Julie Orringer Discussion Group discussion
A Few Questions Answered...
date
newest »
newest »
Question:The places your characters lived in were described so well that I could actually see the sadness or the beauty as I read. Did you actually go to theses places yourself in order to write about them with such detail?
I have another question that I wondered last year as I was reading The Invisible Bridge. Out of all the themes you covered throughout the book, what made you finally decide on that name? Or did you know from the beginning what the title would be?I actually started reading TIB again before I found this group because I wanted to re-read it for the 'writing' instead of getting so caught up in the story that I didn't pay close attention to how wonderfully you crafted it.
QUESTION: “I was wondering, did you have to learn a foreign language in order to complete research for the novel, like French or Hungarian? Or did you already know a foreign language? It just seemed to me that there were such authentic details mixed in, that you would have had to get from original sources in Europe!”
ANSWER: From the outset, I knew it was going to be difficult to write a book in English about a Hungarian protagonist who’s trying to learn French; his friends speak Polish, Yiddish, Czech, Italian, German, Hebrew, and Russian, among others. I knew French when I started writing, which was very helpful for my research in Paris; I went to archives and libraries and read old newspapers and architecture books and city histories and accounts of wartime experiences. Hungary proved a greater challenge. Though I’d grown up around Hungarian speakers, I’d never learned much of the language myself; since my grandparents had escaped Hungary under difficult circumstances, they weren’t too keen on passing the language along. But I did end up absorbing enough to make my way around in Budapest and Debrecen, and I had a translator—a wry and talented young medical student—who helped me with my archival and library research there.
QUESTION: “How long did THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE take to write?”
ANSWER: Seven years in all: three years to write the first draft, three to revise, and a year to edit the manuscript with my editor at Knopf.
QUESTION: “A quick question -- how much documentation of your research is necessary when you submit a historical novel? Did your publisher want to see yours or do they just trust an author to have their facts straight?”
ANSWER: The publisher trusts the author. But I had a wonderful copy editor who checked my dates and details and asked for sources for many pieces of historical information. She went far beyond the call of duty to make sure the book had all its facts, large and small, absolutely straight—or as much so as possible. It was important to me to be historically accurate, not just because I wanted the book to feel real and to reflect real experience, but also because I wanted to learn the facts myself.