The Book Show Show 1308, 2013 August 11

Welcome to the book show A Celebration of Reading and Writers.
I'm Judd On You.
Publishers Weekly says Kelly Braffett's new novel, Save Yourself is captivating and
realistically creepy, adding that she uses graceful prose, a stupe dialogue, and vivid
characters to carry the plot to an unexpected and believable finale.
Save Yourself is a layered tale of a group of characters, each seeking their own warped
version of piece.
Braffett's previous works include the novel Josie and Jack and Last Scene Leaving, and
a writing has been published in the Fairy Tale review post-road and several anthologies.
We welcome Kelly Braffett to this week's book show.
Thank you very much for being with us.
It's a great pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me.
A delight to have you on the program.
At what point did you come to, I guess was there a particular, something in particular
that you wanted to accomplish with this novel?
Well, actually the absolutely honest answer is yes, because I had promised a friend to
short story and didn't have an idea for one.
The thing that I most wanted to accomplish with the germ of this novel was to write a short
story, and so my friend wouldn't be mad at me.
I locked myself in my office for a weekend and basically hacked and hacked at it.
The short story itself was fine, but it had these three characters in it that sort of
stuck with me, the three Mike and Carol and Patrick, the two brothers and the girlfriend.
But additionally, with my previous novel Last Scene Leaving, I did a book group in Western
Pennsylvania, and that novel is about a woman who's sort of a new age philosophy adherent,
of crystals and so forth.
And the women in that particular book group, it just happened to be all women, really at
the end of the book, several things happened with that book.
The first was that a couple of the reviews talked about it as being, as my right, talked
about my writing about the new age aspects of that book as being satiric, which was not
at all my attention.
I really wanted to convey it as being very sort of earnest and something that this woman
truly believed.
And then the book club, in the book club, there was actually a woman who protested quite
loudly that neither of the characters in my book had any faith, and I thought, well,
of course, they don't have any faith.
It never occurred to me to give them any faith.
That never popped into my head that they might be religious people.
And it sort of stuck with me as something that I wanted to try writing about at some point,
that I wanted to try and write a character from the point of view of somebody with a great
deal of faith.
So when I found myself with these three characters, the two brothers and their girlfriend, who
have pretty much no faith in anything in various ways, I thought it would be really interesting
to sort of mush them together with a family that has, that is basically built around faith
and structured around faith and see what happened.
I want to talk about the book specifically in just a moment, but before we let this go
of the effect of readers and reviews, of course, many writers come here and they talk
to us about their books and they say, I never read reviews because I would have an effect
and so forth.
I would think for a young writer specifically, particularly, that it would be very helpful
to have that guidance or not.
Well, it depends on the review.
Obviously, there are some reviews that you sort of don't want in your head, but I find
that after the book has been out for a while and you sort of get a little emotional distance
from it and from the fact that it's being read and being commented on, that yeah, there
definitely are things that I've read in reviews that I've thought, not that I've taken them
in the same way that I would take a critique in a writing workshop or something, but they
have sort of stuck in my head and I've thought, oh, that's interesting.
I should think about that.
Of how it is perceived by others, which is what you'd get from a book group as well.
Exactly.
Yeah.
How it's perceived by others, things that other people see in it or don't see in it that
I don't see.
I really like interacting with readers because you sort of see the book through this Funhouse
Mirror and people always see things in it that you don't expect and the same is true
for reviewers.
The novel is written in alternating voices of Patrick and Verna.
What was it about these two characters to kind of head the game, if you will?
Well Patrick was always in my head.
Poor Patrick.
Patrick is...
He's a smart person who grew up in a not particularly smart world.
He's also a smart person who was not particularly valued.
And he has this mixture of sort of vulnerability and defensiveness and he's also, at the beginning
of the book, the book takes place about a year after Patrick's father is convicted of killing
a child in a drunken, hidden run.
And that has really had a profound effect on Patrick.
Not just the sense of his father's guilt, but his sense of his own sort of complicity
every time he let his father get behind the wheel drunk.
And I thought that was really interesting, the sort of exploration of how grief and
sort of social aprogram kind of combine and mesh and how that can really break a person's
life apart.
And as for Verna, Verna is actually the younger sister of Leila, who in some ways is one
of the central figures of the novel, but I knew from the beginning that I couldn't write
about Leila because it was too close.
Verna, we need a little bit of distance on her writing from Leila's perspective would
really have given too much away too soon.
With Verna, she sort of serves the role of, you know, the person from the ordinary world
who gets sucked into the fantasy realm, who has to learn about it as she goes.
And with Verna, we get that same sort of, you know, education in Leila's world slowly
and surely as the book progresses.
I was fascinated by the beginning of the novel in that these characters are really in a
position of paying a very heavy price for what their parents did, for the choices that
their parents made.
All of them are really.
Yes.
And that's an interesting thing to consider of the baggage that you have because it's
not a baseline that they're starting at.
No, I mean everybody.
I think everybody to a certain extent carries that baggage with them.
Everybody to a certain extent does, you know, find themselves dealing with long term choices
that their parents made for them in one sense or another.
With the case of the L-Share Sisters, Raleigh Lenverna and the Kuzmona brothers, Mike
and Patrick, they're dealing with much more short term choices.
And Patrick's case is his father's sort of inability to cope with his mother's death
and his decision to drive after having far too much to drink.
And in the case of the L-Share Sisters, it's their father's sort of political involvement
in this bruhaha that happens in school where he hears from Laila that there's a biology
teacher who gave a very basic, sex-ed demonstration and takes it to the school board and it sort
of blows up.
And he doesn't ever really consider the fact that it has on his daughter who have to go
to that school and spend eight hours a day in that school.
And I think that, like I said, I think that we're all sort of dealing with those choices,
I also think that there's no matter who we are and no matter how far we come, I think
we always sort of carry our parents with us.
And I feel like that's a little bit of a faux-wise thing to say because it's a little
bit obvious in some ways.
Will it is, but in this case, in this dramatic case, when you look at Patrick, there's such
shame and alienation as a result of the choices.
I mean, it's different than having your parents be in the armed forces and bringing you
from one place to another and being an army brat versus having them be felons.
Sure.
And there's also a sense where we're not really sure how much of the sort of social
censure that Patrick's sense is real and how much of it is his own guilt.
And there is a moment in the book where his brother says to him, you know, it's not everybody
else.
You look at people like I think the exact line is, you look at everybody like they're
about to stab you in the brain.
And so there is a sense that the world actually might be a much more forgiving place than
Patrick thinks it is, but he himself just can't get there.
He can't see that.
And it brings up something and one of the ideas of the novel that I find interesting because
there's so many of us who are given this position and then, okay, what are we going to do
with it?
Are we going to fight and become a different person than our parents and say, we do not
want to become that or mirror it in such a way that we become a carbon copy.
That very much does come through.
I mean, I think that, you know, your parents' expectations of you in one way or another
will drive who you are.
And you know, in Patrick's case, his parents had almost no expectations of him and he has
no expectations of himself.
And on the other hand, we have Verna, whose parents have such powerful expectations of
her that she's never really even considered until the events in this book that she might
be able to do anything other than fulfill those expectations.
That's just has an interter, her very young mind.
What brought you to Ratchetburg, Pennsylvania?
Ratchet'sburg is actually a town that I've written about before.
My first novel was set also in Western Pennsylvania, which is where I grew up, but it was set in
a town called Jamesville.
And when I wrote my second book, which was a bit grittier, I decided that Jamesville
was too classy.
So I made up this town called Ratchet'sburg and I originally wanted to call it Mechanicsburg,
but there are like four mechanicsburgs in Pennsylvania, actually.
There's several of them.
So I picked Ratchet'sburg because it had that sort of toolbox kind of feeling to it.
And it's sort of an amalgam of the town where I grew up.
I like to write about fictional places because I'm not bound to geography.
If I need there to be, you know, two convenience stores and one of them is wonderful and one
of them is crappy, then I can do that.
But Western Pennsylvania, like I said, is where I grew up and it's a very, I don't want to
say it's a strange place because that will make nobody talk to me anymore who lives there.
But it is sort of a unique place in that it has a great deal of deeply rooted history,
which I suppose most places do.
But in Western Pennsylvania, that history is so deeply rooted in the industry of the
place in coal mining and steel mills and these industries that for the most part have faded.
I used to, I actually worked at a warehouse like the one that Patrick works in and I worked
with former coal miners, people who had actually spent 20 years in the mines.
And so there's this sense of a glory that's no longer there or a purpose that's no longer
there.
And it's also a place that people don't tend to leave that often.
And I think my generation is leaving a bit more for economic reasons, but it was not
at all uncommon when I was growing up there to have friends who lived on the same street
as their grandparents.
So it's a very sort of enclosed feeling place.
But there was always the wish to get out that maybe you could be the kid that could get
out.
Well I actually came from somewhere else, which made a big difference.
I moved to Western Pennsylvania when I was 10 from Arizona.
So I came with a sense of mobility and a sense of other places.
But the kids that grow up in that environment from that I'm thinking of like all the right
moves, Tom Cruise type of Pennsylvania where you're working there and you're just trying
for that one shot to get the hell out of the town.
The flash dance Pennsylvania.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think I was actually thinking about that in the way up.
I, you know, as social media has sort of grown, I've gotten back in touch with a lot of
people that I did go to high school with and a good number of them left, but a good number
of them stayed.
And I think that they would say that they are totally happy to live in Western Pennsylvania
and, you know, root for the stillers and do their black and gold terrible towel thing.
And probably there are just as many of those as the ones who sort of from the beginning,
you know, or at least from a very early age wanted to see what else was out there.
I think it's it varies from person to person.
Like look at that, you know, talking about the brothers in the book, I think that Patrick
is somebody who in another life, you know, had he been, had he grown up in another family
that was a little bit more functional, but have desperately wanted to get out.
But I don't think it's ever occurred to Mike that, you know, why would you want to leave?
You've got everything you need right here.
And my graph at Snoot novel is save yourself.
It is published by Crown.
When you think about place, is it wanting to explore it for even for yourself to kind of
come to terms with it to understand it?
Absolutely, absolutely.
When I was a teenager, if you'd asked me if I was going to write about Western Pennsylvania,
would I grow up?
I would have said, absolutely not.
Why would I write about this place?
Nothing ever happens here.
There's nothing to say.
But of course, it's all, you know, for the most part, it's all I've ever written about.
And I think that, you know, this book in particular was sort of, was exactly that.
It was me wanting to explore not just sort of the economic place that I came from, but
also the social place that I came from and how all of these people would live when immersed
in that life.
Being people, characters who are stuck tend to be sort of a big theme with me.
I keep writing about characters who are stuck in one way or another.
And the characters in this book are stuck in sort of, they're stuck in geography, they're
stuck in their economics, they're stuck, you know, career wise if you can call working
at a convenience store career, which I suppose people do.
And putting those characters in a place like that go mart and putting characters in a place
as simple as a loading dock at the high school where they can smoke and talk is fascinating
because it is just, it is stuck in the career and the world sense, but also even in that
moment of just sort of being stuck and wallowing in what it is they're feeling and living.
Well they're all, they all spend a lot of time in places that people pass through.
Patrick, I think a lot of the germ for Patrick and his convenience store job was that the
convenience store that I used to get my gas at in Western Pennsylvania, I went in one
summer after I had left for college and the kid working by the kind of counter was actually
a guy that I'd gone to high school with who was a couple of years younger than me.
And who I always thought was really good looking and really cool.
And so I bought my gas and I, you know, paid with my credit card and I think the bill
probably went to my dad's still at that point.
And left thinking, wow, what's his life like now?
You know, he had been out of school and he was spending all of his time standing in this
convenience store and he was a smart guy.
So it was, I think that that really stuck with me, that notion that, you know, somebody
that I thought was smart and cool and good looking was standing behind this counter selling
me gas and everybody else gas who was passing through.
And you know, the places that the kids tend to hang out, the loading dock, even Eric's
father's apartment, they're not places where you stay.
They're places that people sort of tend to move in and out of.
The other narrator, she only has a couple of sections is Carro and she's a waitress,
which is another place that, you know, you don't really think about the interior life
of the woman who's bringing you your fish.
You pass through.
You pass through.
Is this the type of book that you always, as you said, you would have never imagined yourself
writing about Western Pennsylvania?
Is this the type of novel that you would always imagine yourself writing that that thriller
novel?
Oh, I think when I was 16, I probably thought I was going to grow up and write the Great
American, you know, the New East of Eden or something like that.
But when I was in late college sort of early grad school, I actually discovered classic crime
novels.
I read a lot of Dashalhamid and Raymond Chandler and James M. Kane and all of these sort
of old pulp writers.
And I've always been such a huge story fan.
And I think that was sort of what I was running up into in my studies of, you know, capital
L literary writing was that while my writing needs were being satisfied and my pretty
word needs were being satisfied, my story needs weren't really being satisfied at that
point.
And this was, you know, 10 or 15 years ago and I think the literary world has changed a
lot since then.
But when I discovered these old pulp detective novels, then I think it sort of became inevitable
that I was going to write something more like that, something more along the lines of
a James M. Kane than John Steinbeck.
Fortunately, you're unfortunately.
And you were a fan of the band who would become your father in law, Stephen K.
I was, I was speaking of story crafters.
He's a master at it.
And also what is fascinating to me about his career, having interviewed him on this program,
is that that transformation from someone who could be a commercially successful fiction
writer, nobody bigger, and to look at what now is considered to be a literary novelist.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, he's, he's a master, a great deal of cred over the years.
And I think that some of that is the changing, like I said, there is, there has been sort
of a shift, I think, to novels where things happen.
But also I think he's just a damn talented writer.
And I think that, you know, enough people sort of are of age now who grew up on him that
they can recognize that he's a damn talented writer.
And, you know, as time passes, I think that the focus of his books has changed slightly
from, you know, haunted cars to, well, from haunted cars to towns trapped under domes
and haunted cell phones.
Well, maybe not, but.
Well, there's such an imaginative quality.
And in reading, save yourself, you get, you get so immersed with these, these characters.
And I'm, I mean, to you was there a, go ahead, I even shot her asking this, but, you
know, is there kind of like a, you know, a team Patrick kind of mentality, right?
You know, team Edward versus, where you think of, of people who are, will root for different
people at different times.
You mean team Patrick versus team Mike?
Yeah.
Um, boy, I hope so.
You know, a question that came up a lot when I was showing the book around before publication,
various editors and my agent and various early readers was that the characters weren't
explicitly likable, which I always found sort of baffling because I've always found Patrick
likable.
I find his sort of frailty and poor decisions likable.
Well, I find them likable and almost, you know, very, that I know this guy.
Yeah.
Well, and that's what I wanted.
Really?
Yes, that's what I wanted people to think that I feel, I do feel like everybody has known
somebody like Patrick, somebody.
And I don't necessarily, you know, I think he would be a frustrating friend to have.
I think he would be profoundly, you know, I've had friends like this that, you know, you
sense the potential in them and you just want them to do something, anything.
But um, yeah, I mean, I, I, I have to say they are some of my favorite characters that
I've ever written.
I don't think that any of the characters in my other book have stuck with me in quite
the same way that, that this batch has for whatever reason.
There is a concrete nature to them, a very, a very set, beautiful makeup that they, they
seem to have.
Well, they feel very real to me.
And it takes a, you know, it takes a very long time to write a book.
Sure.
And this one took me five years and I'm not sick of them yet, which I think is a good
thing because I have to spend another year with them while I'm promoting the book, but
which is also good because I think it says something about, about them and my relationship
to them.
And I think that that did help sort of, I think that I captured, I would like to think
anyway that I captured something in them that was, that was concrete.
I've spoken to many novels who have said that, that is, there are better if, if they're
halfway through a book and they're sick of the characters than it goes on the drawer
because it's, it's the multifaceted nature of those characters that keep them interesting
and fresh and something that they want to be with for an extended period of time.
Oh, absolutely.
And I still feel like I could write more about Patrick and Carol.
I, I feel like they have more stories to tell.
I mean, eventually you do sort of come up against the wall of how many exciting things
can really happen to two people in the span of a lifetime, but at least exciting on the
level that, you know, happens to them in this book.
There's lots of exciting things that happen.
There are a lot of exciting things, but it's what we expect as readers, too.
We want all of those exciting things.
Yes.
And we may even want them from these characters.
That's, hopefully, that's my hope.
Would you write a series?
Would I write a series?
I might write a sequel to this one.
I, the fact that Patrick and Carol are still, this, this sounds a little bit more ethereal
than I generally like to be about writing, but the fact that they're still hanging around
in my head makes me think that there might be a series that I'm going to write.
There might actually be a story to tell about them.
That happened with the original short story is I finished it and then they sort of kept,
I kept thinking about them.
So maybe there's more to say there.
I don't know if I could write a series in the traditional sense of the series.
You know, like, oh gosh, what's a good example of a series?
The only one that's coming to mind right now is Jim Butcher's Dresden files for reasons
that I can't quite figure out where the magician with the hoky stick fights demons.
Well, Dennis Lahain series or Spencer, or Robert and Parker or something like that.
Something like that, right?
Where there's sort of more of a tonal continuity or even the Larry McMurray books.
Yeah, it's on some doctrine and those, right, where you've set a place and not particularly
a, a, a sleuth, if you will.
The new novel is Save Yourself.
It is published by Crown Kelly Brafett.
A great pleasure to have you on the program.
I wish all the luck in the world.
This is a beautiful novel.
Thank you very much for sharing it.
Well, thank you.
Thank you so much for having me, Joe.
This was really enjoyable.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
We enjoy hearing from our listeners about the show.
You can email us at book at wamc.org.
You can also listen again to this or find past book shows at wamc.org.
Sarah Laduke produces our program book markets for next week.
And thanks for listening for the book show.
I'm Joe Donnie.