What Burns Away

by Melissa Falcon Field

  Why did you choose to set the novel in two different settings? Do you see a particular contrast between the East Coast and the Midwest?

  I’m a New England girl, and although I have lived all over the country, there’s been very little of my life, until recent years, that I have spent without an ocean. When my husband and I moved to Madison three years ago, I thought, “There’s a lake. It’s water. It’s all the same.” But what I learned that first winter was how different weather patterns move across bodies of water, how the snow on a lake lasts longer and drifts in ways I have only ever associated with sand, whereas it’s the wind off an ocean that delivers a nor’easter, with snow that melts quick and floods to cause coastal erosion. To me it was noting these differences in those two kinds of unforgiving winters that make both the Midwest and New England equally spectacular in the severity of their storms. The commonality, of course, is the desolation of those long winters, that kind of beauty you have to search for—a cardinal in the underbrush or the ice coating naked birch branches. I suppose too that it was my interest in those weather patterns that ultimately led to my choosing atmospheric chemistry as Claire’s career.

  Your main character Claire is, at times, a seemingly unreliable narrator. Did you find her character hard to write, and why did you choose to depict her this way?

  I think an unreliable narrator is especially useful when developing a story in which the characters’ work/life balance is all off. Claire is a more unhinged version of how I think many new mothers feel after the birth of their first child, especially older moms like myself, who had lives that were once defined by their careers. Then—wham!—there she is at home, doing the hard work of rearing a child, mostly in isolation. The balance is off for Claire and Miles once they become parents, and thus, I wanted Claire to reflect that imbalance, taking those normal unanchored emotions to an extreme and to become the kind of unreliable narrator I have always found alluring in fiction.

  What do you love most about writing?

  What I love most about writing is not knowing where I am going. When we were kids, my parents would take my sister, Kristen, and me on what they called a “mystery ride” in our old wood-paneled station wagon. We never knew where we would end up, but often there would be ice cream. I loved those drives the same way I love writing—how you can be on a road you vaguely recognize, unsure of your final destination, until the very end. I was really lucky to find my wonderful agent, Jennifer Gates, and her copilot at the time, Lana Popovic, who took a ride with me on this book. What Burns Away was in an early draft when I first sent it to Jen, and I felt like by the end of our revision process together, and again after we got my editor Shana Drehs in the car, we were all four arriving at the close of the novel and that journey together. The editing is really rewarding for me, as much so as the conception of a story. So even when it means cutting away scenes, or letting my characters fail despite my desire to protect them (which was hard for me with Claire), I love that process, that journey through the narrative, getting to the end and writing the whole work over again, informed. Because so much of writing is done alone, getting feedback from smart readers and working out the story’s flaws, for me, is where the magic really starts to happens. That journey through the revision process is my greatest pleasure as a writer.

  What relevance do you see socioeconomics having in the novel and, in particular, Claire’s story?

  Claire’s crossing from a blue-collar world into a more privileged one is relative because she fails to assimilate anywhere. Through her narrative, we learn that Claire was the first person in her family to attend college, and we understand that there was little push from her mother to do so. Therefore, the professional identity she created for herself was of her own drive. Writing her, I understood too that although Claire longs for the past and that old house on Willard Street, she is no longer a part of that world. Gone from her in all ways, Dean remains the only true representative of that place, drawing Claire to him because not only is she ostracized culturally and regionally from her history, but also because she fails to find a sense of belonging in her husband’s privileged world of medicine. It is that play on socioeconomics that furthers Claire’s isolation and ropes her into Dean’s scheme.

  How do you see Claire’s virtual affair working toward or against her as a catalyst for change?

  Claire is so caught up in what is behind her that I worked hard to emphasize her disillusionment with what is in front of her. My hope was to leave Claire susceptible to the kind of seemingly “safe” virtual affair she embarks upon. Thus, it seemed only logical to make Claire’s first exchanges with Dean virtual to make it plausible that she would indulge the flirtation. Of course, she mistakenly believes that an online affair is both private and risk-free, allowing the exchange to grow more and more intimate until she falls victim to the dream of living another life, like her mother did, like Emma Bovary after La Vaubyessard ball. It was very hard for me to let Claire eventually fall prey to an actual affair. In the earlier drafts of the book, I kept stopping her short before anything unfolded physically between her and Dean. But ultimately, as I revised and worked through the edits, I felt that a virtual affair alone was not consequential enough to push Claire toward a reversal. So, I put her and Dean in a room alone together just to see what would happen. And once I set them there inside the inn, entangled with the memory of who they were, wanting each other but also wanting to reclaim their youth, I simply could not apply the brakes. I believe too that Claire’s betrayal of her husband, and most especially of herself, was one of the most emotional parts of this writing. To let your narrator fall and know she may not recover is a hard thing to do when you are emotionally invested in the character. Yet, I do see Claire’s failure to stay faithful to the marriage as part of what forces her to look inward and reclaim herself, and as the thing that finally sets her free of the past’s hold on her.

  Self-forgiveness and atonement are major themes in this novel. Who do you believe has done the most genuine atoning in this story? Who has the biggest sin to forgive?

  The mother-daughter relationship between Claire and Kat is especially interesting to me in terms of forgiveness. How they reach for each other after all those years of hurt, Claire having carried a sense of responsibility for her father’s death, then learning that the history between her parents was more complicated than she ever could have imagined. But what was most incredible about writing a dually troubled love story (Kat and Peter, Claire and Miles) is examining all the different types of love and the angles that love can manifest, alongside the remedies for heartache, forgiveness being one. For me it is Claire who does the most damage in this story—her anger is often misdirected, both toward her mother and her husband, and her facts are skewed, yet it is also she who is forced to make the greatest reparations toward self-forgiveness. I set out to render Claire’s marriage to Miles as a sort of destroyed fairy tale, which is why I love the cover so much—that image of a storybook set safe in a shadow box with matchsticks. And as Claire embarks down a path of moral ruin, unable to appreciate the realities of her life, becoming full of nostalgic fancy after reconnecting with Dean, she grows only further discontented with her domestic monotony. Claire is unable to accept her current situation and attempts to escape it through deception. This, of course, only brings her further harm, ultimately risking the marriage altogether and jeopardizing the well-being of their beloved Jonah. For these things, it is Claire alone who must atone. And it is Miles who must forgive her if they are to step from the wreckage and build again.

  In the novel, we find many quotes that deal with the sky, most especially Halley’s comet, and in the opening chapter you write: “Nineteen eighty-six was the occasion of Halley’s comet…and it seemed everything that happened that year was caused by the sky.” Can you discuss why you chose to use the comet’s pass as a literary device?

  I myself came of age in that time of Halley’s comet—and I remember learning
its celestial folklore in school. I was completely obsessed with it. So when kids at my grammar school started wearing Halley’s T-shirts and chewing Halley’s Comet Rock Candy, checking the time on their Halley’s Comet Swatch watches, I was all about it, even though I was equally fearful of the legends associated with that strange, bearded star. I studied the omens associated with comets, how the pass of a comet like Halley’s often coincided with the births of two-headed calves, the deaths of kings, and the fall of empires. Later, as a teacher, I used my students as an excuse to dive back into those legends, imparting celestial folklore as part of my eighth grade curriculum. From the very onset of Claire’s story, I knew that I would weave in elements of natural phenomena to demonstrate how life is often marked in seeming response to the natural world. I’ve always been fascinated by astronomical patterns that repeat themselves, and Halley’s comet returns on a cycle that approximates the human life span, which makes it a wonderful device for marking narrative time in a novel—especially one where aging is a part of the through line. Here, the use of the comet punctuates the novel with a historic, scientific, and inevitably personal meaning.

  Most of the characters in this story are at the onset of middle age. Can you discuss why you chose that as a narrative stance in the novel?

  I have always loved coming-of-age novels, and for me, middle age is the second coming of age. That moment of realizing your youth is more behind you than in front of you gives a person pause. You have to decide what to let go of. You must redefine yourself and decide how you want to live out the rest of your life. It is the middle-age “awakening,” particularly in women, that I am interested in as subject matter. There is something about redefining yourself professionally, familially, and sexually that fascinates me. What was once sexy, what once felt like desire, is driven by different external factors. There is also a new embrace of simplicity or fancy, depending on who you are, and an unshrouding of former definitions of self. Because middle age is something we can’t stop—because it is simultaneously happening to our husbands or our lovers—there is a redefinition of beauty too, finding what is left underneath the obvious youthful pretty. I loved writing a character in this space, acknowledging these things about herself. The process of that surrender for Claire is both brutal and transformative, and that is why I felt compelled to capture it.

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  Acknowledgments

  I am incredibly grateful to the many friends who helped me in the writing of this book, most remarkably those early readers who gave frequent advice, direction, and the necessary tough love: Don J. Snyder, Debra Monroe, Dagoberto Glib, Suzanne Matson, Jan Elizabeth Watson, Sarah Braunstein, Dina Guidubaldi (toughest of all), Jaquira Diaz, David DeVito, Lucie Scholz (medal of honor for most reads in record time), Julie Michaud, Antonya Nelson, and, most especially, Bill Roorbach. To my Madison Fiction Writer’s Group: Susanna Daniel, Michelle Wildgen, Jeannie Reynolds Page, Jesse Lee Kercheval, and Judith Claire Mitchell, thank you for guiding me through the editing process with love, wisdom, and enthusiasm and for making Madison, Wisconsin, my writing-life home.

  The Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference filled this story with fresh perspectives and new writerly friends to inspire the final revisions of this book, the Sequoya Branch of the Madison Public Library provided me with a beautiful workspace, and Mary Ellen Marchant took loving care of my son so I could live inside this story.

  Most certainly, I would be nowhere without my editor, Shana Drehs, who understood Claire’s motivations from the start, and the rock star team at my publisher, Sourcebooks, took wonderful care of me, especially Lathea Williams and Anna Michels. It was the talent, wisdom, and friendship of Jennifer Gates, my beloved agent, and the savoir faire of Lana Popovic that pushed me to discover the depths of Claire’s story. Jen, you took a chance on me, for which I am forever grateful to you. And for everyone else at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth who read and gave feedback, I am so truly appreciative.

  For all those summers in the mideighties full of Frosty Treat and the family beach walks inside the setting of this novel, thank you to my sister, Kristen Falcon-Shannon, and our loving parents, Kathleen and Patrick Falcon. Philip Horan, your memory still lives with all of us on that stretch of sand, evermore.

  Finally, to the man who devotes himself in equal measure to his work and our treasured Noah, while challenging me to live outside my comfort zone, Michael Field, you told me that one day I would thank you for all that is unconventional and crazy in our lives. My gratitude, darling; here it is!

  About the Author

  Melissa Falcon Field was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and earned her BFA in creative writing from the University of Maine at Farmington and her MFA in fiction writing from Texas State University. She has been a recipient of the Katherine Anne Porter Writer-in-Residence appointment and attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Currently, she lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and spends summers along the coast of Maine. What Burns Away is her debut novel.