by Toby Devens
Also, the roots of family have become more important to me as I’ve grown older. Not long ago, I did a bit of genealogical research and turned up the ship’s manifest for my maternal grandmother, who left Austria for America, all alone, to start a new life. She died before I was born, so I bombarded her generation of the family with questions about how she’d adjusted to the new world. That led to my fascination with the immigrant experience in general and the ways people adapt to transplantation, how they wilt or bloom in new soil. With America welcoming unprecedented numbers of newcomers from Asia, I decided to make my main character Korean-American, but Grace’s story has much that’s universal about it.
Judith’s relationship with Grace is another narrative thread. Mother-and-daughter dynamics are tricky to manage under the best of circumstances and Judith and Grace perform the special, precarious balancing act of a single mother and only daughter. Judith has always walked a tightrope between love for and independence from Grace. I thought it would be interesting to follow up with the two adults to see if that relationship landed on its feet.
Q. This is your second novel. Can you tell us a little about your first one and how it compares to Happy Any Day Now?
A. My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet) is a novel about women who reinvent themselves after their tidy worlds are shaken up. The narrator, Gwyneth Burke, MD, walks in on her husband of twenty-six years in the arms of their male interior decorator and—bam!—life as she’s known it is over. From then on, she’s on her own. But not alone. She’s got friends: never-married businesswoman Fleur Talbot and widowed fiber artist Kat Greenfield. We follow this witty and resilient trio as they take on career issues, aging parents, truculent children, difficult men of course, the occasional hot flash, and a delicious plan for revenge.
Each writer has a personal voice and mine pervades My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet) and Happy Any Day Now. Both stories are set in Baltimore and spotlight protagonists who are dedicated to serious work. Gwyn is a surgeon who deals with cancers specific to women; Judith is a classical cellist. Gwyn and her pals are in their mid-fifties; Judith is rapidly approaching the big five-oh. One lead is a physician, the other an artist, so their personalities are quite different, but at the core is a similar latent strength just waiting to be tested.
The stories share my preference for plots with twists and surprises, a focus on character, and lots of dialogue because I enjoy writing it and think it reveals even more than description does. Both have a healthy dose of humor, sizzling sex scenes, and love. Blissful, painful, complicated love.
Still, the books are very different from each other—the way siblings from the same mother can be—and my labor with both novels was considerably longer and significantly harder than with my daughter.
Q. Judith’s Korean/Jewish background gives so much richness to the novel. How do you happen to know so much about both cultures?
A. I have Asian cousins and a second generation that blends the Asian and Jewish strains. A family Christmas letter a few years ago with photographs of their beautiful babies sparked my thinking that this combination offered interesting story possibilities. Happy Any Day Now took off from there.
The Jewish experience is something I grew up with and continue to be surrounded by. The Asian component required more extensive research. I live in a community between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., that hosts a rich cultural mix, a very diverse population that includes a large number of immigrants from Korea. I started by chatting with my neighbors. I visited Koreatowns in various cities. I also read books by Korean authors and did research online. Korean-American blogs were my go-to source for all kinds of information—the women traded recipes and childhood reminiscences, exchanged advice about how to deal with their parents, wrote about preserving the meaningful traditions of their ancestors for their own kids. The more I came to know, the more I was impressed by how many qualities and values the Jewish and Korean cultures have in common.
Q. Through your depiction of Judith’s and Geoff’s roles in the orchestra, you bring classical music down to earth and make me want to listen to many of the pieces you mention. How did you choose the selections you made? What would be on your ideal playlist for listening while reading Happy Any Day Now?
A. I come from a musical family. My mother and her brother both played piano, her twin sister played violin, and a first cousin was an Academy Award–winning composer/conductor. Saturday afternoons, our apartment was flooded with music from the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast.
Later, for a New York magazine, I reviewed concerts at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall and became hooked on the serious stuff. I’ve listened to the local classical music stations for years, so I felt reasonably comfortable matching the selection to the situation in Happy Any Day Now. When in doubt, I consulted musician friends in California and London, who made suggestions.
A playlist . . . what a great idea!
We first meet Judith at cherry blossom time in Baltimore, so the perfect accompaniment to the beginning of the story is “Spring” from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
From the Manhattan rooftop scene: France’s iconic Édith Piaf singing her haunting rendition of “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” is available on numerous CDs and as an MP3 (as are many of the selections I note). Also from that scene, a reference to the theme from the PBS drama Brideshead Revisited. The score from Charlie’s favorite show when he and Judith were together in Cambridge is available on CD. And there’s a wonderful sequence on YouTube with music and still photos.
The work that freaks out Judith onstage, Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2, is at times meltingly beautiful, at others stunning in its intensity. Many consider the version recorded by Maurizio Pollini with the Berlin Philharmonic (Claudio Abbado conducting) a masterpiece.
Dvorák’s Cello Concerto, mentioned a number of times in the book, may bring tears to your eyes as it does to mine. Some think it’s the greatest concerto for the instrument ever written and it’s been recorded by almost every major cellist. CD versions are available by Mstislav Rostropovich, Yo-Yo Ma, and Jacqueline du Pré, among others.
The two Dons by Strauss—Don Quixote and Don Juan—which figure prominently in the story, can frequently be found paired on CDs. Also, look on YouTube for the complete performance of Don Quixote by the Chicago Symphony with Daniel Barenboim conducting.
Richard mentions one of Paganini’s Twenty-Four Caprices as being a lifelong challenge. Hear all twenty-four in their original incarnation for violin played by Itzhak Perlman in EMI Classics Great Recordings of the Century series. Also, don’t miss a masterful playing of that dastardly difficult cello adaptation in the CD Portrait of Yo-Yo Ma.
A touching moment is Judith playing Massenet’s “Meditation” from Thaïs. My second favorite performance of this piece (after Judith’s, of course) is by Yo-Yo Ma. Check it out on YouTube. Or listen to it tucked in among Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze,” Piazzolla’s “Libertango,” and other compositions for cello on the highlights CD The Essential Yo-Yo Ma.
And finally, Mozart’s Horn Concertos—just because they never fail to lighten my heart.
Korea’s keening shamanistic music, which sometimes serves as background to mudang readings, is strange to Western ears at first, but may grow on you. If you want to experience it, there are at least two CDs out there featuring the double-reed piri as well as the two-stringed fiddle called the haegeum. Search online for “sinawi music of Korea” and you’ll come up with samples.
Of the popular songs mentioned, two stand out: “My One and Only Love,” which Geoff plays at the Bard in Fells Point—the Sinatra version is the gold standard—and “Stars Fell on Alabama.” In a CD simply named Ella and Louis, Ella Fitzgerald sings the latter like she’s unwrapping velvet, and when Louis Armstrong joins her, his rasp is uncharacteristically mellow.
Now you have the best in the book. So, as Richard Tarkoff would say, “Play on!”
Q. Grace is one of my favorite ch
aracters in the book. She’s funny and courageous and has great common sense. Can you tell us more about how you came up with her?
A. Oh, I loved writing Grace. Inspiration? There used to be a Korean woman living on my street who took her grandson—about four, I’d say—out for a walk on weekday afternoons. Occasionally, she’d stop at my front garden to point out tulips or the cherry tree in bloom. She was gentle and funny with the little boy. Later, she walked for exercise with her husband. She scolded the old fellow with many fierce hand gestures, then broke out a gold-toothed smile. I modeled Grace’s physical appearance on this woman and perhaps picked up the little bit of her personality I observed. The rest was drawn from my own mother’s sometimes unaware sense of humor and her fund of hilarious superstitions, an aunt’s perseverance in the face of difficult circumstances, a friend’s . . . Gosh, I don’t know. It’s always a jumble. I may lift a gesture here, a pattern of speech there, a snippet of circumstance from way back, but the composite bears no resemblance to, as the legal disclaimer goes, anyone, anything, or any event living or dead. I haven’t a clue about the creative process and, truth is, I don’t want to know. I’m afraid if the mystery is revealed, it will vanish. Even if I tried to replicate a real person, I’m sure what would emerge wouldn’t resemble the original in the slightest. I don’t try. I just let it come together on the page. Memorable characters—and I hope Grace is one—really do take on a life of their own.
Q. What are your favorite parts of the novel? What parts were the most fun to write? Which were the most difficult?
A. I always have a great time writing about relationships—but that’s also the most difficult material to get down. Dissecting how and why human beings behave as they do is challenging because it’s frequently unpredictable and inexplicable. But that is the way people act in real life—sometimes against their better judgment, better interests, better nature, and, God knows, logic. As the writer I’m charged with making those you’ve-got-to-be-kidding decisions and actions of the characters believable. And when love enters the picture, especially romantic love, all bets are off.
I got a kick out of writing Kiki, also Irwin and Marti—the more outrageous characters. After a while, they became like family. I knew them too well to like them unreservedly, but there was no doubt I loved them.
On the other hand, Judith’s performance anxiety episodes were difficult because as a child I acted professionally and experienced stage fright. It was painful to recall that stomach-churning fear, but also cathartic for me as an adult to write about it.
Getting the music part right was challenging. The big find for me with regard to that segment of my research—and I did lots of the standard probing and poking around—were the online musicians’ forums, open to all. Here I picked up facts about the audition process, debates over the use of antianxiety drugs, wonderful small details that enrich a story. It’s amazing how generous people are with information, how much they share online. Thank you, anonymous musicians. You know who you are. Really, only you know who you are.
Q. Are you a big reader? Can you imagine a life without books?
A. Life without books would be, for me, life without air. I come from a reading family. My mother made sure I had a library card as soon as I qualified. Asking a factual question of my dad usually prompted the answer, “Look it up, sweetie.” On languid summer days, you could find me socked in our apartment, reading about ancient Egypt in a tattered Book of Knowledge encyclopedia or gobbling up all the Sherlock Holmes stories. Eventually, my mother would extract the book from my hands and chase me with, “Enough reading, Toby. You’re getting a bedroom tan. You need fresh air. Go outside and play.”
Early on, I learned that books expand your universe like nothing else can. I still believe that and I still—no matter how busy I am—read for pleasure daily.
Q. Would you share some of your own life story and what led you to writing?
A. Brooklyn born and bred, as a child I performed as an actress onstage and in television. But even then, I had a craving to write. I kept a notebook with me in rehearsal halls and behind the scenes in TV studios. I turned out poetry and fairy tales, then the adventures of a detective, à la Nancy Drew. By thirteen, having “retired” from acting, I resumed a conventional childhood. In high school, my English teacher commended my writing and urged me to keep at it. In college I was editor of the literary magazine, and after my return to New York, I earned a master’s degree in English literature while working my glamour job as a writer/reviewer and then editor for Where magazine. From there I went on to an editorial position with Harcourt Brace publishers and my future husband, whom I met when I interviewed him for an article.
After we married and our daughter was born, I used chinks of time to write articles and short fiction, which, to my surprise and delight, were published in national magazines. As Stewart’s struggle with a chronic illness grew more intense and my daughter turned toddler, there was hardly time to think, let alone write. I prayed a lot, however. Prayers that, late into the night when the needs around me settled, I wrote down. Some were funny, some poignant, and they turned into my first book, Mercy, Lord! My Husband’s in the Kitchen. It came out the week my young husband died.
Eventually—after emerging from the initial swamping wave of grief, and bolstered by good reviews for Mercy, Lord!—I was ready to write again. But I had a child to support and care for, and over the next decades, even after my second marriage, my time and energy went to the family and job I loved. Still, ideas brewed, and eventually I left my job to write a book that literally demanded to be written, My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet). After that, another I couldn’t turn away—it had my heart—Happy Any Day Now.
Q. What do you most like about the writing life?
A. When the work is going well, you get something like a runner’s high. I assume serotonin or another pleasure hormone is surging, because everything around you fades and you’re totally absorbed in the joy of writing. Also, when things in the real world are falling apart and you feel helpless to change them, your ability to shape a fictional world, steer your characters’ destinies, give them satisfying resolutions to their problems can be sanity-saving.
The feedback from readers is incredibly fulfilling. After My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet) came out, I received so many revealing and touching e-mails via my Web site. Readers identified with the characters and thanked me for giving a voice to women “of a certain age.” One wrote that her husband had walked out of their marriage earlier that week and she’d been despondent. Finally, she forced herself out of the house, wandered into a bookstore café for a cup of tea and a browse, and picked up Midlife Crisis. She said that the book gave her hope that there could be happiness ahead for her. For an author, it doesn’t get better than that.
On the practical side, it’s nice to be able to work in sweats and slippers and make your own schedule. And I like the balance of the solitary—it’s just you and the laptop when you’re writing—and the camaraderie with other writers.
Q. What writers have you particularly enjoyed and been inspired by over the years? And are you a member of a book club?
A. The first who made an indelible impression was Louisa May Alcott. I loved Little Women so much that, as a preteen, I wrote a mercifully short play based on the story and drafted my friends to act in it.
Later on, I became a big fan of the three Johns: Updike, Cheever, and O’Hara, who did such a wonderful job of vividly capturing specific times and milieus. Dorothy Parker is an idol. She displayed amazing versatility: short fiction, poetry, screenplays, book and film reviews. Everything was clever and frequently, in the case of her stories and poems, heartbreaking.
I love Susan Isaacs’s voice. Compromising Positions was to me a breakout novel. Her savvy, witty woman protagonist was a new phenomenon and readers were captivated by her. Since I tend to write about bright women who use humor to brave their way through crises, that first Isaacs book was a personal in
spiration.
There are certain authors whose talent transcends their genres. I’m addicted to Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series, Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley novels, and Laura Lippman’s Baltimore-based Tess Monaghan books. These writers are masters of the spy and detective formats, but, bottom line, they’re simply fine writers.
Among the younger crew, I’m especially impressed by Tana French, whose Dublin-set stories are riveting. I have a review of her Faithful Place at the salon page on my Web site, at www.tobydevens.com. Maggie Shipstead made a marvelous debut with Seating Arrangements. Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles is a stunning first novel.
As for nonfiction, Nora Ephron is a hands-down, thumbs-up favorite. In a tribute to her in my blog, midlifepassions.blogspot.com, I try to explain why her work resonates so deeply with women of all ages and backgrounds. Other nonfiction writers I’m always eager to read: Anne Lamott, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Erik Larson.
I am a member of a couples book club, which is a hoot. The mechanics of coming to a consensus about what we want to tackle next is always fun and surprising because we try to move outside our comfort zone. We chew over the books during dinner. Once I nearly slung the soup at a dear friend. He literally hated a novel I adored. The back-and-forth gets pretty heated. But a really rich chocolate dessert always produces the peace that passeth (mutual) understanding.
Q. What is your next novel about, and what might we expect from you over the next several years?
A. First, I’m heading to the beach. And not just to stretch out on the sand. I like to have my settings—the medical practice in my first book; the invented Maryland Philharmonic in my second—work almost as characters in my stories. And what’s better than a beach town where an intruder from the past is about to make waves?