Book Review: The Gondola Maker by Laura Morelli

Title: The Gondola Maker by Laura Morelli
Paperback published March 3, 2014
Genre: historical fiction

First paragraph: I chew my lower lip while I wait to see my father's gondola catch fire. 

Page 56: I have done my best to stay hidden during daylight hours, observing, waiting - for what, I cannot say. 

A young boy, Luca, has accidentally caused the burning of his family's boat making factory after a fight with his father. He runs off to stay with an old friend, an oar maker, but soon disappears to become a gondolier for a well known artist, ferrying the artist to his various appointments and running errands by boat.

The novel is more than a coming-of-age story set among boat makers and gondoliers in 16th century Venice. It tells how Luca grows up to learn to handle responsibility, gets to know a world outside that of his small town, and falls in love. He discovers an old boat produced by his family in years past and sets out to restore and repair it, improving his boat making skills and working on making his own oars. How he handles misfortune, disappointment, even imprisonment, and how he redeems himself is the crux of the novel.

The setting is detailed and the atmosphere and feel of Venice is well done. We are immersed in the surroundings and lives of Venice's gondoliers and how they handle their boats, the techniques of boat makers and their exacting craft, and the skill needed to make boats of the highest quality boats.

I was captivated by the story and easily slipped into the Venice of the 16th century. The author has artfully woven Luca's story into the historical fabric of the times. I learned a lot about gondolas of the time, the laws of the city regarding boat making, and much more. My objective rating for this fascinating historical novel: 5/5.


Author's Bio:
Laura Morelli holds a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University, and has taught college-level art history in the US and Europe. Laura is the author of Made in Italy, Made in France, and Made in the Southwest (Rizzoli). The Gondola Maker is her first work of fiction. Visit her at Laura Morelli Facebook Twitter

For a list of other reviews of the book, visit iRead Book Tours
I received a complimentary review copy of the book for this tour.

Here is a Q and A that will tell us more about Laura and her writing.

1. Where are you from?

I grew up on a farm in Georgia. It was a wonderful childhood, climbing trees, riding horses, playing in the barn with cows and chickens, fishing in the lake. There were not many kids around so I learned to be independent. I read everything I could get my hands on; the used bookstore in town was one of my favorite spots. I still remember the smell of it! I always had the idea that I would write books, and I dreamt of writing a novel for as long as I can remember.

How did you start writing?

I was educated as an art historian. Those of us in academia are trained to write in a specialized style that comes across as dry and dull, full of terminology that is inaccessible to all but those of us who spend many years studying the field. In the end, this kind of writing strips out the passion that is so inherent in the arts, even though of course I hold great respect for the rigor of scholarship and those who publish exclusively in academia. Art history is the most fascinating subject in the world!

 I realized that I enjoyed writing for a more general audience and that I had an opportunity to bring art history to a wider audience through my writing. I try to bring both the knowledge as well as the excitement of art history to my readers. I  also try to capture the excitement and passion I felt when I first discovered the history of art. 

3. How did you do research for The Gondola Maker?

The foundational research that went into The Gondola Maker was actually conducted for another book. I didn’t plan it that way! While I was writing Made in Italy, I traveled all over Italy, from the Alps to the islands, talking with contemporary artisans who still practice centuries-old traditions like Murano glass, Florentine leather, Sicilian ceramics, Roman gold smithing, and of course, Venetian gondolas. Over and over, the people I interviewed emphasized how important it was to pass the torch of tradition to the next generation. I began to wonder what would happen—especially centuries ago—if the successor were not able… or willing. The character of the gondola maker and his son began to take shape in my head.

As I began to work on The Gondola Maker, it was an opportunity to take a deeper dive into the primary historical sources about the history of the gondola, the world of the guilds or arti, and Venetian boatmen in Renaissance Venice. Historically, Venetians were well aware of their position in the world and so there are a lot of historical sources from which to draw, although private boatmen and other domestic servants only appear incidentally in the historical record, sometimes in reference to a crime or other infraction.

4. What other books have you written?

I’ve written a series of specialty guidebooks with the goal of leading travelers beyond the tourist traps to discover authentic local traditions and artists, and come home with great treasures in their suitcases. My focus in on cultural immersion through a greater appreciation of art objects and the people who make them.  

5. What are you currently writing?

I am working on revised editions of my books, Made in Italy and Made in France, and am also writing a series of small guides that lead travelers to discover authentic arts in specific cities and regions of Europe. Venice will be the first!

Other relevant information and links:

2014 IPPY AWARD FOR BEST ADULT FICTION E-BOOK
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 DA VINCI EYE PRIZE

Author Q & A: Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Friday 56 Rules: *Grab a book, any book, and post a sentence from page 56. Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also Book Beginnings by Rose City Reader.

Oleander Girl

Page 56: Eighteen years lost already - I can't waste any more time. The need to find out everything about my parents, suddenly, is like an ache in my bones, a deep deficiency.

Opening paragraph: I am swimming through a long, underwater cavern flecked with blue light, the cavern of love, with Rajat close behind me. We're in a race, and so far I'm winning because this is my dream. Sometimes, when I'm dreaming, I don't know it. But tonight I do. Sometimes when I'm awake, I wonder if I'm dreaming. That, however, is another story. 

A Conversation with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni about Oleander Girl,  a sweeping, suspenseful coming-of-age tale about a young woman who leaves India for America on a search that will transform her life.

How did you become a writer? Did you always know you wanted to be one?

Growing up in India, I never thought I'd be a writer. I didn't believe I had either the talent or the drive or a special story to tell. But immigration thrust me into a whole different world which was at once exciting and disconcerting in its newness. I wrote to make sense of my new life, and to remember the life that I had left behind.

You often set your books in India. What attracts you to the Indian landscape?

The landscape of one's childhood imprints itself upon the heart. In my case, that was India. Add to that the fact that Indian culture is old and complex and currently, due to globalization, undergoing a rapid transformation, and you have possibilities for many stories. In Oleander Girl, for instance, the two protagonists, Korobi and Rajat, come from very different families. Korobi's is steeped in tradition; Rajat's is westernized and newly rich. When Korobi and Rajat fall in love, this will lead to many complications.

A family secret lies at the heart of Oleander Girl. What made you decide to focus on this?

My own family had a dark secret of its own. When I discovered it, it turned my life upside down. I felt betrayed by the people I had trusted all my life—and yet I couldn't stop loving them. I wanted to explore these painful, contradictory feelings through Korobi's situation. She is braver than I was—she traveled across the world in search of that secret.

Do you write your books in English, or in some other language?

I write all my books in English. My mother-tongue is Bengali, but English was the language of my schooling. I read Bengali fluently, and when my mother was alive I wrote letters to her in that language. She told me once that it was a good thing I didn't write anything else in Bengali! (I think my vocabulary is at the 6th grade level). I do participate, though, when my books are translated into Bengali.

Oleander Girl is set in the year 2002. Why did you decide on this time period?

An important question in Oleander Girl is how can we live in amity with difference, both racial and religious? The year 2002 illustrates the price we have to pay when we choose not to do so.  In 2002, in the U.S., people were suffering the aftermath of 9/11—both the tragedy of the deaths in the Towers and elsewhere, and the violent fear and prejudice that swept the nation and affected the lives of many Americans who looked like I do. In India, 2002 was the year of the terrible Godhra Riots that led to deadly clashes between Hindus and Muslims.

How did you come up with the title of this novel? In what way is it central to the theme of the book?

The heroine Korobi's name means Oleander in Bengali. From childhood, Korobi wants to know why her mother, who dies in childbirth, would want to name her after a flower that is beautiful but poisonous. She will discover the answer at the end, and along with that she will understand what kind of woman her mother wanted her to be. And this—how women need to balance between what they owe others and what they owe themselves—is an important theme in the novel.

 

What are you working on now?

I'm working on a novel that is a re-working of our famous epic, The Ramayana. I am re-telling it from the point of view of Sita, the central woman character. The teller of the tale changes the meaning of the tale. By putting a woman at the center of an epic adventure, I hope to draw attention to different issues and make readers re-evaluate their beliefs about what is heroic.

About the Author

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the author of The Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, and The Vine of Desire; two short story collections, Arranged Marriage and The Unknown Errors of Our Lives; four volumes of poetry; and an award-winning novel for young readers, The Conch Bearer. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Times. Winner of an American Book Award, she teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster for providing this Q &A.

Interview with Matthew Dunn, author of the spy novel, Slingshot

My review of the political thriller Slingshot has this accompanying Q and A with British author Matthew Dunn which was not posted but which I am now printing here.

About Slingshot: Master spy Will Cochrane must catch a missing Russian defector as well as one of Europe’s deadliest assassins in this action-packed follow-up to previous novels in the series, Spycatcher and Sentinel.

Former MI6 agent and author of the Spycatcher series, Matthew Dunn gives readers a peek into his former life.

 1. How did you conceive of the character Will Cochrane? How is he like you, at least you when you were working? How is he different?

 I wanted to create a character who personified the reality of intelligence work that operatives do in the field – the loneliness, the requirement to make tough decisions on the ground without being able to call for support from headquarters, the moral ambiguities of those decisions, the strong intellectual prowess, and the relentless mindset. An operative also needs a tough body, yet one that can be filled with both love and respect for the people around him. Cochrane is a lot like me when I was in MI6, though his family background is different. I’m now ten years older than he is, have two children, am recently married, and write for a living. I’m no longer Will Cochrane.

 2. Do you see writing spy novels as a way to shed light on popular misconceptions or educate readers about the realities of international politics today?

 In essence, there are two primary activities of spy agencies: the long-game of running foreign spies to obtain intelligence that can inform the foreign policies of the agency’s government; and covert, frequently extremely violent, paramilitary actions. The primacy of either activity ebbs and flows depending on the circumstances of the times. During the Cold War, all sides knew that pulling a gun was counterproductive as there was a standoff on all levels. Since then, things have been very different and that was reflected in my work as an operative, though I was also very involved in the running of foreign assets and at one time was living under deep cover with 15 different alias identities. My novels are fiction of course, but they reflect what can and does happen in the field, all of which never makes the papers unless something goes terribly wrong. Even then there are mechanisms in place to block or misdirect public scrutiny. The biggest misconception about the reality of espionage is that it is not exciting and extremely dangerous. That is very wrong. My novels reflect the realities of being in the field. I have no point to make, beyond telling it how it is.

 3. While you probably can’t get too specific about this, how do you translate your experiences as an MI6 agent into the scenes and characters in your novels?

 One of the joys of writing fiction is that I can disguise my experiences inside a fictional tale. In SLINGSHOT, you’ll read about real events and people. The names of the people have obviously been changed, and the events take place in different locations and under different circumstances. I will leave it to readers to attempt to deduce truth from fiction. When I write, I see everything through the prism of being an MI6 officer. A frequent question I will ask myself is, “what would I have done?’ It’s a useful question and there is often no right or wrong answer, just as it is in the field when you’re an operative and you’re faced with intractable problems. Will Cochrane makes mistakes, as I have done in real life, has to recover from those mistakes, and has to keep going. The people I write about are similar to people I know. The events are similar to those that I and others have been in. That’s the world I know. I concede it’s very different from the world that most others know.

 4. From James Bond to Will Cochrane, what do you think accounts for the timeless appeal of fiction featuring dashing spies?

 Though I never wrote the Spycatcher series with comparisons in mind to Bond (or for that matter, at the opposite end of the spectrum, John le Carré’s George Smiley), it is understandable that comparisons are made. I write my novels with a contemporary and very precise understanding of espionage and for that reason Cochrane is different to other fictional espionage characters. Regardless, all share in common a dislocation from the real world in favor of an understanding of a very real, yet secret world that is all pervasive and often deadly. Such characters' ability to operate in that world, and to be supremely intelligent, often charming, frequently deadly, is very intriguing. But more than that, I think the ability of operatives to be chameleons has a tremendous appeal. Readers want to know who they really are. That is a challenge.

5. SLINGSHOT concerns some of the Cold War “loose ends” left behind in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. What do you think most people don’t know about what’s going on in that part of the world today?

 Most people don't understand the threat from foreign states. Right now, Russia, Iran, the Israel/Palestine conundrum, China, North Korea, and Syria are the biggest threats to world peace. Terrorism pales in comparison to what these states can do. After the collapse of communism, Russia re-built itself on a capitalist platform. It is aggressive to the West and, alongside China, does not want to be a responsible world power, as evidenced by its repeated vetoes in UN Security Council proposed resolutions to stop genocide in places like Syria. The nuclear powers who have the capability to destroy the world are the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China. Three of those "big 5" are responsible. Two are not.

 6. What are Will Cochrane’s greatest weaknesses as a spy and as a person?

 Cochrane has a huge heart and yearns for another life, particularly with a woman who would love him for who he truly is. This is his strength, rather than weakness, but of course - in the world in which he operates - love and compassion are honorable traits that evil men will use against him.

 7. Could a frightening story like the one in SLINGSHOT actually take place today?

 Something similar and dreadful nearly took place. I know, but can't reveal details.

 8. There are a few pivotal roles played by women in SLINGSHOT: a retired operative named Betty who’s brought in on a vital assist; and a whip-smart CIA analyst named Suzy. Did these women come to life entirely from your imagination? Or did you work in the field with women like these?

 I've met some of the bravest women and men in the world. Gender doesn't differentiate them; they are the same breed of unique animal. I can't give you details of specifics about people I knew beyond one anecdote.

 During one of my trips to MI6's training facility, I walked off the shooting range and confronted an old woman. It was common to meet unusual people in the facility as we often received briefings from Cold War warriors, for example, from both sides of the Western/USSR fence in order to inform the contemporary work we did. But I'd never seen this woman before. She asked me what I was doing and I told her that I'd just been testing a new customized handgun. She immediately had a look of horror and said, "Guns terrify me!". I smiled, walked her to the range and showed her how to shoot it. She took the gun from me and, ignoring my instructions to position the weapon at eye-level, then held the gun against her belly and fired five shots at the target. All hit a tiny radius around the target that any Special Forces operative would have been proud to strike. I asked her how she did it, given she looked as fragile and as old as my grandmother. She didn’t answer, but just smiled and walked off.

 That evening I found out she was a former British Special Operations Executive officer who'd been parachuted into Nazi-occupied France and the Netherlands, who'd blown up German transportation lines, had - together with the resistance civilians she'd rallied - killed hundreds of Nazis, and had ultimately been captured by the Gestapo who put her in dungeons, brutally tortured her, before sending her to an extermination camp.

 Men and woman, young and old, risk their lives every day by operating in the secret world. I know many of them, and in my novels you'll meet some of them as well. Women like Betty and Suzy existed. SLINGSHOT is my heartfelt homage to them. --
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What do you think of the interview and the author's world view? Do you agree with Mr. Dunn  about the political world as it is now?

For reviews of Slingshot, visit the Partners in Crime Book Tour schedule.

Author Khanh Ha, guest post

Welcome to Khanh Ha, author of the historical novel Flesh (Black Heron Press, 2012) set in early 20th century Vietnam. He gives us the background and inspiration for his book and the family history that impels this story.  He also discusses his upcoming and second novel.
Flesh

The Ideas and Inspiration Behind It

by Khanh Ha

Flesh, is set in Tonkin (now northern Vietnam) at the turn of the 20th century. It tells the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who witnesses the execution, by beheading of his father, a notorious bandit and sets out to recover his father’s head, and then finds the man who betrayed his father to the authorities.

A coming-of-age story of brutal self-awakening and also a tender love story, takes the reader into places, both dark and wonderful, in the human condition where allies are not always your friends, true love hurts, and your worst enemy can bring you the most solace. As its author, I was asked what inspired me to write about this specific subject.

There was an image formed in my mind after I read a book called War and Peace in Hanoi and Tonkin, which was written by a French military doctor. In one chapter he depicted an execution by capital punishment. The scene took place on a wasteland outside Hanoi. This bandit was beheaded for his crime while the onlookers, some being his relatives with children, watched in muted fascination and horror. While reading it, I imagined a boy—his son—was witnessing the decapitation of his father by the hand of the executioner. I pictured him and his mother as they collected the body without the head which the government would display at the entrance of the village his father had looted. I thought what if the boy later set out to steal the head so he could give his father an honorable burial. What if he got his hand on the executioner’s sabre and used it to kill the man who betrayed his father for a large bounty. However, it really started with a story within my family.  My mom told me that my grandfather was one of the last mandarins of the Hue Court, circa 1930.

At that time the Vietnamese communists were coming into power. They condemned any person a traitor, who worked either for the French or the Hue Court. So my grandpa was a traitor in their eye. One day news came to him that a communist gathering was to be held in one of the remote villages from Hue. He set out to that village with some of his bodyguards to punish the communists. Unfortunately, news leaked out about his trip. He was ambushed on the road—his bodyguards were killed—and he was beheaded. The communists threw his body into a river.

My grandma hired a witch doctor to look for his headless body. Eventually the witch doctor found it. They were able to identify his body based on the ivory name tablet in his tunic. My grandma hired someone to make a fake head out of a coconut shell wrapped in gilded paper and buried my grandpa on the Ngu Binh Mountain. The beheading of grandpa surfaced again while I was reading the decapitation scene in War and Peace in Hanoi and Tonkin.

I spend much, much time in researching before I write. I’m a perfectionist and the harshest critic of myself. I have to know everything about what I’m going to write—well, sort of—before I ever pen the first word. Indeed much research was done before I felt dead sure about writing it.

More than once I was asked if I’m currently busy with a work-in-progress.

Yes, I’m about done with my next novel. But I rarely talk about what I’m working on. It may sound like a hard-line stance. But well, I can give you a harmless description. When I was still a struggling young writer, I came across a very old Vietnamese magazine article written about a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Hue. He was already dead the year the story was published, circa 1966. Two years before I was born. A sketchy story whose facts were gleaned from the eunuch’s adopted daughter, that ended with a small halftone photograph of her portrait. I put the article away. But I couldn’t put the story away, even months after. It dawned on me then that it wasn’t the story.

It was the face in the photograph. I traveled to Hue, Vietnam in the summer of 1991. I was 23. I went with her image in the photograph and when I finally met her, the eunuch’s daughter, that image hadn’t changed. She was someone like a forbidden love to a young man half her age. The first time she gave me a glimpse of her past from her spotted memory, it was in a sugarcane field where two decades earlier, her lover—a young American—had died in her arms.

Thanks to the author for this very interesting post. For reviews of his book, visit Virtual Author Book Tours.

About the book:  
The title refers to temptation-the temptation of the flesh. But it refers equally to the obligations of kinship, the connections between us and those to whom we are related, even if we would choose not to be. 

Khanh Ha was born in Hue, the former capital of Vietnam. During his teen years, he began writing short stories, which won him several awards in the Vietnamese adolescent magazines. He graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism. FLESH (Black Heron Press, June 2012) is his first novel (literary fiction).

Visit the author at: http://www.authorkhanhha.com

Thanks to Teddy Rose at Virtual Author Book Tours for this guest post by the author.

To see my July 26, 2012 comments on the book, visit my Review.

Author Interview: Paul Levine, the Solomon and Lord legal thrillers

Paul Levine is author of the “Solomon and Lord” legal thrillers--
Solomon vs. Lord, The Deep Blue Alibi, Kill All the Lawyers, Habeas Porpoise (formerly titled Trial & Error).

The books were nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, and James Thurber awards, and have been released as Kindle Exclusives.

         
Q: “Solomon vs. Lord” opens with the lyrics from an old Frank Sinatra song called “But I Loved You.” That’s a little odd for a legal thriller, isn’t it?

A:Would you like me to sing a verse?

Q:Only if you must.


A:“Opposites attract, the wise men claim, Still I wish that we had been a little more the same,It might have been a shorter war.”


 Q: So, is it a thriller with humor or a mystery with romance?

A: A legal thriller with humor. A dramedy.

Q: If you had to compare the story to earlier works...?

A: Shakespeare, of course.

Q: Of course.

A. Seriously.  The ‘opposites attract’ set-up goes all the way back to “The Taming of the Shrew.”  Then there’s Dashiell Hammett’s “The Thin Man.”  “The Bickersons” on radio.  “Moonlighting” on television. Two people love-hate each other.  Life sizzles when they’re together, fizzles when they’re apart.

Q: Let’s look at the book’s teaser: 

          “Victoria Lord follows all the rules...

Steve Solomon makes up his own...

bed.”

Does that leave anything out?

A: All the kinky sex.

Q:  We’re not sure if you’re being serious.

A:  Totally.  My working title was “Fifty Shades of Plaid.”

Q: One reviewer described the book as “Carl Hiaasen meets John Grisham in the court of last retort.”  Fair assessment?

A: I probably bring humor to my work because, as a trial lawyer, I saw so much nuttiness in the courtroom.

Q: In “The Deep Blue Alibi,” there’s a chapter at a Florida nudist resort.  Is it fair to ask how you researched the scene?

A: Like Jackie Chan, I do my own stunts.

Q: What about the title?  Are you paying homage to John D. MacDonald’s “The Deep Blue Good-Bye?”

A: “Homage?” That’s French for cheese, isn’t it?

Q: Now you’re being facetious.

A: That’s what they pay me for.

Q: Let’s be serious.  You’ve won the John D. MacDonald Fiction award.  You’re not denying his influence on you.

A: After I moved to Florida, I read all of MacDonald’s Travis McGee books.  When I wrote my first Jake Lassiter novel (“To Speak for the Dead”), one of my first fan letters was from John D. MacDonald’s son. I think JDM nailed Florida’s weirdness and corruption.

Q: Does that explain the title of your third Solomon & Lord novel, “Kill All the Lawyers?”   A combination of Shakespeare and MacDonald.

A: As lawyers constantly point out, that line was spoken by a villain in “Henry VI.” The guy wanted to overthrow the government, and killing all the lawyers seemed like a good place to start.

Q: While we’re on the topic of titles–

A: Which you seem to be obsessed with.

Q: What about “Habeas Porpoise?”

A.  I didn’t steal that one from Shakespeare.

Q: Or anyone else.  That would seem to be original.

A: Here’s the story.  When Bantam published the book, my editors rejected the title as too funny.  Now, the story opens with two highly trained dolphins being kidnapped by some hapless animal rights people, so I thought “funny” was okay.  But we settled on “Trial & Error” for the book. When I got the rights back for e-book publication, I restored the original name.

Q:  Tell us about your background.  Your education.

A: At Penn State, I majored in journalism.  At the University of Miami Law School, I majored in the swimming pool.

Q: You’ve been a successful television writer. What advice would you give to people who want to break into Hollywood?

A: Marry a blood relative of Jerry Bruckheimer or J.J. Abrams.

Q: Lacking that, when aspiring authors or screenwriters sit down at the computer, what should they be writing?

A: Ransom notes, maybe? Look, it’s really hard to break into the business. Some people suggest writing a spec script. But that’s a tough route.  Years ago, Elmore Leonard said, “Writing a script and sending it to Hollywood is like drawing a picture of a car and sending it to Detroit.” So I’d recommend entry level positions as assistants or script readers.  In the TV business, assistants sometimes manage to sell a script to the show they’re working on.

Q: Any last words about “Solomon vs. Lord?”

A: I wasn’t kidding about the kinky sex.

More information on Paul Levine’s website: http://www.paul-levine.com

Thanks to Wiley Sachek of Authors on the Web for this interview.

Author interview: Erin Kelly, The Dark Rose

Erin Kelly

Author of

THE DARK ROSE

Pamela Dorman / Viking
Publication: February 6, 2012

Q: Is any part of THE DARK ROSE autobiographical, or is it wholly imagined?  

A.  Of course parts of me leak into my characters. I can only tell you about the aspects I am conscious of. I’m sure there are more. As one British reviewer recently told me, ‘Your readers know you better than you know yourself.’

The Dark Rose is told from the alternating points of view of 19-year-old Paul and Louisa, the older woman who eventually becomes his lover. Both of them embody different aspects of me at various times in my life. 

Like Louisa, in my late teens I was a sucker for anything that was prefaced by the word ‘alternative’, whether music, therapy or religion, and it was great fun revisiting those years. I also had a terrible weakness for pretty boys who wanted to be rock stars, although in my case that did not prove fatal.

And like Paul, I grew up in Essex, the infamous county to the east of London that follows the Thames out to the North Sea. My home was bookish and sensitive, but the wider culture there is neither of those things, and when I was writing him I drew on memories of isolation that I sometimes felt growing up.

Q.  Most of us have flirted with dangerous situations or people during adolescent and young adult years, but few pay the price that your protagonists, Paul and Louisa do? What inspired you to write about adolescence?

A.  Late adolescence is when life really begins; those years are a perfect storm of freedom and curiosity, responsibility and impulsiveness. Life has not yet blunted the edges of our passion so little wonder we cut ourselves from time to time.

On a more practical level, during this period, life is relatively transient and that suited my plot. Without mortgages, careers or families to tie them down, my characters could easily uproot themselves, run away, begin new lives, and hide. 

Q.  Why did you choose the backdrop of a sixteenth-century English garden as the backdrop for this novel? Can you explain the title in the context of having chosen this as your setting?

A.  I’ve always found inspiration in ancient places, and a few years ago I was walking in the gardens at Cawdor Castle in Scotland, when I found half-hidden in the grounds, a battered old VW Camper Van. The juxtaposition between this modern vehicle and the centuries-old garden got me thinking. What sort of person would stay in a place like that? Are they part of the life of the castle or separate from it? What’s their story? From there the character of Louisa slowly grew. She is so scarred by her past that she has rejected all the comforts and threats of contemporary life, content to immerse herself in history rather than deal with the present. This suited her character but also worked on a practical, plot-serving level. It’s not easy these days to live off-grid or under the radar, to remain untraceable, but when we meet Louisa at the beginning of the story, that is just what she has done. 
 
Kelstice Lodge, the ruined Elizabethan hall whose garden Louisa is restoring, is my own invention, but is loosely based on a similar project at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire. It’s a huge, eerie place. Its crumbling red stone walls have witnessed blood-curdling scenes more powerful and violent than anything I could invent. While I was thinking about Louisa’s character, I happened to see a documentary on the English Heritage project to restore the gardens to the way they looked in 1575, when Elizabeth I came to stay.  
                                                                                                                    

The Kelstice Lodge project is on a much smaller scale, and infinitely less professional, but the seeds of inspiration were sown.  (Incidentally, I got the name Kelstice from the pictures tacked to the wall in my study; a postcard showing a page from The Book of Kells was next to a flyer for a summer solstice party.)

As for the title, it’s open to a number of interpretations. There is a scene in the book where Louisa describes to Paul the curse of gardeners everywhere of Rose Sickness, a phenomenon whereby a newly-planted rose will fail to flourish in soil where another rose has been. (I believe it’s something to do with nitrates in the soil, but that’s as far as my understanding goes.) In Paul, Louisa thinks she has found the replacement for someone she loved and lost in violent circumstances when she was a girl. It is only when she accepts Paul on his own terms, rather as a simulacrum of someone else, that their relationship begins to deepen and flourish.

Q.  What kind of research did you do for this book?

A. The Essex and London scenes I drew from memory, but to create Kelstice Lodge I visited Kenilworth Castle and other stately gardens. I also read an inspirational book called The Lost Gardens of Heligan by Tim Smit, which described a garden restoration project in Cornwall. I urge everyone to read it: beautifully written, it’s full of fascinating detail and has a wonderful true-life cast of quintessentially British eccentrics. Its romantic, shambolic spirit encapsulates life at Kelstice.

Funnily enough, the more technical knowledge about garden restoration I amassed, the less made it through into the text. What I didn’t do was actually pay any attention to my own little garden in London; I wrote much of The Dark Rose in the summer months, while the grass and weeds grew waist-high.


Q.  In THE DARK ROSE you explore the extremes of obsessive love and loyalty, devotion and desperation, what about these themes inspired you to write about them?

A.  What I have noticed on re-reading the novel is that obsessive love is just the springboard for the real issue; that is, how far we can all be pushed, the extraordinary potential within ordinary people – for good, as well as evil. As in my first novel, The Poison Tree, I’m interested in blurring the boundaries between good and bad, guilty and innocent, and obsessive, desperate love is one way to make people cross borders that previously seemed impassable. Throughout the novel, I also explore the idea of whether guilt can ever be shared, or if one party is always to blame, if it is always a case of strength versus weakness.

Q.  Why did you decide to make the older character a woman? Do you think the story would be received differently had the ages of Paul and Louis been reversed? Was it easier to write the character of Louisa for you?


A.  I did not consciously decide to write a love story between an older woman and a younger man; that’s just what character, and then plot, dictated. Of course, the dynamic would be different if the genders or ages were reversed but then it would not have been such an interesting story to write. Louisa is actually a classic case of arrested development, emotionally stunted and frozen at the age of 19, when her lover died. And Paul is in some ways sensitive and mature for his age, so in that sense it becomes a more equal relationship than the age gap would suggest. Actually, I think that their different upbringings – she comes from money and privilege, his background is far humbler – would be more of a stumbling block than the years between them.

As for writing Paul, there are some details of male adolescence I can only draw from imagination, but I can remember with cringing clarity how it feels to be a sensitive teenager overawed by the opposite sex. 

Thanks to Sonya Cheuse of Viking for the interview and review copy of The Dark Rose. See my review of the Dark Rose

Author Interview and Book Giveaway: Tatjana Soli, author of The Lotus Eaters

Author Tatjana Soli, author, discusses her novel about photographers and what they experienced covering the Vietnam War, in the New York Times bestseller, The Lotus Eaters: A Novel.






Welcome, Tatjana.

Q:  Can you tell us about the research you made in order to write the book? How long did it take and what are the different things you had to do?

Tatjana:  I had been obsessed with the war for a very long time in terms of understanding it for myself. I had read all the major works of fiction and journalism that are considered important, seen all the movies and documentaries. But when I decided that I would tackle writing about the war, I really immersed myself in non-fiction because it was absolutely essential to get the details right — so many people have experienced the war first-hand and it had to be credible to them.

That said, the factual history was only the starting point. As intellectually interesting as it might be, as a storyteller, you need to bring the experience to your reader— that is paramount. You need to give facts meaning, otherwise the scale of the pain and destruction in war become numbing. So part of this was also learning about the long history of Vietnam, how the culture was structured, who the people are, in order to have a sense of what was destroyed.

I think I spent about a year and a half taking notes, living out this experience in my imagination. Although ultimately, little of it made its way into the book, I studied aspects of Vietnam the way an actor does sense-memory exercises: I ate the food, listened to the music, read poetry, even tried in my miserable way to learn a little of the language. A tonal language that is beyond difficult. If nothing else, it kept the novel alive for me while I was writing it.

Q: What made you become interested in the Vietnam War, this period of history?

My mother and I lived on Ford Ord military base for two years in the late sixties, so the military experience had imprinted itself on me although I was a young child. I had frightening memories and had this real longing to understand what had happened. I think in the bigger context, Vietnam can stand in for all wars, especially conflicts that we are in today. So it is a remarkably topical subject at this moment in our history. I was also fascinated by the huge role journalists played in exposing the lies we were being told about the war, how they turned public opinion. Before Vietnam, much war coverage was in the service of boosterism, of making the public patriotic and supportive of the wars we were engaged in.

Q: The war is controversial. How do you feel about it, looking back in history? Did your research change your mind about how you felt before writing the book?

When I started to write the book, my memories of the pain endured by our soldiers and their families was really foremost in my mind. Helen’s family has been torn apart by her father and brother dying in two different wars. But as I learned more about Vietnam, my frame of reference expanded. We lost 58,000 soldiers and another 9,000 veterans to suicide in the five years after the war. I emphasize that because the war destroyed so many lives, even if they survived combat. A huge toll. Not to mention the disservice done to many of the returning soldiers who were made into scapegoats for an unpopular war. But the Vietnamese lost 1.5 million combatants; 4 million civilians were killed. The only war that the US was similarly affected by was the Civil War. Every Vietnamese family suffered loss; their lands were destroyed. For me this knowledge cured some of the myopia that is natural when dealing with people and cultures that you don’t know. Vietnam was more than just a blank battlefield. The war was more than just an American tragedy.

Q:  Are you currently working on another book?

I have finished a second novel that will be published in 2012. A big departure from The Lotus Eaters, it is set in contemporary Southern California, on a citrus ranch, and involves a ranching woman and a girl who she hires to take care of her. I like to describe it as a novel involving two very dangerous female characters, an orange grove, and voodoo.

Q: How can readers reach you?

Through my website, or tatjana@tatjanasoli.com. I love to hear from readers, and I also am open to speaking to book clubs, either in person if local to Southern California, or by phone or Skype.

Tatjani's website is www.tatjanasoli.com/TatjanaSoliAuthor.html. A novelist and award-winning short story writer born in Austria, she attended Stanford University and the Warren Wilson MFA Program. She lives in California and teaches through the Gotham Writers’ Workshop.

(What is the book about? Click on the link for my review of The Lotus Eaters)

Book Giveaway: The publisher has agreed to give away a copy of The Lotus Eaters: A Novel to readers of each TLC book tour participant. U.S. residents only, no P.O. boxes, please.

To enter, leave a comment on what interested you about the book review below or about Tatjana's discussion, and include your email address! The giveaway will run through Feb. 15. The book will be sent through TLC by the publisher.

UPDATE: The giveaway winner is Suzanne of CT.

Book Review:The Blind Contessa's New Machine and author interview

The Blind Contessa's New Machine: A Novel by Carey Wallace, published 2010.
Genre: historical novel

My comments: Wonderful descriptive writing, capturing the surroundings and the delicate feelings of the Contessa Carolina Fantoni during the gradual loss of her sight. We follow her amazing ability to cope with daily life.

The book is set in Italy in the early 19th century. I read it as the story of a young woman's coping with a new husband and home and the narrowing of her world visually. Carolina, the Contessa, relies on the devotion of a friend Pellegrino Turri, an inventor who creates and makes a typewriting machine for her to continue her correspondence with friends. Turri is also married, but his relationship with Carolina develops into much more than ordinary friendship.

Carolina also has her dreams, which allow her to create a new world for herself. I found this part of the novel lyrical and insightful, and the emotional journey of the Contessa poignant, her story bittersweet.

Here is an excerpt from page 86:

For those first several weeks, the darkness was complete. But then Carolina began to see again in her dreams.

At first the glimpses were so slim, they might only have been memories; the sun blazing through the new spring leaves, which seemed to be in danger of disintegrating in its rays; a box her mother kept by her bed, red cloth, embroidered with a white parrot; a silver bowl full of lemons.

The ending of the novel was an interesting surprise, subject to more than one interpretation, but the basic facts follow the true story of the Contessa and her intimate friend.

Here is what Carey Wallace, the author, has to say about her novel. Welcome, Carey!

(photo by Alicia Hansen)

1. What inspired you to write an historical novel set in Italy?

The evocative details of the actual invention of the typewriter inspired me to write the story: a beautiful blind woman, an inventor who’s inspired to create the first typewriter out of love for her, and the fact that they were both married to other people. The added fact that the typewriter really was invented in Italy was just another lucky element in a wonderful collection of historical scraps. But I was delighted to get to create a corner of a fictional Italy, since I think Italy occupies a special place in the imaginative landscape of the whole world: from the Greek and Roman myths that still dominate so much of western fiction, to more modern writers like E.M. Forster who find Italy to be a playground for the imagination – it’s a place where, at least in literature, anything can happen.

2. How much of your book is based on actual people and facts?

When the first typewriter was invented, nobody knew it was the first typewriter. The inventor wasn’t the same person who eventually commercialized it, so the historical details are scarce, but I did work within them. The typewriter really was invented by Pellegrino Turri for Carolina Fantoni, a noblewoman who went blind in her early twenties. Using the machine, they carried on a correspondence of only a few years, which ended around the time Carolina’s family moved away from the area. The original machine was returned to Turri’s family upon Carolina’s death, and it does not survive: only a handful of her letters that prove that she was in possession of the first machine to fit the modern definition of typewriter. 

3. The description of the Contessa's gradual loss of sight seems very realistic. Do you have first hand experience with people who are blind or have lost their sight?

Thankfully, I don’t – although I’ve always valued the fact that my near-sightedness gives me more than one way to see the world. The descriptions of blindness in the story date back almost ten years, to a church retreat when I wound up in a room with a woman who worked for an eye doctor. Over the years, she had learned to read patient tests well enough that she could diagnose problems herself, and sometimes knew that a patient was destined for blindness before the doctor told them. This was a difficult weight for her to carry, and she spent several hours explaining different varieties of blindness to me in extraordinary detail. For years, I struggled to write about this experience. It just never seemed to fit anywhere I tried to put it. But over time, my writing went through a shift. Instead of trying to manage the trauma of the world through my work, or even to bear witness to it, I got interested in creating new worlds. Pain still had a place, but it was transformed. And the simple stories of modern patients struggling as they lost their sight finally emerged, reborn as The Blind Contessa’s New Machine. 

4. How much and what research did you have to do for the novel?

As a writer, I’m interested in evocative scraps of history that provide jumping off points for the imagination. The story of the invention of the typewriter is an almost perfect example of this: a small but wonderful group of facts mostly garbled beyond recognition on the internet or collected with more accuracy in out-of-print books by typewriter aficionados. I tracked down the previously-printed facts thoroughly, but there weren’t many to find, which gave me the leeway to create with abandon around the kernel of the true story.

5. I was a little puzzled by the ending. Can you enlighten us a bit about your decision to end the novel in the way it did?

The Blind Contessa’s New Machine really has two distinct narrative arcs: one that tells the story of the romantic complications surrounding the invention of the typewriter, and a far more private story about a young woman creating a world of her own making to inhabit as blindness steals the sighted world from her. To me, that story is at the heart of the book, and has a true resolution by the end. The romantic arc, as with so many actual romantic arcs, doesn’t have such neat resolution. That’s deliberate: it’s meant to question whether the meaning of the book was ever really to be found in the romantic arc, and send readers looking for the meaning Carolina finds for herself, outside of the relationships she has with Turri and her husband.

6. Some of your favorite authors and books?

Penelope Fitzgerald is my favorite modern author. She began writing fiction to entertain her dying husband when she was already over sixty, and won a Booker Prize less than five years later. Her books are slim, intelligent, beautiful, and so strong you can get drunk on the first sip. She’s got a sharp eye, but a generous heart—a rare combination. And she can set her novels convincingly in Russia, Italy, or on the Thames. Julio Cortazar is the writer I name most often as my favorite: even in translation, his writing breaks into some category beyond prose, and his books work more like dreams than stories. I love Hawthorne best among American authors, followed by Raymond Chandler, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Tennessee Williams, along with a deep affection for Cornell Woolrich, whose hypnotic prose I sometimes think works not in spite of but because of its imperfections. Dostoyevesky and Tolstoy are always the cornerstones of anything I’ve managed to learn about books, balanced on the side of wonder by Borges and Marquez. A portrait of the Bronte sisters, with their brother Branwell painted out, has hung over my desk since I was a teenager. I’ve read both Gone With The Wind and The Count of Monte Cristo many times. I read Thomas Merton almost daily. And Flannery O’Connor helps me in a host of ways, not least of which is her sheer cussedness. 

7. Are you working on another book at this time?

I am working on five other books: one about a girl who falls in love with a ghost who can’t remember who he was before he died, one about the secret bride of a train robber, one about a young vampire, one about the relationship between art and faith, and one about my family’s experience with my mother’s chronic illness, lupus – the disease that killed Jack London and Flannery O’Connor. This is no guarantee, however, that any of these will be the next to appear.

8. Is there anything else you would like to add for readers?

Just my gratitude to them for being readers. The noise and demands of the world get more crushing every year, and no other art form demands as much imagination, attention, and time from people as a book. I think it’s a small miracle every time someone makes the choice to read, and I hope you’ll find The Blind Contessa’s New Machine offers you a real gift in return.

9. How can readers reach you?

I’d love to hear from people through my website: http://www.careywallace.com/, or directly at theblindcontessa@gmail.com.

Congratulations again on your novel, Carey, and we wish you the best!

About the author: Carey Wallace grew up in a small town in Michigan. She is the founder of the Hillbilly Underground, a retreat in rural Michigan that draws international artists. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and is at work on five other books.