Q&A with Rachel Beanland

  

 

 

Rachel Beanland is the author of the new novel The Half Life. Her other books include Florence Adler Swims Forever. She lives in Richmond, Virginia. 

 

Q: How much was your new novel inspired by your own experiences living in Italy as a child?

 

A: A good bit! My family lived in La Maddalena, Italy, from 1986 to 1988, when my father was stationed on the USS Orion. I was f5 years old when we moved to the island and 7 years old when we moved away, and I attended the Istituto San Vincenzo for kindergarten and the American elementary school, Vista Mare, for first grade.

 

Obviously, I wasn’t getting into half the trouble Eileen finds herself in, but many of the more sensory details in the book come from my own experiences.

 

The years my family spent in La Maddalena were happy ones, and when I returned to the island 31 years later, on a vacation, I was struck by how much had changed. The last American submarine tender left La Maddalena in 2008, and I realized I wanted to write about this community of Italians and Americans who had—for a time—lived side by side.

 

Q: How did you create your character Eileen?

 

A: I knew I wanted to set the story in the mid-'70s, which was a tumultuous time on the island, and I decided pretty early on that I would write the novel in one point-of-view (my previous two novels are multiple POV).

 

I wanted to follow a “Navy wife,” who would understand some (but not all) of what was happening on the submarine tender and would also be witness to the island’s growing unrest, particularly as she gets to know a group of scientists and activists who are fighting to get the Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines out of the archipelago.

 

Eileen is young and newly married and has no idea who she is, let alone what it means to commit herself to another person. She’s never been anywhere, and so when she arrives in La Maddalena, she’s unprepared for the ways the island will change her.

 

Q: The writer Brian Castleberry said of the novel, “This is a book about losing and finding yourself and having the courage to choose who you will be in this world...” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Brian’s good with words, so I’ll take just about anything he wants to say about my work, but yes…I think this description is particularly accurate.

 

I was really interested in writing about early marriages and this idea that, when you marry young, you’re still growing into the person you’ll eventually become.

 

Eileen has made a lot of grown-up decisions…to drop out of college, to marry Paul, to move with him to a remote Italian island, but that doesn’t mean she’s figured out who she is or what she wants. And for her to do that, well, it’s not going to come without a pretty big reckoning.

 

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

 

A: Coming up with the title, The Half Life, was a group effort! I sold the book with a different title, and then we spent the better part of a year batting around title ideas.

 

When we settled on The Half Life, I was thrilled because I felt like it was a nod to multiple aspects of the book. There was real concern about the presence of nuclear byproducts in the Mediterranean Sea, and of course, if the nuclear byproducts have long half-lives, it’s worse for everyone. But also, until Eileen figures out who she is and what she wants, she’ll only ever be living half a life.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: It’s too soon to say anything about the novel I’m working on now, but I think it’s safe to say I’m moving into the present day, while still managing to give a nice tip of the hat to the past.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Just that I feel lucky to be watching my third novel come into the world. Florence Adler Swims Forever, The House Is on Fire, and now The Half Life are all very different books, but what connects them is my curiosity and my desire to tell stories you haven’t read before.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Rachel Beanland.