Ordinary Hazards
Page 26
In San Francisco, where I lived for several years before I moved to Iowa, there is a bar on the edge of town called The Final Final. The ambiance is completely different from the bar in the novel, but I always loved the name. I love the idea of a final stop after the final stop, or as Emma would say, “One more drink, which is always one drink too many and at the same time, never enough.”
Q: And on a broader scale, how much inspiration did you draw from your life when coming up with the characters and setting?
A: In my writing, an essential aspect is an exploration of what each character does for work. I think this is a departure from many literary novels, which either minimize focus on work in service to other aspects of character (family and friendship) or draw characters who are either writers or academics. I’ve always wanted to read books about people with jobs that are more representative of what people actually do. Even minor characters like the random guy who buys Emma a drink, have jobs. Emma recalls that he delivers medical equipment in New York and New Jersey.
Before we had two babies, my husband and I used to hang around the bar with general contractors and electricians. We have a good friend who works for a family drywall business, one who works at a diner, and another who owns a storied pizza joint down the block. (Someday I’ll write a novel about a guy who owns a pizzeria.) Having gone to business school, some of my friends work in finance like Emma. I suppose I wanted to explore the intersection of these lives, and the bar provided a unique opportunity to do so.
While the people who populate The Final Final and their conversations were inspired by many of the people I spent time with at our local bar, they are not directly based on anyone. The exception is Emma’s dog, Addie, who is closely based on my dog (also named Addie). I basically stole Addie’s personality and put it down on the page, figuring she wouldn’t mind.
Q: What do you hope the reader’s opinion of Emma is at the end of the novel? Did you find yourself forming new opinions of her over the course of writing the book?
A: My guess is that readers will be split on Emma’s “likability.” In the end, I hope she is seen as self-aware. She’s privileged, of course, but she’s aware of her privilege. She also understands that women are viewed as unlikable while men in similar circumstances are not. For Lucas, friendship and loyalty come naturally because he’s easygoing and fun. He describes himself as water flowing downstream. But Emma knows that men can be easygoing because they have that luxury. While Emma worries and judges and pursues, Lucas plays and laughs and enjoys. Of course, this is a generalization and an oversimplification of their dynamic. Emma acknowledges that while she is traveling for work, Lucas is maintaining their domestic sphere, which includes diapers, feedings, and crying, crying, crying. Still, as a mother, I empathize with Emma. When I’m in the kitchen disinfecting bottles for my infant, I glance over at my husband building block towers with my toddler. My work is invisible; his shines like gold.
For a long time, I’ve been waiting for people to wake up and realize women are likable for all the important reasons a person is worthy of being liked. Certainly, when women become mothers, they see their own mothers in a new light. But as I’ve gotten older, I care less about what people think of me, and I’ve come to the conclusion that likability is overrated. I think we need to get over the idea of likability. If we don’t, exceptional people will be passed over for guys everyone would love to grab a beer with.
Q: A couple of the more prevalent themes throughout the novel are the importance of a sense of family and a sense of place. Why did you choose to explore these two concepts in such depth?
A: When I moved to Iowa City after nearly a decade in San Francisco, I thought deeply about the decision to live in a big city or a small town. I distinctly remember attending a reading at Prairie Lights where Vivian Gornick stated she couldn’t wait to get back to New York where she could take a walk and there would be (interesting) things to look at. I didn’t agree with her but I understood the sentiment. Ultimately, I chose to stay in this small town.
Big-city bars always struck me as anonymous. The bartenders rarely know the patrons, and the patrons rarely know anyone other than the people they walked in with. In my twenties, I felt this anonymity deeply. When guys hit on me, I had the distinct feeling that I could be anyone. I was merely a body taking up space. Small-town bars are the opposite. Bartenders know your name and your drink. Patrons have known one another for years. Some of them spend Thanksgiving and Christmas at the bar. The intimacy of the townie bar is a writer’s playground.
Q: There are a handful of dark themes throughout your novel, but it ends with the slightest bit of optimism for the future. Is that a comment on a larger conversation about life and its unpredictable nature?
A: The novel explores ordinary hazards, (“you can worry all you want, but you’ll never predict the thing that will destroy you”), along with the idea that small decisions that are good or neutral sometimes add up to unexpected outcomes (“our fate was a tyranny of small decisions”). We can’t eliminate ordinary hazards. We also can’t stop making small decisions. If we attempted to do either, we’d exist in a state of paralysis. The flip side, blissfully, is that human beings are designed to adapt. So yes, life is unpredictable in one sense, but grief is a means of processing and overcoming the inevitable.
Also, I should say, for me personally, Ordinary Hazards is a love story. Perhaps this is because I wrote it as I was falling in love with my husband. Emma and Lucas belong together, even if circumstances push them apart.
Q: Have you begun working on your next project? And if so, can you tell us what it will be about?
A: My next novel is about a group of friends who grew up in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh. After experiencing a tragedy at their Catholic prep school, they go to college and move away, but never fully move on. The novel explores the mystery of the tragic event while confronting what it means to be raised Catholic and whether their parents’ faith is still a possibility for a group of kids raised in the eighties and nineties.
Having a second baby threw a wrench in my writing schedule, but I can’t wait to get back to it.
More in Literary Fiction
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANNA BRUNO is a writer and teacher at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business. Previously, Anna managed public relations and marketing for technology and financial services companies in Silicon Valley. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, an MBA from Cornell University, and a BA from Stanford University. She lives in Iowa City with her husband, son, and blue heeler. Ordinary Hazards is her first novel.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bruno, Anna, 1981- author.
Title: Ordinary hazards : a novel / Anna Bruno.
Description: First Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York : Atria Books, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019046634 (print) | LCCN 2019046635 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982126957 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982126971 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3602.R8557 O73 2020 (print) | LCC PS3602.R8557 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046634
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046635
ISBN 978-1-9821-2695-7
ISBN 978-1-9821-2697-1 (ebook)