Q&A with Mo Daviau

  

 

 

Mo Daviau is the author of the new novel Epic and Lovely. She also has written the novel Every Anxious Wave. She lives in Portland, Oregon. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Epic and Lovely, and how did you create your character Nina?

 

A: Epic and Lovely has a few origin stories that all came together when I was extremely depressed during lockdowns in 2020.

 

The most important one: when I was 18, I was told by a genetic disorders specialist that a full-term pregnancy would likely kill me due to the ribcage deformity I have due to Marfan syndrome. This news did not devastate me. I did not want children and appreciated having the medical excuse.

 

Twenty years went by, and I visited another genetic disorders doctor and they asked how many children I had. This was a Marfan visit, so I was confused why I’d be asked that. The doctor very casually told me I could have carried a pregnancy if I’d wanted to!

 

Now, I don’t think that’s true for my case. My ribcage is a mess, and I have difficulty breathing on a good day. But the casualness of that response has stuck with me.

 

Nina has A12, which is a fictionalized “Marfan on steroids.” She knows she’s going to die around age 40, and she’s 39, so when her boyfriend gets her pregnant and she’s told, hey, you can try to carry this pregnancy, she does.

 

Nina is fearless and reckless because of her life-limiting diagnosis. Actual Marfan syndrome doesn’t kill you at any particular age, but I wanted Nina to have a clock ticking over her head.

 

There are a lot of reasons why she chooses to have the baby: as a gift to Dr. Chen, whom Nina loves and who always wanted to be a mother, and to keep her charismatic but nefarious boyfriend Cole around.

 

In the end, though, it’s this: she wants to prove to herself that unlike her mother, who is a superficial West Side of L.A. mom who was a great beauty, she would choose her child over a man. Which she does.

 

Q: The author Kimberly King Parsons said of the book, “Full of tenderness, dark humor, and aching vulnerability, Mo Daviau has written a stunning novel that asks how we choose to be remembered when our stories reach their inevitable conclusion.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I love Kim’s blurb. I think she’s one of the best blurb writers, honestly.

 

Nina has one last shot at how she’ll be remembered, but what she really wants is to be understood. She thought Cole would be the one who would understand her, since they are fellow travelers with the same physical deformities, life expectancy, and history of parental neglect. But as we soon learn, he’s not.

 

Nina’s funny and smart and she accepts her lot in life. She doesn’t necessarily want to stick around, she just wants someone, anyone, to see her, before it’s too late. It is tender, dark, and achingly vulnerable, but Nina’s not in a position to hold herself back.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: The ending in the book was rewritten at the last minute, at the request of the editorial team at West Virginia University Press. They felt that for such a dark book, it would be better to have the happier ending the reader deserved. I thought that was the right call, so I lightened things up.

 

During the two years I spent writing it, I didn’t really have an ending in mind, though. I don’t plot before I write. I just go.

 

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

 

A: In 2020, when I was trapped alone in an apartment during lockdowns, I was losing my mind. It was in a full mental health emergency, but I didn’t want to go to the hospital and risk getting Covid, so I stayed inside.

 

I wrote an incantation that I would repeat to keep myself from going to an even darker mental space: may my future be so epic and lovely as if to be divine. When it came time to choose a title, that seemed appropriate.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Two novels simultaneously!

 

One is a follow-up (not really a sequel) to my first novel, Every Anxious Wave, which is a favorite of over-40 dads in band T-shirts. Patton Oswalt says Every Anxious Wave is his favorite book, and so I figured since I know who my readership is, I’ll write them another indie rock-flavored meditation on getting older and changing and letting go of the past.

 

The other has a very commercial, stylized premise, but it’s a reverse rewrite of Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel Generation X. If you’re over 40 and wearing a band T-shirt, I’m writing for you!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Epic and Lovely was written for people who have been through emotionally abusive relationships.

 

Circa 2015, I spent a lot of time in narcissistic/emotional abuse survivor online groups, where I made friends going through the same thing who helped me heal. Cole is the amalgamation of hundreds of stories of abusive relationships that, after a while, began to sound the same, and sounded like my story.

 

I’m now very happily married to a wonderful man, but it took me a long time to heal and work on myself such that I could form a relationship with someone loving and kind.

 

Writing this novel was a way to cast out some demons, as it were, but also to bring light to a fairly common experience that forced me to reckon with a lot of my own experiences and beliefs. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb