My new fact-based novel about a famous man’s wife began one day when a voice started forming paragraphs in my head and I realized who was speaking: the juicy wife of an author on whom I had worked, a lot. Now I do not customarily hear voices but had heard the novelists I teach say their characters speak to them all the time. I’d never believed them, exactly. Now it was happening to me.
I wrote this novel in a dream, revising it over several years and adding a second narrator. I have loved, loved, loved working on this book, for which I will use here not the actual title but one that will serve for now: HUSBANDS AND DAUGHTERS.
History-based fiction, filling in the blanks and making the past live for us. Hilary Mantel got me thinking about that with WOLF HALL and BRING UP THE BODIES and then I learned that Hilary Mantel was not always Hilary Mantel: that she had done other things before these wonderful books. And then there was THE PARIS WIFE, another book for the literati and others.
The last two posts announce new books I expect to be available soon: PICNIC IN THR DARK: CLASSIC BOOKS AT A TIME OF WAR AND LOSS, the subject of the next blog, and my fact-based imagined life of a famous man’s wife.
My regular blog-site switches to www.mariannatorgovnick.tumblr.com. I was missing the social media side. But the site you’re viewing remains the place to learn more about me and my work. Look for some announcements soon.