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August 7, 2007 6:07 PM

Alice Sebold interview

I have in my sweaty (seriously - it's way too humid!) little hands an advance copy of Alice Sebold's new book, The Almost Moon. I've had a little look  at the first page and synopsis and am *very* excited to start reading it soon. Very!

We'll have a review for you nearer the time of release (October) but in the meantime, we have permission to re-print this interview with the author, which I think you'll find interesting. Enjoy!

What was it like to sit down to write a second novel after the success of The Lovely Bones?

I think all novels are a struggle, and after a big success, that still holds true. I think the plus for me was that I could pay my bills, which is huge, and people need to state right off if they've had any level of success. I can get ready-made sandwiches from a good deli instead of eating Goya chickpeas from the can. The other side of it is the increased pressure to follow up your success with another. But my definition of success has always been to write a book I believe in and to stay true to character, so no matter what, I feel very solid going out with Moon. As a writer you are responsible only for what is between hard covers. The rest you can't control. I had a subject that was haunting me, and I waited for the voice of my main character to run clear so I could tell it. As soon as I had Helen, I had my engine. Then it was just the daily unpredictable hell ride from that point forward to get it right.

What do you hope readers will take away from The Almost Moon?

I want readers to enter the reality and experience of my main character, Helen, and to take the ride with her, as it were, even if it takes them into uncomfortable or unimaginable places. To have those unimaginable and dark places more fully queried and understood by the end of the novel. The Almost Moon is asking some pretty intense questions about the relationship between love and duty, what you owe to others versus what you must do to have your own identity in the world. It is a book very much about the dangers of self-erasure.

Helen Knightly is a very different character from Susie Salmon. How was the experience of writing her different from writing Susie? Do you think readers will find it more challenging to embrace her?

Helen is a complex character. Though her actions are, on the face of it, hard to understand, the challenge for me was that, if done right, the reader might be able to see how she had gotten to this place and have compassion for her. I love Helen as I loved Susie, and I see her as I did Susie — someone strong and outside my own creation somehow, even though obviously I wrote the book and I created the character and her world. She is funny, wry, strong, and very broken in what I hope will feel like an utterly human way.

Both of your novels start with a shocking first chapter and a strong voice that hits you right away. Did you write them this way intentionally?

I believe the story should invite a reader in immediately, so my books begin directly. Neither Susie nor Helen has a lot of time to waste, and they let you know right off who they are and how they got there. Maybe this reflects my own hatred of small talk in real life. I've always preferred someone who answers the question "How are you?" with a response like "I feel like hell. My wife left me yesterday." This allows us to get to the heart of the matter, which is what human communication is about. In the book Helen says she hates the phrase "No worries," and every time I find myself using it, I think of how Helen would detest me for it! Who has no worries? It is such a lie!

Both books deal with family — troubled or dysfunctional. Why is family such a concern for you in your writing?

Though modern fiction is full these days of what I think of as high jinks narratives that splice and dice and somehow put family on the back burner, family is who we are. I don't mean this in a reverent or saccharine manner but in the idea that, for good and for bad, we cannot escape our family. They define us even if we work against what they give us or tell us or how they behave. It is a brutal reality: there is no escape, and in encountering that truth, I think writers have endless possibilities to encounter central human truths about identity, love, hate, loneliness, loss, and joy. All of it, every truth we eventually experience, exists within the idea of family first, and how it, or the lack of it, has shaped an individual's mind.

Originally published online here. Reprinted with kind permission.

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Posted by DIANE SHIPLEY on August 7, 2007 in American Authors, Book related, Interviews, Modern Fiction, New Releases | Permalink

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