Q&A with Jaye Viner

 

 

 

Jaye Viner is the author of the new novel Jane of Battery Park. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Jane of Battery Park, and how did you create your characters Jane and Daniel?

 

A: I was initially inspired by Donald Maass’s keynote at the 2012 Backspace Writer’s conference to write what I was afraid of. That summer, I had a frightening giant spider home invasion that left me shaken for months. To process that I began thinking about my fear of spiders (literally) and also what that fear translates into figuratively.

 

There was a lot that felt out of control in my life then with my health. This fear of spiders began to feel like an analogy for how I felt about my body, that there was always the possibility of some bad surprise lurking in the places that I perceived as safe and dependable.

 

These experiences translated into both my writing of Jane and Daniel. They both exist in really insecure worlds. Jane believes that her family could show up and force her back to her old life. Daniel doesn’t trust his body. For many years they’ve been living these half-lives of constant vigilance, always expecting the worst.

 

When I first started writing, the story wasn’t as much of a romance as it ended up being. I wanted to explore this idea of two broken people finding each other and being able to accept that brokenness, not because of what it gives them, but because it means they can begin to accept themselves and figure out new ways of being, which is a really big thing, much bigger than falling in love, in my opinion.

Q: The writer Catherine Texier compared the book to the show Unorthodox--which features a young woman who leaves an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community--calling the novel "Unorthodox in the heartland." What do you think of that comparison?

 

A: I haven’t read the book, but after Catherine’s blurb, I did watch the Netflix adaptation of Unorthodox.

I was stunned by the similarities of a sheltered woman in an unhappy marriage where pregnancy is the catalyst for getting out of that life and her love of music plays such a huge role in that journey.

 

With some minor differences, this is Jane’s story in Jane of Battery Park. She’s a piano player who wants to be an artist, but her family believes nursing is a holy profession, or what we might call “women’s work.”

 

Through Daniel, she’s exposed to film scores and her love of that music unlocks something in her that, when she gets pregnant and realizes she can’t raise a child in that environment, gives her the push she needs to leave. 

 

Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther is also a memoir about a woman who finally finds the power she needs to leave her fundamentalist religious community/family after she becomes a mother.  

          

At least as far as the Netflix version goes, the stories differ significantly in that Unorthodox spends a lot of time in the Orthodox Jewish community, whereas my novel focuses on Jane’s life once she’s away from her religious family and making her own choices.

 

We have a lot of stories about trapped women getting out. I’m more interested in the struggle that comes after that initial choice, how our trained ways of seeing the world don’t just vanish when we decide we don’t have a particular faith, or we stop being part of a community.

 

There’s a long process of deconstructing, and evaluating, and rebuilding an entirely new self. That’s the story of Jane of Battery Park or at least part of it.

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I had no idea how it would end. Once Red Hen accepted the novel for publication, the ending was the thing we worked on the most.

 

Part of this was because I’ve written more than one book with these characters. There was a lot of struggle for me to find an ending when in my mind, it’s really just a pause, because I know Jane and Daniel have other things to do, and there’s a lot I wanted to explore with their families.

 

Ultimately, because the story arc became this kind of romance, it made sense that the end was their acceptance of each other with all their secrets on the table. The ending in my mind is probably 500 pages past the end of Jane of Battery Park and it does change every six months or so as I imagine future stories for these characters.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

 

A: As a disabled artist, I always want readers to come away with their idea of what disabled people can do and be as broader than what they thought when they started reading. Jane and Daniel are not particularly able mentally, and Daniel is also an amputee.

 

The idea of a love story that is not some kind of John Greene tragedy, that these are just two people with issues falling in love, is actually a big deal and having stories like that out in the world helps expand the possibilities for cultural acceptance of disability and romance.

 

I also hope readers come away with more tolerance and intellectual curiosity for problematic family relationships.

 

Since the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, we have a broader conversation and awareness of the way that Americans are divided. Being related to people who don’t believe in the legitimacy of our democracy is a thing that is out in the world. It’s not new, but now it’s more obvious.

 

And I’ve seen many many people depict this like it’s an easy, black and white thing. But culture is not always black and white. It is not easy to just erase the values that raised you. It is not always obvious to see truth when you’ve been taught lies your entire life.

 

Jane’s family is part of a terrorist organization. Even though she doesn’t want to be part of that, there’s still a lot that she can’t help but hang onto, things she hasn’t managed to detach from yet. It’s a long, difficult process to see the world in a new way, especially when you’re doing it alone and your family is all on the other side.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Right now, I’m revising a speculative novel about two women from opposite economic backgrounds using each other to get what they want.

 

They collaborate on a project to recreate alien teleportation archways (one wants to use them to remake the world, the other wants to put them in the consumer market as a way to send barista coffee to your kitchen) only to fall in love and realize they’re not as different as they first thought.

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Anyone interested in Jane of Battery Park can read the first two chapters for free by subscribing to my newsletter through my website JayeViner.com. On the site, there is also a character quiz for readers who want an interactive introduction to the characters.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb