An Interview with Anna Solomon, Author of The Little Bride

“Minna continued pulling up grass in big fistfuls. . . . One day she would decide to learn the names of her torture and be disappointed when she found them nowhere near as precise as how she’d identified them then: Sharpest grass, shiniest grass, curly grass, hardest-to-pull grass. She pulled all of it up from the roots, giving in to the slices in her palms, watching the dry soil break into dust….” ~ From The Little Bride

 

When dreams turn to fantasy and take on a life of their own, and it becomes inevitable that they will fracture or crumble in the face of reality. Anna Solomon’s debut novel, The Little Bride, is the story of Minna Losk, a Jewish mail order bride on a journey to pursue her dream of life and freedom in America, which she assumes will include a handsome husband, a large house with running water, and servants of her own. What Minna discovers instead is the stark reality of life on a South Dakota homestead, marriage to a husband twice her age, and a forbidden attraction to the man who is her stepson.

Using subtle but rich details, Anna Solomon quietly introduces readers to each character in The Little Bride and takes us through the seasons of rugged South Dakota and through Minna’s self-discoveries. The characters are perfectly balanced, so that minutes after an unfortunate decision is made that casts a negative light, their stories still pull at the heartstrings of the reader. Today, I am honored to host Anna Solomon for an interview, where she discusses her novel and writing, and offers her best advice for others on the road to publication.

At the end of the interview, drop your name in the comment section for a chance to win a copy of The Little Bride. Random.org will choose the winner on Tuesday, January 3rd, at noon.

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CC: In a post on Beyond the Margins, you talk about a musical-literary collaboration, with musician Clare Burson (called A Little Suite for The Little Bride) as an innovative way to introduce readers to your novel. Can you talk a bit about the structure of these performances and how readers have responded to them?

AS: That’s a great question, because until people have seen Clare and I perform together, it’s hard for them to picture exactly what we’re doing. Basically, Clare wrote five songs inspired by scenes from my book. On stage, she starts playing a musical score, then I come in reading one of those scenes over her score, then my reading ends and she plays/sings the song that was inspired by it. Sometimes we break one of my readings up with music – I stop mid-scene for a musical interlude and then begin again. And sometimes the music drops out and I read in silence for a little bit. But that’s the basic rhythm of the work.

And there are projected images, too: old drawings or maps that Clare played around with in Photoshop, thrown up on the wall behind us in black and white. The images are there to accompany the various sections, and provide context; often they have text, too, maybe a line from the book, just to set the scene and give the audience a footing in our story. We wanted to create a narrative arc through the piece, which is similar to the novel but also can exist on its own, for the purposes of these performances. I find that aspect very satisfying – that we’ve created something inspired by but separate from the novel. It kind of mirrors the experience of publication, when you see your book go off and become something different in each reader’s mind. Maybe the performance process helped prepared me for that letting go. In any case, I’m excited that we already have more performances of our “Little Suite for The Little Bride” scheduled for 2012!

CC: Some of my favorite scenes in your novel are the early interactions between Samuel and Minna, the simple dialogue and how Minna describes his gestures. When he finds her pulling grass, helps her, and then leaves, her recollection of his departure says so much with so little — about his character, and hers. What was your favorite scene to write, and why?

AS: I did like writing that scene – especially after he leaves, when she’s replaying it in her mind. (Did he mean to breathe on her, or did he just breathe, like people have to do?) Minna’s a tough character – a survivor – and scenes like that let me into her tenderness, her humor. It’s funny – at some point I thought that the same scene might take place when she’s trying to milk the cow, that Samuel would wind up behind her, showing her how to do it, but then I thought: gag! My favorite scene to write might be one that comes pretty late in the book. I won’t give away too much, but it also involves Samuel and Minna – they’re standing outside at dawn and though nothing very physically intimate happens between them, it’s probably the closest they come to a true emotional intimacy in the whole book, without the walls they usually have up. Also, it involves a circus and gunshots, so those parts made it fun to write, too.

CC: You recently started up a blog on your website. How do you like the blogging platform? And, do you find it offers more freedom in writing?

AS: Honestly, I’m not sure about blogging – for me. I held off for a long time (aren’t new blogs sort of passé at this point?) and now that I’m attempting to do it I feel a kind of pressure and I’m starting to think I’m not going to be able to fulfill my idea of what I want to do with it. I like the posts I’ve done, and writing them was fun, but especially as I dive deeply into my second novel, I feel like I only have so many things I can pay attention to. In some ways I think I’m just not cut out for multi-tasking in my writing, or for quick, off-the-cuff pieces. I enjoy them, and they do offer a different kind of freedom – there’s something nice about just pitching my voice into the soup and seeing where it goes – but I’m also not entirely comfortable with the process. I’ve found this with writing for online formats before: I’m not prepared to move so quickly. Editors get frustrated with me. I think I’m a slower thinker, a slower writer.

That said, I’m loving being part of the wonderful Beyond the Margins blog. That gives me a way to try my hand at blogging without having to be the sole proprietor, so to speak – and more importantly, it’s introduced me to this amazing, incredibly supportive group of writers, all at different stages in our careers, eager to offer other writers bits of our own experience.

 

So we’ll see. I’m going to stick with my blog for a while, see if I can make it fun for myself, and also experiment with different kinds of posts.

 

CC: What are you reading these days?

 

AS: I’m loving Amos Oz’s A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS. Not crazy about the title – it’s so generic, I forget it every time I put the book down – but the book itself is wonderful: a memoir of Oz’s childhood in Jerusalem, and also of course the story of Israel itself. I’ve loved hearing Oz speak about conflict, war, and peace, and I find his book adds a complexity to those soundbytes – it’s very rich, very generous, and beautifully written, too. I’m also reading a totally different kind of book, a novel that came out last June, DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION by Carolyn Cooke. It’s about the first black girl (admitted by clerical error!) at an elite New England boarding school. But it’s about so much else, too – Cooke’s characters are totally real, often eccentric, always struggling to hang on to their individual selves even as they scramble to belong within “society” (theirs or others’). Her writing feels almost anthropological: look at these things, they’re called people, they create institutions like this, and they run around like that trying to get in or out.

 

CC: What advice do you have for writers on the rise?

 

AS: Stay focused on the work itself. I think the hardest thing about having my first book published was how obsessed I had to become – at least for a few months, while on tour – with my “career.” It’s so important, of course, I wanted to give my book the best chance possible, but it was also easy to lose track of the whole point: writing. When I was in an MFA program, just starting to publish short stories, I had this very rigid boundary for myself between writing and submitting stories – I would only deal with submissions at night, after my “real” work was done, and I wouldn’t think of it most of the time, I’d forget that the question of publication even existed. This gets tougher, of course, as you’re lucky to publish more, but I think it’s important to try to keep that boundary there. Now, as I start back in on my next novel, I’ll put up my wall again: in the morning, when I’m writing, there will be no phone calls, no internet, no criticism or praise to ingest, just me, my characters, my story. For me, this is the only way – I need rules, to bring my back to the work.


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From Anna Solomon’s website:
Anna Solomon’s fiction has appeared in One Story, The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, The Missouri Review, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. Her stories have twice been awarded the Pushcart Prize, have won The Missouri Review Editor’s Prize, and have been nominated for a National Magazine Award.
For more information about Anna or for a chance to explore The Little Bride, visit her website. You can also follow her on Twitter or like her page on Facebook. Also, don’t forget to leave a comment to enter the book giveaway!

Santa and the Grinch and Well-loved Books

Santas on Cycles

They traversed the city in packs all day long on Saturday. I saw them first in the morning, and I figured, a Jingle Bell Bike Ride or a fundraiser of sorts. But after running errands for a good part of the day and then finally heading home, I caught glimpses of Santas still peddling about in clusters, nodding to passers-by. I tried following them, but just as I pulled up to a stoplight, they rounded the corner and disappeared down the block. A mile later, they showed up again, only to slip down a side street. Santa. Always elusive, but ever present. And tough to capture on film.

Fizzle, fumble, drop crack spill

Sounds of my Christmas season so far. The lights on the Christmas tree went out minutes before I hung the last ornament. The garland let loose two days after I tucked its ends nicely into a corner. It continues to taunt me, shifting and slipping and inching its way to unruly. Cleaning the bathroom last weekend, I broke a tiny snow globe with a miniature Santa inside, who waved to me as he went down the drain. That was not a good sign.

Then, when a simple sewing project turned into a thread-breaking, table-banging, curse word-slinging ordeal, I looked around for the Grinch. He’s out there, snickering, and now he’s messing with my sewing machine. I wonder, do you think he likes Sugar cookies? We have a few freshly decorated (during which the bottle of sprinkles suspiciously got knocked over), and there’s a hot little number of the Gingerbread kind who might capture his attention. At least for the next few days. She does have green hair, after all, and she’s smothered in chocolate sprinkles.

Felicity and Paolini

What brings me back to center, even after several Holiday blunders is reading. Our bedtime ritual with the kids consists of time together with a good book. That’s not necessarily different from any other parent. But as my kids both grow older (my son is turning ten soon!), sharing a book together becomes even more special.

Right now, my daughter is into Felicity, the independent and spirited American Girl who grows up just before the Revolutionary War. The name Felicity means happiness, and I am happy we are reading about someone other than Barbie.

My son and I are reading Eragon. This particular book came from the library and was a magical find. We had talked about the book, searched the online catalog for it, hunted the shelves to find it, and didn’t see it anywhere. Just after we settled on a substitute and were ready to leave the library, he saw it on a random shelf, the cover barely hanging on. We snagged it, and I said, “This book has been well-loved and well-read. Or, dropped in a puddle.” Either way, it carries an air of mystery. He’s loving the story, too, and recently said, “It’s too bad we can’t stay up all night and read the whole book at once.”

That’s good stuff.

What’s your story this week?

Recovering, Published, and a Flash Fiction Flashback

I’m coming off of a weekend sequestered at home because of a marathon run-in with a stomach bug. That virus is still lingering in corners, threatening to zap the last standing victim. In fact, it may have just tagged my son. And, I’m still recovering.

‘Tis the season.

At times like this, I appreciate the work of those around me, like my husband who kept the house running and the kids moving all day, while I stared out the window at the sun shining and cursed the virus. And like fellow authors of the Dead Shoe Society who ramped up big time over the last few days and pulled together story submissions to create a cool, new anthology, while I stared out the window at the sun shining and cursed the virus.

20111213-161346.jpgThe anthology is up and ready for your Kindle. You can read more about it and the stories within (including mine, “If It Wasn’t for Sylvia”) in this great post on Victoria Flynn’s blog, Penny Jars. Then, if the stories intrigue you, click on Amazon or on Smashwords to purchase your own copy. If you prefer books in hand rather than on screen, rumor is that paperback copies will be available in no time flat (those Dead Shoe Society folks work fast, like little elves).

The other thing I did during Stomach Bugapalooza was think back through my flash fiction archives for a piece apropos during this time of year, the giving season (if you don’t have the energy to write a post, you can always re-post a post). This piece, first published last year around this time, introduces you to a woman named Cecilia, who does what I wish I had been doing on Sunday…while I stared out the window at the sun shining and cursed the virus.

Hope you’re all staying healthy, finding great new books to read, and keeping up with your lists!

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Celia Loves

Paper Flowers for the HolidaysCelia only had three things left on her list of Christmas gifts: a book on wolves for her nephew, Dylan, wild animal that he was; a cookbook for her sister, Mary, Paula Deen’s latest convert; and a gift card for her brother, Jim, who never latched on to anything, not even a wife.

In the bookstore, she wandered past the Bestsellers and paused at the New Fiction. She thumbed through calendars and flipped through books filled with quotes. She was drawn to the display of journals and pens, unable to resist the feel of fine paper between her fingers and the weight of a good pen.

She eyed a travel journal; but she had no where to go. She picked up a nondescript diary with a brown leather cover, smooth and tempting: a classic. She considered a package of fountain pens; the things she would write.

Carol of the Bells rang out from the store lobby and pulled her attention toward a group of young adults. Dressed in Christmas Story costumes, they had stationed themselves near the front doors and begun a chorus of holiday cheer. A young man singing tenor looked a lot like her nephew might in a few years.

Dylan. She turned back to her list.

From the shelves of the Young Adult section, she grabbed an old classic, Wolfling. In the cookbook section, she reached for Paula Deen’s It Ain’t All About the Cookin’. Celia agreed with that title, knowing that behind every recipe is a good story. Then, Celia went back and picked up a small book of quotes she’d been reading before. She paid for the books, a gift card, and a package of pens for herself. Then, she sat down in her car and wrote inside each book’s cover.

To Dylan. Dear Lover of wolves, You’ll find plenty of facts about habitats and behavior in other books, but the real learning is hidden in stories. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said it best: “The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books.”

To Mary. Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote said “All sorrows are less with bread” – or, if you’re Paula Deen, a red velvet cake. Let’s bake one together. I miss you.

To Jim. You’re a man of mystery, impossible to buy for, and you work too much. Annie Dillard offers wise advice: “Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.” I love you.

Celia put the cap on her new pen and slipped it inside her purse. She started her car and turned up the heat, though she was already warm.

*photo credit: PermaCultured on Flickr.com