This week’s story, “Ambrose,” is about a sixth grader named Lily, who, as she says at the opening of the story, wants to live in the old days. How hard is it to be a sixth grader in contemporary America?
It is definitely hard to be a sixth grader in contemporary America, but I think Lily’s desire to live in the old days has more to do with what is happening in her family. She is not just sensitive, but imaginative, so she begins to wish for another time. Children read like no one else. When books captivate them, they want to jump in and live there. Sometimes, as with Lily, they want to write their own.
Lily has been given a journal by one of her teachers, and she’s using it to write a novel about a princess named Ambrose who turns into a swan at night. When did the idea of Lily’s novel first come to you? Is Lily inspired by any specific books or stories?
The idea for Lily’s novel came to me as I wrote the first lines of the story. As a writer, I’m a planner—and then I improvise. When writing stories, I like to follow where my characters lead. Taking a step back and looking at Lily’s work, I can see that she is drawn to fairy tales like “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” When I was little, I had a copy of Andrew Lang’s “The Red Fairy Book” and, later, I took out his other fairy-tale books from the library. I loved his richly detailed retellings.
Debra and Richard, Lily’s parents, are divorced. Would Lily be daydreaming quite so much if the family were still together? Is this a particularly hard time for her?
She is having a rough time. Her parents suspect that they are the cause, and they are not quite sure what to do about it. They aren’t sure what’s going on with her writing, either. I was interested in exploring this situation—the parents on the outside looking in. The child developing an imaginary world. And then there’s the reader who gets to see a bit of both.
Lily and her family are recurring characters in a series of stories you’ve been writing for several years about an extended Jewish American family called the Rubinsteins. Your most recent story in the magazine, “The Last Grownup,” was also about Lily’s family, but it focussed more on Debra. How do the stories come to you? How well do you feel you know the Rubinstein family by now? Do you write the stories chronologically or do you go back and forth in time?
I’ve written these stories roughly chronologically, almost like scenes in a play or chapters in a novel. It’s been wonderful to explore this family from different points of view. I’ve written from the perspective of Richard, Lily’s father, and Debra, Lily’s mother, and Lily herself. I’ve also written about Lily’s grandmother and her great-aunts and cousins. The name Rubinstein means ruby stone. With these stories, I pick up a family and look at all its facets, turning each to the light.
Lily and her sister Sophie take ballet lessons after school. They’re in different levels and Lily’s class is always first. In the story, for one reason or another, she keeps being late for class. Lily’s very anxious about this—and she’s not wrong to be anxious, because her dance teachers are sticklers for promptness. Will she still remember the experience of walking into her class late when she’s an adult?
I suspect she will remember a lot—but to answer this question I’d have to keep writing about her to see how she grows.
You have a new novel coming out in January called “Isola.” It’s about a sixteenth-century French noblewoman who is abandoned by her guardian on a small island in the New World. It is inspired by the true story of Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval. The subject matter seems like quite a departure for you. When did you first come across the original story? Did you do a great deal of research, or did you rely on your imagination to summon up Marguerite’s experiences on the island?
“Isola” is indeed my first historical novel. In some ways it’s a departure, but in others it’s a natural choice for me to write about someone who lived long ago. Like Lily, I’m fascinated by the past.
I came across Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval on a family trip to Canada. We were travelling with our four children, aged ten, seven, three, and six weeks. I’d checked out a stack of children’s books about Canadian history to share with the older boys. Nobody was interested in looking at these books with me, but as I sat up at night nursing the baby, I read them all. In a book about the sixteenth-century French voyager Jacques Cartier, I saw an aside about a young woman who sailed with her kinsman to the New World in 1542 and was marooned on an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Why? How? What happened to her? The author returned to Cartier, but I sat up in my hotel bed with my newborn on my lap and all I could think was—I want to write about this! Later, I thought—but how? I was not sure I was ready to write about a person who lived so long ago. Years passed and I wrote other books. My children grew up; my baby went to college, but I could not stop thinking about Marguerite. I started reading. I spent at least a year researching and considering how I might tell Marguerite’s story. One day I began trying out first lines in a notebook. After about twenty tries, Marguerite began to speak to me. “I never knew my mother. She died the night that I was born, and so we passed each other in the dark.” Once I had that line, I knew that I could write the rest of the book.
Can you imagine Lily and Debra talking about Marguerite’s life? What would Lily think about these particular old days?
Even at her young age, Lily has internalized Debra’s view that the past was difficult for women. At some level, she understands what Debra means. However, Lily has not quite lost her sense that the past is magic. For her, the old days are not simply the historical past but a mythic place she wants to claim. I wanted to capture her belief and longing. The moment in childhood when you know better, but you can almost convince yourself fairy tales are true. ♦
