels. Here, she opens up about the inspiration behind this high-wire act of historical fiction, reveals her dream sideshow act and shares her fail-proof cure for writer's block.

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