Yesterday I finished Ann Patchett’s novel “Bel Canto”. I always tell students to use superlatives sparingly and in this instance, I practice what I preach. But “Bel Canto” is worthy of superlatives. It’s a brilliant book, an easy pick for my Top Ten Great Reads. Unless you’re made of stone, the ending will rip your heart out. But then there’s the epilogue…..hmmm. I would welcome your thoughts on that.
A dramaturg I worked with once pointed out a flaw in my work – I was skilled at setting up complications, but I was too quick to resolve them. That’s a direct manifestation of my character. In my life and in my writing, I want happy endings and I want them now. But as my friend the dramaturg pointed out, the bigger the investment, the bigger the payoff. A writer has to be willing to bet it all, every time. This is a lesson I have been slow to learn.
I’ve taken some risks in the Joanne Kilbourn series – killing off a character everyone loved and replacing him with Zack, a character that only my protagonist and I loved. I got a great deal of mail about that. Even the Dean of our Cathedral said he found it difficult to forgive me for killing off “X”. But in the past year, the mail about Zack has changed –now I get a steady stream of ‘don’t let anything happen to Zack’ letters.
My favourite is from a woman who was married to a man like Zack. She said the marriage was like hanging onto a flotation device and being pulled along by a powerful, shiny red speedboat. She said the time she spent with her Zack was the most exciting time of her life but it reached a point where she simply couldn’t hold on any longer. She remembers her husband fondly, but they are no longer together.
The point of this digression is, I guess, simply to say that I’m grateful that readers came to care for my own (fictional) powerful red shiny speedboat as much as I did. Zack has added a great deal to Joanne’s life and to the novels, but I did roll the dice by introducing him.
I’m pondering an equally large gamble in the new book. We shall see.