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Because my reading time is taken up with manuscript submissions, the only outside reading I do is listening to audiobooks when I drive the longer distances demanded by living in a rural area. I just finished Home Fire by the British/Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie and it made me reflect on the power of narrative fiction to better illustrate through dramatization social and political truths that straight journalism, hewing to the facts, cannot quite deliver.
Like almost everyone, like you, probably, I remember certain things from before I was 12. But it’s from 12 that I can remember my life in a narrative way. Because my family got rearranged then? Some other reason? I don’t know. But the age was 12. And from then on, I can recall the broad sweep and the defining details of what has become my whole life.
The girl I’ve written about in The Mapmaker’s Daughter was 12 when she captured the attention of the most powerful man on earth. Her name was Cecilia Baffo Veniero. His was Suleiman the Magnificent. [Read more…]
Last November I was having dinner with David Plante, an American novelist who 
lives in Italy and just happened to ask if he had any fiction he wanted to publish. At the end of the evening, he emailed me a copy of a novel called American Stranger. I read it the next morning in one sitting and finished the novel in tears. [Read more…]
I would like to believe that writers achieve celebrity because their work reflects a depth of thought and intelligence. That these writers see their fame as incidental to the excellence of their craft and, unlike actors, they don’t behave any differently once they have achieved the pinnacle of success. Most actors, after all, aren’t known to be deep thinkers, and therefore we tend to forgive their public outbursts, drug binges and generally bad behavior as by-products and delusions of their fame. [Read more…]
Patricia Highsmith avoided the company of other writers; she felt there was little chance of hearing a good, usable anecdote. Writers, she said, are generally careful to guard any good material for their own use. [Read more…]
Once upon a time, novels were written to be serialized. It gave novelists better pay, created a built-in audience and there was collusion between reader and writer to keep the plot going. This sounds a lot like our current political situation where every development is dramatized and then infinitely scrutinized and discussed in a drawn-out narrative. Collusion seems to be the word of the day; the word itself conveys a hidden story that is slowly coming to light.
We sometimes need a break from the heat of summer. We may also need a break from the endless political analysis. Perhaps we need to turn to a book that will take us far away from here but also allow us to circle back to what truly matters to us.
Resurrection was Tolstoy’s last long work of fiction, written some 25 years after his great works, Anna Karenina and War and Peace. The story is deceptively simple. A callow nobleman named Dmitri seduces a housemaid, Maislova, who becomes pregnant, gives birth to an unwanted child and then with her reputation smeared, loses her job and is forced into prostitution. In an ironic twist, Dmitri, who sullied Maislova’s reputation, ends up sitting on a tribunal that against his fervent wishes, sends her to a Siberian prison for poisoning one of her abusive johns. Finding this unbearable, Dimitri decides he must help Maislova and follows the caravan of prisoners across Russia and uses all his connections to gain entrance to the prison where, hearing story after story of its inmates’ unjust and cruel imprisonment, realizes that just below his charmed aristocratic life lies a world of great suffering. Dimitri’s beliefs are forever changed and, to redeem himself, he gives away all his land and vows to live the rest of his life in simplicity.
Resurrection is the sort of novel that uplifts the reader with the idea that human nature is not so intractable as we might think. We can feel that one’s most grave mistakes have the possibility of bringing revelation and redemption. It tempts one to believe that in our cynical, polarized political process, there is still a chance for something meaningful to happen that might bring about a positive transformation.