In the first person, you can write “I did this” or “I felt that,” which gives the story an automatic believability. For me, the third person—which puts readers a little more at a distance—is more of a challenge. I think that to write convincing fiction you have to be able to empathize with your characters. You need to know them deep down. You have to believe in them. But you also need to step back and give them breathing room to be themselves and make their own choices. It’s very tempting when you’re writing in the third person to manipulate your characters and force them to do what the story line dictates. But I think readers can always tell when a character is acting and talking . . . well . . . out of character. The most important thing I learned from writing this novel in the third person is that if something doesn’t seem to be working, it probably isn’t the fault of the character—instead, there’s something wrong with the plot.
Q. Two of your main characters are teenagers. How did you manage to empathize with them?
A. Though I don’t have children myself, I am lucky to have a number of wonderful teenage nieces and nephews in my life. I listen hard to what they say—and, perhaps more important, wonder about what they keep to themselves. But, as I started to write the first chapter from Phoebe’s point of view, I remembered a relationship I had when I was about her age. It was with a boy who, like Liam, was going through a very hard time. He also happened to be the most popular boy in our class and, when it became obvious to everyone that we were spending a lot of time together after school, it was assumed that I was his new girlfriend. So I suddenly became very popular, too! But, in truth, all we were doing together was talking. Actually, he was talking and I was listening. More than anything else, I think I drew from that memory to create the strong bond that Phoebe and Liam share.
Q. Is there an underlying theme in A Place for Us?
A. Yes—and it’s right there in the title. It’s the age-old yearning to fit in and be accepted. In my novel Local Knowledge, I wrote about a woman raised in a small town who is befriended—and ultimately betrayed—by a wealthy female weekender whom she tries to emulate. My character Maddie wanted to be accepted by this glamorous new friend so much that, as a result, she ended up sacrificing everything truly important in her life.
The natural human desire for acceptance has always interested me as a writer. We’ve all felt that longing at some point, and very often the power of it has made us act in ways that we later regret. In A Place for Us, I decided to turn the tables on the social situation I’d set up in Local Knowledge and have my character Brook be a very wealthy transplant from New York City who longs to fit into the small town where her husband was raised and to which her family relocates after 9/11. Brook’s struggle to fit in, as well as her son Liam’s yearning for acceptance, propels the story along and acts as the novel’s thematic underpinning.
Q. What sort of research did you do in writing the novel?
A. I spent a lot of time on the Internet reading up on the Social Host Liability law and the many cases in Massachusetts that have resulted from the law’s passage. The more time I spent researching different stories and exploring various sites, the more the name Richard P. Campbell kept cropping up. Digging a little deeper, I discovered that Mr. Campbell is the founder of a prestigious law firm in Boston, president of the Massachusetts Bar Association, and a driving force behind Social Host Liability legislation. He created a multimedia program, Be A Parent, Not A Pal, to educate students, parents, teachers, and members of the community about the Social Host Liability law. It’s a first-rate tutorial on the subject. For more information, please see: http://www.socialhostliability.org/programs/beaparent.php.
I was very lucky to have the opportunity to interview Mr. Campbell by phone one afternoon. He had agreed to a one-hour session, but we ended up talking for much longer than that. He was outspoken and full of great anecdotes.
And he was tremendously helpful, clarifying many complicated legal issues for me. He was also a passionate spokesperson for a cause he obviously believes in very deeply. At the end of the conversation, he said, “Whatever else your novel does, please have it make a case for how deadly underage drinking can be.” I hope I’ve done that!
Q. What authors do you like—and would you like to recommend?
A. I read a lot—poetry, fiction, history, memoir. I spent last winter in eighteenth-century Russia, with Robert Massie’s fascinating biography of Catherine the Great. This spring, I relived the Kennedy assassination and Lyndon Johnson’s remarkable early achievements as President via Robert Caro’s latest installment on Johnson’s life. I loved Ann Patchett’s most recent novel, State of Wonder, and Edith Pearlman’s collection of short stories Binocular Vision. I’m thinking about trying my hand at writing something that revolves around a mystery, so I recently reread all my favorite P. D. James novels, and I’m currently working my way through Agatha Christie. After Nora Ephron’s death, I read everything she wrote in book form—and laughed out loud for a couple of days.
Q. Do you have a set writing routine?
A. I usually wake up early and reread whatever I’ve been working on. I revise constantly on the computer. (It continues to amaze me how Tolstoy could have written War and Peace in longhand!) Then I let the demands of daily life intervene for several hours and pick up again in the afternoon. Most days, I don’t hit my stride until three o’clock or so, and then, if I’m lucky, get two or three good, productive hours in. I think a lot about what I’m working on when I’m not actually writing. When I’m running, for instance, or driving the car back and forth between the city and our weekend place in Massachusetts. I try to work out problems—a scene I can’t get off the ground, a character who refuses to behave—during that two-and-a-half-hour stretch.
Q. Where do you write?
A. In the city, I usually write in a beautiful old Eames chair that I commandeered from my husband. But sixteen years ago, we bought a place in the beautiful Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts. It included a small farmhouse and an old horse stable that became my “writing studio.” It still has the old iron stall feeders and leather harnesses on the walls. It remains permeated by a wonderful smell of animal and old hay.
When we’re in the country, I wake up early and reread and rewrite on my laptop in the house, but in the afternoon I go out to the studio, bolt the door, and start the hard work of writing the next new word, sentence, paragraph, chapter. In the winter, I have a fire going in the Jøtul stove; in the summer, I have all the windows open and can hear the brook and birdsong. This summer, I watched a family of wild turkeys—seventeen in all—parading up and down in the old paddock. Other sightings: woodchuck, coyote, fox, and, early last spring, when the trees were just greening out, a big black bear.
Q. Are you working on anything new?
A. As I mentioned earlier, I’m interested in trying to write something with a mystery at its heart. I don’t think it will be a traditional police procedural, though someone will be murdered and the story will explore the reasons why—and probably end with the discovery of who did it. But I’m hoping the novel will be more about the characters and the small New England community where they live. I’m an avid amateur gardener and I loved writing about gardening in So Near and talking about my garden on my blog, so I’m pretty sure I want my main character to be a landscape architect or professional gardener. I also know who gets killed—and when. But that’s all I really have figured out so far. A lot of the joy of writing—just as it is in reading—is discovering what’s going to happen next.
CONVERSATION GUIDE
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Do you think that a state law—such as the Social Host Liability statute—should be able to dictate what you can and cannot do in your own home?
2. Do you think it’s ever right to withhold something about your children from your spouse?
3. Michael’s mother turned his father into a “plaster saint” after his death. Do you believe that “you should never speak ill of th
e dead”?
4. To what degree do you think Brook and Michael were responsible for what went on under their roof when they weren’t there to supervise?
5. Do you think Troy responded appropriately to what happened to Phoebe?
6. Brook says her marriage works because she’s rich and Michael is good-looking. Does your relationship rest on the same kind of implicit principle?
7. Michael refused to share his own boyhood problems with Liam. Do you think children have a right to know about their parents’ pasts?
8. Troy tries to convince Phoebe that it’s okay to lie about who assaulted her by saying, “Don’t forget that the Bostocks’ lawyer felt it was perfectly okay to claim you had sex with Liam. . . . You sticking to your story is nothing compared to that.” Do you agree with Troy?
9. Phoebe spent a lot of time fantasizing about Liam—before and after they became close. Do you think that’s normal behavior for a fifteen-year-old girl?
10. Who do you think is the best parent in the novel—and why?
11. Brook tends to handle bad situations by putting on a “happy face” and “pretending everything’s great.” Do you have similar coping mechanisms?
ALSO BY LIZA GYLLENHAAL
So Near
Local Knowledge
A Place For Us Page 27
