TR: I don’t think I have a religious bone in my body. I don’t say that boastingly or regretfully. It’s just a fact. Perhaps that’s why religion appeals to me as a subject, because I have distance from it and I’m curious about what a large part it plays in so many people’s lives. I have no axe to grind, no position to attack or defend. It was also an exciting challenge. The real stretch for me was assuming the voice of a Tertiary Baptist (the nonexistent sect Eve was raised in.) But no one asked me about that. They all wanted to know how I dealt with bras and periods and stuff like that.
DC: Did you ever hear from readers who had a strong fundamentalist bent?
TR: No. I don’t think this kind of book makes it onto their radar. I’d be curious to know what they think, though.
DC: Eve interacts a great deal with the New York art world. Is that autobiographical? Do you know a lot of artists?
TR: I know some, but I used art because Eve is so perplexed by this Vision, what she saw, and tries so hard to make sense of it, that the best world in which to work out this problem seemed to be that of the visual arts. Horace and Marron, for all their eccentricities, are serious makers, addressing concerns about reality and representation that are crucial to Eve’s progress as a person. Yes, they use her, but she learns from them, from the hurt they inflict, and finally uses what she learns to move on.
DC: Speaking of reality and representation, the novel draws a lot of intensity from your use of point of view, the use of “unreliable narration”—is that the word you would use? As Detective Jourdain tells her, “Between what you see and what you think you see, there’s this space. More than anyone else I’ve known.” I found myself fascinated by the many ways you made use of that “space” in Eve’s perception, the way it can be played for humor and pathos, the way it underpins the dream-like mood and music of the prose but is also intrinsic to the twists and surprises of the plot in the end. Why do you think you’re drawn to this particular technique? What does it do for you as a writer, and what effect are you hoping that it will have on a reader?
TR: I don’t believe in unreliable narrators. Or rather, I believe every narration is unreliable. Eve sees what she sees, thinks what she thinks, when she sees and thinks it. Don’t you, Dan, don’t we all, see crazy things that a moment later we decide weren’t there, that we cancel out or paper over because we can’t really handle the bizarreness of our brains? Don’t you sometimes think strange and terrible thoughts? I do. Then I pull back and dismiss them. We all perform this mental maneuver hundreds of times a day, in order to maintain appearances. Well, Eve was brought up in such a stark spiritual landscape that she hasn’t learned to do that, yet. She calls it exactly as she sees it and, I would contend, by striving to stay close to her true vision of what’s going on gives a more “accurate” picture of the world than an ordinary, plausible depiction of what we’ve all tacitly agreed is out there.
DC: I’m greatly looking forward to the next book. Any hints about what the future might look like for Eve?
TR: When we next meet Eve, she’s sitting in a playground, taking care of her seven-month-old daughter. But Eve’s take on motherhood is, needless to say, all her own.
READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
The book starts out with a mysterious event—Eve’s glimpse of what may be a rape/mugging/murder. How important is this mystery to the personal journey Eve undergoes over the course of the novel?
From very early on in the novel, Eve begins to doubt the reality of what she sees; she talks to herself and has vivid fantasies, frequently finding herself “misinterpreting” events. Did you find yourself questioning what was “real” in this book? When did you find Eve a trustworthy narrator, and when did you doubt her?
Did any of Eve’s potential “suitors” seem more sympathetic than others? Are they all equally flawed? What would have happened to Eve if she had ended up with Viktor, or Horace, or Detective Jourdain?
In the interview, Thomas Rayfiel says that he imagines that in the end, Eve “marries the city itself.” What do you think he means by that? How has Eve’s “relationship” with New York City changed over the course of the novel?
At a crucial point in the novel, Eve is seriously considering returning back home to Iowa. What resources does she discover in herself that make her decide to remain? Were you glad that she chose to stay?
The novel confronts issues of gender behavior and sexuality in nearly all its characters. At one point, Marron says: “I don’t believe there’s any difference between male and female. I mean, they’re useful distinctions, for bathrooms in restaurants and stuff like that. But they’re artificial. They’re imposed on us by society. Really we’re this complex mixture of both.” How true is this statement for Marron and the other characters in the novel?
At one point Eve compares a coffee shop to a church and later compares Bloomingdale’s to a cathedral. At the same time, she’s very critical of traditional houses of worship. How do such metaphors help us understand Eve’s notions of spirituality?
At one point, talking to Detective Jourdain, Eve thinks: “I could see the future. I could make the future. That’s how it felt. I could control my destiny, or maybe I was just in tune with it, accepting the inevitable and pretending it was my idea.” How much does Eve control her own destiny in this novel, and how much is fate? What crucial choices does Eve make? Which events are thrust upon her, beyond her control?
THOMAS RAYFIEL is the author of Split-Levels and Colony Girl, which was named a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Claire, and their two children.
OTHER BOOKS BY THOMAS RAYFIEL
SPLIT-LEVELS
COLONY GIRL
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Book Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2003 by Thomas Rayfiel
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2005 by Thomas Rayfiel and The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Ballantine Reader’s Circle and colophon are trademarks of Random House Inc.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2004096355
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eISBN: 978-0-307-41517-2
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