Gin Phillips's Blog, page 4

Cool Things From Amsterdam

So there are a lot of cool things that come from seeing your book published in different countries–different titles, different covers, different marketing–but these little guys from The Netherlands are at the top of the list.

They’re called flip books, and they’re a low-tech alternative for reading while traveling. (Standard hardcover also shown for comparison.) Just as convenient as packing an iPad or a Kindle. Why have these not become an international sensation?!

And why have I not learned to read Dutch?

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The Perfect Book Club

Let me start with this: I’ve been burned by book clubs. This goes back more than a decade–alright, nearly two decades–when I tried my first (and only) book club and recommended Roddy Doyle’s The Snapper to a group of a dozen or so women. When we met back a month later, no one had thought the book was funny. Or moving. No one thought anything, really, except that the punctuation was weird.

And THAT was the last meeting I attended of THAT book club. Since then, of course, I’ve visited plenty of book clubs as a speaker and guest when they’re reading one of my books, and my experiences have been all over the place. It’s almost always enjoyable. Sometimes the book is just a prop, and everyone’s really there to drink wine and eat cheese. (I myself love both wine and cheese, although I don’t understand why we don’t just call those Wine and Cheese clubs.) But there are also plenty of groups where the conversation is complex and thoughtful and a mile-a-minute–where a bunch of readers are dying to voice all the thoughts and questions spinning in their heads after finishing a book.

That’s my idea of a book club. You leave college, and suddenly, when you finish a great book, there’s no one to talk about it with. There’s no circle of classmates or friends hanging out at midnight at a coffee shop. You’re left alone with all these questions–and probably answers, too–and that’s not nearly as much fun if you can’t share them. Last year I read The Age of Innocence for the first time, and I decided it was my new favorite book. I was giddy with the brilliance of it…and at the same time I was a little desperate to figure out What are the chances that someone I know has just finished reading this nearly century-old novel and is dying to talk about it? 

Last week I went to one of my favorite book clubs ever–five women sitting around a coffee table in Birmingham, Al. And I realized afterwards that what I loved most about the dynamic was that the readers approached Fierce Kingdom from an intellectual angle and a personal angle. So they might quote a passage from the book (I always LOVE quoting the text), and they might ask:

—Why the zoo setting? How does that background work with the story? or Why does Kailynn act like she does? Is it bravery or obliviousness or something else?

I added my own favorite questions about the book: What’s the role of stories? What stories do Robbie, Joan, Lincoln, and Kailynn escape into–and how do they work differently for each character? 

And maybe something like:

“There are beautiful things. Pay attention.” Joan thinks these lines at the end of the book–how does that notion of paying attention play out in the story?

And we’d talk about the ins and outs of character and themes.

But then a passage might be a starting point for something more personal, like this assessment by Margaret mid-way through the book: “When they come to her desperate, empty, their parents are desperate and empty. She sees which direction they are headed, usually, and there is nothing she can do about it. Sometimes she has tried, and it is like huffing and puffing at a brick house.”

The woman who read those lines then talked about her own teaching experience and feeling that same sense of helplessness with students.

And these sorts of questions circled around, too:

–Is there a different kind of bond between mothers and their firstborn children? Is there a different kind of bond between mothers and sons than between mothers and daughters? (All of these women had sons.)

–What would you do in Joan’s place when it comes to the crying baby? Would that be different if you were alone than if you had your child with you?

–Are women always caretakers? Do you feel like you take care of everyone–husband, parents, children? Is that inborn or do we get shaped that way?

–Do you like Joan? (Everyone in this group did, by the way.) Do you think there’s a tendency to judge her differently than we would judge a man in the same situation?

To me, that overlap of personal experience and thoughtful reading–and the questions that come out of that–make a great book discussion. And a great book club.

Not that wine and cheese would go amiss.

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Tell Me How It Ends: SPOILER WARNING

Let me tell you the two most common questions I’ve heard in the three weeks since Fierce Kingdom was released: 1) What’s the deal with the movie? 2) What happens at the end of the story?

So here goes: First of all, as for the movie, it is not an actual thing yet. There have been movie rights sold, and there’s a screenplay in process, but that does not equate to a real, buy-your-tickets movie. There are lots of steps still to go in the process. We’ll see.

But about the ending. Endings are, of course, hard to talk about in a public way. Spoilers and all. But it’s been really interesting to me that what was an intentionally open-ended, multi-layered ending has driven some people crazy. It’s a matter of perspective, I guess. As a reader, it drives ME crazy when writers overstate their themes and act as if I’m not smart enough to make my own conclusions…to fill in the gaps myself. I do assume that a reader is smart and thoughtful, and I’ve always loved the idea that the reader comes to a book and joins with the author, and between the two of them, they make this new thing. The book is different for every reader. (For all you English majors out there, it’s reader response theory in action.)

So I like that the reader can decide for themselves what happens. There are two (I think ) different ways you can read the ending of Fierce Kingdom. Joan either _______ or ___________ . (I’m not sure if my code is too obvious there or not.) In ways I didn’t intend, I think the ending has turned out as a litmus test for how people view the world. My husband read the first draft of the book and stalked into the room saying, “I can’t believe you_________!” And I said, “I didn’t!”

I might say that he’s a pessimist and I’m an optimist, and that’s the difference in the way we see the ending.  I like that he can have a different ending than I did. That you can have a different ending than I did. So that’s one reason for the content of the last few pages. The other is that, in as much as the book is about parenting, the truth is that–in the best of circumstances–you leave your child behind.  You go and they stay. So the ending can’t be all smiley faces and rainbows. That’s not life.

And another thing about life:  we don’t get everything tied up neatly. We don’t KNOW how our actions effect everyone down the line. Joan can’t know the end result for everyone at the end of the night.

But, for what it’s worth, I always veer towards light instead of dark. Good does not always triumph in real life, but if this is my story, I want good to conquer.

 

 

 

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Coming to a City Near You

The book is finally here! Tomorrow, July 25th, Fierce Kingdom should be perched on a bookshelf near you, anxious to be bought and read. And while the book is lazing around doing nothing, I’ll be traveling from city to city doing readings and signings and, hopefully, sampling some local donuts.

Come see me! I’d love to talk about the book with you.

Here’s my schedule.

July 25th at 6:30 p.m.–Foxtale Books in Woodstock, Ga. (Outside of Atlanta)

July 26th at 5 p.m.–Alabama Booksmith in Birmingham, Al.

July 28th at 5 p.m.–Lemuria Books in Jackson, Miss. (To be held at the Eudora Welty House)

July 31st at 12 p.m.–Page & Palette in Fairhope, Al. (Lunch event needing reservations)

August 2nd at 7 p.m.–Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona

August 3rd at 11 a.m.–Towne Center Books in Pleasanton, Ca.

August 4th at 7 p.m.–Vroman’s in Pasadena, Ca.

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Epigraphs and Babies

I realize that in all the interviews I’ve done leading up to publication for Fierce Kingdom, no one has asked about the epigraph. So I’m going to talk about it anyway.

Here it is: “I just want to know if a sound can create a boy. Or, if a woman becomes a mother when she thinks she hears a baby crying for her.”

The lines come from the poem below by the very talented poet Elizabeth Hughey. (Who also happens to be a good friend.)

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t actually read the poem until after I’d finished the book, although the lines seemed so perfect that I didn’t think Elizabeth would believe me. (I think she did.) I love the way the poem touches on what it means to be a mother–that it’s tied to being needed. To being crucial. If you’ve read Fierce Kingdom already, you know that the cries of a baby play a fairly big role. But the idea of hearing a baby cry–of hearing a child who needs you–also fits into the broader themes of the novel. At its core, I think the book deals with what we owe our children…and what we owe other people’s children. Joan is always wrestling with that question–how much should she risk for a stranger?

Ultimately, I think her decision echoes the epigraph. We don’t just parent our own children. We’re all connected. We step into the role of mother–or father–when we see the need for it, in all kinds of big and small ways.

Elizabeth, by the way, has published two collections of beautiful, strange, mesmerizing poetry. You might want to check out Guest Host or  Sunday Houses the Sunday House, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize.  Or you can read another one of my other favorite poems, “Land Lines,”  here.

 

 

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Good Things from Canada

Second day of book tour in Canada, and there are all sorts of good things in Toronto. Soup dumplings at Lee Chen’s. Nanaimo bars. Summer weather that’s way better than Alabama.

But the first two things we always look for in a city are doughnuts and playgrounds. Toronto has loads of both. There’s this great playground near Corktown Commons under an overpass…

 

And there were these amazing Fierce Kingdom doughnuts crafted by my brilliant friends at Penguin Random House Canada (and Jelly Modern Doughnuts.)

 

 

 

AND there’s also–if anyone’s interested in book-related items that do not have carbohydrates–this interview that I did yesterday on CTV’s “Your Morning.”

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A Big Pile of Books

On Friday I signed 1,200 copies of FIERCE KINGDOM at the Books-A-Million headquarters. Here’s the before and after:

What 1,200 books looks like…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the finished product.

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The Favorite Author Conundrum

 

I’ll be starting the official book tour for FIERCE KINGDOM in a little less than three weeks, so I’m starting to think about what questions I’ll likely be asked. There’s one I have no doubt about: Who’s your favorite author?

A softball question, right? No problem?

I dread it. I seem to simultaneously forget every author I’ve ever read and think of a thousand names at once. I’ll flash to the reading list from 12th grade English, and I’ll think of the book I’ve tried to start three times and never finished, and I’ll wrack my brain for anything that’s on my bookshelf.

Part of my trouble, I think, is that I often read in phases, having fallen in love with an author and decided to read everything by her I can get my hands on. This is a terrible way to read. It is never the most flattering or satisfying way to experience an author’s work, but I do it anyway. I can’t help it.

The list of those obsessions is a wide and eclectic list. I am heavily into Elizabeth Strout right now. I was on a Colson Whitehead kick before that, devouring three novels before I made myself switch to someone else. And in those weeks, each of them were my favorite author.

That designation changes based on day and mood and random firings of my brain. It’s like asking for my favorite food–it depends on the moment.

But my “favorite” is also never singular. It’s a shifting and swirling list, and it is longish and lacking coherence. (I should specify that for me to say an author is a favorite, I feel like I should love multiple works by them. Otherwise it’s not really a favorite author–it’s  favorite book.) Currently my list is something like this, maybe…. Edith Wharton, Ann Patchett, Margaret Atwood, Charles Dickens, David Mitchell, Richard Russo, Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Strout, Colson Whitehead, Hilary Mantel. Maybe add Neil Gaiman and Jane Austen and Willa Cather.  I’m in the early stages right now, but I’m considering adding Penelope Lively and Elena Ferrante.

Ask me again next week and you might get something different. Although I’m considering printing out that last paragraph and keeping it in my purse.

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Publishers Weekly review

And here’s the second big review for FIERCE KINGDOM…I might quibble a wee bit that the toddler is not “cranky” and that it’s not exactly a “horror story.” But, okay, quibbling would be pretty ungracious. It’s a starred review and the Pick of the Week!

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7352-2427-8

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First Official Review

Alright, so I’m not sure if Kirkus Reviews counts as the first official review of FIERCE KINGDOM. But I’m old school and think that an actual printed version you can hold in your hand MATTERS. So, to my knowledge, this is the first print publication with a review. (Which is actually online. Tricky.)

AND IT IS A STARRED REVIEW. It is like Christmas. Because, frankly, as a writer you inevitably tell yourself that the reviews don’t really matter–it’s all subjective and everyone has different taste, blah blah blah–but the good reviews? The ones that tell you someone saw and felt exactly what you hoped a reader might? They MATTER.

Here you go:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...

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