Jen Michalski is the author of the new novel All This Can Be True. Her other books include the story collection The Company of Strangers. She is the editor of the literary weekly jmww, and she lives in Southern California.
Q: What inspired you to write All This Can Be True, and how did you create your characters Lacie and Quinn?
A: I had this image of a woman lying in bed, waking up to a phone call. It’s from the hospital, and they’re calling to let her know that her husband has woken from his coma. But there’s another woman in bed beside her. Although it didn’t wind up in the novel, I worked backwards from that image—how did these women get there?
Also, I began writing this novel during the pandemic, which had just begun (and Derek, Lacie’s husband, in the first draft was in a coma because of a mysterious airborne illness and not a stroke).
Quinn was sort of a wild card in those initial drafts, too, because the story was entirely from Lacie’s point of view.
It wasn’t until one of its first readers, Jennifer Pooley, suggested that Quinn was too interesting a character for us not to see the interior that I alternated the narratives, and I think that added a richness for the reader—to see their internal struggles and how their relationship was sort of a lifesaver for the both of them.
In terms of their characters, ironically Quinn was a character that I’d had in my head for a long time, and she’d appeared in various short stories under different incarnations (“Eat a Peach” from my previous collection comes to mind), so it seemed fitting that she finally found her way into a novel.
Q: How would you describe the dynamic between them?
A: I think, in the beginning, Lacie is more desperate—for comfort, for understanding, for love, and Quinn is more careful, knowing that she harbors a secret that will really hurt Lacie.
But, despite her reservations, she becomes more dependent on Lacie so that, in the end, they switch places, with Quinn wanting to give it a go and Lacie, once burned, twice shy, wants to explore her options and figure herself out instead of losing her newfound identity.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: There is a line in the novel that Lacie shares with Quinn (and that Quinn eventually writes a song about) called “all of this can be true.” Basically that people are imperfect but are still worthy of love—and also that situations are complicated. Oftentimes there aren’t winners or losers, just survivors. And the experience.
And that’s one of the richest of being human, I think. You don’t see birds or turtles having love triangles, although far be it for me to say that is an absolute truth.
Q: The writer Sandra A. Miller said of the book, “All This Can Be True is a profoundly moving story about the tangled web of intimate relationships, the paradoxical power of secrets to both destroy and unite a family, and the hard-earned rewards of stepping out of the darkness and into the light of one's own truth.” What do you think of that description?
A: I think it’s entirely apt! A big theme of the book when I was writing it was about second acts in life. I’m at the age now in which I’m at the mid-mark, so there’s a lot of reflection and recalibrating—am I where I thought I would be in my life, and if not, how do I change direction? Am I proud of the choices I’ve made and the person I am? Am I happy and living my truth?
A hidden rainbow in realizing you’ve been headed the wrong way is that it’s never too late to turn around, take a different exit.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A comedy-drama about a family that spends a weekend together at Coachella, which is one of the biggest outdoor concert festivals in the US (and about an hour from where I live). Secrets are revealed, relationships are tested, a surprise weather event tests everyone’s resolve.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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