Q&A with Jessica Levine

 

 

 

Jessica Levine is the author of the new novel Three Cousins. Her other books include the novel The Geometry of Love. She lives in Northern California.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Three Cousins, and how did you create your characters Julia, Robin, and Anna?

 

A: Growing up as an only child, the cousins on both sides of my family became sibling substitutes. My mother and her side of the family were more creative and artistic; my father and his side were more intellectual.

 

My cousins and I are all in our 60s now (except one who has passed away). It has been fascinating for me to watch how we all evolved differently in both our personal and professional lives.

 

I wanted to reproduce in fiction the experience of watching one’s family change over time. Three Cousins is the prequel to two other novels I have already written, The Geometry of Love and Nothing Forgotten, the first of which focused on cousin Julia, the second on cousin Anna.

 

In contrast, Three Cousins interweaves the stories of all three women at a turning point in their lives: Julia and Anna are in their last year of college, and Robin has started graduate school only to find the program she chose is not to her liking. All three women must make decisions about relationships and work, decisions that will determine the course of the rest of their lives.

 

The three characters were partly inspired by friends and relatives, partly by different aspects of my own personality, and lastly by archetypal patterns of behavior elicited by a period of sexual and social liberation.

 

For the question of the decade was, what to do with the new freedoms? Julia typifies the prudent romantic who resists change, Anna is the traveler and explorer, and Robin the sexual experimenter. 

 

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

 

A: I set the novel in places I know well: Manhattan, New Haven, San Francisco, and Paris. Moreover, the era of the mid to late 1970s is also familiar to me. Consequently, most of the research I needed to do was minor and easily done on the internet – for example, which songs were in the top ten in 1976 or where in Paris to set the final chapters. 

 

What was sometimes surprising was the reading I did around the project to refresh my memory of the political and cultural context. The period I was writing has been seen through many different lenses, some more optimistic, others less so.

 

Because of my involvement with feminism, I remember the period between the end of the Vietnam War and Reagan as imbued with an optimistic sense of possibility.

 

In contrast, in How We Got Here: The 70’s, David Frum argues that the decade in question marked the beginning of a rise in individualism and a cynicism about government that have been destructive to the social fabric of the United States. Same decade, very different point of  view.

 

Q: The writer Corie Adjmi said of the book, “Levine artfully explores relationships and the lives of women, gracefully raising questions about the choices women make and why.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Corie honed in on what interests me: the choice aspect of relationships. For relationships don’t just “happen.” We are making decisions all the time – about how much time to spend with a partner, how vulnerable or guarded to be, how much to share or hide, whether to stand firm or compromise, and so forth.

 

When women are truly unhappy, the choice can be whether to stay or leave. If they stay, the choice may be how to cope with unmet needs or even gaslighting, betrayal, or abuse. 

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the novel?

 

A: I hope to offer an experience that will resonate with readers and provide a space for processing their own life journeys. An optimistic coming-of-age story, Three Cousins will hopefully remind readers of the energy and possibility of youth and how it can be carried forward into adulthood. 

 

The three women in the novel repeatedly have to make choices between security and passion, conformism and rebellion, secrecy and disclosure. Readers will have the opportunity to explore their own values as they evaluate the decisions the characters have taken. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have started writing the story of the third cousin, Robin, which will take place in her 50s. As Robin is both a sexual explorer and a spiritual seeker, this promises to be the wildest installment of The Cousins Series.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Fiction provides a means of ordering and structuring experience. In following the lives of three women over decades, The Cousins Series invites readers, especially women, to consider the ideals and dreams that have guided them in their own lives.

 

Have you lived up to your expectations? Have you been true to yourself? Were you pressured into abandoning your goals or did you stay the course? What’s the story you tell about you?

 

Novels that span lifetimes help us make peace with the disappointments that come our way, even as they encourage us to try again and never give up. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Jessica Levine.