Elizabeth Harlan is the author of the new novel Becoming Carly Klein. She lives in New York and in Florida.
Q: What inspired you to write Becoming Carly Klein, and how did you create your character Carly?
A: When I was a teenager with problems of my own, I was seen by a therapist who worked out of her apartment and whose young daughter would sometimes hang out in the hall by the elevator when I arrived for a session.
I always wondered what this young person thought about her mother’s patients, and this inspired the central plot twist in Becoming Carly Klein.
Q: How would you describe Carly’s relationships with her parents?
A: As a young person coming of age in New York City in the 1980s, Carly's a latchkey kid growing up with two well-meaning, preoccupied professionals who don’t give her the attention she craves and needs.
When she hits some of the inevitable snags of teenage life, she resents her parents' apparent indifference and takes advantage of their neglect to construct a retaliatory and self-destructive game plan.
The crisis Carly brings upon herself sends a wake-up call to her mom and dad, who ultimately provide the attention and support she needs to find her way.
Q: The scholar Catharine R. Stimpson said of the book, “Becoming Carly Klein is a superb novel about this aching process of becoming both honest and honorable.” What do you think of that description?
A: Catharine Stimpson walked on water as my freshman English teacher at Barnard College. I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration to say she taught me how to write.
That she genuinely thinks so highly of my novel (she would never have written this blurb if she didn’t truly love the book) is one of the highlights of my personal journey and professional career.
Q: As you mentioned, the novel is set in New York City in the 1980s--how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: This setting is super important and personal. I know New York City, where I grew up and came of age and went to college and graduate school and raised my children, on the back of my hand.
I loved describing Carly’s Upper East Side neighborhood, her bus rides, walks in Central Park, and her activities on the Barnard/Columbia campus.
I had a lot of fun placing my characters in spaces I'd personally inhabited and knew and loved, and this gives energy to these descriptions and ultimately to the story that unfolds in these special places.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My next project is an historical fiction set toward the end of World War II in the Alpine region of Haute-Savoie. This novel’s lead character is a young French girl whose family produces a traditional French cheese called Reblochon.
Unbeknownst to her father, who sympathizes with the collaborationist Vichy government, Gabrielle is provisioning her boyfriend’s troop of Maquis (Resistance fighters hiding out in the mountainous countryside) with wheels of Reblochon to sustain them as they organize attacks on the occupying Nazi forces.
To avoid spoilers, I won’t say more, but I’m thrilled to be working in a format that draws on my skills as a YA novelist and my nonfiction experience writing historical biography. Not to mention my love of French cheese and that I lived in France for 10 years!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Even though Becoming Carly Klein is marketed YA because of its teen protagonist, I’ve had a remarkable amount of adult readers comment in personal correspondence as well as in published reviews that this novel is just as interesting and packs as powerful a punch for adult readers as it does for teens.
I think the existence of a special genre for Young Adult fiction, which is a relatively recent marketing phenomenon, makes us forget that books like Catcher in the Rye (to which Carly has been compared) were once published as general fiction.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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