Q&A with author Evie Wyld

Evie Wyld is the author of the new novel All the Birds, Singing. She also has written After the Fire, A Still Small Voice. She grew up in Australia and London, and lives in London, where she runs the Review bookshop.

Q: How did you come up with your main character, Jake?

A: Jake emerged as I wrote the book - she took on quite a few different personalities, but as I discovered what had gone on in her life previous to us meeting her on the island, she sort of filled out and became the person she is now.

The two strands of the novel are in that way like a conversation with each other, the events in her life explaining her personality and her personality explaining to some degree the events in her life.

I was very clear that I didn’t want her to be there to aid a romantic storyline. Often female characters tend to be there in order to fall in love or to be fallen in love with. She’s got other stuff going on like the rest of us, and that was important to me. Also her anger - being one of the things that women are not allowed to experience, I wanted to explore her anger.

Q: Why did you decide to tell the story of Jake's past going backward in time?

A: Mainly because I thought the story was told best like that. That’s the only real reason for doing anything fancy with the structure. But also, the nature of memory is such that if there’s something you flinch away from, you wad it down with everything else first, pad it out with other memories so its sharp edges can’t get to you.

I also like the thing that happens when two moments that do not exist in real life next to each other are set against each other - in the same way that putting orange next to blue changes both of those colours - a third space is created which has everything to do with the reader.

Q: How was "All the Birds, Singing" chosen as the book's title?

A: It was just a line I liked that seemed to speak of how something beautiful can be overwhelming when there is too much of it. It came initially from an image I had of a bush fire and all the birds rising up just before it really gets going, trying to escape.

Q: What books are you recommending lately to your bookshop's customers?

A: Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson, Pollard by Laura Beatty, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan and The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’ve just finished a graphic novel with an artist that comes out in the UK next year, called Everything is Teeth, and I’m working on a third written novel, but it’s early days.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I run a bookshop in South London called Review -- here it is: http://www.reviewbookshop.co.uk/

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Sept. 7

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Sept. 7, 1885: Writer Elinor Wylie born.

Q&A with author Nayomi Munaweera

Nayomi Munaweera is the author of the novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors. Born in Sri Lanka, she lives in Oakland, California.

Q: How did you come up with your characters Yasodhara and Saraswathi?

A: I don’t really know how to answer this question. I think that the character comes to the writer when the writer is ready. Of course, some part of each of these characters is me -- but also it’s a matter of plugging into a different persona.

It’s a little like acting. You sort of inhabit or try to inhabit a different life, a different persona. It’s a little like being possessed. You walk around talking in various voices. It’s quite a strange process that I don’t really understand even as I engage in it.

Q: How was the book’s title selected?

A: It had a completely different working title that the original Sri Lankan publisher did not like. Then there were three agonizing months when the publishers, my editor, myself and my partner tried to name the book. We came up with 80 titles. Yes you read that right -- 80! I was losing my mind when we finally found the one that became the title.

Q: What kind of research did you do as you worked on the book?

A: There wasn’t a lot known about the Tamil Tigers when I was writing the book so that was what I most needed to research. As well as various aspects of Sri Lankan history. I needed to check when certain events in the war happened.

The novel is of course, fiction. But it also loosely follows the timeline of the war. There are historical moments, for example, the race riots in 1983, and for these moments I did extensive research -- mostly survivor accounts.

Q: Which authors have inspired you?

A: Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, Lionel Shriver, Margaret Atwood, Vladimir Nabokov, Arundhati Roy, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Shyam Selvadurai, Joyce Carol Oates, Milan Kundera.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: My second novel, which I am editing right now, is about the darker parts of American maternity. I can’t say more than that!

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Island of a Thousand Mirrors was a labor of love that took me five years to write and another five to publish. I do hope you will read it. So much love to the tribe of readers!

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Sept. 6

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Sept. 6, 1869: Writer Felix Salten born.

Q&A with author Susan Coll

Susan Coll is the author of the new novel The Stager. Her other novels are Beach Week, Acceptance, Rockville Pike, and karlmarx.com. She works at Politics & Prose bookstore, and she lives in Washington, D.C.

Q: Why did you choose a home stager as one of your main characters?

A: I’ve long been obsessed with trying to capture the way we live in contemporary suburbia, and the idea of home staging seemed especially rich with metaphor. The Stager’s goal is to create illusions about the way we live---or more accurately perhaps, the way we want to envision ourselves living.

I also love the symbolism of neat exteriors masking messy interior lives. Essentially a stranger comes into the home to strip it of personality, to symbolically declare that the house is no longer the emotional property of the homeowner.

Add to this already volatile emotional situation the fact that the Stager is presumably a complete stranger who has access to the very private realm that is one’s home.

When I had my own home staged at the behest of a Realtor, my admittedly dark imagination began to churn: what if the Stager was not a stranger? What if she had her own agenda? What if she was a person with no boundaries? What if she was an unreliable narrator, to boot? It seemed a delicious set up.

Q: Another important character is a rabbit. How did you come to write about him?

A: Oh Dominique! The rabbit really began as a comedic sidebar. There was a bad smell in the house, and it was caused by the rabbit chewing through the electrical cord of the freezer. This had happened to a friend, who had a destructive pet rabbit who kept chewing on things, including the carpet.

But as I wrote, the rabbit took on an increasingly important role. By the time I got to the end of the book this rabbit just inserted himself into the narrative. He wanted to tell his story. I stepped aside and let him do his thing.

Q: You wrote the book from the perspectives of some--but not all--of your protagonists. Why did you pick those particular perspectives?

A: I struggled with the point of view in this book through many drafts. Originally Elsa, the 10-year-old, did not have a speaking part. She was just a child in the room, sitting on the floor playing with her dolls.

I had written part of the narrative from Bella’s point of view, but at some point I decided I was less interested in what in what she had to say. I didn’t want to pass judgment on Bella, and in some ways I didn’t even want to know what was going on in her head, I was simply more interested in her as an archetype, and in the destruction she was wreaking on others.

But once I dropped Bella’s POV, I lost my way into certain important elements of the narrative. This led to one of the key comic conceits of the novel---Lars’ omniscient point of view, which is caused by mixing too many medications with the letters x, y, and z. I invented this side effect in order to get the reader into Bella’s head to tell us what was happening in real time.

Q: Which authors have inspired you?

A: At times I feel I am nothing more than the sum of what I have read: Everything I’ve ever read is lodged inside me somewhere, which is part of why I can’t give any of my books away, and my house may soon buckle from the weight.

But the simpler answer is that I love to read dark comedy. William Boyd’s A Good Man in Africa, Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, George Orwell’s Burmese Days, Zoe Heller’s Notes on a Scandal. I’m a huge fan of Cathleen Schine, who writes very smart but accessible fiction, so I was honored to have her write a blurb for the book.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I am taking a brief, blissful break until February and letting some material marinate for a few months. In February I will go off on a three-week writing residency and reboot---it’s the first time I’ve ever done this. I have been toying with some linked essays, which could be my first foray into nonfiction.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I feel quite fortunate right now to have a life and a job where I’m surrounded by books. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. For a previous Q&A with Susan Coll, please click here.

Q&A with author Mira Jacob

Mira Jacob, photo by In Kim

Mira Jacob is the author of the new novel The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing. She co-founded Pete's Reading Series in New York, and she lives in Brooklyn.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing?

A: Having come from a crazy family, I wanted to write about one, and specifically about a father who was going crazier than the rest, and receding from them in some way. So I set out to write that book, but in the middle, my father in real life started dying from cancer. The receding became horribly real. Too real, actually--I stopped working on the book for three years while that was happening--but then when I came back, I had a slightly different story to tell. 

Q: Why did you decide to tell the story from Amina's perspective?

A: When we meet her, Amina is in many ways a failed person--a photographer who took a picture that completely derailed her, and left her outside of her own life. And yet, as things get worse, she actually gets more interesting, more functional, more complicated. So her eyes seemed to be the best to view the story through. 

Q: How was the book's title selected?

A: I came up with it years ago--maybe eight? It's been called everything from "perfect" to  "lazy," both of which I take as a compliment. (Someone caring enough to have an opinion is a damn good thing, in my book.) 

Q: Which authors have influenced you?

A: You know, that's an answer that varies pretty much from week to week, depending on what I'm working on, so this week I'm going with Antonya Nelson, Sherman Alexie and the poet Joy Harjo. 

Q: What are you working on now?

A: RIGHT now--a short story and a graphic something-or-other. Novel? I don't know. Something or other. Oh yes, and another novel! I'm working on that, too. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Sept. 5

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Sept. 5, 1905: Writer Arthur Koestler born.