Q&A with Donna Levin

 

 

Donna Levin is the author of the new novel The Talking Stick. Her other books include the novel There's More Than One Way Home. She lives in San Francisco.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Talking Stick, and how did you create your cast of characters?

 

A: The Talking Stick had two forbears. Some years ago, I was having coffee with my friend Mark Coggins, who writes detective fiction. We said that we’d both like to write a novel in which some magical object plays a role.

 

His idea was that a man finds a device in his garage that he can use to make women fall in love with him. My idea was that someone has a traumatic experience that gives her the ability to read minds. Then we both went back to our respective novels-in-progress.

At the time, I had just joined a new writing group, at the kind invitation of a former student. It turned out to be a transformative experience. The women weren’t just a writing group: they were friends, and friends in an unambiguous way.  They fully supported each other, and there was a lack of competition among them that gave me hope for the human race. 

 

This wasn’t a completely new experience for me, but it was unique in its power. 

 

I would often talk about the group to my daughter, and more than once she said, “You should write a book about a group like that.”

 

The two ideas merged into the story of a woman’s group that comes into possession of a talking stick that might have some magical power.

 

For fictional characters, I do a lot of homework, for example, sketching their life stories.  Their life stories don’t belong in the novel, but that’s how I get to know them.

Q: The writer Karen Joy Fowler said of the book, “The situation: real women with real and painful problems. The solution: have friends. Also, magic. The result: A thoroughly engaging, completely entertaining novel by the great Donna Levin.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Who am I to argue with “entertaining” and “engaging”?  I’m honored that Karen Joy Fowler gave me that quote.  She’s a distinguished author who’s been nominated for the Booker twice, and has had books on the New York Times bestseller list (for realsies, in her case—if everyone who made that claim had actually achieved it, the list would circle the globe), so she gets many requests. 

 

Some writers will blurb a book as a favor without reading it—they’ll even ask the author to compose the blurb. She actually read the book. She’s a gracious and generous lady.

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I was never entirely happy with the titles of the two novels that preceded The Talking Stick, but this was one time that the title was a simple choice. The talking stick is central to the plot. 

 

One of Freud’s patients described psychoanalysis as “the talking cure” and on one level, I see the story of The Talking Stick as a dramatization of what happens in therapy: one reevaluates the past, and sees one’s own role in creating one’s current challenges.

 

Q: Did you know the novel’s ending before you started writing the book, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I not only didn’t know the novel’s ending, I knew nothing about it beyond “a group of women get a hold of a talking stick that causes them to remember incidents as they really happened, not as they wanted them to happen.” 

 

I envy novelists who can plot in advance. Writing this book was a long process of trial and error. The women of my writing group were of tremendous help: They were happy to tell me (in a nice way) when I went too far.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’ve started a new novel with the working title What We Did Last Winter. I’m afraid this might be another never-quite-happy-with-the-title book, but I wanted to call it something, the way naming a stray cat makes it belong to you. 

 

This is a novel about a woman with DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, which used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. It’s a fascinating phenomenon, and I’m learning that it’s more common than I thought.

 

There’s much to explore, but my first priority is to debunk the myth that people with DID have dangerous, murderous alters. A person with DID is much more likely to be a danger to themself than others.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: For those who prefer to listen to books, the audio versions should be available soon! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb