Lauren Acampora is the author of the new linked story collection The Animal Room. Her other books include The Wonder Garden. She lives in Westchester County, New York.
Q: What inspired you to write The Animal Room?
A: Ever since I was a child, I’ve been intrigued by animals and stories involving animals. I’m pulled in by newspaper articles and neighborhood reports about animals, whether the story of a police dog apprehending a fugitive, a bear getting into a birdfeeder, a safari-goer being trampled by an elephant, or red-tailed hawks nesting on the ledge of a Manhattan apartment building.
I’m fascinated by what these stories suggest about human nature—and humanity’s relationship with Nature. Taken together, they illustrate our deeply complicated, paradoxical, delicate, sometimes fraught co-existence with other species.
I’d long planned to write a collection of stories featuring human-animal relationships, mostly because I thought it would be fun to create characters involved in these kinds of situations.
There’s so much cognitive dissonance that arises from our varied relationships with animals. We cherish our pets as family members, while also living with the fact that scientific researchers carry out experiments on animals, including domestic ones.
So many complex questions arise from human-animal scenarios. Who are we within the natural world? How has humanity’s place changed, or not changed, over time? How much can it ever really change? We are biological, mortal beings, after all—animals ourselves—and other species are, in many ways, our mirrors.
Q: The author Mona Awad said of the book, “In this dazzling panoply of intersecting lives and stories, Acampora explores our relationship to the animal in all its forms and throws into profound relief our great and tragic humanity.” What do you think of that description?
A: Well, of course I love Mona’s wonderfully generous quote! And I think that the idea of our humanity being both great and tragic is spot on. We are a terminally confused species, too smart for our own good. The knowledge of our own mortality and our painful awareness of the passage of time really messes us up.
This is a critical difference between us and our fellow animals who live moment to moment. Being human is a gift, yes, but also by definition a tragedy.
Q: Why did you decide to return to your fictional town of Old Cranbury, Connecticut, in this book?
A: At first, only one of the stories, “Dominion,” was meant to be set in Old Cranbury. I wanted to write a story from the perspective of Roy Fox, the retired oil CEO with an exotic animal estate, who features in my book The Hundred Waters, which is set in the Nearwater area of Old Cranbury.
In that novel, Roy is an opaque character, a bit of a cartoon villain in others’ eyes. I wanted to give him a chance to show his good (if sometimes misguided) intentions.
After finishing that story, I thought it would be fun to loop in some of my other characters from my first linked collection, The Wonder Garden. Once I had the idea of connecting these stories with previous books, I started connecting them with each other and couldn’t stop.
I do love a linked story collection, especially those that include characters from an author’s previous books. As a reader, I enjoy discovering Easter eggs, and so I included some for the readers of my other books, who will encounter familiar friends and incidents. That’s how all the stories ended up in Old Cranbury. I seem to keep coming back there.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: When we moved into our house 17 years ago, we took ownership from a couple who’d lived here for 40 years and raised two daughters to adulthood. I chose one of the girls’ old bedrooms as my writing office.
While putting things away in the bedroom closet, I found taped to the far inside wall an old green construction paper sign with purple cut-out letters spelling “ANIMAL ROOM.” I picture a little girl’s stuffed animals arranged in the closet, maybe—but who knows?
I never took the sign down and never will. Those two words, “animal” and “room,” are so interesting together. Animals don’t belong in rooms. We put them there. We entrap them, rescue them, study them, admire them, and keep them close. I thought “The Animal Room” would make a great title for something someday.
And then I encountered those same words again while researching the story “Husbandry,” about an animal husbandry technician at a research institute. I learned that the rooms where laboratory animals are kept are called “animal rooms.”
Further researching that story, which has a strong neuroscience angle, I learned about the structure of the brain and its different compartments, so to speak. There are areas responsible for sophisticated reasoning and planning, and areas that are evolutionarily much older, which is where our instincts, intuitions, and self-protective, propagating drives come from.
I imagined this primitive compartment of our brains as a kind of “animal room,” where our deepest animal selves and urges are kept and which secretly drives our desires and purposes.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve been taking notes for years on a novel that may or may not expand upon this world I’ve been building and may or may not bring all four of my books together.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: My dog Auggie was a major contributor to this book, just by napping on the guest bed near my desk. He provided companionship and inspiration and forced me to take mandatory breaks. While walking him, I thought through many of the ideas and problems in the book.
Also, being near Auggie activates the special energy that exists between humans and animals who share time on Earth. We’re drawn to animals for good reason. And being in his company reminds me that creatures of all species are deserving of respect, compassion, and dignity.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Lauren Acampora.
