Deborah Goodrich Royce is the author of the new novel Best Boy. Her other books include Reef Road. She is the creator of the Ocean House Author Series in Rhode Island.
Q: You’ve said that an inspiration for your new novel was hearing from someone you worked with but did not remember. Can you say more about that?
A: A couple years ago, I received an email that began, “Do you remember me? I was your best boy on Survival Game.” As you can probably imagine, it caught my attention! The phrasing sounded borderline scandalous when, in fact, “best boy” is a job on a film, and Survival Game is a movie I did way back when I was an actress.
The email went on to detail touchpoints in our (unremembered by me!) shared experience at that time. He spoke of a Thanksgiving dinner we had together and later running into each other at the Cannes Film Festival. There, he said, I was holding a baby and he wondered for a moment if the child was his. But he clarified by saying, “but I knew that would not have been possible.”
After picking myself up off of the proverbial floor, I googled this fellow and found that he was legitimate. He had worked in the movie business. He had gone on to a writing career, much as I had done.
So there was nothing untoward in his email, but no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t remember him at all. I remembered doing that film. I remembered going to the Cannes Film Festival with my then-husband and baby, Alexandra. Just not him.
The genesis of Best Boy came from my subsequent meditations on memory and its fallibility and the fact that we do not all remember the same things.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen and what does it signify for you?
A: Best Boy is a title that can be read at multiple levels. Rather than being a double entendre, it is a triple entendre (if such a thing exists!).
First, it refers to the best boy on a movie set, the thing Mark Remington claims to be in his mysterious letters to Viveca. Next, it signifies Sebastian Waldron, the brilliant, misunderstood teenage brother of Ingrid’s best friend, Em. And finally, it stands for Theo, Viveca’s sweet son and perhaps her chance at redemption.
Each one of these “boys” is instrumental in the trajectory of Ingrid/Viveca’s life for good or for ill.
Q: The author Victoria Christopher Murray said of the book, “Best Boy is a haunting, propulsive novel about the cost of secrets and the past’s refusal to stay buried.” What do you think of that description?
A: Let me begin by saying that I am a HUGE fan of Victoria and her novels! And it is because of her ability to write with nuance and subtlety about the complex decisions and inevitable mistakes that human beings make that I wanted her to read Best Boy.
There are costs to secrets and, despite the fact that nearly all of us know that, still we find ourselves keeping them. Ingrid undergoes a severe trauma as a teenager. She judges herself harshly for how she handles it and, consequently, she buries the past. Whether it is conscious or unconscious is almost beside the point. And that past pops up like a nightmarish whack-a-mole game in the present.
So I am deeply appreciative of Victoria’s endorsement of this morally knotty novel.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: Ah, how to answer this without giving away the plot! In short, I thought I knew how Best Boy would end very early on in the writing process. But somehow along the way, I questioned my direction.
I have been called the “queen of the plot twist” in the past. But a plot twist—no matter how extreme—has to be organic. Even if readers don’t see it coming—and hopefully they won’t—when it does come they have to have that moment of saying, “Of course!” It cannot be so outrageous that the reader ends up throwing the book across the room.
Without going into detail, suffice it to say that I was headed down a path that I simply could not justify and I changed course.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Right now I am working on a ghost story! But a really fun “Ghost and Mrs. Muir meets Agatha Christie” kind of ghost story.
My mother died a year and a half ago and I am finding this a really difficult loss. That said, I also feel her with me a lot and I find myself almost imbibing her essence as I go forward as now the oldest generation in my own family.
My mother had a very straightforward quality about her. She did not mince words. And she was often very funny, which is the quality I miss most about her.
So let me just say I am working on a mother-daughter mystery where one of the characters just happens to not be inhabiting her physical body anymore!
Q: I'm so sorry for your loss...
Is there anything else we should know?
A: Writing is such an extraordinary process in which thoughts, feelings, words, plots come to you and through you. I am loving this journey so much…both the act of writing, which is naturally solitary, and the amazing relationships that have evolved with other writers over the years.
Two of my favorite ways of connecting with my fellow authors are: 1. Hosting the Ocean House Author Series in Watch Hill, Rhode Island where I get to interview the best and the brightest in our literary landscape and 2. Co-hosting the Deer Mountain Writers’ Retreat in the Catskill Mountains of New York State where I get to write all day and socialize with my favorite writers every evening.
The writer’s road is always interesting and I feel very fortunate to be on it!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Deborah Goodrich Royce.
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