Regina McBride is the author of the new novel The White Deer, which is based on the life of the Russian writer Anton Chekhov. McBride's other books include the novel Stranger from Across the Sea. Also an educator, she lives in New York City.
Q: What inspired you to write The White Deer, and have you always been interested in Anton Chekhov?
A: When I was 18 I read Chekhov’s play The Seagull and found myself deeply moved by its world, so different from anything I’d encountered before. I was instantly drawn into its atmospheric setting and in wonder over the characters, who speak so earnestly about what is missing from their lives. The play is a beautiful and painful chain of unrequited love.
Two years after discovering The Seagull, I was cast in The Cherry Orchard and my love of Chekhov intensified. Almost 25 years ago, after rereading Chekhov’s story "The Kiss," I decided I wanted to write about Anton Chekhov as a fictional character, and I wanted to write it as an epic novel in the mold of the great Russian novels.
Before finding my way to the final book, The White Deer, I wrote five iterations of what I’d refer to as “my Chekhov novel,” each one close to 500 pages. But none of them really worked. I had to put it away many times, each time in despair, and work on another book. But I’d always go back to it.
It was while reading one of Chekhov’s letters to his brother, Alexander, that I made a discovery. He was giving his brother writing advice: “Brevity is the sister of talent.” He was urging his brother to be more concise.
I had always known Anton was a master of economy, but I had never applied that insight to my own novel. I began to see the folly of trying to write an epic novel involving a writer whose work was the soul of moderation. I reduced the timeline dramatically and focused the action all in one summer.
Q: What did you see as the right balance between history and fiction as you wrote this book?
A: I read that when Anton was 19 years old and on his way to Moscow to study medicine, he stopped in the Ukrainian countryside a few weeks to relax and visit friends. Not much was written specifically about this so I thought it would be a perfect time and place to create a fictional world.
All of Chekhov’s biographical details are respected in my novel. The things he shares with Vera (the narrator of this novel) about his family and his dream of traveling to Siberia to write about the prison conditions are all based on what I learned from reading biographies and Chekhov’s letters.
Vera and her family and even Volkhov, Vera’s childhood estate, are all fictional.
Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book says, “McBride evokes a sense of place with lush depictions of birch stands and daisy fields along with a soundtrack of Tchaikovsky and folk tunes, creating a backdrop for Vera’s tender and chaste friendship with Anton.” What do you think of that description, and how would you describe the dynamic between Anton and Vera?
A: I’m glad that the reviewer understood how important a sense of place is to this novel. Vera and Anton revel in the beauty of Volkhov’s forests and spend much of their time wandering the acreage in search of a white deer that has been spotted on the property.
Seeing a white deer, according to Anton, is a promise of future happiness. We find out later that seeing a white deer has another more specific meaning for Anton.
Surreptitiously through Anton, Vera learns that her beloved childhood estate is likely to fall to the axe at the end of the summer. Vera and Anton feel a sense of urgency to relish what Anton has called in a letter to his brother “a beautiful Eden” and to be present in it.
Both Vera and Anton face great changes ahead of them in their lives and they fantasize about stopping time and remaining in their idyll together.
I appreciate the reviewer’s depiction of Anton and Vera’s connection as “tender.” The word “chaste” is technically true but might give the impression that there is no sexual energy between them, when there is a very strong attraction. I would characterize what is between them as a romantic friendship.
Q: What do you hope readers will take from this book?
A: I hope readers will fall into the dream of the book, that they will be able to enter the sensory world of Volkhov, of Ukraine in 1879.
As with Chekhov’s play The Cherry Orchard, the characters in The White Deer are all, consciously or unconsciously, being carried on a great historical wave as the Russian aristocracy gradually loses its foothold. No one in the novel knows exactly what is ahead as the empire moves slowly toward revolution and earth-shattering change.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am currently working on a memoir. My first memoir, Ghost Songs, was published in 2016 by Tin House. That focuses on my childhood, young womanhood and my journey to Ireland, where I would live for a year, all while trying to cope with the suicides of my parents (who died when I was a teenager).
The memoir ended when, at the age of 22, I was on my way to New York City from Ireland with the dream of becoming an actress.
This new memoir begins in New York City when I am 22. Haunted by the violent loss of my parents, I suffer with hallucinations and struggle to support myself as a waitress, while trying to hold onto my dream of becoming an actress.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Regina McBride.
.jpg)
