Jennifer Oko is the author of the new novel Just Emilia. Her other books include the novel Gloss. She lives in Washington, D.C.
Q: How was the title of your new novel chosen?
A: The title Just Emilia...that was tricky!! First, I needed a name for the protagonist that had a couple of good nicknames attached, and it took a while until I landed on Emilia, Em, and Millie.
Naming the novel was harder. There were a number of failed ideas. For a long time, it was just Friendship Heights (the name of the Metro stop), then The Event Horizon--the theoretical boundary around a black hole beyond which no light or other radiation can escape.
Nothing was sticking, and then I was away for a writing weekend with a few friends and it just came to me. I have a very clear memory of sitting on a cozy sofa and shouting, “Just Emilia!” and they were like, yeah, that tracks. It just felt right.
Q: The writer Laura Zigman called the book a “deeply moving story, uniquely told, about the different versions of ourselves--past, present, and future--that co-exist, and how, with the correction of long-buried distorted memories, they finally find peace.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love it, and I am so grateful for her blurb. Laura is one of my favorite authors and for her to respond like that was incredible. (Especially the next sentence, which is “A novel I won’t soon forget.” That was nice to hear!).
Honestly, it’s quite humbling when people tell you that what you put out into the world resonated with them.
A few days ago, an early reviewer I have no personal connection to DM’d me the most amazing message on Instagram. She wrote: “On a Friday morning at 9:05am I finished reading the book and I’m feeling powerful, excited, and hopeful for the day to come.” I cried when I read it. I just started tearing up again now, while typing it out.
Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I had absolutely no idea what would happen! In fact, it took me YEARS to figure it out. For better or for worse, I’ve always been the kind of writer who writes herself into a corner (or an elevator) and then has to figure out how to write her way out of it.
I envy people who can plot their books out from the start, but my mind just doesn’t work that way at all. I am not sure I am even capable of telling a linear story, not even just sitting around with friends at dinner. In fact, the first sentence of my debut novel Gloss is “I digress.”
Q: The story is set in an elevator at a subway station in Washington, D.C. (one I'm very familiar with)--how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: Hi neighbor! :-)
Setting is so important!! When I am writing, that’s part of the fun—trying to imagine what things should look, smell, feel like for the characters. How the characters exist in their environments reveals so much about their personalities and motivations.
It never occurred to me that the elevator Emilia, Milllie, and Em are stuck in would be anywhere but in Washington, D.C., because Emilia is very much a product of this part of this city.
That was so fun, too. I didn’t grow up here, so I spent some time researching the area where I have now been living for a couple of decades, trying to imagine what it would have looked like in the late 1980s.
It was a little more depressing trying to imagine what it might be like here a few decades into the future, but it was an interesting idea to explore.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have two half-written novels that I’ve been flip flopping between, trying to decide which I want to spend the next couple of years living in. Maybe I should put it to a vote.
One, untitled, is about a blocked novelist who is stuck between motherhood, marriage, and a day job she hates—until a mysterious death at her kids’ school and a haunting Russian literary classic combine in her mind to spark an idea for a new novel.
The more she digs in, the more she discovers that the events leading up to the murder directly touch almost every part of her own life—her work, her writing, her marriage, her kids—and soon she has to confront the fact that it may have inadvertently been her own fault, that she herself might be both guilty and not guilty of the crime, not unlike the protagonist of her favorite Russian novel.
The other, tentatively called The True Life of Phoebe Weiss, is about a young woman whose grandmother, dying of Alzheimer’s, starts revealing cryptic secrets, uncovering long-buried family ties to the Jewish mafia and leading Phoebe Weiss on a dangerous hunt for the truth, where old crimes, betrayals, and a mysterious map could change everything.
Flip a coin or start something new? This is the question I’ve been stuck on for more than a year. It’s not a very productive place to be!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I am always happy to answer more questions. Writing a novel is really hard, but putting it out into the world is even harder. I deeply appreciate this opportunity to share more about it.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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