Q&A with Nick Owchar

 

 

Nick Owchar is the author of the new novel A Walker in the Evening. He is a former deputy books editor for the Los Angeles Times. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write A Walker in the Evening, and how did you create your character Yuri?

 

A: My reason for writing A Walker in the Evening was pretty simple: I just wanted to tell a good gothic ghost story. I love ghost stories. I’ve read so many. I decided it was my turn to try.

 

Gothic novels like Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind have given me so much pleasure. I wanted to create something like these books without being too derivative.

 

In the process of writing my book, I found myself turning to my Slavic heritage and to my father’s stories of his childhood in a village in what would later become Western Ukraine.

 

He told me how the old grannies would warn the kids not to go swimming in the river on summer nights—“Stay away from the water! We’ll never see you again!”—and about the wooden totem with a devil’s face that he and other farmers carried on nightly patrols of the village.

 

All of this was so rich and weird and perfect. What was even better was, it was real. Thanks to my dad, I realized I had something special that would transform my story from just another cliché tale into something more personal and original.

 

I love the character of Yuri. I love the fact that he’s an Englishman who’s been living as a Ukrainian peasant farmer for years. I wanted to tell a gothic story involving the English painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Old Country traditions of my father’s village. Yuri became the perfect way to bridge both worlds.

 

What happens to him in London explains why he left England—“fled” is probably better than “left”—and created a new life on the far eastern edges of Europe.

Q: Can you say more about how your family history affected the writing of this book?

 

A: Like I mentioned, my father’s childhood memories in Ukraine played a big part. I grew up listening to his village stories. He told me about all kinds of incidents, people, folk cures, and various superstitions.

 

By the time he and I went back to his village in the late 1990s, I knew the place like I’d lived there. When we climbed out of the old red Mercedes that took us there, I looked around and felt this incredible sense of déjà vu. As Yuri says at one point about living in the village, “My blood’s here, too. I’m my father’s son.”

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: Visiting Ukraine and staying in the village was important. I loved it. We spent a month in the village with our cousins. There’s no better research than eating and sleeping in the place you’re writing about. One day I want to go back and take my sons, but we need to wait until Putin and his army have been stopped and kicked out of the country.

 

I supplemented my father’s stories and our village experiences with reading some important scholars like Norman Davies and Orest Subtelny. But I also make a point, in the author’s note, of expressing how my goal in writing A Walker in the Evening was to capture my father’s memories. That matters more to me than the judgment of any historians.

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book called it a “canny and ambitious cross-continental tale of apostolic anxiety.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Considering how tough Kirkus can be, I was blown away by that review and some others that have come out.

 

That description of the book as a “tale of apostolic anxiety” perfectly captures Yuri’s state of mind; I just never thought much about his anxiety as I was writing him. I simply went where his character wanted to take me and watched as he engaged in some shameful behavior. But I never judged him or thought about his mental state the way the Kirkus reviewer does.

 

I really appreciate how the critic captured the sense that Yuri is caught between two worlds, the choices he made, and his regrets.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Writing A Walker in the Evening taught me so many things about my voice. It also helped me realize that I’m a tight writer. Even though this book is a gothic tale, it isn’t very long. It’s under 300 pages even though many gothic novels are doorstoppers.

 

With that in mind, I’ve turned in my new book to a more modern story that draws on my experiences as a young English teacher at a Catholic high school. It’s funny—even though I’ve distanced myself from the Catholic Church as an adult, I’m still fascinated enough by my upbringing to make Yuri a priest in my first book and then return to that same culture for the next one.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Just that my publisher has brought out a wonderful audiobook version of A Walker in the Evening read by British voice actor Richard Griffith. It’s about 10 hours long. Perfect for the daily commute. You can find it on Audible, Apple Books, and Amazon.

 

Since Yuri was born and raised in London, it made sense to have a narrator with an English accent. I love the way he sounds.

 

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about my book. I’ve really enjoyed this.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb