Mariella Hunt

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  • No One Disappears on an Island: Thoughts on Remote Literary Settings

    No One Disappears on an Island: Thoughts on Remote Literary Settings


    Soon it would be another memory, those things and times and places and people one could never reclaim, yet never be rid of either. A feeling that would fade and flicker back to brightness, subject to her will, but that could never be undone or erased.

    The Light on Farallon Island, p. 345

    The Light on Farallon Island by Jen Wheeler was a gripping read that offered readers much to think about. Amelia lost her family a long time ago in a horrific accident caused by a hateful father. Amelia alone escaped, and has done odd jobs in order to survive, one of which leads her to the remote Farallon Islands in the San Francisco area, a place so isolated at the time that the arrival of a newcomer is the subject of much surprise and gossip.

    Amelia has an additional secret that she can’t even escape on the Farallons. Before arriving, she had fallen in love with a woman named Lucy. When a terrible fire ravages their home while Amelia is gone, reducing poor Lucy to ashes, Amelia at once enters survival mode. She had not seen anyone in Lucy’s social group, and no one knows her — she plans to leave anyway — so she takes Lucy’s name and some of her belongings; in her mind, Amelia Osbourne is dead.

    But one person exists who will not be so easily fooled by this ruse: Lucy’s brother, Will Sisson. He will demand answers from Amelia relentlessly, but before long, he will fall for her — before he even learns what her name is — while he still knows her only as a woman with a very compelling past.

    The Trope of “Hayworth House”

    Upon arriving at Farallon, Amelia is given for shelter a place called Stonehouse. It stands as “a simple, flat-faced structure made of… a mosaic of granite blocks quarried on the island. Its patchwork facade recalled a fairy cottage, but its form reflected perfect symmetry. A chimney capped each end of the gabled roof.” This is to be Amelia’s home as she lives on remote Farallon as a teacher to the handful of children living on that lonely place.

    Is Stonehouse haunted? Previous owners of the place report strange apparitions, such as a woman veiled in black. Even if these stories are true, Amelia’s experiences have taught her not to fear a lost spirit, but a living man who can do bodily harm.

    As a novel, The Light on Farallon Island succeeds most strongly in its atmosphere. Wheeler makes the Farallons feel genuinely cut off from the mainland, a place where news arrives slowly and the small community knows nearly everything about its inhabitants. That isolation gives the novel its Gothic quality without requiring the supernatural to carry the story.

    Amelia herself is also an effective protagonist because her desire to disappear is never quite as simple as it first appears. She has come to the island to escape her past, but the novel gradually asks whether escape and reinvention are actually the same thing. I did find some of the mystery elements more familiar than surprising, but the setting and emotional stakes kept me invested. The result is a novel that is less frightening for its ghosts than for its understanding of how difficult it is to outrun the past.

    There were many elements in this novel that made me think about great works of Gothic fiction that we all know and love, in particular the great novels of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Wheeler’s novel takes place on an island both remote and atmospheric. It is the ideal breeding ground for ghost stories and superstition.

    Off the Grid Drama

    It also reminded me of a novella written more recently, Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor. Set on a remote Welsh island of fishermen, there is a similar sense of it being separated as though it were another world. Updates of the ongoing war against Hitler reach them very slowly. They, too, live lives that honor their own gods and traditions. O’Connor and Wheeler both use words to create the kinds of communities one could go to if they wished to disappear and become someone entirely new.

    Do such places still exist today? Could it still be possible to live “off the grid,” creating a self-sufficient community far from the wars and struggles of real life?

    Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May Alcott, tried something like this when his young daughters were very young. It was called Fruitlands. Alcott, a radical Transcendentalist and author, and an English associate named Charles Lane attempted to establish a community in Harvard, Massachusetts. Lane purchased roughly ninety acres of farmland, and in June of 1843, the Alcotts were among the first families to move there.

    Alcott and Lane were obsessed with an idea: what if human beings could strip away the corrupting habits of ordinary society and return to a more innocent, spiritual, natural way of life? Fruitlands was imagined as a sort of earthly Eden, and their commitment to living simply was extreme:

    • They pursued a strict plant-based diet and rejected animal products.
    • They rejected the use of animal labor, including animals for plowing the fields.
    • They tried to minimize dependence on the outside economy and live as self-sufficiently as possible.
    • Lane advocated increasingly severe forms of self-denial, eventually including celibacy within marriage.

    The experiment, unsurprisingly, proved much harder to sustain than its ideals suggested. Farming was difficult, crops failed, supplies became scarce, and the community struggled financially. Fruitlands collapsed after about seven months, and the Alcotts left in January 1844. The failure was painful for Bronson, both financially and emotionally, though he continued to pursue his philosophical and educational ideals afterward.

    Later, Louisa satirized the experiment in Transcendental Wild Oats, her fictionalized account of Fruitlands. She remembered the community with both affection and irony, poking fun at the gulf between its lofty ideals and the practical realities of keeping a family fed and functioning. At one point she jokes that “Apple Slump” might have been a better name for the place, playing on the monotonous and sometimes meager food available to the community.

    Louisa and “Apple Slump”

    Louisa had witnessed firsthand the gap between an idealized community and the messy reality of actually living in one. She was a child when the Alcott family went to Fruitlands, but the experience clearly stayed with her. Years later, she could look back on it with enough distance to find the humor in what had once been a very real hardship.

    That humor is part of what makes her story, Transcendental Wild Oats, so charming. Louisa did not simply mock her father and his ideals; she understood the impulse behind them. She knew what it meant to believe that the world could be made better if people were only willing to live differently. But she also knew that lofty principles become considerably more complicated when there are hungry children to feed and crops that refuse to grow.

    Her “Apple Slump” joke captures that perfectly. Fruitlands was supposed to be an earthly Eden, a place where human beings could escape the corruptions of ordinary society and live according to higher principles. Yet Eden, as it turned out, involved a great deal of difficult farming and not nearly enough food. The joke is funny because it brings the whole grand experiment back down to earth: transcendental philosophy is one thing, but eventually somebody has to figure out what everyone is having for dinner.

    Louisa remembered Fruitlands with both affection and irony. She could see the beauty in her father’s dream without pretending that the dream had worked. And perhaps that is what connects Fruitlands to the remote islands in these novels: people may go somewhere isolated hoping to escape the world’s troubles, or even to become someone entirely new, but isolation does not make a place perfect.

    People bring themselves with them. They bring their loves, their griefs, their secrets, their prejudices, their hopes. Someone may arrive hoping to disappear, while someone else is waiting to find them.

    It is never perfect.

    Hidden in the Fog

    What makes the Farallons such an effective setting for Wheeler’s story? Could it be the remoteness?

    After all, Amelia goes there believing she can leave her old life behind. The island is remote enough to make reinvention seem possible, but it cannot erase what she has lost, nor can it protect her from the complications of being human. The ghosts of Stonehouse may or may not be real, but Amelia already knows that the most dangerous things we carry with us are not always supernatural.

    Sometimes they are memories. Sometimes they are grief. Sometimes they are the identities we thought we had buried.

    She may have gone to the Farallons to disappear, but the island gives her something quite different: a place where she must finally decide whether a new life means becoming someone else, or learning to live with the person she has always been.

  • You Don’t Actually Have to Finish the Book

    You Don’t Actually Have to Finish the Book


    A Crisis of Bookish Morality

    When a reader becomes accustomed to devouring novels over the course of hours, it becomes something of an expectation that every book which sounds promising will have the same effect. When we come across a story that does not immediately grip us in the way we hoped it would, we begin to feel oddly guilty.

    It must be something wrong with me, we think. Perhaps I’m too tired, or I missed an important paragraph, or maybe it’s the insomnia…

    I understand the impulse to make excuses. I’ve done so myself, because there is a soft voice inside me that tells me I am committing a sin by putting down a book I expected to love.

    Somewhere out there, after all, an author put a great deal of work into this very novel.

    Being an author myself, I have an instinct to give them a chance. I find myself asking: What if it were my novel? How would I feel if someone gave up thirty pages in?

    As I’ve gotten older, however, I have come to realize that time is limited. Each book is written, after all, for someone. I might not be the person for the book I am holding, but someone else might be—and surely they will write a generous review making this known.

    Life is short, and I am doing no favors to myself—or, frankly, to the novel—by forcing myself through a story that hasn’t gripped me by page 100.

    No, You Don’t Have to Finish the Novel

    I want to say this to you gently, but firmly: you are under no obligation to force yourself through a novel when you clearly are not its intended reader.

    I don’t particularly enjoy science fiction. Very rarely do I encounter a sci-fi novel that I genuinely enjoy, so I tend to avoid those shelves when I go to the bookstore.

    That doesn’t mean I look at science fiction with disdain. I know there have been brilliant authors working within the genre, authors who have built much-deserved followings. I know that, for the right reader, a sci-fi novel, a slasher horror, or a romantasy might be the best thing they’ve ever read.

    My preference does not diminish the impact those books might have on someone else—or on the literary world.

    But, friends: I don’t have to read them.

    They’re doing perfectly well in their own corners of the literary universe. They do not need me to force myself through them in order to be validated.

    Lately, I’ve been struggling with the mentality of but I don’t want to hurt the book’s feelings.

    No, Mariella.

    This book is going to have plenty of readers.

    Maybe sooner or later, you’ll return to it, and it will be the time. Your time to enjoy fanfic aboard the Enterprise, perhaps. Or maybe even a monster romance.

    Today is not the day, and that’s okay. There is a literal pile of books behind you that you already know are made for you.

    I don’t have to finish the book, at least not today. Neither do you.

    The Book Will Survive

    There is a strange sort of morality we sometimes attach to reading. We talk about finishing books as though perseverance itself makes us better readers—as though putting down a novel halfway through is a failure of character.

    But a book is not a moral obligation.

    You are allowed to admit that something isn’t for you. You are allowed to close the cover, place it back on the shelf, and move on without writing a lengthy defense of your decision. You do not have to apologize to the author. You do not have to wonder whether you simply weren’t intelligent enough, patient enough, or disciplined enough to understand what everyone else seems to love.

    Perhaps you simply didn’t love it.

    And that’s enough.

    The book will survive. Somewhere, someone is going to pick it up and find exactly what you could not. They may devour it in a single evening. They may press it into the hands of their friends. They may call it one of the best books they have ever read.

    Good for them.

    Meanwhile, there are books waiting for you.

    Books you will stay up too late reading. Books you will carry from room to room. Books that will make you forget to check your phone, miss your bus stop, or sit in the driveway for ten extra minutes because you simply cannot bear to stop reading yet.

    You don’t owe every book your time.

    But when you find the right one, you may find yourself giving it gladly.

  • A Well-Read Woman is Not a Snob

    A Well-Read Woman is Not a Snob


    A Gift Card Will Be Fine

    As a woman, have you ever felt a little out of place when telling someone that your idea of a vacation is curling up in bed with a paperback? Have you ever had the sensation that few other women exist who are willing to engage in the kind of conversation you crave?

    Or perhaps you have felt that particular twinge of guilt when someone gifted you makeup or perfume, when what you really wanted was the latest Kristin Hannah novel. But you cannot exactly say that without hurting their feelings. They thought of you, after all, and I am a firm believer that it is the thought that counts.

    There can be a real impulse to apologize for being different, as if one is somehow failing at being a woman—or, perhaps, that everything about us is merely performative. Loving books, living for books, and talking about books might make us appear, to the rest of the world, a little pretentious. A little strange. Maybe even a snob.

    I am here to tell you—at least in most cases—that a well-read woman is not a snob.

    A Well-Read Woman Is Not a Snob

    What, exactly, is a snob? A quick look at the dictionary offers the following definition:

    snob (noun): a person with an exaggerated respect for high social position or wealth who seeks to associate with social superiors and looks down on those regarded as socially inferior.

    Reader, where in this definition can you find a link between the bona fide snob and a woman who simply wants to read—to read, and nothing else?

    I think that people who call such women snobbish are often bothered by some of the behaviors that come along with being a devoted reader.

    In my case, at least, I do not necessarily “seek to associate with social superiors.” As an introvert, I seldom want to associate with anyone at all. I do, however, want to engage in conversation with people who do not love the sound of their own voices so much that they will not allow me to use mine.

    Nor do I look down on those “regarded as socially inferior.” I do occasionally catch myself thinking about how much happier someone might be if they simply found The Novel—the book that could transport them from this world, answer all of their questions, and bring them peace. I am always looking for an opportunity to slide a book recommendation into the conversation.

    I did not study literature, so you cannot accuse me of snobbery born from some particular kind of education. In our scramble to define what makes someone “well-read,” I think we often complicate things. One becomes a well-read woman in a remarkably simple way: by picking up books and reading them.

    So why do we still get a bad rap?

    We Have Not Always Had the Luxury of Reading

    Perhaps part of the reason the well-read woman can still seem like an unusual creature is that, historically speaking, she is not nearly as ordinary as she ought to be.

    For much of history, literacy was not something equally available to everyone. Education was shaped by class, wealth, geography, and, of course, gender. A woman who wanted to spend her life reading was not always simply a woman with an interesting hobby. The ability to read—and, more importantly, the freedom to decide what one wished to read—was something generations of women had far less access to than we do today.

    The change has been remarkable. Globally, literacy rates have risen dramatically over the last several decades, and the expansion of literacy among women has been one of the defining parts of that progress. Yet even now, women account for nearly two-thirds of the world’s adults without basic literacy skills.

    So when I think about the modern woman who carries a novel in her purse, spends her evenings wandering through a bookstore, or answers every question about what she wants for Christmas with the name of another book, I do not see a snob.

    I see someone participating in a freedom that women before her could not always take for granted.

    In Defense of the Romance Novel

    These days, people may picture women reading and imagine a very specific form of novel: the romance novel. I’ve been asked by at least two guys whether I read “those romances” (you know the kind—the Sarah J. Maas flavor; while I don’t consider them to be my cup of tea, I don’t hate them, either).

    I do not agree with a lot of the things that take place in some of these romance novels, but I absolutely support a woman’s choice: if she wishes to read something like that, she has a right to. She also has the right to say no. What other people don’t have the right to do is assume that a woman reading a book on the subway couldn’t possibly be reading a five-hundred-page philosophical drama simply because she is a woman.

    This isn’t new. Many things associated with girls and women are demeaned by people who do not understand them: the color pink, lace on dresses, trips to the hairdresser. I can’t expand much on all of those things, but I’ve always had strong opinions about gatekeeping novels for women. So I, as a person who does not read romance novels, will defend them, and I will die on this hill.

    Does this make me a snob?

    Well—perhaps it does.

    What Is a Well-Read Woman?

    We have already established that a well-read woman is not a snob, simply because she chooses to spend her time reading. You might go on to ask what is a well-read woman? This is a vast question, worthy of its own post. But it is a matter I try to simplify if possible.

    A well-read woman is one who likes to read. She escapes the monotony of everyday life into novels of different lengths and density. Sometimes she writes margin notes; other times, she prefers to leave her books pristine like the day when she purchased them.

    A well-read woman doesn’t need to read 100 books to claim the title. She can read ten books instead and really read them—take notes, meditate on sentences, and use them to guide her through challenges in life.

    We do not need to graduate from anywhere to be a well-read woman. We simply need to find the books that ignite that passion, and be unapologetic about finding time to read them. We are not snobs. We gather sentences, moments of beauty, and are more than happy to share these things with people who ask.

    Snobs don’t do that.

    Lovers of literature do.

  • Tea with Deborah Svec-Carstens, Author of Toward the Light: A Year in Paris

    Tea with Deborah Svec-Carstens, Author of Toward the Light: A Year in Paris


    A Year in Paris, and the Story That Followed

    In 1992, Deborah Svec-Carstens was a young French major living in small-town Iowa, uncertain about what she wanted to do next. She had never been to France. Then an au pair position gave her an opportunity to change that.

    What followed was a year in Paris that would become far more complicated than she could have imagined—and, years later, the subject of a memoir.

    Toward the Light: A Year in Paris is the result of ten years of writing, revising, and querying. But Deborah’s story is about more than a young woman finding her way in a foreign city. It is also about loneliness and friendship, trauma and resilience, the complicated experience of belonging somewhere while remaining an outsider, and the long process of finding the courage to tell a difficult story.

    In our conversation, Deborah shares what life was actually like as an au pair in early-1990s Paris, why she chose to leave Iowa, how building a community helped her through an unexpectedly difficult year, and what it means to finally hold that experience in her hands as a finished book.

    She also talks about the writers and memoirs that have stayed with her—and offers some quietly powerful advice for anyone trying to tell a story of their own.

    Q: Prior to reading your memoir, I had only a vague sense of what being an au pair involved. Could you tell us a bit more about the experience?

    A: I went through a placement agency to find an au pair position in Paris. I can’t speak to the au pair experience today, but when I worked as an au pair in the early 1990s, the job entailed childcare and light housekeeping. I received a small monthly salary, plus room and board. 

    Each afternoon, I picked up Lily, the six-year-old girl I cared for, from school and entertained her until dinner time. We went to a nearby park or returned to the apartment for a snack, cartoons, and play time. I helped cook dinner and ate with the family. When my duties were done for the day, I would retreat to my chambre de bonne, a small room on the top floor of the apartment building where the family lived, or go out with friends. I would usually babysit at least one evening a week, sometimes more.

    French children don’t have school on Wednesdays. I spent the day with Lily and attended to my housekeeping duties, which included ironing, vacuuming, and dusting. Weekday mornings the rest of the week, I attended French language classes, first at the Sorbonne and later at Alliance Francaise.

    One of the most challenging parts of the job for me was being part of the family and an outsider at the same time. A few scenes in Toward the Light: A Year in Paris (available September 15) describe the initial difficulties that arose because of that dynamic. My relationship with Lily and her parents changed over the course of the year, due in part to shifting family dynamics, but also because of the sexual assault I experienced two months after my arrival, following a morning run. When I left Paris, I took with me both a love for Lily and a deep gratitude for her mother.

    Q: Tell us about your decision to leave home and spend time in France. What were the days and weeks leading up to your departure like?

    A: After graduating from college in the spring of 1992, I returned home to live with my parents in small-town Iowa, uncertain of what career path I wanted to follow. I returned to an administrative job at the company where my dad worked and continued to apply for a variety of jobs that I thought might fit my interests and background. Rejection letters piled up, and I decided to apply for an au pair job in Paris.

    I was a French major who had never been to France. An au pair position would provide the opportunity to live in Paris, improve my French, and make enough money to get by. I saw it as the only viable option for living abroad, and a chance to step back and think about the direction I wanted my career to take.

    I left Iowa within weeks of accepting the position. Those weeks were filled with excitement and nervousness, as I shared the news with family and friends. Not until I was on the plane to Paris did the gravity of my decision finally hit. I would be living in a city, in a country, where I’d never been. I didn’t know anyone there.

    I could never have predicted that my year in Paris would turn out to be one of the most challenging periods of my life.

    Q: Do you think your experience would have been different if you had chosen to do this today?

    A: My initial experience of loneliness would likely have been different because of the technology available today. When I lived in Paris, I had to use a payphone across the street from the apartment to call the US, which I did about once a week. Today, smartphones and the internet make staying connected much easier.

    Instead, I had to build a community of friends in Paris. In the aftermath of trauma, that mattered more than it might have otherwise.

    Q: What’s it like to have your experience in the form of a memoir?

    A: After ten years of writing, revising, and querying, holding the finished book in my hands is both surreal and a dream come true. When I started writing Toward the Light: A Year in Paris, I wondered whether I might uncover another layer of healing.

    Over time, my initial reason for writing expanded beyond myself. I wanted my family to know all of what I’d experienced. I wanted my nieces and nephews, most of whom are now young adults making their way in the world, to know I was courageousand resilient, and they could be, too. And I hoped the book would find a wider audience among survivors and their loved ones, offering them hope and healing.

    Q: What advice would you give to someone who is considering taking a similar path?

    A: My advice for other writers or for survivors who want to write their own story is twofold:

    First, keep going. Take a break when necessary, but do your best to keep showing up to write, whether it’s for five minutes or five hours. Life will happen, but if you believe in the writing and your project, don’t give up on it. Don’t give up on your story. Don’t give up on yourself.

    Second, find a community of writers. Writing is a solitary endeavor, but it requires support and encouragement from others. I’m fortunate to be part of a writing group that’s met for more than ten years. They were there to cheer me on when I wanted to quit.

    Q: And finally, I would love to know about your favorite books! What are you reading these days, and are there any books that have stayed with you over the years?

    A: There are several memoirs that have stayed with me, including: 

    • Wild by Cheryl Strayed

    • Appetites by Caroline Knapp

    • Know My Name by Chanel Miller

    • The Desert Pilgrim by Mary Swander

    • The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd

    • Slip by Mallary Tenore Tarpley

    I’m currently reading Skylark, a historical novel by Paula McLain. I recently read Courtney Maum’s memoir The Year of the Horses, and her new novel, Alan Opts Out. And I just finished The Names, a novel by Florence Knapp, which will probably make my top 10 list for this year.

    I’m grateful to Deborah for being kind enough to send me an advance copy of Toward the Light. It was a pleasure to read her story and then have the opportunity to talk with her about the experiences behind it.

    The memoir will be published on September 15, and I’m delighted to be able to share a little of her journey with you ahead of its release.

    Preorder at https://deborahsveccarstens.com/toward-the-light/

  • ‘Station Eleven’ by Emily St. John Mandel

    ‘Station Eleven’ by Emily St. John Mandel


    The End of Life as We Know It

    What if a great catastrophe were to bring about the end of life as we know it? What would be the thing that you missed most about the “old world”? Would it be the electricity and all the conveniences that came with it? Would it be advanced medicine and the possibility that humans can live longer?

    Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel gives readers a lot to think about. She creates a world that has been ravaged by a deadly disease called the Georgia Flu. In a matter of a week, the world’s population has been reduced to a fragment of what it once was, and those who survive often resort to savagery in order to keep themselves and their loved ones from starving to death.

    But we soon find that even violent plagues cannot snuff out beauty. The novel follows a caravan of musicians and actors who call themselves the Traveling Symphony. Their goal is to keep the remnants of beauty and art alive, even if doing so means that they must venture into various sketchy places, performing in front of people who might have become wild and unpredictable because of the struggle to survive.

    Then, they discover that their latest crowd is actually a religious cult. They are led by a Prophet who soon proves that he is accustomed to being in control of his followers — and his visitors. He suggests that the Traveling Symphony leave behind Alexandra, only a child, because he — the Prophet — is in search of a new wife. When they refuse, they soon discover that, for a cult that calls itself “the Light,” this is a group that is extremely passionate about making enemies and destroying them.

    Humans Need Survival Stories

    Something about this novel made me think of the television series Lost. There is a specific sort of drama that surrounds stories of survival, where the world and its conveniences are suddenly gone and the few who are left behind must get creative, carving out new existences. In these stories, humanity — and all acceptable behavior — is pushed to its limits. But I have noticed that, in such stories, hope and love do not ever truly die.

    In this situation, humans would need to relearn the skills necessary for survival. They would need to get used to a world of sudden silence — no radios, airplanes, electric guitars. And though such a tragedy may seem unlikely, perhaps it would still be a comfort to find beauty in silence and in completing tasks with our own, sincere effort. We humans have done so before; we can do it again. Perhaps, even after everything else is gone, we will still find ways to make beauty.

    The Museum of iPhones

    If the world ended, if for some terrible reason I had to walk away from city and home, I would still be content if I had my family traveling with me. My home is where my family is. I believe my greatest fear would be facing a hostile world without them. But in Station Eleven, everybody has lost loved ones to the Georgia Flu; entire families have died in their houses.

    At the airport (which no longer functions as one), there is a museum of things that humans once used but which are now useless: cell phones, laptops, IDs, all now paperweights because there is no way to charge them and bring them back to life. How haunting to picture it: these things that contributed to our everyday lives, that brought us joy, now nothing but memories to be gawked at.

    There is something particularly unsettling about the idea of a museum like this. Museums usually preserve things because they have survived long enough to become valuable or historically significant. Here, the objects are ordinary. They belonged to ordinary people who expected to keep using them tomorrow. A phone might have held photographs of a child, messages from a spouse, or the last conversation someone ever had with a loved one. Now it sits behind glass, stripped of its purpose.

    The museum also makes the world of Station Eleven feel strangely close to our own. We live surrounded by objects that seem permanent because we have never known a world without them. We assume there will always be electricity, cell service, the internet, and somewhere to buy a replacement when something breaks. The airport survivors have discovered what happens when all of those assumptions disappear at once.

    And perhaps that is what makes the museum so sad. It isn’t really a museum of technology. It is a museum of a vanished way of life. The phones and laptops are only the artifacts left behind.

    Lives That Matter

    Early in the novel, an exchange between a protagonist named Jeevan and a passing character makes a striking point about humanity and our best attributes:

    “You want to scrape drunks off the sidewalk for a living?”
    “I want to do something that matters, if that’s what you mean.”

    I believe that, underneath all our fears and ambitions, every honest human being has this desire. I believe that, at our core, humans are inherently good. There will always be a little light in our hearts urging us to make a positive difference.

    Many — if not most — people won’t act on this instinct. We are, unfortunately, very adept at drowning out this voice (can we call it our conscience?) with activities that create “noise,” distracting us into thinking, erroneously, that all is well. We can convince ourselves that there’s no need to interfere with life as it is.

    Station Eleven soon gives humanity no choice in the matter: people must learn to help one another, or die alone.

    Before the real drama begins, Jeevan gives voice to this sentiment. It is foreshadowing, but it is also something more. His words are simple, yet they point toward a truth that is easy to forget: we can let the noise and distraction fade away. It can become quiet enough that the small voice in our hearts, that lovely little light, is no longer drowned out. Instead, it can guide us forward toward opportunities to help others.

    In that very same opening of Station Eleven, there’s another moving passage involving Jeevan. When the actor playing Lear in a stage adaptation of King Lear suddenly dies, chaos ensues. In the midst of this, a young actress called Kirsten — little more than a child — approaches Jeevan and asks if the actor will be okay.

    The actor is already dead, but Jeevan must say something.

    “Just now,” Jeevan tells her, “he was doing the thing he loved best in the world. If acting was the last thing he ever did, then the last thing he ever did was something that made him happy.”

    Comfort at the End of the World

    Jeevan cannot restore life to the actor, nor can he ease the fear and trauma from Kirsten’s memory. But he can speak words of kindness and comfort, knowing this is probably the first time that child has witnessed death or been in the same room as a person who is deceased.

    Kind words, words of comfort, do matter. They will mean a great deal to the person who needs them. After all, it is said that we remember not so much what a person does, but how they make us feel. Comfort and undivided attention: they are two of the very greatest gifts.

    We all have the ability to “do something that matters” — offering a helping hand, a listening ear, a smile of genuine kindness in the face of life’s difficulties. These will not go unnoticed. Sometimes, what matters most is not solving the problem before us, but simply refusing to let another person face it alone.

    We may never know how deeply a small act of kindness stays with someone. But that is no reason not to offer it. In a frightening world, even a few gentle words can become a small place of safety.

    What Remains

    These things are what Station Eleven made me think about. When everything unnecessary has been stripped away, what will remain?

    Cell phones become paperweights. Airplanes stop flying. All the lights in every city will go out. Things we spent so much time acquiring may become useless overnight. But the impulse to create will remain. So will our ability to comfort one another–to listen, help, and love.

    The Traveling Symphony continues to perform because survival is not the only thing that makes life worth preserving. Jeevan stops to comfort a frightened child because kindness matters, even when there is nothing he can do to change what has happened. Small acts may seem insignificant beside the enormity of a catastrophe, but they are precisely what will keep us human.

    We cannot know what we would miss most if the world as we knew it disappeared. Perhaps we would long for electricity, medicine, warm houses, or the familiar conveniences of ordinary life. But I hope that, if everything else were taken away, we would still recognize the value of one another.

    This is the comfort of Station Eleven’s story: even at the end of the world, there will be opportunities to do something that matters. There will be beauty worth making and people worth comforting.

    That is how we carry a little light with us, even into the dark.

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  • Raising Hare: A Hare Full of Love

    Raising Hare: A Hare Full of Love


    Leveret Had Different Plans

    It is a mistake to believe that animals and humans cannot form bonds. A person who is willing to spend time with an animal will learn this, and they’ll be rewarded in countless ways, one being the fact that something so much smaller than you feels safe by your side.

    Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton was one of the most enchanting stories I have enjoyed this year. It is a memoir in which she tells us the heartwarming story of an unlikely friendship.

    Dalton had the job she had always dreamed of, following her passion to work as a political adviser with access to the “war room.” She could not have imagined how one act of kindness could change it all.

    When Chloe discovers a leveret (a newborn hare) alone on a track outdoors, she is torn at first about what to do. What happened to its mother? Did she abandon it, or did she plan to return shortly?

    Look! See! A Leveret

    Dalton describes her tiny companion:

    The animal, no longer than the width of my palm, lay on its stomach with its eyes open and its short, silky ears held tightly against its back. Its fur was dark brown, thick and choppy, and grew in delicate curls along its spine.

    At first, Chloe goes on her way, hoping that the mother hare will come back for her leveret. She decides to let nature take its course:

    I would leave the leveret where I had found it, in the hope that it would hurry into the long grass as soon as I had gone, and be reunited with its mother.

    Four hours later, she returned to discover that the leveret remained where she had left it, exposed to the elements and unclaimed by a mother hare.

    Chloe knows now that she cannot abandon it; there are too many predators in the vicinity. She takes it to her home, planning to nurture it until it is strong enough to disappear once more into the wild.

    Before long, however, a powerful bond begins to form. Chloe hand-feeds the leveret as if it were her own child, and the leveret begins to trust her as though she were its own mother. As the leveret grows, it is allowed to frolic about the house, picking amusing hiding spots. It keeps Chloe company as she reads or watches TV.

    It soon seems evident that the leveret might go outside to play for a while, but it is not in a hurry to abandon Chloe and her home, the only safe place it has known in its life.

    The Hare of the Matter

    The story of the leveret was charming, almost like a fairy tale, but I recognized several greater messages burrowed into each chapter. I will list a few of them here:

    • Why do we like to pretend other species are so different from us? Love is a universal emotion; just because animals express it differently doesn’t mean it is not true.

    • If you found an animal in distress, would you do as Chloe did? Would you speed past it, ignoring an opportunity to perform an act of kindness for the sake of kindness?

    • Some animals are not meant to be domesticated. Chloe refuses to give the leveret a name, feeling that by doing so she would be claiming it as her own, when it was never her intention to force the leveret permanently into her lifestyle.

    In fact, the opposite happened. In her final chapter, Dalton wrote:

    The sensation of wonder she ignited in me continues to burn, showing me that aspects of my life I thought were set in stone are in part as malleable as wax. She did not change, I did. I have not tamed the hare, but in many ways the hare has stilled me.

    What Love Looks Like

    What does it mean to truly love someone, human or otherwise? Dalton made me think that love has certain characteristics:

    • Love does not force the other person to change who they are. If your condition for giving affection is that the loved one do all that you say when you say it, that sounds more to me like keeping a pet than a lover — and Chloe Dalton never did this with the hare.

    • Love is not a trap. You must leave the door open; then, you’ll know that the person is returning to you because it enjoys your company and feels secure in your presence.

    • Love compels us to try to speak the language of the beloved. In the case of a creature who cannot speak our language, pay attention to what they do; take the time to look into their eyes, and be compassionate.

    Raising Hare is not just a memoir about a leveret. It’s a book about the importance of paying attention, crossing barriers, and loving another living thing — patiently, and with great care.

  • Tea with Kate Westbury, Author of ‘The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies’

    Tea with Kate Westbury, Author of ‘The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies’


    Set in Oxford in 1951, The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies brings together a university still living in the shadow of the Second World War, a young woman determined to make her own way, and a mystery that threatens to pull old secrets into the light. Ginevra Bishop is confident, clever, and perhaps a little too willing to trust her instincts, while Sidney Braithwaite carries wounds from the war that are less easily left behind. Against the colleges, traditions, friendships, and quiet intrigues of postwar Oxford, the two find themselves drawn into a story where scandal and loyalty can be difficult to separate.

    I was delighted to speak with Kate Westbury about the making of the novel, the women who pursued higher education in this period, the complicated aftermath of war, and why community matters so much to Ginevra’s story.

    Oxford feels almost like another character in The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies. What drew you to setting this mystery at the university in 1951?

    I have always been enchanted with Oxford, partly because the tutorial system is such a distinctive approach to higher education that has vanished apart from a handful of schools. The architecture of the individual colleges, the university’s integration into the city–the history of both the university and the city—it all combines into a rich, fascinating setting for story atmosphere, one you can really sink your teeth into as both an author and reader. I settled on early 1951 because it felt far enough from the end of the war that characters’ lives have had enough years to resettle into normal grooves, but it’s also right before some interesting things happened on the espionage front. (If you’ve never heard of the Cambridge Five, that’s an important bit of Cold War history which will have ramifications inside my story too.)

    Ginevra Bishop is a fascinating heroine because she is both intelligent and socially confident. What inspired her character, and what did you hope readers would understand about the experiences of women at Oxford during this period?

    I always balk when people ask what inspired Ginevra and Sidney because their voices were so loud and clear from the very beginning. There was no character worksheet: Gin appeared with a story to tell, and I listened. That being said, Anne Shirley, Jo March, and Elizabeth Bennet were some of my dearest heroes growing up, and I can see glimmers of that same bright independence in Gin’s character. As I got to know her over the course of the first draft, what interested me most was how confidence can mask all kinds of wounds—loneliness, in Ginevra’s case–but she also has the resilience to not jump into the easy marriage that society expects her to make that would (ostensibly) make her life easier. In a world that often undervalued women’s capabilities, Gin bets on herself, and you see that same doggedness in the women who pursued higher education during this eraof postwar change. 

    Sidney Braithwaite carries the emotional scars of war throughout the novel. How did you approach writing about the lasting impact of the war on those who lived through it, even years after the fighting had ended?

    I wanted to be very careful with how I portrayed his PTSD, that it wasn’t reduced to a stereotype and convenient plot point. I spent a lot of time thinking about how his mental health before the war contributed to where he is now and the myriad of different emotions someone who overthinks everything can be plagued by: the burden of rejecting parental expectations, the delight of finding something you love doing that ends up betraying you, the struggle to prove yourself when people expect—or want—you to fail. What Sidney experienced during the war left its scars, but the layers of what he’s still struggling to process are more complicated than a label, too. 

    It occurred to me recently that we’re about as far from the height of Covid shutdown as my characters would have been from the end of the war. When one considers the lingering repercussions of the former (and the enormity of the war in comparison), I think that offers some perspective to contemporary readers on how these characters would have felt about living in the shadow of WWII.  

    Gin has a strong support system and meaningful friendships, which is refreshing in a genre where heroines are often portrayed as isolated. Why was it important for you to give her these connections?

    Community is historically foundational to Oxford college life, so this felt like a very natural, importantpart of the story. For someone like Gin–someone who has been starved for connection since her mother’s death–it would have been a breath of fresh air. When she’s eager to be real partners with Sidney too, his rejection stings all the more because of it. (As Sidney’s arc includes reckoning with no man is an island, Gin’s little found family plays a role in that, too.)

    It was also important to me that her friends feel like fully realized characters who could carry their own story; they are not props in Ginevra’s life, and her relationship with them exists outside of the romance (much as they still might tease her). I want readers to enjoy those scenes (almost) as much as Gin and Sidney’s. 

    What do you hope readers take away from Gin’s journey, particularly her experiences with family, identity, and choosing the people who truly support her?

    Gin is so extroverted and oriented toward the people around her that her journey is about realizing when it’s ok to let go of people—and things—that are hurting her. While she tends to be impulsive and acts on instinct—e.g. it’s easy for her to reject a marriage proposal at the start of the story (or to ignore Sidney when he brushes her off) because there’s no established bond—she’s also very loyal. Those deeper emotional splinters are harder for her to root out because she’s grown accustomed to the pain, and in this story, she must reckon with the boundaries of who and what deserves her loyalty. 

    Which three books would you recommend to Tearoom readers right now, and why?

    The Eights by Joanna Miller is a fictionalized account of the first matriculating class of women from Oxford in 1920. If you’re craving more historic Oxford with a good mix of comedy and pathos, this one is exquisite.  

    The Cloak and Dagger Club by Jackie McMahon –This is a 1930s mystery inspired by the real-life Detection Club, and Jackie is an impressive student of the era. She really captures the style of Golden Age mysteries, creating a very clever, Christie-esquepuzzle with a side of second-chance romance. There is a sequel coming next year, too! 

    I am also recently obsessed with The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion series by Beth Brower. Beautifully written, deep character work, hilarious; I pitch them to my friends as L.M. Montgomery x P.G. Wodehouse x Gilmore Girls. I don’t remember the last time I wanted to escape somewhere as badly as I want to live in St. Crispian’s.

    Thank you to Kate Westbury for joining me at The Tearoom and for sharing such thoughtful insights into Ginevra, Sidney, and the world of postwar Oxford. The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies is a story about secrets, friendship, resilience, and the difficult question of where our loyalties belong—and I’m delighted to have had the chance to talk with Kate about the world she created.

    The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies releases September 1, 2026. If you’re drawn to historical mysteries, postwar Oxford, and characters who refuse to be neatly defined by the world around them, keep this one on your reading list.

  • ‘O, Juliet’ by Robin Maxwell

    ‘O, Juliet’ by Robin Maxwell


    William Shakespeare’s works have taken on so many forms. As the centuries passed and the world changed, his genius remained—but it began to morph, began wearing different clothes and appealing to new age groups. O, Juliet by Robin Maxwell is a creative retelling of the play Romeo and Juliet, written as a romance novel. A few characters’ names are changed, along with some world-building details, to make it feel like a well-rounded story.

    When Juliet meets Romeo in Maxwell’s novel, they fall immediately into a romance that is both energetic and irrational. It is not uncommon for a teenager’s first love to feel this way, and here there is the added pressure that their love is forbidden, as both of their families are locked in a generational feud. We all know that it can do little good to forbid something to someone; it only makes them more determined to have it. No words of wisdom or caution will open the eyes of a person caught in the mire of infatuation. Youth is, and always will be, impulsive.

    As I read Maxwell’s iteration of the story, I felt torn. I really enjoyed the book, as I don’t often find novels about love—purely and simply about that flirty feeling—that are gripping and also well-written.

    I have never actually read Romeo and Juliet as a play, but whenever I have encountered the story through adaptations and spin-offs, what strikes me is how the story, while common enough (young love is not a new concept), is driven by so much passion—and, in my view, it is not the romantic kind. How can you love a person if you barely know them? Is it love if so much of it is fueled by fear and violence?

    I believe that true love should make a person feel peaceful. Of course, it would bring with it romance and happy feelings, but it does not seem sustainable to me that a love affair should thrive on constant struggle and anxiety. If Romeo and Juliet’s families had not despised one another, would this ever have happened at all? Could it be that part of this attachment was due only to the fact that their love was forbidden?

    Juliet knows nothing about Romeo at first. What is immediately clear is that her family and his have long been in disagreement. Yet she is completely lost in this first love, captivated by Romeo physically and because he shares with her a deep love for literature, particularly Dante, who is to them what Shakespeare is to us. Now, I can understand this: while I have never had physical crushes on men, I could always appreciate meeting a gentleman who can participate in literary discussions that engage my mind.

    Page 3 says of Juliet:

    “But of all my furnishings, those that I most cherished were my wooden desk and my chair. Unremarkable as they were, they were sacred to me. Some girls took great pleasure in their prettily painted marriage chests that grew fuller every year with linen and baby clothes, gold plate, and fine pieces of glass they would one day take with them into their husband’s house…. But for me the center of the world, the universe itself, was my desk. For here it was that I read and I wrote, and more than in my bed and sleep, did here I dream.”

    This passage is a beautiful ode to the sacredness of a writing desk. Virginia Woolf wrote of how a woman needs “a room” of one’s own to be successful; it’s not a stretch to imagine she’d feel the same sort of reverence for a desk. And it does not even need to be a grand desk: Jane Austen famously wrote on a desk so small that it just barely had room for pages, ink, and quill. Any space set aside for creation is sacred, and in this passage, we see that Juliet understands this.

    Page 58 features a beautiful, breathless monologue by Juliet as she speaks of Romeo:

    “I’ve been wild with such longings since I met him. I have not slept except pitifully, and then I dream of him. And I dream in verse, words flowing into words, streams and rivers of them, and all with the theme of love. When I wake, I try to remember the poems, but they’re gone, disappeared. And all I have left are memories of the feel of his hand, the sound of his voice, the shape of his lips.”

    All things considered, I found O, Juliet to be a beautiful book—perhaps one of my favorites this year—because it is a book about love that, with magical prose and high stakes, makes us feel as if we, too, are involved in the forbidden affair. It soothes an ache that many of us feel, a wish to be so taken by another person that it changes the very colors of the world in which we live.

    There will always be a place for love stories—forbidden love, doomed love, even troubled love. Humanity needs love. This might explain the timelessness of Romeo and Juliet, which has continued to inspire creatives for centuries since the Bard wrote it.

  • ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ by Ottessa Moshfegh

    ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ by Ottessa Moshfegh


    When life becomes difficult, it gets really tempting to believe that sleeping will shield us from all of our problems. The bliss of slumber offers temporary relief, but our problems will not vanish. On waking — and, while we are alive, we must wake — we still have to battle our demons and find solutions to our problems.

    Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a novel about a young woman who decides to spend an entire year sleeping. The narrator is nameless, but she becomes very real as we learn about her depression and her desire to disappear from the world. She begins this period of hibernation in June of 2000, when she is twenty-six years old.

    The only person who would visit, at least in the beginning, was Reva — a friend that our narrator met in college, but now is no longer sure that she likes. The bitter truth is this: you can love a person that you do not really like.

    What Is My Year of Rest and Relaxation About?

    On page 12, the narrator is telling Reva about her plan. “I’m not a junkie or something,” I said defensively. “I’m taking some time off. This is my year of rest and relaxation.”

    But the narrator becomes dependent on sleep medication — trazodone, Ambien, and Nembutal — and a host of other things that she acquires from a questionable and unscrupulous psychiatrist named Dr. Tuttle.

    The narrator is mum, at first, about her reasons for wanting to sleep for a year. But as we read on, we discover that, at the heart of it all, her wound stems from grief. Her father died of cancer, and her mother ended her own life not long afterward. They were both emotionally absent parents, but our narrator is scared, all the same, by how they left her alone in the big and cruel world.

    Grief and Depression in My Year of Rest and Relaxation

    This is another novel that deals with grief and the messy ways that it can change the lives of those left behind. It does not matter if the person who died was loving or even kind to those left behind. Death in the family is a change of life, a hole that needs filling, and we all seek ways to fill in the holes left behind.

    In this book, relief is found in sleep — in the void, the nothingness of slumber.

    In After Annie, the characters seek relief in distraction. They change routines, participate in romantic affairs, struggle with failing grades, and lash out in anger. Moshfegh’s narrator wants only to retreat, to enjoy the void of Dr. Tuttle’s prescriptions.

    While much of this story might be exaggerated, here is another common reaction to great tragedy. Grief is exhausting — but, it struck me as I was reading, this narrator’s great ruse also seems exhausting to uphold. She thinks it will make sleep easier, but perhaps all the effort she puts into maintaining her isolation makes rest harder to achieve.

    Indeed, grief is messy. It is not logical and it can often be unproductive. It does not always look like black mourning clothes and boxes of tissues. And in the case of this narrator, it takes the form of deep exhaustion, apathy about the world, and an urge to seek numbness at all costs.

    But sleep does not make the grief go away. All emotions, positive and negative, are persistent; they demand, sooner or later, to be felt.

    Reva and the Loneliness of Depression

    The narrator tries to push away Reva, who is the only person consistently present in her life and who constantly offers good advice on healthy ways to grieve, such as leaving the house.

    A person determined to suffer may push away anyone who tries to remind them that better things are possible. When someone is deeply depressed, accepting help can feel almost threatening because it requires them to imagine that their suffering might not be permanent.

    In my notes about After Annie, I wrote about how good novels can help us work through grief. Grief can lead to numbness. It can cause self-destructive behavior. These are emotions that we are often scared to address in the real world; novels create safe spaces in which we can explore the darker emotions that live in all of us.

    Reva had been having an affair with a married man that she knew from work. She is losing her mother to cancer, which means she’s constantly in need of comfort that the narrator is unable, or unwilling, to give. She has an eating disorder and always feels that she is overweight, though she is not.

    The narrator sees all of Reva’s problems and is annoyed by them. She is self-centered in the way that one with depression can be: no one else’s trouble is worth the energy. No one else is struggling. Many do not talk about this truth — depression can make the sufferer feel as though they are the center of the universe.

    My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ending

    Spoilers ahead.

    But after the year of rest and relaxation ends, the entire world changes.

    On September 11, the Twin Towers fall. Reva is in the North Tower, where she worked. The narrator records footage of the tragedy and watches it constantly to remind herself that life is worth living. She cannot see those poor souls jumping to their deaths and dismiss their suffering.

    After this tragedy, the world changes. New York City changes. And our narrator cannot remain stagnant anymore: she is forced to change, too.

    The year she spent trying to disappear has ended, and the world has given her a terrible reason to become fully awake again.

  • ‘The Swans of Fifth Avenue’ by Melanie Benjamin

    ‘The Swans of Fifth Avenue’ by Melanie Benjamin


    Historical fiction is unique because it allows us to “meet” some of the artists and celebrities who gave the past its most vivid colors. Melanie Benjamin’s The Swans of Fifth Avenue brings us into the glamorous world of Truman Capote and the wealthy New York women who became his closest friends and, eventually, his greatest enemies.

    I knew very little about Truman Capote before reading this novel. Of course, I knew him as the author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but I had never really wondered about Truman the person—the mind that dreamed up Holly Golightly. Benjamin presents him as thoroughly human. Behind the literary genius was a flawed soul with many wounds left over from childhood, and a void he tried to fill with fame, friendship, and a larger-than-life personality.

    At first, Truman is a beloved confidante to his wealthy friends, affectionately known as “the Swans.” He is welcomed into their glamorous world and becomes privy to their secrets. But after the success of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman becomes increasingly consumed with the idea that his next work must be even more sensational.

    So he begins using the secrets of his friends as material.

    Although he changes the names of the characters in his stories, it isn’t difficult for those around him to recognize themselves. His friends feel betrayed. Truman has taken the intimate details they entrusted to him and transformed them into entertainment for the public.

    When one of his stories contributes to the destruction of a woman’s life, there is no going back. Truman has the fame he wanted, but he loses the people who loved him.

    Was it worth it?

    That question is at the heart of the novel. Writers often draw inspiration from real life, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But where is the line between inspiration and exploitation? What happens when our success depends upon exposing someone else’s vulnerability?

    Benjamin’s novel suggests that fame rarely provides the wholeness people imagine it will. Truman spends years pursuing recognition, only to discover that success cannot replace the friendships he has lost. The void he was attempting to fill becomes even larger.

    The Swans are similarly desperate to escape their own fears. Their world is one of glamour, wealth, beautiful clothing, and carefully maintained appearances, but underneath it all is an awareness of mortality. They do not want to grow old. Their beauty is one of the few forms of power they possess, and they fight desperately against the passage of time.

    This part of the novel feels surprisingly modern.

    We may no longer live in the same world of Fifth Avenue dinner parties and society pages, but the battle against aging has hardly disappeared. Beauty products promise clearer skin, fewer wrinkles, whiter teeth, and a younger appearance. Social media allows us to carefully curate our images and decide which version of ourselves other people are allowed to see.

    The Swans wanted to hide the evidence of time. Today, we have filters.

    The deeper tragedy is that the Swans become so committed to maintaining their perfect images that truth itself becomes threatening. Truman exposes the shadows behind their picture-perfect lives and reminds them that they are human.

    But Truman is hardly innocent. He is also performing. He has created his own larger-than-life persona, and he uses the private lives of others to sustain his fame. He exposes their secrets while simultaneously trying to hide his own wounds.

    That complexity is what makes the story so compelling.

    Everyone in this novel is, in some way, trying to escape being ordinary, forgotten, or mortal. They use beauty, wealth, friendship, literature, and fame as ways of bargaining with time. None of them can actually win.

    Ultimately, The Swans of Fifth Avenue is a story about the price of being seen—and the price of refusing to be seen honestly.

    The most powerful stories are often the ones that contain the truth. Capote understood that. But the truth-teller risks becoming a threat to those who would rather remain hidden.

    All the same, someone has to tell it.

    A world without truth would be horrific, indeed.

  • Tea with Mariko Turk, Author of ‘The Museum of Modern Love’

    Tea with Mariko Turk, Author of ‘The Museum of Modern Love’


    There are few things I love more than talking with a writer about the books they’ve made and the worlds that shaped them.

    Today, I’m having tea with Mariko Turk, author of The Museum of Modern Love, to talk about writing, art, love, and the strange, wonderful things that happen when those worlds meet.

    The Museum of Modern Love follows Miki, a young intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who plans to spend a night alone in the museum with her crush. As they make their way through the galleries, visiting the paintings her grandparents saw when they first fell in love, Miki hopes to finally tell him how she feels.

    I hope you’ll pull up a chair and join us.

    Q: The Museum of Modern Art in your novel feels like a space saturated with love for art in all its forms. I was especially struck by Grandma Hana’s belief that art is something we can fall in love with. How do you think we can carry that philosophy into our everyday lives, outside of museums and books?

    A: What a great question! I think we can carry that philosophy into our daily lives by making time and space to appreciate beauty. Whether it’s a particularly lovely tree you pass by every day in your neighborhood, or a heartwarming scene you witness at the playground, or a perfect, peaceful moment you experience while sipping tea and listening to the birds sing. Too often we don’t pause to examine or appreciate these things because we’re distracted by all kinds of stuff, some of it very necessary (work, childcare, grocery shopping, etc.) and some of it not as necessary (the endless array of screens always at our disposal). But what if we stopped to study the pattern of veins on the leaves? Or to reflect on why that scene at the playground captured our heart? Or to linger in that peaceful moment with the birds?

    This is why I love museums so much, because they force us to study and reflect and linger. They force us to slow down and really look at things, as if our only job is to marinate in art and what it makes us feel. So why not treat the world around us like a museum sometimes? I feel like we’d all be a bit happier and more fulfilled.

    Q: Reading your novel over the weekend felt, at times, like stepping into the Met itself—its atmosphere is so vivid and immersive. How did you approach building that sense of place on the page? And do you have a personal history or relationship with the museum that shaped it?

    A: One of my best friends worked at the Met Museum for many years, and I remember visiting her there several times in my twenties. So some of my research was drawing on memories of what it felt like to be there in that grand, awe-inspiring place, and also what it felt like to get little peeks behind the scenes.

    But because I live in Colorado and can’t just skip over to the Met any time I want (though wouldn’t that be amazing?) I did A LOT of remote research about the details of the Met’s galleries. I read books and listened to podcasts about the Met. I was on the Met’s website constantly, studying floor plans and reading about exhibits and collections. 

    Any time a particularly fascinating piece of art stood out to me, I’d make a note of it and think about how it could fit into Miki and Lou’s love story. I can honestly say it was the most fun I’ve ever had while researching! 

    I found Miki and Auden’s relationship deeply recognizable, especially the intensity of their long-distance connection and the earnestness of their feelings. It made me think of how often young love is shaped as much by imagination as by reality. In your view, what creates the central tension in their relationship—distance, youth, or something more subtle between the two?

    Distance and youth for sure, but also fear. Specifically, the fear of uncertainty and vulnerability, which results in the desire to cling to what is safe and familiar. I felt that fear a lot when I was a teen, which is probably why my own teen love life was 100% taking place in my imagination. I had a lot of very intense crushes that hinged on small interactions and instant message chats because it was a way to have the excitement of romance without any of the messiness and vulnerability that comes with a real relationship.

    I think that a lot of teens in this generation experience that fear as well, especially since so many of their relationships also take place via a screen. Real relationships can be messy and scary, but I hope that through Miki’s journey, readers see that it can also be exhilarating and fulfilling. 

    Q: Were there particular artistic, literary, or cultural influences that guided you while writing this story? I’m curious what works or ideas might be quietly woven into its emotional landscape.

    A: The book that first sparked the idea for this story is the 1967 middle grade classic From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg. It’s about a brother and sister who run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and stay there for multiple nights. It is SO evocative, funny, thoughtful, and poignant, and I feel like anyone who read it as a kid (or an adult) has fantasies about staying overnight in an art museum. It also does such a lovely job of juxtaposing the grandeur and history of the museum with the bickering and emotional breakthroughs of its young protagonists—while treating each with the respect and gravity they deserve. It’s a juxtaposition I wanted to capture in Miki and Lou’s story as well.

    The history of WWII Japanese American incarceration also features in the story, specifically Miki’s experience as a descendant of a camp survivor. I drew on my own family’s history in the camps as well as outside research to think about how Miki’s perception of art, the past, museums, and love might be shaped by this particular aspect of her family history.

    Q: On a lighter note—if you could step into the world of your novel for a day, wandering the museum and its surroundings as one of your characters, where would you go first, and what would you be most tempted to take with you in your imagination?

    A: I have always been drawn to portraits, especially unconventional ones when the subject doesn’t seem posed but instead just captured in a real moment from their lives. I also love paintings of people in general—family scenes, party scenes, groups of friends gathered together. There is always so much to dissect and wonder about. The relationships between the subjects, what was happening right before this scene, what will happen after, what the people were like in real life, etc. 

    I think I’m drawn to paintings of people because they lend themselves so well to stories. If I could wander the museum overnight, I’d find all the most intriguing people on the walls and make up stories about them all! 

    Q: I also found myself thinking about how certain books feel like they slow you down while you’re reading them—in the best way. Was that sense of quiet, lingering attention something you were consciously trying to build into the reading experience of this novel?

    A: Yes! And I’m so glad you felt it! I wanted the experience of reading the book to mimic the experience of visiting an art museum, when you travel through centuries of beauty and history all in the span of a few hours. And then you come back out into the real world, and it feels so strange, because not a lot of time has passed, but you feel like you’ve been on an epic journey. You feel like you’ve traveled through so much time and so many emotions. You feel changed.

    I wanted Miki and Lou to feel that way, to realize they needed to slow down and really see the details of the other person, the same way they slow down and look at the art. They fall in love with each other the same way they fall in love with the art that surrounds them. And I wanted the readers to feel that way, too! 

  • ‘After Annie’ by Anna Quindlen

    ‘After Annie’ by Anna Quindlen


    Books cannot directly solve the problem of death, but I have come to realize that they can offer an insight into grief and loss that is incredibly powerful. Years after losing important people in my own life, I am grateful for novels that reassure me that grief is never simple. It is messy and hollow all at once, the process of trying to fill such enormous holes.

    After Annie by Anna Quindlen is not a very long book, but it is full of truth. It follows the Brown family after the sudden death of Annie, a wife and mother who dies from an aneurysm. When she goes, so does life as the family knew it, because the whole household has relied upon her. The children find that they have no choice but to grow up, especially Ali, the oldest, who must step up and learn to do the things her mother once did because no one else is going to do them for her.

    Annie’s husband is lost in a different way. Months after his wife is buried, he has an affair with an old girlfriend, perhaps seeking comfort in some form of familiarity. But he soon realizes that the relationship is not healing him or helping him grow. Instead, it is pushing his two older children further away.

    One of the most interesting things about the novel is that, immediately after Annie’s death, no one in her family seems able to remember her imperfectly. Her husband occasionally feels frustration toward her, but he pushes those feelings away because they are accompanied by guilt. He seeks comfort in distraction instead. Her best friend, Annemarie, was also in love with her, but this ultimately creates more resentment toward Annie’s husband than toward Annie herself.

    The suddenness of Annie’s death creates a fear of dishonoring her, as though she might somehow return if everyone remains silent, or as though an unkind thought could somehow cause her to die all over again.

    This fear is not uncommon, especially immediately after a death. Words and even thoughts are handled carefully. It can be easier to find distraction in lovers, alcohol, or anything else that keeps us from thinking honestly about what we feel. Do we subconsciously imagine that the person we have lost, now existing only in spirit, can somehow see all of our private thoughts and feelings?

    I have known grief to change not only how a family looks, but also how it feels. It does not simply take the form of tears; that would almost be too easy. It also looks like insomnia, anger, irritability, silence, and an unbearable emptiness. These emotions are much more difficult to excuse than a fit of crying. If only tears were the ultimate and final expression of loss. But the emotions of a human heart are, by nature, difficult to contain and understand.

    Novels allow us to explore these differing twists and turns. They do not answer all of our questions, but they can provide a starting point on the journey toward peace. A novel is a complete form of art, an elaborate map of the landscape of human emotion, capable of charting both its rises and its descents. Anna Quindlen has given us a beautifully written story of a family struggling to find its footing again.

    Because life must go on. We have not died with our loved one. Our time on this planet has not yet ended. We still have decisions to make and stories to tell.

    The hardest part is getting up and beginning to live again, but it is also the most important part. Our deceased loved ones do not want us to stop living. Their time here is finished; ours is not. There are still people who love us, people who need us, and people who share in the same story we are living.

    Grief demands to be felt and experienced, but it is not meant to steal our entire lives from us. Eventually, we have to get back up and make the most of the time we have left. We cannot bring back those who have passed on, but we can choose to keep living.

    Perhaps that is one of the truest ways we can honor their memories.