Liza Gyllenhaal spent many years in advertising and publishing. She lives with her husband in New York City and western Massachusetts.
A CONVERSATION WITH LIZA GYLLENHAAL
Q. What made you want to write this novel? Did you know somebody who lost a child?
A. The story was actually sparked by a “This I Believe” piece that I heard on NPR a couple of years ago. It was about the “pathways of desire” that Daniel describes to Jenny when they first meet: “the tracks and paths we create naturally in our day-to-day lives. How we really get from place to place—from car to house, say, or across a vacant lot—rather than following the prescribed routes.” The NPR essay went on to extrapolate on that idea, pointing out the necessity of boundaries and how certain “pathways” can lead to real danger—in this case the author’s horse, who leapt across a cattle guard to get at some apples and broke a hip.
The concept stayed with me and, when my mother died a few months later, I found myself longing for some sort of emotional shortcut, some quick way around the pain, something like a pathway of desire. The proscribed stages of grief just seemed too onerous—and time-consuming. My mother had died after a long, productive life, and I had many months to prepare myself for her passing and to say good-bye. If I felt this badly, I wondered, what must it be like to lose someone under truly adverse conditions? The most painful possibility I could imagine was losing a child—in a split second, without warning—and then believing you might actually be responsible for that death.
The novel grew out of that premise: how a couple copes with the worst possible scenario. I’m always drawn to writing about marriage and family, and it seemed to me that such an extreme situation would offer a lot of insight into both subjects. The rest of the story follows the divergent “pathways” they take to deal with their grief and guilt.
I’ve known several couples who have lost children, but, as with most fiction, Cal and Jenny are broad composites of real and imagined people. Though the novel deals specifically with a child’s accidental death, I hope that it also sheds light on the journey we all are forced to take after a loved one dies.
Q. You wrote all but the final chapter in the first person point of view, but alternating between Jenny and Cal. Why?
A. I knew that I wanted to have both Cal and Jenny tell the story, sometimes even repeating the same scenes and conversations but from their differing viewpoints. How better to show them misreading each other—and growing further and further apart? Writing in the first person gave me (and, I hope, will give the reader) immediate access to their deepest emotions. Without this, I think some people might find their decisions unconscionable. They both behave in highly irrational and irresponsible ways. But, as Cal says at one point, grief “can make you do some crazy stuff.” I hope that putting the reader inside Jenny’s and Cal’s heads helps make both characters more sympathetic and understandable.
At first, I didn’t know why I wanted to cast the last chapter in the third person. But even before I wrote a word of the novel I knew that’s how I wanted the story to end. It took me until I was actually working on the final scene to realize that, by using the third person, I was able to describe what Cal and Jenny were both feeling more or less simultaneously, which, I think, heightened the emotion and the immediacy at a critical point.
Q. How did you conceive of Daniel? What do you want the reader to make of him?
A. Initially, I thought of Daniel as just this amoral, narcissistic type of guy. Both Cal and Jenny are drawn to him, obviously, because he makes it clear that he believes the “whole idea of guilt is probably the worst concept mankind has ever come up with.”
This is a comforting philosophy, of course, to two people weighed down by remorse. However, as the story developed, I started to take a much darker view of him. And I began to understand that he was like a black hole—essentially empty but also extremely powerful and dangerous. Cal and Jenny were able to project their own needs and desires onto him and to believe he was offering them solace and guidance. But he was really leading them astray—down dangerous pathways—while interested only in his own pleasure and self-aggrandizement.
In the end, I think the character of Daniel is the closest I’ve ever come to writing about evil.
Q. The novel explores a number of sibling relationships. What was your own upbringing like?
A. I was raised in a small, close-knit community where large families were the norm. I’m one of six kids—third in the lineup and the oldest girl. There was a five-year gap between me and my younger brother, so I had very little experience of sibling rivalry and unhappiness (unless you count being tickled to the point of hysteria by older brothers). However, as a high-performing and ambitious group, we were not without drama and dysfunction. Probably because of that, I’ve always been fascinated by family dynamics. Jealousy, neediness, envy, loyalty, hero worship—all the great emotions are the everyday stuff of most sibling relationships. Even now so many of the habits and roles we established in our childhoods are still at play.
Q. Where exactly is So Near set—and why?
A. My husband and I have owned a weekend cottage in western Massachusetts for nearly twenty years. We spend about half our time there, commuting back and forth from New York City. Our place is close to a small town that still retains a lovely New England rural feel, though a good percentage of its population are second-home owners like ourselves.
I loved writing about this beautiful part of the world in my first novel, Local Knowledge. I didn’t want to reprise the same characters (though I do have Maddie and Paul put in a brief appearance), but I find that writing about a fictionalized version of this area is deeply satisfying. In many ways, it reminds me of the rolling hills of Pennsylvania and the community where I was raised.
Q. What sort of research did you do in writing the novel?
A. I had drafted a rough outline and was just starting to write the book when I was asked to talk to a reading group in my hometown. At the end of a terrific discussion, one of the women in the group asked what I was working on next and I briefly described the story that became So Near. “That’s quite a coincidence,” another woman said, “because my husband is a lawyer who has handled several such lawsuits.” It wasn’t just a coincidence; it was a real godsend. I was able to get firsthand, deeply knowledgeable advice about product liability litigation. These insights made me rethink some important details and, I believe, helped lend the story a sense of verisimilitude that secondhand research (from books, articles, the Internet, etc.) just can’t duplicate.
Q. What authors do you like, and did any of them influence you in writing this book?
A. I read a lot of fiction and poetry, and my list of favorite writers is long, lowbrow, highfalutin, all over the place, and always growing. In no particular order, I love the fiction of Iris Murdoch, P. D. James, John Fowles, F. Scott and Penelope Fitzgerald, Jane Smiley, Susan Isaacs, and Alan Furst, and the poetry of Richard Wilbur, Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, and Kay Ryan, to name just a very quick and beloved few. Over the past year or so, I’ve been particularly taken with—and no doubt influenced by—Jim Lynch’s Border Songs, Allegra Goodman’s The Cookbook Collector, and Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife.
Q. Do you have a set writing routine?
A. I usually wake up early and reread whatever I’ve been working on. I revise constantly on the computer. (It continues to amaze me how Tolstoy could have written War and Peace in longhand!) Then I let the demands of daily life intervene for several hours and pick up again in the afternoon. Most days, I don’t hit my stride until three o’clock or so, and then if I’m lucky get two or three good, productive hours in. I think a lot about what I’m working on when I’m not actually writing; when I’m running, for instance, or driving in the car back and forth between the city and Massachusetts. I try to work out problems—a scene I can’t get off the ground, a character who refuses to behave—during that two-and-a-half-hour stretch.
Q. Are you wor
king on something new?
A. Yes, and again, it takes place in a small town not far from Red River in Local Knowledge and Covington in So Near. It is about a married couple with two children who move from New York City back to the husband’s small hometown after being traumatized by 9/11. The story is told from several points of view—one being that of the son, now in prep school, who gets caught in the middle of a drinking scandal at the couple’s home, involving a classmate of his and a girl from the small town. The novel will explore questions of parental responsibility, identity, acceptance, and—of course—family.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. In the beginning of the novel, Cal looks up to Kurt, just as he looks to him for direction in life. But after the accident, he begins to shift his allegiance and respect to Edmund. Did you sense he might be making a mistake?
2. Even before Betsy’s death, Jenny seems to be troubled. Though the accident sweeps aside many other concerns, it also exposes some of Jenny’s underlying problems. What are they—and how do they feed into some of her later decisions?
3. Sanctimonious and judgmental, Jenny’s father is not a particularly sympathetic character. And yet, in the end, Jenny says to him, “I want you to know that almost everything you told me since Betsy died turns out to be true. I only wish I’d been able to listen to you sooner.” What did you think of his advice?
4. Have you ever experienced the recurring presence of someone you loved after he or she has died?
5. Jenny’s garden, especially as the story progresses, is intended to be a metaphor for her life. Did you sense that—and did that concept work for you?
6. When Cal first meets Daniel, he tells Jenny that “I felt that I knew him from somewhere. That we had this kind of connection.” Why do you think he feels that way?
7. Do you think Kurt did the right thing when he decided to act as a witness against his own brother?
8. Unlike Cal and Jenny, Daniel never lies or alters his belief system. In fact, he doesn’t change in any way throughout the story. What do you think this says about his character?
9. Grief “can make you do some crazy stuff,” Cal says at one point. Do you think that excuses his actions—or Jenny’s?
10. We never really learn why Jenny’s mother left her husband and family. At one point, Jenny’s father says, “What happened is between us.” Do you think it’s fair of him—or any parent—to keep such important information a secret?
11. Early on, Jenny says that there’s something “creepy about demanding payment for someone’s death” and calls product liability lawyers “vultures.” Do you agree with that assessment when it comes to Lester Stokes and how he handled Cal’s case?
12. Many marriages would fall apart after what Cal and Jenny experience. What do you think is going to happen to them in the future? Do they have a shot at happiness?
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