John W. Farrell is the author of the new novel An Uncommon Descent. His other books include The Clock and the Camshaft. Also a journalist, he is based in Boston.
Q: What inspired you to write An Uncommon Descent, and how did you create your character Nora?
A: What initially inspired me was the fact that novels about how science is done are few and far between. And novels about evolutionary biologists in particular, so I thought it would be a challenge to tell the story of an experiment, from beginning to end, with all the pitfalls, false starts, and complications that a real project would entail.
Nora was sort of waiting there for me. I had begun a story about her, finding this odd “haunted” piece of china in such an unlikely remote place, but did not yet know she was a scientist. They came together as I began to outline the science plotline.
Q: The novel is set in New Hampshire’s White Mountains--how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: It's very important. I think my imagination tends to work cinematically. So right from the beginning, I feel drawn to stories in which the landscape is almost one of the characters.
Whenever I go traveling and discover new places, new landscapes, I instinctively wonder, What happened here? What *could* have happened here--not just in terms of history, but in terms of people themselves.
Q: The author Margot Singer said of the book, “With deep insight and intelligence, An Uncommon Descent reveals the hard work and blind leaps of imagination, empathy, and faith that lie at the true heart of science.” What do you think of that description?
A: I feel like it's true to what I was trying to do in the narrative: To show that scientists, like everyone else in all walks of life, have to weather roadblocks and dead ends in their work, often though not always, complicated by their own personal lives and questions. But also sometimes resolved by them, too.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The title came relatively late. I wanted to sort of riff on the familiar term of common descent, from Darwin, because it's a novel about evolutionary biologists. But I also wanted to highlight Nora's predicament at the outset of the story, her feeling of professional exile, an uncommon descent, from what she was accustomed to.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A number of short stories I'm circulating for publication, and a science mystery/thriller novel that's still very much in revision stage (I fear there are too many characters and too many subplots at this stage).
I have finished a play about the last days of Thomas Aquinas, which I'm hoping to have staged soon. It was inspired during the writing of my book on medieval technology, The Clock and the Camshaft.
We've had staged readings in the development process over the past couple of years, but now I feel like it's ready for a full production. But that's a whole process of its own, very different (and more stressful) than the writing process.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I'm looking forward to the audiobook of the novel. You can become all too familiar with your own text after working on it for so long, until you hear it in the voice of a total stranger. I think that's when you really appreciate that a book has taken on a life of its own.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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