Marian Thurm is the author of the new novel I Don't Know How to Tell You This. Her other books include Today Is Not Your Day. She has taught creative writing at various universities, including Yale and Columbia.
Q: What inspired you to write I Don’t Know How to Tell You This, and how did you create your character Judge Rachel Sugarman?
A: I actually have a friend (now retired) who was a family court judge, and it occurred to me how fascinating it might be to create a fictional judge whose own life and family relationships were as complicated—though in different ways—as those of the plaintiffs and respondents who appeared in her courtroom day after day.
Q: How would you describe the dynamic between Rachel and her husband, Jonathan?
A: Watching Jonathan lose himself to dementia is no doubt the most painfully difficult experience of Rachel’s life; the loneliness she feels even when in his presence is evident to her as time passes.
And yet despite the loss of the smart, capable man she’s adored since they were both college students, she will continue to love him; to help him into his pajamas and brush his teeth for him every morning and every night; to respond calmly to those questions of his that make increasingly less sense, and to try, as best she can, to navigate the changes to her marriage, to her life.
Q: How was the novel's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I struggled to find the right title, and then I realized that “I don’t know how to tell you this” is often the way someone quietly warns the person she’s speaking to that she’s about to pass along some particularly bad news, the sort no one wants to hear. And those words suddenly felt like just the right message for the novel to send.
Q: Did you need to do much research to write the novel, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: My friend, the family court judge, generously allowed me to sit with him in his courtroom many times, and I came away with pages and pages of notes about the cases that appeared before him. Many of them were heartbreaking, but occasionally there were moments that were surprisingly funny.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve never written a book of linked short stories before, and that’s the new challenge I’ve given myself.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I’m the proud mother of a daughter—who works full-time helping elderly and critically ill prison inmates—and who has published a novel and a short story collection. It was one of the most meaningful moments of my life—as both a mother and a writer—when she was offered her first book contract!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Marian Thurm.
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