Q&A with Nora Gold

Photo by Yaal Herman

  

 

 

 

Nora Gold is the author of the new novella Doubles. Her other books include In Sickness and In Health/Yom Kippur in a Gym. She is the founder of the literary journal Jewish Fiction.

 

Q: In your new novella’s acknowledgments, you write that Doubles was inspired by your work as a social worker and social work professor. Can you say more about that, and about how you created the book’s narrator?

 

A: When I was a social worker in the 1980s, one of my jobs was working with the families of children and adolescents with autism, some of whom were living in group homes. Part of my role was to visit them there and assess how they were doing. As I mentioned in my acknowledgments in Doubles, many of the administrators and staff in these places were caring and committed professionals.

 

However, there was one particular visit I made that was so shocking and disturbing to me that I remember it to this day. I arrived mid-morning on a weekday, and the kids there were all just sitting around watching TV. Instead of being educated, stimulated, and helped to grow academically, developmentally, and socially, they were merely being babysat.

 

I was appalled. I didn’t see anyone being overtly unkind to the kids, but neither were they engaging with them; and although at the time I did not see neglect as a form of abuse, we now know that it is, and obviously this experience registered with me emotionally as such.

 

In retrospect – even though I was not aware of this when writing Doubles – I believe that this long-ago group home visit is what prompted the scenes in this book where the kids are just sitting around, day after day, doing nothing.

 

As for how I created Doubles’ narrator, I really have no idea. I don’t believe I created her.  She came to me fully formed. She created herself.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The title, Doubles, just came to me, and as soon as I heard it, I felt it was perfect because the concept of a “double” is so rich and resonant. There is one point in this book where the narrator refers to her sister as her “double”: the girl who is free, not institutionalized as she is, and who is therefore able to do all the things the narrator used to do, and wants to do again, but can’t.

 

I think many of us have “doubles” in our lives, in the sense of some other “me” that exists in our minds. This might be a shadow self, or a what-if self, or a self that we wish we were, or might have been, or think we still could be.

 

The “double,” of course, is also a theme in literature: think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or The Picture of Dorian Gray.

 

Last but not least, “double” is a mathematical concept – and in this book, math is everything to the main character. It is her language, her home, and her hope. So the title, Doubles, signifies, captures, and expands on, all these elements.

 

Q: Why did you set the story in 1968?

 

A: The late ‘60s are a time that I lived through, remember vividly, and find historically fascinating. On the one hand, this was a period of seismic social, political, and cultural change; on the other hand, it was still quite conservative in many ways.

 

It was a fluctuating and liminal time, which is an interesting context in which to set a story. So I made this novella about a girl living in this era, with all its complexities and contradictions.

 

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

 

A: I hope readers come away from reading Doubles with greater empathy and compassion for young people living in institutional care, not only in the past but in the present. Despite the good intentions of many professionals in the child welfare field, the system itself remains flawed and can be very damaging to the children and adolescents who are dependent on it.

 

I’d also like readers to come away from this novella with increased respect and compassion for young people in general. A 12-year-old, for example the narrator of Doubles, has considerable knowledge, and even wisdom, about the world, including the capacity to see through the lies, games, and pretenses of adults.

 

In a way, this book is a plea to take children and adolescents seriously, to not underestimate them, to recognize their dignity, fragility, strength, struggles, and beauty, and to treat them with the respect, compassion, and love they deserve.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’ve recently started something new, which will end up being either a story or another novella. I’m at the beginning of this new project and I’m enjoying it immensely.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I love the main character of Doubles. One doesn’t always love one’s characters, but I love this girl – her spunkiness, sensitivity, intelligence, sense of humour, strength, and truth-telling.

 

Like some many of us, she searches for, and fortunately finds, a language that can help her survive (in her case, the language of numbers and math). This whole novella, in a sense, is about the importance of language, and finding, or creating, an inner language through which we can tell our truth.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Nora Gold.