Spotlight on A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

I’m about to begin reading what many consider to be THE book of the month.  Some even say this is THE NOVEL of the year.  I don’t know about that yet, but we’ll see.

About the Book:

A resilient doctor risks everything to save the life of a hunted child, in this majestic debut about love, loss, and the unexpected ties that bind us together.
 
   In his brilliant, haunting novel, Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner Anthony Marra transports us to a snow-covered village in Chechnya, where eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night, accusing him of aiding Chechen rebels. Across the road their lifelong neighbor and family friend Akhmed has also been watching, fearing the worst when the soldiers set fire to Havaa’s house. But when he finds her hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.
   For the talented, tough-minded Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. And she has a deeply personal reason for caution: harboring these refugees could easily jeopardize the return of her missing sister. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weave together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.

About the Author:

 

Anthony Marra grew up in Washington, DC, and has lived and studied in Russia. His story “Chechnya” won First Place in Narrative’s Spring 2009 Story Contest and received both a Pushcart Prize and the Narrative Prize in 2010. His work has appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012, and in 2013 Marra received the prestigious Whiting Writers’ Award. His debut novel is entitled A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Random House, 2013). Marra is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

There is no doubt that the war-torn country of Chechnya has been in the news of late and I think that might mean even more readers for Marra.  Readers are comparing A Constellation of Vital Phenomena to two of my favorite novels: Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Tea Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife.  I am excited about Marra’s debut.

Book Review: Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt

Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt (Algonquin Books; 384 pages; $14.95).

            Fear of communism and nuclear war permeated the psyches of millions of Americans in the 1950s.  Public and private concerns were heightened by Senator Joseph McCarthy when he proclaimed that hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the United States government.  Many writers and entertainers were accused of sympathizing with Communists and thus were blacklisted.  His accusations were later disproved, but that did not stop his fervor from spreading.

In her tenth and best novel, Is This Tomorrow, expert storyteller Caroline Leavitt capitalizes on these anxieties.  “You can’t trust these Communists,” one of Leavitt’s minor characters maintains.  “They couldn’t tell the truth if they wanted to….You kids think it’s funny, but any second a missile could come down on us,” he insists.  “And we wouldn’t even see it or be prepared.  One minute we’re here talking in this nice neighborhood, and two seconds later, boom, we’re ash.”  In his eyes, the Russians “hide explosives” and could be anywhere, even in his own neighborhood, “and we wouldn’t even know it.”

The era in which Leavitt sets her story is perfect for her setting.  Father Knows Best gently reminds American kids who is boss in the household.  Echoes of “just wait until your father gets home” are heard all across the United States as the mother keeps house and raises the children and the father brings home the bacon.  Doors are left unlocked.  Sunday is the Lord’s day.  The post-war economy is booming, and so is the birthrate.  Everything seems idyllic, but appearances often deceive, as we all know.

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is at its frostiest with no signs of thaw.  Nuclear annihilation is a real and daily threat as school kids are taught to duck and cover and worried fathers build bomb shelters.  New phrases such as Red Scare and Yellow Menace become part of the everyday lexicon.  Americans view those who are different, who do not conform, who look different, who sound different, and who worship differently with contempt.  Anyone deemed not like everyone else was considered deviant.

Life seems peachy for Americans, but ugliness and fear lurk just under the surface.  This juxtaposition is at the heart of Leavitt’s taut, atmospheric, and humane tale.  Blending a coming-of-age saga with history and mystery, Leavitt creates a tense and suspenseful atmosphere when a neighborhood boy goes missing.

Is This Tomorrow is told from three different and varied perspectives: Ava, divorcee, working mother, and the head of the only Jewish family on the block; Lewis, her son; and Rose, her son’s best friend and sister to Jimmy, the youth who vanishes.  Although Jimmy is not a narrator, his disappearance looms over the novel; his presence and his absence are powerfully palpable.

Because Ava is different from the other neighborhood parents, she is suspect.  Ava locks her doors when all the other doors are unlocked; she works when the rest of the mothers do not have jobs outside the home.  She does not dress like the other mothers and she has had a string of boyfriends. The neighbors see her as a floozy.  These things do not necessarily damn her, though.  Other parents believe she may have had an inappropriate relationship with her son’s best friend.  Ava denies it but admits she knew Jimmy had a crush on her.  He was at Ava’s the day he went missing.

Jimmy’s disappearance profoundly changes the lives of all of Leavitt’s main characters.  Jimmy’s departure leaves Ava, Lewis, and Rose stuck and unable to go forward.  The calendar turns and they grow older, but they are still stuck in the moment Jimmy faded away forever.  They have too many loose ends in their lives, and the burning desire to know what happened drives them.

Caroline Leavitt

Rose, Jimmy’s sister, becomes a teacher but never forgets her family tragedy as she desperately pleads with the principal to put a fence around the playground so school kids will not wander off.  Lewis withdraws from his mother and searches for his father, who once wanted custody of Lewis but has since vanished himself.  Ava feels alone and bakes pies that she sells to a local restaurant but has never forgotten Jimmy and the day he seemed to evaporate into thin air.

Leavitt hooks you in the first chapter when young Jimmy goes missing and does not let you go until the very last page.  I was riveted.  Leavitt provides readers with timely and weighty issues such as missing children, difference, and paranoia.

With expert pacing, the author takes her time revealing secrets.  This master storyteller is meticulous and wise as she teases out every detail but still keeps you guessing.  Is This Tomorrow is atmospheric and taut and has everything you could ever want in a book: compelling, fully realized characters; an intense, dramatic, and compelling plot; and the perfect, evocative setting.  Everything comes together superbly in Leavitt’s skilled hands.

The title is taken from a propaganda comic book that came out in 1947 and warned of the dangers of a Communist takeover.  An estimated four million Americans purchased the educational comic, no doubt contributing to the fear and paranoia of the 1950s.  In Is This Tomorrow, Leavitt brings this era to life and illustrates how fear of the unknown and fear of difference transformed a country, a community, and a people.  Although her book is set primarily in a time very different from our own age, Is This Tomorrow is a cautionary tale for us in the Twenty-First Century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline (William Morrow Paperbacks; 304 pages; $14.99).

            For thousands of years, the Wabanaki Indians traveled extensively by canoe, portaging from one body of water to another.  They had to decide which possessions were necessary and which were not needed on their journeys.  The Wabanakis “learned to travel light” and to make logical decisions about “what to keep and what to discard.”  The canoes were essential; little else, though, was deemed indispensable.

Molly Ayer, a Penobscot youth and one of the main characters in Christina Baker Kline’s emotional page turner Orphan Train, knows the concept of portaging all too well.  At 17, she is months away from aging out of the foster care system.  In nine years, Molly “has been in over a dozen foster homes, some for as little as a week.”

As Kline illustrates, life has been difficult for Molly, who has “been spanked with a spatula, slapped across the face, made to sleep on an unheated sun porch in the winter, and taught to roll a joint by a foster father.”  If that is not enough to make your heart go out to Molly, consider this: she got her first tattoo at 16 from a 23-year-old man in exchange for her virginity.

People make assumptions about Molly.  She has streaks in her hair, a number of piercings, and tattoos.  She comes across as tough-as-nails and extremely apathetic.  But it’s all for show.  Molly is hurting crying out for help.

Molly gets in big trouble when she steals a beat-up and old copy of Jane Eyre from the library and must do 50 hours of community service.  Because it’s “better than juvie,” she agrees to help an “old lady” clean out her attic.

As Molly sees it, Vivian Daly, a wealthy widow, has led a full and fulfilling life with everything she could ever want.  Interestingly, Molly is guilty of making the same kind of assumptions about Vivian as people make about her.

In reality, Vivian has a tragic past: she was an Irish immigrant and orphan sent by train from New York to Minnesota to be adopted by Midwestern families.  In some cases, the families fed, clothed, and educated the children until they reached 18 and mutual love and affection developed.  This was not Vivian’s experience.  Going from house to house, from family to family, Vivian endures hardship, hatred, and abuse.  Everything was stripped from her, even her name.

For Vivian, it was a “pitiful kind of childhood, to know that no one loves you or is taking care of you, to always be on the outside looking in.”  It really was not a childhood at all, as she knew “too much” and had seen “people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish.”  This knowledge made Vivian cautious.  Vivian learned “to pretend, to smile and nod, [and] to display [an] empathy” that she did not feel.  Broken inside, she was little more than an indentured servant, hoping and praying for the day her time would be up and she would be free.

Molly learns that she and Vivian are more alike than she knows when her American History teacher gives his students an assignment: interview someone about his or her own portage, the moments in life “when they’ve had to take a journey, literal or metaphorical.”  He urges them to create with an oral history of those they are to interview and ask: “What did you choose to bring with you to the next place?  What did you leave behind?  What insights did you gain about what’s important?”  Molly seeks out Vivian, who tells the young girl about the orphan train, a secret she has kept hidden for years.

Kline makes clear that both Molly and Vivian have undertaken a number of portages throughout their lives.  Their journeys have shaped their personalities and made them skeptical, guarded, and afraid.  Although Vivian seems done with portages, Molly is not and must undergo another in the novel: “She’s a turtle carrying its shell.  Jane Eyre, staggering across the heath.  A Penobscot under the weight of a canoe.”

In Orphan Train, Kline employs a dual narrative format as she takes us from contemporary Maine to a Minnesota in the midst of depression and war.  The author gives us Molly’s perspective in the third person but shifts points of view for Vivian to first person.  This marked change underscores the importance of Vivian’s narrative and gives her story more bearing.

Orphan Train is a historical gem, shedding much-needed light on an almost-forgotten period in American history when East Coast orphans were packed up and put on trains headed to the Midwest from 1854 to 1929.  Kline not only entertains us and captivates us with such a well-told story but she also informs and educates us, and I applaud her for that.

Solemnity and heartbreak intersperse the pages of this novel, yet Kline also infuses Orphan Train with inspiration and hope.  While Molly and Vivian undertake both literal and physical portages, Kline forces us to ponder our own lives: what we take, what we leave behind, and those things that are of utmost importance.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline is the She Reads May Book Club Selection.  For giveaways, interviews, discussion, and more reviews, please visit She Reads.

Christina Baker Kline

 

 

Book Review: Dear Lucy by Julie Sarkissian

Dear Lucy by Julie Sarkissian (Simon & Schuster; 352 pages; $25).

           I have never felt fiercely protective of a character before, but the urge to shield Lucy, the main speaker in Julie Sarkissian’s quirky, unique, and weirdly beautiful debut, Dear Lucy, overtook me. And there’s a good reason why: Lucy is developmentally delayed and has issues with behavior and language yet she is filled with determination and love. Lucy is limited, yes, but she looks at the world with wonder and sees it as full of possibility. Lucy is extraordinary and she certainly becomes special to us as her eyes are open to the beauty around her.

“It is time to get the eggs. Time for my best thing,” Lucy says. “I get the eggs for our breakfast. They are alive. When you eat something that is alive you take the life for yourself. You can’t think of it as taking life from another thing, you think of it as giving life to yourself.” This sentiment comes from Lucy’s friend, Samantha. “Samantha knows” because “there is something growing inside of her too.” Samantha, a pregnant teenager, is also one of the narrators in Dear Lucy. She does not want her baby; instead, she plans on giving the child up for adoption.

Sarkissian sets Dear Lucy on an isolated and rather mysterious farm. The setting makes the story dark and desolate and allows a sense of menace to loom over the entire novel. Mister and Missus, owners of the farm, only add to the story’s doom-and-gloom environment. Missus functions as Sarkissian’s third and final narrator.

The author could have told her tale solely from Lucy’s perspective, but then we would not have so many different windows and perceptions of the story, making Dear Lucy richer and more satisfying. Sarkissian writes each narrator in Dear Lucy with vulnerability, though some characters are more defenseless than others. Weakness is sometimes overt, like with Lucy and Samantha; other times, helplessness can be hidden, as it is with Missus, who feels inadequate for not giving her husband a son.

Dear Lucy gives up its secrets slowly yet pleasingly, building mystery and suspense. Especially when Sarkissian reveals the reason why Lucy is on the farm. Lucy gets a thought into her head and cannot let it go. Because she is so single-minded, she can be willful and even prone to violence. Her impulses rule her, leading me to wonder if perhaps her hypothalamus is to blame for her behavior. Lucy’s mother could not handle her daughter any longer and put her in the care of Mister and Missus.

Lucy believes her stay on the farm is temporary and believes her Mum mum will return for her, as she promised. She must listen to Mister and Missus always so they will allow her to stay on the farm, where “Mum mum will know where to find” her. Lucy takes this literally and is loath to even get in a car or go on foot off the farm. She longs for her mother and yearns to be called “Dear Lucy” as Mum mum wraps Lucy in her arms protectively and lovingly.

The farm becomes a haven of sorts for Lucy as she waits for Mum mum. She develops an attachment to Samantha and to the chickens from whom she collects the eggs. Lucy is so happy when Samantha gives birth and decides to keep the son she delivers, but her world comes crashing down when Samantha’s baby is taken from her. Samantha begs Lucy for help.

Lucy then sets out on an adventure like no other, a journey that takes her farther away from the farm than she has ever been. She worries Mum mum will not be able to find her again, but Lucy presses on. She is not alone on her mission. Jennifer, a talking chicken, accompanies her and tells Lucy what to do. Jennifer is everything that Lucy is not: tough, smart, mature, and wise. For me, the chicken was a part of Lucy’s psyche that appeared right when she needed it the most.

Dear Lucy is told in three distinctive and gorgeous voices. Sarkissian’s imagination, originality, and amazing talent captivated me and would not let me go. Eerie and atmospheric, Dear Lucy reads like southern gothic, unsettling and intriguing and at the same time urging the reader and Lucy onward.

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Book Review: Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer

Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 336 pages; $24).

Fourteen year old Lorca listens intently to a conversation between her mother, Nancy, and her Aunt Lou.  “What is the best thing you’ve ever eaten?” her aunt asks.  “Masgouf,” Nancy answers, “from an Iraqi restaurant that’s closed now.”  Nancy proclaims masgouf, the national dish of Iraq, “heaven.”

In Jessica Soffer’s lush, flavorful debut, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots, food evokes memories of what is lost and of what can never be again. Like masgouf, for instance, or “carp, typically from the Euphrates or Tigris, pulled out of the water, grilled on the banks and prepared with lemon and tamarind and tomatoes.”  However, Islamic leaders placed a fatwah on the fish because of all the dead bodies in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.  As Soffer laments, “Baghdad is not what it once was. All the Jews are gone. Their experience of eating masgouf as they once did is very much over.”

In Soffer’s skilled hands, recipes and food become symbols in Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots.  Lorca, starved for her mother’s affection, calls her mother a “cold war” and an “enigma, fickle, unknowable, like a giant fish.”  Nancy is not like most mothers; instead, she only loves Lorca in “fits and spurts,” “warm in flickers and then very cold.”

Only one thing makes Nancy, a chef, happy, and that is food.  Lorca prepares a myriad of dishes in hopes of garnering her mother’s attention.  Nothing works.  When Lorca was 6, she burned her hands while making a birthday cake for her mother.  Lorca imagines “that if my mother had just taken out the ice pack, tucked it into a towel, and held me on her lap, rocking me, whispering in my hair, cooling my fingers, things would have been different.”  But Nancy did none of those things.

Lorca’s yearning for her mother is only lessened through acts of self-harm.  So she does them again and again and again.  Her urge to injure herself is “constant…like a band of moths stuck between the screen and the window” but in her “chest instead.”  Lorca welcomes the sweet agony of pain.  Caught in a dangerous downward spiral, Lorca has been suspended from school for self-cutting when Soffer opens the story.

The masgouf gives Lorca renewed hope.  If she can learn how to prepare masgouf, then perhaps the dish will bring her and her mother closer together.  “Bukra fil mish mish,” she hopes (“Tomorrow, apricots may bloom).  Her mother’s wistful recollection of the masgouf compels Lorca to seek out the husband and wife who once owned the Iraqi restaurant.

It is here that Soffer introduces her other main character, Victoria.  Like Lorca, Victoria is hungry for companionship.  She is a widowed Jew from Iraq, whose husband, Joseph, recently passed away.  Joseph’s death left a hole in Victoria’s heart; she grieves for him and also for the daughter they gave up for adoption many years ago.  Victoria agrees to teach Lorca, an almost-orphan, cooking lessons.  Before long, recipes and food bridge the gap between their different generations and different cultures.  Both characters strongly believe that they share a deeper connection.

Soffer tells her tale in the alternating voices of Lorca and Victoria, incredibly well-drawn and vivid narrators.  But Soffer knows the best dishes come from a mix of ingredients so she changes it up a bit by incorporating Joseph’s point of view.  Joseph’s voice provides a new and unexpected window into the story and into the characters.  Soffer further amazes by creating interesting minor characters and subplots that further enhance the novel.  One of the strengths of Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots is the way Soffer effectively puts us into the heads of her main characters.

Food is supposed to provide sustenance and can be a comfort.  Sometimes, though, the body craves things other than nutrients.  We all need love, attention, and companionship.  There is such longing within the pages of Soffer’s story—longing for affection, for the past, for a different present, and for a future than can never be again.  Like food, life can be sweet and sometimes life can be sour.  Sometimes you burn the meatloaf or the shakrlama and sometimes it comes out perfect.  Sometimes we have to make do with the ingredients at hand.

Writing is part of Soffer’s family history. Her grandfather was a scribe in Baghdad, her father was a sculptor and painter, and Soffer is a novelist.  Interestingly, “Soffer,” means “scribe” in Arabic.  Soffer is a born and gifted storyteller whose debut is good enough to eat.

Book Review: The Third Son by Julie Wu

The Third Son by Julie Wu (Algonquin Books; 320 pages; $24.95).

Rocky Balboa had an anthem, and so did Daniel LaRusso.  Saburo, the irresistible protagonist in Julie Wu’s dazzling first novel, The Third Son, does not have an anthem, nor does he have a championship title, trophy, or belt.  But Saburo is just as much an unlikely and humble hero as Rocky and the Karate Kid are.  With a strong will, a big heart, and an indefatigable spirit, Saburo fights to survive and thrive in the midst of a family that deems him unimportant and a country drowning in violence, tumult, and autocracy.

A rich and evocative epic, The Third Son centers on Saburo, a tender and good-hearted underdog who drives Wu’s commanding historical novel.  Wu introduces Saburo when he is eight years old, in 1943, weeks before the Japanese begin bombing Taiwan.  As Saburo recalls in his own distinctive voice, “We all understood Japanese.  Taiwan had been a Japanese colony since 1895.”  The official language of Taiwan is Japanese, and even his family’s last name, Togo, is Japanese.  “But in our heads and in our home,” Saburo explains, “we spoke and were Taiwanese, descendants of the Mainland Chinese….”

Saburo’s life, like Taiwan itself, is complex.  He is the third son, “different, somehow,” from his elder brothers Kazuo and Jiro.  Saburo does not have a mind for his studies or sports.  Instead, it is ” far more interesting” for Saburo, “despite the real and everpresent threat of being struck by” his teacher, “to study the sky outside.”  The third son of the Togo family loves “the sky, its boundless, lovely blue, the translucent ruffled pattern of clouds stretching across it.”

Because his face is forever turned toward the skies, he spots the Japanese planes on the horizon before the air raid sirens sound.  While fleeing Japanese bombers, Saburo meets a young girl, Yoshiko, and is instantly smitten.  After their initial encounter, she suddenly vanishes; her disappearance breaks his young, tender heart.

Wu creates a pattern with the loss of Yoshiko.  Nothing comes easily to Saburo; life, for him, is a struggle.  Throughout The Third Son, Saburo must fight.  He must fight for food, because the majority of food in his household goes to his brothers and not to him.  He must fight to live when sickness threatens to overcome him.  Saburo must even fight to learn and so cherishes reading The Earth, a book his cousin gives him.

Saburo is “fed as much” from his “growing knowledge of the stratosphere, the ionosphere, and the aurora borealis as from the berries and mushrooms and silvery fish” that he collects from the land around him.   “Reading the book” is a “balm” for Saburo, as he witnesses “all the changes in the world outside.”  But even that is taken from him.

As the third son, Saburo must also fight for an education.  His older brothers are given instruction, but not Saburo.  He learns English on his own and studies to be an electrician.  His world is shaken, though, when he sees Yoshiko, after years of trying to find her, in the company of his oldest brother.  If he wants her in his life, then Saburo must fight for love.

As the years pass, and Saburo wrangles for position in his family and in his country, he comes to see that his future is not in Taiwan.  “Saburo,” his cousin tells him, “you have only have one life.  Fight for it.”  This is all the impetus Saburo needs to try to find a place in America, yet he must also fight to study and work in the United States.  That could be the biggest challenge of all.

As Saburo battles his naysayers and fights for a better life, we cannot help but cheer on this beloved underdog.  He maintains a great deal of persistence and perseverance despite the obstacles Wu throws in his path.  Because we watch him grow to be a good and just man, we develop a strong bond with Saburo; he becomes important to us.  Wu forces us to connect emotionally with this character, and the link lasts well beyond finishing the story.

The Third Son is a rich debut featuring a character who I came to see as family.  Saburo is a very special narrator, one who resonates and one who will steal your heart.  Wu’s story is perfect for fans of Samuel Park, Jamie Ford, Janice Y.K. Lee, and Lisa See.  Saburo has so much to teach us about life and about living.

Debut novelist Julie Wu

Interview with Jessica Soffer, Author of Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

Jaime Boler: Thank you, Jessica, for letting me interview you.  I love Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots for its profound message, its well-drawn characters, its rich recipes, and, perhaps, most of all, for your phenomenal writing.  How did you come up with Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots?

Jessica Soffer: During graduate school, I wrote a story called “Pain.” It was the chronicling of a woman’s entire life of self-harm from childhood to womanhood. It was an unsuccessful piece in a lot of ways—most of all, I think, because it was so sad. And there was no break from that.

Lorca was the protagonist, though, and she was the upshot. I loved her. Love her. She’s so sad, and yet in Apricots, she finds a way out of that: through food, through friendship, through a kind of persistent optimism that she never got around to in the short story.

JB: Please describe Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots using ten words or less.

JS: A(1) debut(2) novel(3) you(4) simply(5) cannot (6) live(7) or(8) breathe(9) without(10).

Or.

Food(1), friendship(2), NYC(3), growing(4) up(5), growing(6) old(7), sadness(8) and(9) hope(10).

JB: “Soffer” means “scribe” in Arabic.  Your father was a sculptor and painter, your grandfather was a scribe, and you are a writer and storyteller.  It’s as if writing is in your DNA.  As a child, did you want to be a writer?

JS: I’ve always been obsessed with books and words and rhythm. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I started to consider a career in writing, what that might look like. And it was very much because of my parents that I wasn’t afraid, because they dedicated their lives to the pursuit of creativity—of living in it, for it, because of it—that I felt I could too. And I had some idea of how to begin.

JB: Food is a symbol in Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots, substituting for love, affection, and companionship.  What prompted you to use food in such a way?

JS: Food is certainly a symbol for all those things in Apricots. But as much as that, I’d say that food is a source of real sadness, reminding the characters of what once was, what can no longer be, what can never be. I’m deeply interested in the things that bring us—in equal measure—joy and sorrow. And the notion that it is often those very things that can be most useful. For Lorca and Victoria, the novel’s protagonists, food is a way to communicate happiness and loss. It’s a way to engage with the world: with emotions, memories, each other.

JB: There are a lot of mouth-watering dishes in Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots.  Do you like to cook? What is your favorite food?

JS: I love to cook and do often. I’d say that my favorite foods change seasonally: mushrooms in fall, bean soups in winter, greens in the spring, and watermelon in the summer. I don’t mind if it’s covered in sand and saltwater. In fact, I’d prefer it.

JB: What are the perils and pitfalls of incorporating food into a novel?  What are the rewards?

JS: I think that’s probably a question for the reader, and not me. I mean, maybe the self-harm and the food will turn people off. Maybe I’ve ruined French bistro food for anyone who has read the novel. Maybe some people like their food on a plate and not between the pages.

But I never thought about that while writing. You can’t, I don’t think. You write. You write. You write what you can write, what you feel you have to. Of course, everything is a choice and writing has little to do with fate. But I wrote the book I felt most compelled to write. I never thought about whether it was good or bad idea to write about food (and it would scare me to really consider those questions now)—it was, call me idiotic, simply what I wrote.

JB: I never sympathized with Lorca’s mother, Nancy, even when I discovered her history.  Is she a sympathetic character?

JS: I think that every character is a sympathetic character. And every person. Nancy shouldn’t have been a mother and her treatment of Lorca is unforgivable. But she is deeply unhappy, always has been, and cannot find her way out of it. That, for me, commands a whole lot of sympathy. Lorca will be OK. Nancy never will.

JB: What kind of research did you do for your book?

JS: On Iraqi Jews: I spoke with family members, read books, watched documentaries. On self-harmers: I went to cutters’ meetings, met with psychiatrists, psychologists, cutters too. At a certain point though, I had to put the research aside: let the good stuff sift in and let the rest vanish for a time. All the “facts” were pressing too hard on the work and it came through burdensome and clunky.

JB: You teach fiction at Connecticut College. Has teaching fiction made you a better author?

JS: I hope so. I guess that remains to be seen. But I have had to think about the fundamentals of writing again. All the stuff that I take for granted, that feels second nature, I’ve had to reanalyze and consider and articulate. Like, why it’s unfair to say, “And then she woke up.” Why and why not and what’s an appropriate alternative. Fiction feels fresh again. Like I’m seeing it with a new set of eyes. It’s wonderful. And my students are smart and eager and fantastic. Just fantastic.

JB: You point out in your novel that the Jewish life is over in Baghdad and “masgouf will never be prepared as it once was again.”  Can you explain?

JS: Masgouf was carp, typically from the Euphrates or Tigris, pulled out of the water, grilled on the banks and prepared with lemon and tamarind and tomatoes. Because of all the dead bodies in those rivers, there was a fatwah declared on those fish. And Baghdad is not what it once was. All the Jews are gone. Their experience of eating masgouf as they once did is very much over.

JB: Who are some of your favorite authors and what are some of your favorite books?

JS: Virginia Woolf, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabokov, Roberto Bolaño, Flannery O’Connor, James Salter.

JB: What do you like to do when you are not writing?

JS: Read, of course. Walk the streets of New York City, the beaches of Eastern Long Island. Cook. Yoga. Read.

JB: What was your publication process like?

JS: I’ve been very, very lucky. I’ve been blown away by my agent, editor, and publicist. I don’t think everyone gets a crew this dedicated and generous and lovely, really, and I’m hesitant to talk too much about it lest the magic dispels. But I worked hard and long with my agent, revised and revised. And then again with my editor. They were both tireless. The work needed it. I had to do big structural shifts but they could see past those, believed in the book despite its shortcomings, which is surprising to me now. They saw a better version of the book than me. And they led me to it.

JB: How different were earlier versions of Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots from the finished copy?

JS: It meandered much more. There was more Joseph. People kept calling it “literary,” and not in a good way. I think “obtuse” would have been a better word, though less a sensitive one. It required a stronger plot, more forward momentum, more of Lorca and Victoria together. And that’s what it got in the end.

JB: What was the most difficult thing about writing this novel?

JS: This part. The letting go. The having faith that it will find a place in the world, its place. Faith is so hard and so crucial. In a lot of ways, there’s a sadness to the whole thing. That what I love the most—writing—has been bastardized (I know that’s a very strong word and maybe not the right one) for my career. It’s no longer just joy, which is obvious and should have been for the last five or six years. But it’s only just dawning on me. And I’m so sensitive. The thick skin must grow. It will.

JB: What did you learn about yourself while in the midst of writing and editing?

JS: That I love to write. That I can’t wait to write another, better novel with its own set of issues—different ones, I hope. That I can’t imagine a different career, a more engaged way to spend my days. That if I was on a deserted island and could only take one item with me it would be my computer so I could write. And a charger and a very, very long extension cord. I wouldn’t need the Internet, but my handwriting is atrocious. So a computer, yes.

JB: Please give us a peek into a typical day in your life when you are writing.

JS: It changes radically. There are days when I do not get out of my pajamas. When I cannot pull myself from the computer screen. There are days of staring into space. Days of erasing. Days when I know I won’t be productive and so I try to find alternative ways of contributing to the work: reading, looking at art, doing yoga until it hurts, considering something new and writing notes until I scrap them and revert back to what I’d been toiling away on previously. The good stuff tends to rise to the top. I worked full-time until I started working with my editor so those days looked very different than the days when I taught undergrads—and different still from the days when I had no real “job” but the writing itself.

JB: What do you hope readers take with them after reading Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots?

JS: I can only hope that it moves them as writing has moved me my whole life. That the characters linger, the sadness, the hope, the sense of nostalgia. Not that readers learn anything—I don’t have anything to teach really—but that there is a certain feeling that comes across and it doesn’t vanish. Good books have done that for me for so long: moved me in a fundamental, physical way, as much as an emotional one. That’s lofty, I know. But here’s to hoping.

JB: What’s next for you?  Are you working on anything new?

JS: I have an idea for a novel but I haven’t really gotten down to it yet. I’ve been working on lots of non-fiction for newspapers and magazines as the book stuff is happening. But I’m eager to get back into fiction. It’s what I love the most and what requires the most—space, time, energy. Of course, it’s what rewards the most, too.

JB: Thanks, Jessica, for a wonderful interview.  Good luck with the book!

 

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It’s May–What Should I Read?

May is here, and everything’s coming up books!  And that is indeed a wonderful thing.  There’s lots of variety, meaning there should be something for everyone this month.

Titles To Pick Up Now

Dear Lucy by the extraordinarily talented Julie Sarkissian is available now.  I loved Sarkissian’s debut and feel fiercely protective of her main character, Lucy, who is developmentally delayed.  If you are a fan of Gothic tales, this will be perfect for you.  I spotlighted the book and interviewed Sarkissian.  Book review is coming soon.

I go down the stairs quiet like I am something without any weight. I open the door in the dark and the cold sucks my skin towards it. It is the morning but there is no sun yet, just white light around the edges. It is the time to get the eggs. Time for my best thing. The eggs they shine with their white and I do not need the light to find them. The foxes need no light either. I am a little like the fox, he is a little like me.—From Dear Lucy

Dear Lucy is a very unique book, one that you will be sorry you missed.

 

Another recently-released debut that I am enjoying is  Amity & Sorrow by Peggy Riley.  Check out my spotlight on the novel.  

A mother and her daughters drive for days without sleep until they crash their car in rural Oklahoma. The mother, Amaranth, is desperate to get away from someone she’s convinced will follow them wherever they go–her husband. The girls, Amity and Sorrow, can’t imagine what the world holds outside their father’s polygamous compound. Rescue comes in the unlikely form of Bradley, a farmer grieving the loss of his wife. At first unwelcoming to these strange, prayerful women, Bradley’s abiding tolerance gets the best of him, and they become a new kind of family. An unforgettable story of belief and redemption, AMITY & SORROW is about the influence of community and learning to stand on your own.

Riley’s tale is gripping, even from the first page when she introduces readers to sisters who are tied together at the wrist.  Amity & Sorrow is an unflinching, timely, and intriguing look at a fundamentalist cult and a mother who will do anything to save her daughters.

 

Claire Messud, author of The Emperor’s Children, returns with a new novel called The Woman Upstairs.  

Nora Eldridge, a 37-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is on the verge of disappearing. Having abandoned her desire to be an artist, she has become the “woman upstairs,” a reliable friend and tidy neighbour always on the fringe of others’ achievements. Then into her classroom walks a new pupil, Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale. He and his parents–dashing Skandar, a half-Muslim Professor of Ethical History born in Beirut, and Sirena, an effortlessly glamorous Italian artist–have come to America for Skandar to teach at Harvard.  But one afternoon, Reza is attacked by schoolyard bullies who punch, push and call him a “terrorist,” and Nora is quickly drawn deep into the complex world of the Shahid family. Soon she finds herself falling in love with them, separately and together. Nora’s happiness explodes her boundaries–until Sirena’s own ambition leads to a shattering betrayal.  Written with intimacy and piercing emotion, this urgently dispatched story of obsession and artistic fulfillment explores the thrill–and the devastating cost–of giving in to one’s passions. The Woman Upstairs is a masterly story of America today, of being a woman and of the exhilarations of love.

I’m so proud of debut novelist Julie Wu.  Her dazzling historical epic, The Third Son, was featured in May’s O, The Oprah Magazine and chosen as one of Amazon’s best books of May.  The Third Son is a rich debut featuring a character who I came to see as family.  Saburo is a very special character, one who will steal your heart.  Wu’s story is perfect for fans of Samuel Park, Jamie Ford, Janice Y.K. Lee, and Lisa See.  I spotlighted the book and interviewed Wu.  A review is coming soon.

It’s 1943. As air-raid sirens blare in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, eight-year-old Saburo walks through the peach forests of Taoyuan. The least favored son of a Taiwanese politician, Saburo is in no hurry to get home to the taunting and abuse he suffers at the hands of his parents and older brother. In the forest he meets Yoshiko, whose descriptions of her loving family are to Saburo like a glimpse of paradise.  Meeting her is a moment he will remember forever, and for years he will try to find her again. When he finally does, she is by the side of his oldest brother and greatest rival.

Set in a tumultuous and violent period of Taiwanese history—as the Chinese Nationalist Army lays claim to the island and one autocracy replaces another—The Third Son tells the story of lives governed by the inheritance of family and the legacy of culture, and of a young man determined to free himself from both.  In Saburo, author Julie Wu has created an extraordinary character, a gentle soul forced to fight for everything he’s ever wanted: food, an education, and his first love, Yoshiko. A sparkling, evocative debut, it will have readers cheering for this young boy with his head in the clouds who, against all odds, finds himself on the frontier of America’s space program.

 

Coming Soon

On May 7, Bloomsbury USA will publish the latest novel from bestselling author Gail Godwin.

Ten-year-old Helen and her summer guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen’s decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work in Oak Ridge during the final months of World War II.At three Helen lost her mother and the beloved grandmother who raised her has just died.A fiercely imaginative child, Helen is desperate to keep her house intact with all its ghosts and stories.Flora, her late mother’s twenty-two-year old first cousin, who cries at the drop of a hat, is ardently determined to do her best for Helen.Their relationship and its fallout, played against a backdrop of a lost America will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.

This darkly beautiful novel about a child and a caretaker in isolation evokes shades of The Turn of the Screw and also harks back to Godwin’s memorable novel of growing up, The Finishing School. With its house on top of a mountain and a child who may be a bomb that will one day go off, Flora tells a story of love, regret, and the things we can’t undo.It will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.

Caroline’s Leavitt’s tenth novel, Is This Tomorrow, comes out May 7 from Algonquin Books.

 

In 1956, when divorced working-mom Ava Lark rents a house with her twelve-year-old son, Lewis, in a Boston suburb, the neighborhood is less than welcoming. Lewis yearns for his absent father, befriending the only other fatherless kids: Jimmy and Rose. One afternoon, Jimmy goes missing. The neighborhood in the era of the Cold War, bomb scares, and paranoia seizes the opportunity to further ostracize Ava and her son.Lewis never recovers from the disappearance of his childhood friend. By the time he reaches his twenties, he s living a directionless life, a failure in love, estranged from his mother. Rose is now a schoolteacher in another city, watching over children as she was never able to watch over her own brother. Ava is building a new life for herself in a new decade. When the mystery of Jimmy s disappearance is unexpectedly solved, all three must try to reclaim what they have lost.

 

 

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra will be released on May 7 by Hogarth.  A resilient doctor risks everything to save the life of a hunted child, in this majestic debut about love, loss, and the unexpected ties that bind us together.  In his brilliant, haunting novel, Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner Anthony Marra transports us to a snow-covered village in Chechnya, where eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night, accusing him of aiding Chechen rebels. Across the road their lifelong neighbor and family friend Akhmed has also been watching, fearing the worst when the soldiers set fire to Havaa’s house. But when he finds her hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.  For the talented, tough-minded Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. And she has a deeply personal reason for caution: harboring these refugees could easily jeopardize the return of her missing sister. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weave together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.

Also on May 7 comes Daniel Wallace’s latest yarn, The Kings and Queens of Roam, from Touchstone.

 

From the celebrated author of Big Fish, an imaginative, moving novel about two sisters and the dark legacy and magical town that entwine them.  Helen and Rachel McCallister, who live in a town called Roam, are as different as sisters can be: Helen older, bitter, and conniving; Rachel beautiful, naïve – and blind. When their parents die an untimely death, Rachel has to rely on Helen for everything, but Helen embraces her role in all the wrong ways, convincing Rachel that the world is a dark and dangerous place she couldn’t possibly survive on her own … or so Helen believes, until Rachel makes a surprising choice that turns both their worlds upside down.  In this new novel, Southern literary master Daniel Wallace returns to the tradition of tall-tales and folklore made memorable in his bestselling Big Fish. The Kings and Queens of Roam is a wildly inventive, beautifully written, and big-hearted tale of family and the ties that bind

 

Unbridled Books will publish River of Dust by Virginia Pye on May 14.  On the windswept plains of northwestern China, Mongol bandits swoop down upon an American missionary couple and steal their small child. The Reverend sets out in search of the boy and becomes lost in the rugged, corrupt countryside populated by opium dens, sly nomadic warlords and traveling circuses. This upright Midwestern minister develops a following among the Chinese peasants and is christened Ghost Man for what they perceive are his otherworldly powers. Grace, his young ingénue wife, pregnant with their second child, takes to her sick bed in the mission compound, where visions of her stolen child and lost husband begin to beckon to her from across the plains. The foreign couple’s savvy and dedicated Chinese servants, Ahcho and Mai Lin, accompany and eventually lead them through dangerous territory to find one another again. With their Christian beliefs sorely tested, their concept of fate expanded, and their physical health rapidly deteriorating, the Reverend and Grace may finally discover an understanding between them that is greater than the vast distance they have come.

 

On May 14, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new novel, Americanah, hits shelves from Knopf.  From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.  As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu—beautiful, self-assured—departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze—the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor—had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.   Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion—for their homeland and for each other—they will face the toughest decisions of their lives.   Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today’s globalized world: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most powerful and astonishing novel yet.

 

Patricia Beard’s A Certain Summer will be ready for your beach bag on May 21.  The publisher is Gallery Books.  “Nothing ever changes at Wauregan.” That mystique is the tradition of the idyllic island colony off the shore of Long Island, the comforting tradition that its summer dwellers have lived by for over half a century. But in the summer of 1948, after a world war has claimed countless men—even those who came home—the time has come to deal with history’s indelible scars.  Helen Wadsworth’s husband, Arthur, was declared missing in action during an OSS operation in France, but the official explanation was mysteriously nebulous. Now raising a teenage son who longs to know the truth about his father, Helen turns to Frank Hartman—her husband’s best friend and his partner on the mission when he disappeared. Frank, however, seems more intent on filling the void in Helen’s life that Arthur’s absence has left. As Helen’s affection for Frank grows, so does her guilt, especially when Peter Gavin, a handsome Marine who was brutally tortured by the Japanese and has returned with a faithful war dog, unexpectedly stirs new desires. With her heart pulled in multiple directions, Helen doesn’t know whom to trust—especially when a shocking discovery forever alters her perception of both love and war.  Part mystery, part love story, and part insider’s view of a very private world, A Certain Summer resonates in the heart long after the last page is turned.

Also published on May 21 is We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo from Reagan Arthur.  Darling is only 10 years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo’s belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad.

But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America’s famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come before her–from Zadie Smith to Monica Ali to J.M. Coetzee–while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own.

 

 

Riverhead releases what may well be another bestseller for author Khaled Hosseini on May 21, And the Mountains Echoed.  Khaled Hosseini, the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations.

Who doesn’t love a good thriller?  While I was no fan of The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, I am looking forward to the release of Inferno, out May 14 from Knopf Doubleday.  As The Lost Symbol showed me, Robert Langdon works best in Europe, and not in America.

In his international blockbusters The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, and The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown masterfully fused history, art, codes, and symbols. In this riveting new thriller, Brown returns to his element and has crafted his highest-stakes novel to date.  
In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces . . . Dante’s Inferno.  Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust . . . before the world is irrevocably altered.

Paperback Releases

If you didn’t catch these amazing reads last year, they are either now available in paperback or are coming out this month.  Don’t miss them!

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers is out now from Little, Brown.  Powers was nominated for a National Book Award in fiction for his tale of the Iraq War.

The Yellow Birds is unlike other Iraq War novels.  Powers actually fought in combat so he knows his stuff.  This is fiction, but there are kernels of truth within these pages.  He drives home the point that the War in Iraq has irrevocably changed a whole generation and our country will not ever be the same.  The Yellow Birds is penetrating, poignant, and deeply personal for Powers.  I can’t stop thinking about Bartle and Murph.  This is the debut of the year.  –Bookmagnet’s review

 

 

 

Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars comes out in paperback May 7 from Vintage.

Hig is an “old man at forty” who lost his wife and their unborn child to the flu.  Hig’s narrative is unconventional as Heller uses flashbacks and sometimes strange streams of consciousness to tell us his story.  After the flu struck, encephalitis felled Hig.  “Two straight weeks of fever, three days 104 to 105,” Hig explains, “I know it cooked my brains.”  There is no pattern to Hig’s thoughts.  They are often jumbled and mish-mashed, often without segue from one thought to the next.  He begins many of his sentences with “and” or “so” and most of his thoughts are fragments.  What Hig has lived through and what he has lost speak to us from the page.  Heller uses a very powerful device, and Hig just would not be Hig without it.–Bookmagnet’s review

 

 

 

 

On May 7, Vintage releases Maggie Shipstead’s debut, Seating Arrangements, in paperback.  

Seating Arrangments is THE read of the summer, but this is no fluff piece.  Shipstead constructs a many-layered story in the same way a baker creates a layered wedding cake or a designer sews a wedding gown.  There are layers upon layers, and we must peel them back chapter by chapter. There are debut novels, and then there are debut novels.  Messy, disorganized jumbles lacking cohesion.  Unrealized characters with nothing to drive them.  Settings that fall flat.  A plot that isn’t.  This is not one of those debut novels.  –Bookmagnet’s review

 

 

 

 

Lance Weller’s electrifying and shocking debut Wilderness comes out May 14 from Bloomsbury USA.

I interviewed Weller and he had this to say about coming up with the story:

“Abel Truman came to me well before I had any notion whatsoever that Wilderness would become what it ended up becoming.  I wanted to try and write a really excellent dog story and, to that end, started writing a short story about an old man and his dog and what became of them.  Before I really knew it, they were living on the Washington State coast and the old man was an American Civil War veteran and I was beyond the point where it was a short story by a good number of pages.”

–From my interview with Weller

 

Mariner Books will publish Jennifer Miller’s smart debut The Year of the Gadfly May 28.  

Foreshadowing is just one of the plot devices in which Miller shows off her skills.  Traveling to the school with her mother, Iris notices that “the mountainous peaks resembled teeth.  The road stretched between them like a black tongue.  And here we were, in our small vehicle, speeding toward that awful mouth.”  One cannot help but wonder if the school will swallow Iris…I recommend The Year of the Gadfly to fans of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, Amber Dermont’s The Starboard Sea, and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.  Miller’s story is intelligent, sharp, and eye-opening.  Miller shines as she describes the pain of adolescence and aptly compares high school to the political dealings of a Third World nation.  “In high school,” Miller warns, “you never knew who was your enemy and who was your friend.”  Keep that warning in mind as you readThe Year of the Gadfly.  As in Miller’s novel, our enemies sometimes disguise themselves as our friends.  Iris should be vigilant.  —Bookmagnet’s review

Interview with Julie Sarkissian, Author of Dear Lucy

Julie Sarkissian, author of Dear Lucy

Jaime Boler: Thank you, Julie, for letting me interview you.  When Julia Fierro, founder and director of The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, has this to say about a novel, I take notice: “Dear Lucy will be one of your favorite reads of 2013. I promise.”  That’s high praise.  How do the wonderful reviews make you feel?

 Julie Sarkissian: First off, thank you for having me on your blog!

The experience of being reviewed brings to mind the nursery rhyme, “When she was good she was very, very good and when she was bad she was horrid.” When you hear something nice about your book, such as Julia’s generous and kind words, it feels very, very good. When you hear something not so nice about your book, it feels horrid. Being reviewed puts the author in a very vulnerable position, so every emotion is very heightened.

JB: Did you always want to be a writer?

JS: Like many of us in the publishing industry – writers, booksellers, editors – one of my first great loves as a child was reading. I grew up without a television and books were the main source of entertainment in our family. I was also a very serious student from an early age. Throughout elementary school writing was a strong suite of mine, it came easily to me and I enjoyed it and took pride in it. But it wasn’t until about the age of thirteen that I became afflicted with a true and overwhelming passion for writing. I started hearing voices in my head and was compelled to write them down. I started writing on a daily basis. I was very private about my work. It was as if I was carrying on an intense, secret affair with my writing at night, and was the same straight-A, type-A, peppy student I was known for being. But something had been awakened inside of me that fundamentally change who I was, and never went away.

 

JB: You became an instructor last year at The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop.  How do you like teaching writing?

 

JS: I absolutely love it. Though I’m a writer and ipso facto have to work alone for much of the time, I am very extroverted. So gathering in a group to discuss writing and craft and literature is such a blissed-out state for me. Teaching is so humbling and rewarding. And inspiring! Of course, my situation is rather comfortable: teaching intelligent, driven adults from my home. My mother teaches high school English and has over forty kids in each class, so I probably wouldn’t have quite a rosy attitude about teaching if that were my situation.

 

JB: How has being a writing teacher made you a better author?

 

JS: That’s a good question. I’m not sure if teaching has made my actual writing better, but it has given me a better appreciation of the artistic community, and my students’ drive and ambition are very inspiring. And teaching is intellectually rewarding, and I’m sure that has to help sharpen my mind.

 

JB: Please describe Dear Lucy in ten words or less.

 

JS: Disabled girl, pregnant teenager and talking chicken vs. the world.

 

JB: What inspired you to write Dear Lucy? Which character’s voice came to you first?  And in what way?

 

JS: The inspiration for Dear Lucy was Lucy’s voice, narrating her gathering of the eggs. Her voice was so strong I just felt compelled to follow it, wherever it lead me. Her voice was the initial inspiration and the guiding force for the whole project.

 

JB: Lucy is truly an unforgettable and beautifully quirky character.  How did her creation come about?

 

JS: Thank you so much! She presented herself to me as a voice, and from there I had to ascertain where she came from, what her past was like, what her mother was like.

 

JB: What exactly is wrong with Lucy?

 

JS: I made a choice not to label Lucy or give her a diagnosis. So the most accurate answer to that question is that there is no real answer. But to be general, I think she has some behavioral issues, I think she has some language processing problems, she is developmentally delayed.

 

JB: In Dear Lucy, you shift points of view from Lucy to Missus to Samantha.  What prompted you to change perspective and give the reader different perceptions?

 

JS: The decision to have multiple narrators stemmed from my desire to get the reader information that would have been lost or at best incredibly convoluted through Lucy’s point of view. I wanted there to be tension between what the reader knew about Lucy’s situation, her safety and well-being, and Lucy’s experience. It seemed like a great opportunity to raise the drama stakes for Lucy.

 

JB: Do you have a favorite character in the story?  If so, who?  And why?

 

JS: Lucy is my favorite, because she gave me her voice so generously and inspired the whole book. But I always felt very protective over Samantha, even though technically Lucy was more limited and more susceptible to danger than Samantha. Unlike Lucy, Samantha is her own worst enemy, and I felt a sense of responsibility for creating a character like that.

 

JB: Sense of place is intensely strong in Dear Lucy.  Why did you want to set your story on a farm?  How does the setting allow Lucy to develop strong friendships and come to the aid of a friend?

 

JS: Setting the novel on the farm was an organic, unconscious part of the process. When Lucy introduced herself to me gathering the eggs, it seemed only natural that she was gathering eggs on a farm. I think the setting is emotionally meaningful because the isolation of the farm highlights and juxtaposes Lucy’s ability to make connections in any environment, even one as desolate and dark as the farm.

 

JB: Dear Lucy has been compared to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Emma Donoghue’s Room.  How do such comparisons make you feel?

 

JS: They make me feel very validated for the type of book I was trying to create. I think both these books are character voice driven literary fiction, and so it is very flattering to be compared to them because in terms of genre that is just what I was hoping to achieve. I wrote about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for the critical portion of my master’s thesis, so it has long been a book that helped me navigate the creation of a full story with a limited protagonist. When I first read Room I was much farther along in the publication process of Dear Lucy, but I was really struck by the similarities in voice between Jack and Lucy. A few of the lines are eerily similar. Jack and Lucy are no doubt kindred literary spirits.

 

JB: What was your publication process like?

 

JS: Dear Lucy was my master’s thesis at The New School. Ann Hood was my thesis advisor and she was incredibly encouraging and supportive. After grad school finished a full draft of a manuscript and found my wonderful agent, Judy Heiblum, through a friend of a friend at the restaurant where I wait tables. My agent and I edited the book for well over a year. That was a very challenging time in the life of the book. Getting the book in sellable shape felt like trial by fire, but eventually we did get a polished manuscript ready. Someone upstairs must have been looking out for me because the book ended up being acquired by Sarah Knight at Simon and Schuster, and she is absolutely the editor who was meant to work on Dear Lucy.

 

JB: How did you react upon seeing a finished copy for the first time?

 

JS: It was a few seconds of pure elation, trying to take in the enormity of how six years of work, essentially my sole focus of my life for six years, had led to this tangible object in my hand. It was very significant, very existential moment.

 

JB: Who are some of your favorite authors and/or what are some of your favorite books?

 

JS: Faulkner has long been a huge influence on my work. Other favorite authors and major influences are Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, and Flannery O’ Connor. I buy a lot of books at Housing Works – a thrift store near my house- so I often stumble across critically acclaimed books that were published some years ago but are new to me. Some in that camp are: Mating by Norman Rush, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton, Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman. Shopping in thrift stories is treasure hunting, and discovering brilliant books like these is the ultimate thrill.

 

JB: What do you like to do when you aren’t writing?

 

JS: I’m from Southern California, and am a Californian at heart, so naturally I love the beach. My fiancé and I rent a beach house in Montauk every summer and I cherish those summer months. I’m big into yoga and baking. I love having dinner parties and BBQing on our deck when the weather is nice. I grew up without a television and now am unabashedly addicted to it, especially crime dramas. I’ve watched every episode of Law and Order, Perry Mason and Murder She Wrote.

 

JB: What is a typical day of writing like for you?  Do you have a favorite place where you write?  Do you prefer quiet or must you have noise?

 

JS: Like any rational human being I start the day with coffee. I’m not a morning person and my brain takes a while to start functioning. But once it does, I sit down to write either on the couch, though I am trying to wean myself off of that habit, or my desk. I get my best work done in the mornings into early afternoon. I break for yoga and lunch, and try to work a few more hours in the afternoon. I prefer quiet when I write early drafts, but listening to music while editing can be inspiring and help keep the work feel fresh.

 

JB: What was the most difficult thing about writing Dear Lucy?

 

JS: Personally the hardest thing was not to get discouraged that the process took so long. Creatively the hardest thing was structuring the novel. My editor was instrumental in helping me get structure the novel in the way that best served all the character’s storylines.

 

JB: Did you learn anything new about yourself while in the midst of this tale?

 

JS: I used to be incredibly private about my work and it was very painful for me to show it to anybody. I never shared any details about my creative process or the host emotions that come with it. But through the publication process I started opening up to my fellow artist friends about the experience of creating the book, the deep tenderness I had for my characters, the mental and creative challenges of editing, the sense of anticipation and the fear of criticism. Being able to share what I was going through was very grounding and galvanizing and helped foster a sense of community and support.

 

JB: Do you have any advice for those working on a first novel?

 

JS: Remind yourself feeling passionate about something is a real blessing. Ignore self-doubt and feel proud that you’re trying! Don’t compare your journey to anyone else’s; there are as many ways to write as book as there are books to write.

 

JB: What do you hope readers take with them after reading Dear Lucy?

 

JS: I hope readers take away the sense that the world is renewing itself every day, and that our sensory perceptions have the inherent ability to experience profound beauty. That seeing the world through another’s eyes, or hearing it from another’s ears, feeling it through another’s fingertips alerts the mind and the heart to the beauty that is around us all the time.

 

JB: I’m sure you have attended many book launches, but BookCourt was the site of your book launch on April 23.  What was it like?

 

JS: It was a blast! My friends- Heather Robb of the band The Spring Standards and Peter Lalish of the band Lucius- played live music – all booked themed songs, including Paperback Writer by the Beatles and Everyday I Write The Book by Elvis Costello. I cried during my thank yous and started uncontrollably coughing while reading– my friend had to take over the reading for me! It was a great turnout; BookCourt sold out of books, there were lots of cupcakes, lots of wine and lots of love!

 

JB: What’s next for you?  Are you working on anything new?

 

JS: I am working on a new book. It’s about a carnival on an old pirate ship that travels the East Coast prophesizing that to succumb to your most primal desires is the only way to have a true experience of life. When the ship docks in a sleepy New England town, the lives of three women will never be the same.

 

JB: Thank you very much, Julie.  Good luck with the book!

Interview with Julie Wu, Author of The Third Son

Debut novelist Julie Wu

Jaime Boler: Julie, thank you for allowing me to ask you these questions.  The Third Son utterly captivated me from the first page and transported me to 1940s Taiwan.  Once I started reading your story, I couldn’t stop!  I know readers are going to love The Third Son just as much as I do.

Julie Wu: It makes me so happy to hear that—thank you, and thanks for having me!

JB: You are a physician.  How did you get into writing?

JW: The writing actually came first.  I always loved fiction, and actually my undergraduate degree was in Literature.  I started writing soon after college, when I was in graduate school, studying opera at Indiana University.  I realized then that writing would be my ultimate occupation, but I also realized that my sheltered life experience limited my writing.  I wanted to see and experience all I could of life, and meet all kinds of people.

I’d previously been thinking of pursuing medicine, and I thought that a medical career would not only be personally rewarding but would also enrich my point of view as a writer.  So instead of MFA programs, I applied to medical schools.

JB: I did some searching and saw where The Third Son is your father’s story or loosely based on his experience growing up.  Can you explain?

JW: I would describe The Third Son as “inspired by” my father’s story.  The emotional journey is very close to his, but the actual scenes and events of the story, large and small, are essentially fictional.

JB: I also discovered you began working on this novel in 2001.  What has the journey been like?

JW: Long.  A learning experience.  Torture.  A joy.  I have learned a lot about myself, about writing, about the writing industry, and about Facebook.

JB: Your first agent suggested you write The Third Son as a memoir.  Why did you want to tell your story in novel form?

JW: I enjoy the immersive, emotional aspect of fiction.  Writing a non-fiction book was not going to give me that, especially since my father does not recall a lot of sensory detail or actual dialogue.  And I did not want to write a story about myself and my relationship with my father because I have had a pretty good, privileged life and a pretty good relationship with my parents.  How boring is that?

JB: How many revisions did the story undergo?  And how different was it then compared to the final, printed book?  Was all the revising and rewriting worth it?

JW: I lost track of the number of revisions.  I didn’t even print them all out, but I have drawers, trunks, and filing cabinets filled with drafts.  Someday I’ll have a big bonfire.

The book is about 98% different from the first draft.  The first draft, I’d say, was a somewhat tentative family chronicle.  At some point I committed wholeheartedly to fiction, and the finished book is a real, dimensional, and hopefully satisfying novel.  I think it’s the best book I could have written, so yes, it was worth it.

JB: How does it feel to finally see it in print?

JW: Awesome!  I’ll admit I didn’t jump up and down hyperventilating when I first saw my galley, but I do hold it and flip through it a lot.  I think seeing the hardcover with all the blurbs on it, in bookstores, will be very exciting.

 

JB: All the early reviews about The Third Son are positive; some are positively glowing.  How do you feel about the wonderful early praise your book is getting?

JW: It feels great.  One of the reasons I wrote the book was to shed light on the modern political history of Taiwan, which is so little known in the West.   The more successful my book is, the more people will be learning a bit more about Taiwan and the Taiwanese people, which is wonderful.

JB: What kind of research did you do for your story?

JW: I interviewed my parents extensively.  For the Taiwan sections, I read as many books and articles as I could find on Taiwan before, during, and after that period.  I was able to use the internet to find photographs.  I had traveled to Taiwan in 1990 with the intention of writing a (different) book set in Taiwan, so I also had extensive notes from that time.

For the sections in America, I consulted books and magazines from and on the fifties and sixties, watched some old movies, and read a lot about the International Geophysical Year.   I also visited MIT’s Haystack Observatory to speak with a slightly puzzled atmospheric scientist.

JB: When you were writing the story, did you have any sense how big it could be?

JW: I knew the story had the potential to be big.  My job was to realize that potential.

JB: My favorite characters in the story are Saburo and Toru.  Do you have a favorite?

JW: Oh, that’s like choosing among your children.  I really do love them all.   One of the things I’ve learned over the course of revising this book is that even your minor characters must have richness and purpose.  I’ll say I’m particularly fond of my mathematician-gardener, Professor Chen, in part because he did not exist until my latest revisions and now he’s not only kind of fabulous, but also a core part of the book.

JB: Your story is so emotional, especially when Saburo is mistreated and/or abused.  Yet, this is based on your own father.  Did you ever get emotional while writing it, so choked up to had to stop and leave it for a while?

JW: Interestingly, I did not.  I really thought of Saburo as his own character.  While writing I was imagining what this person Saburo would feel, think, and do.

JB: What do your parents think of the novel?

JW: It’s difficult for them to read it with any objectivity, of course.  They are on some level disappointed that the novel isn’t their true story.  At the same time they recognize that the story I’ve written is much more page turning and appealing to the general reader than one that would have stuck to the facts.  And my father still finds reading the book to be a very emotional experience.

JB: What do you like to do when you aren’t writing?

JW: Gosh, lots of things.  I like to sing, read, garden, snuggle with the kids.  When the kids are older I’d like to get back to painting and playing the violin.

JB: If you could have dinner with any author, living or dead, who would you choose and why?

JW: Tolstoy.  I’d love to pick his brain.  I’d also love to tell him how many former Taiwanese political prisoners I’ve spoken to have listed him as one of their favorite authors.

JB: What book is on your nightstand right now?

JW: My nightstand is covered in piles of books—novels, biographies, writing craft books, children’s books, and parenting books.  I can’t even see the clock anymore.

JB: If you could describe yourself in one word, what would it be?

JW: Keen.

JB: Are you going on an author tour?  If so, which cities will you visit?

JW: Yes.  I’m still waiting to hear where I’m going.

JB: What do you hope readers take with them after reading The Third Son?

JW: I’m hoping readers will feel moved and empowered.  I’m also hoping they’ll have learned a bit about Taiwan and the Taiwanese people.

JB: Are you working on anything new?

JW: I am working on a book inspired by the former political prisoners I interviewed in Taiwan this past October.  It will cover the same approximate time period as The Third Son, but will be about people more directly involved in the February 28 Incident, the subsequent massacres, and the White Terror.  The book will take place partly on Green Island, a wind-swept volcanic island off Taiwan’s coast, where political prisoners—mostly apolitical university students—were kept for years, forced to build their own prison and grow their own food.  In the early years the prisoners interacted with the island’s poor inhabitants, teaching them in schools and in the fields, and providing medical care.  These people were, and are, amazing.

JB: This story, so grim, is full of hope.  I felt as if I were reading a Jamie Ford or Janice Y.K. Lee novel and not a debut novel.  You are so amazingly talented, and I thank you for agreeing to chat with me about The Third Son. Good luck with the book, Julie!

JW: Thanks so much, Jaime!  This interview was a pleasure.

 

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