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Bryn Greenwood

Goodreads Author

Website

http://www.bryngreenwood.com

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bryngreenwood

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Suspense

Member Since

February 2008

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/bryngreenwood

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BRYN GREENWOOD is the NYT bestselling author of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things and The Reckless Oath We Made. Her fifth novel is out now: NOBODY KNOWS YOU'RE HERE. She lives in northeast Kansas.

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Where did you get the inspiration for All the Ugly and Wonderful things? I think you did an amazing job at changing the male-adult-female-child kind of relationship into something not completely despicable and horrifying, how did you manage it!?

Bryn Greenwood Thanks for the question, Zuky! I get inspiration from all kinds of things, but this book literally started with me seeing a guy riding a motorcycle on…moreThanks for the question, Zuky! I get inspiration from all kinds of things, but this book literally started with me seeing a guy riding a motorcycle on a dirt road through a hay field at sunset. I wanted to know who he was and where he was going. My daydreaming about that scene turned into Wavy and Kellen's story. As for how I managed to make their relationship something more than a tragic headline? The short answer is that I lived it. The book isn't autobiographical, but at the age of 13, I did date and fall in love with a much older man. I wasn't normal. He wasn't normal. But we understood each other. We had a loving, consensual romance that nurtured me more than a lot of my adult relationships have. (less)

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Hi Bryn! I’ve seen a lot of comparisons on here to books like Lolita, Tampa by Alissa Nutting, Glass Castles by Jeanette Walls. How do you feel about these comparisons? Were you reading anything in particular to inspire you as you wrote?

Bryn Greenwood If people were comparing my prose to Nabokov's, I'd be incredibly flattered, but I think any comparison of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things to Lolita…moreIf people were comparing my prose to Nabokov's, I'd be incredibly flattered, but I think any comparison of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things to Lolita or Tampa is based on a very passing acquaintance with the stories. Lolita and Tampa are both constructed as a first-person account of a narcissistic pedophile/ephebophile. Humbert and Celeste are predators and their stories are meant to shock, titillate, and disturb, even as they draw the reader in.

As for my book, I firmly maintain that Kellen is not a pedophile (nor an ephebophile), but he has the misfortune of falling for the right girl at the wrong time. From Wavy's perspective, he falls for her at the perfect time: when she desperately needs him. Life's funny that way. My intention in writing the book was not to titillate, but to tell a story about love and perseverance that reflects parts of American life that don't often get seen beyond headlines. As for The Glass Castle, it's actually a memoir, whereas All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is purely fiction. A lot more people would have to pass away before I publish a memoir.

In terms of inspiration, I tend to read very erratically, so that I almost never end up reading something that relates to or is remotely similar to what I'm writing. In fact, when I wrote All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, I wasn't even reading. I was in the middle of a complete home remodeling project. I was spending nine hours at my day job, four hours gutting and reassembling my house, then another four to six hours every night writing in a friend's spare bedroom. I sacrificed both sleep and reading for the house and the book. (less)

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Bryn Greenwood’s books

Average rating: 3.97 · 247,803 ratings · 31,543 reviews · 7 distinct works • Similar authors

	All the Ugly and Wonderful Things 3.97 avg rating — 214,343 ratings — published 2016	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nobody Knows You're Here 4.06 avg rating — 16,207 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Reckless Oath We Made 3.98 avg rating — 15,037 ratings — published 2019	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Last Will 3.79 avg rating — 1,190 ratings — published 2012 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lie Lay Lain 3.68 avg rating — 1,009 ratings — published 2014 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Battered Suitcase January 2009 by Bryn Greenwood (Goodreads Author), Helen R. Peterson, Cory Mesler 3.57 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2009	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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A novel-writing human fights fascism

My fifth novel, Nobody Knows You’re Here, is out today, available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. I wrote the first scenes for it without knowing that it would turn out to be a suspense/thriller novel. It’s my first attempt at the genre, and I spent a lot of time asking myself if it was in fact suspenseful or thrilling. I also spent an enormous amount of time reading all the materials I could

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Bryn is Currently Reading

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Blackheart Man

by Nalo Hopkinson

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A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence

by John E. Mack

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Quotes by Bryn Greenwood (?)

“I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.”
― Bryn Greenwood, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

tags: learning, love, numbers, stars, ugly, wonderful

122 likes

“Most days I was impossible. Like a unicorn.”
― Bryn Greenwood, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

57 likes

“When I reached her, she was a star, pulling me into her orbit”
― Bryn Greenwood, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

tags: love, real-love

55 likes

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Polls

Which of these books would you prefer to read as the January book club selection?

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood

6 votes, 42.9%

Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1) by Leigh Bardugo

Six of Crows by Six of Crows

5 votes, 35.7%

The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave, #1) by Rick Yancey

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

3 votes, 21.4%

14 total votes

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Bryn’s Quotes

“If you’re purely after facts, please buy yourself the phone directory of Manhattan. It has four million times correct facts. But it doesn’t illuminate.”
― Werner Herzog

tags: facts, illuminate, interview, manhattan, npr, phone-directory

45 likes

“The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care”
― Emily Dickinson

tags: love

622 likes

“when it’s only you and your sister, you can do any embarrassing thing you want.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell The Wolves I'm Home

6 likes

“Mr. Arsenikos said if you knew the constellations you would never get lost. You could always find your way home.”
― Bryn Greenwood, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

tags: constellations, home, lost

10 likes