Author Interview: Cherise Wolas
An Interview with Cherise Wolas
Author of The Resurrection of Joan Ashby and The Family Tabor
Where
do you find inspiration to write each of your characters?
It’s so hard to untangle the inspirations.
They’re like wild, untraceable threads. But it always starts out mysteriously:
a character pops into my mind, I hear dialogue in my head, an image appears—sometimes
these elements come separately, more often they arrive together. I start
sending myself tons of emails. I let things percolate. I research a lot of disparate
topics and areas, that may or may not have anything to do with anything, but the
research helps me think in different ways, and spurs more thoughts and ideas.
The characters start developing, deepening, changing, moving in unexpected
directions, and always raising lots of questions. When I write, I listen
intently to what they tell me, about who they
are, the problems they’re having, their hopes, dreams, secrets, issues, what
they want to do, how they want their stories to go. Sometimes we fight. Sometimes
I have to give them tons of space, or reel them back. But through the writing,
all kinds of clues emerge—and each clue leads to a key, and each key leads to
another door, and I follow them all.
Did
you use any real-world events or people as inspiration for your characters?
I don’t. I seek a compelling immediacy
in my work, but also a timelessness, a quality I hope means my work will endure
way beyond the here-and-now and into the future And so I tend to steer clear of
most current political and cultural references and consumer brands and the
like. Although I think the questions that spur me on are the kinds of questions
that have been timely forever. When the real world figures in, I think I use it
most often for grounding purposes.
For instance, in The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, there
are only two places in the novel referencing actual events. The first is the contrast
between what is going on in the world and what Joan is writing about in her
hidden novel called Words of New
Beginnings. And the second is 9/11, though I don’t use that shorthand.
In The Family Tabor, the actual world is very close, though references
to it are oblique. What the great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents of
Harry and Roma Tabor suffered is historical, of course, but the personal specifics
are all imagined.
Do
you use issues or events from your own life in your writing?
I don’t, at least not consciously! In The Family Tabor, everyone is struggling
with universal issues I think all of us can relate to and/or have experienced
in one form or another. They’re
searching for love, or feel they made the wrong choice in love, or are hungry
to understand their lives, or want a deeper spiritual connection, or suddenly
find themselves unsure of everything, or have had their lives upended, or wish they
could undo something they’ve done, or have kept secrets from their families.
And anyone with siblings has likely experienced the sharp talons and passive-aggressiveness
of that particular rivalry.
The personal filters through
in my novels in two ways. First, I’m exploring intricate and complicated
questions that matter to me. Second, I love stepping into other people’s skins,
lives, thoughts, seeing the world and their worlds through their eyes, and from
the moment I begin writing, I am them, but they are never me.
Why
did you decide to write The Family Tabor using multiple perspectives in
alternating chapters?
It happened automatically, as the natural
way to burrow into everyone’s singular perspectives during the various stages
that lead to the honoring of Harry, and then afterwards. The individual journeys
home, and the waiting for all to arrive; navigating the reefs and shoals of togetherness;
the gala, and when the celebration turns into something that shocks; and then
the aftermath. I wanted to be intimately close to each of them, and I wanted
the same for the reader. There is a single element in the book that isn’t from
the perspective of any family member, but instead has a bird’s-eye, omniscient
view…
Which
of the characters in The Family Tabor do you relate to the most?
They are so real to me that I can only
perceive them as living, breathing people, and I relate to each of them completely,
although in different ways.
How
much time did you spend researching the different professions of the characters
in The Family Tabor? Did you always plan on them having these
professions or did their personalities help dictate what they did?
The coming to life of each character and
what they do professionally happened in tandem—who they are, what they do, how
they know what they know, and how sometimes their professions hold up a mirror
to their own flaws. I research constantly through the entire writing of a book.
For The Family Tabor, all of the research
runs pages and pages, and about their professions, it was wide-ranging and the
following is a tiny sampling: the stock market, technological developments in
trading, articles and judicial case law about duties owed and breaches and
insider trading, including the very first insider trading case when America was
a brand-new country; scientific articles about how the brain eliminates
memories completely; psychological and mental conditions; social anthropology, which
included reading about all the amazing women who were out in the field in the
1800s and on; how works of art stolen by the Nazis are recovered in litigation.
Joan
Ashby made an appearance in The Family Tabor and Simon Tabor made an appearance
in The Resurrection of Joan Ashby. Have we been introduced to any of the
characters from your future novels? Can you share what book you’re working on
next?
It’s funny that a
couple of characters crossed over from Joan
Ashby to The Family Tabor because
the novels are completely unrelated. And maybe some of the characters will
always spill over because I never want to leave them behind.
I’ve
received so many requests from readers of Joan
Ashby to turn various of Joan’s excerpted stories into novels. The Last Resort, about a woman in a mental institution; Bettina’s Children, about a married couple providing medical care
in Nigeria whose children all die; the wondrous and strange rare babies; The Sympathetic Executioners, about the
twin boys who become killers—the suggestions go on, and all of what I wrote continues
to fascinate me, and I can see writing about one or more in the future, if I
find a new way in, if I find interesting questions I’d like to explore within
those particular environments.
I am
working on my third novel now. And the characters were first in Joan Ashby, and even as I was writing
about them in Joan Ashby, I knew I
wanted to know so much more about them. So I’m writing about them now, and
they’re on their own journeys in a different world.
(Note from Jackie --> I would still love to see the strange rare babies and The Sympathetic Executioners brought out into our world! I also cannot wait for your third novel!)
How
long did it take you to write The Resurrection of Joan Ashby? What about
The Family Tabor?
Thinking about
this, it’s strange that I can’t figure out the markers in my own life to know either
exactly or approximately how long each novel took to write. And I don’t have
dated and numbered drafts to look back at, because I never have a first draft.
As I write forward, I’m constantly going backwards, editing, revising, honing,
discovering elements, teasing them out, re-envisioning, contemplating anew, as
well as feeling my way into structure, and fine-tuning sentences, down to every
last word. By the time I have a completed manuscript, it’s something like the
thousandth draft. Maybe my inability to recall is a way to not focus on the
sheer amount of time each novel takes, so that I am eagerly writing my third,
and will be just as eager to write all those that follow?! But suffice it to
say each has taken years.
Are
there any plans for either of your novels to be turned into films?
That would be fantastic!
What
book have you recently read that you are recommending to everyone?
Can I offer up more than one? I read
voraciously and a great deal from around the world. Here’s a short-ish by-country
list of what I’ve been pressing on others recently—some new, some older, some
very old.
Israel: Three Floors Up by Eshkol Nevo, The Ex and A Late Divorce by A.B. Yehoshua, Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
Germany: All For Nothing by Walter Kempowski, Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck
Norway: Shyness and Dignity and Novel 11, book 18 by Dag Solstad
Switzerland: Agnes, Seven Years, and Unformed Landscape by Peter Stamm
Iceland: Hotel Silence by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
Hungary: The Door and Iza’s Ballad by Magda Szabo
Britain: Everything by Margaret Drabble and Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
Japan: Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama, The Maids by Junichiro Tanazaki
France: The Memoirs of Two Young Wives by Balzac
Scotland: The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau by Graeme Macrae Burnet
I’ll stop here!
The
ending of The Family Tabor was a bit of a shock to me! Was this always
your plan when writing the novel?
I love that the ending shocked you! It
shocked me too. Oddly, the deeper I am in the writing, the less I seem to know.
Certainly, there are many trajectories that become clear as the novel moves
forward, but what happens at the end is always organic. In The Family Tabor, it found me, and I fought it for a while, and then
certain elements clicked into place, and I realized, yes, of course, it had to
be this way! I seem to prefer endings that allow readers to keep thinking and
wondering about what will happen next.
Thank you so much to Cherise Wolas for being so willing to answer my questions and so open in her responses! She is a must buy/must read author for me and I'm so happy to have been introduced to her works. I'll be anxiously awaiting news of book #3!
Cherise Wolas' blog is http://www.cherisewolas.com/. You can find her on Goodreads here and Instagram here. Now do yourself a favor and pick up one of her novels!
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