Books That Were Seeds for My Novel

This collection of poems by Brenda Shaughnessy burned a hole in my soul when I first encountered them. I’ve read these poems many times over, and feel recognition and connection to the stories told in them, perhaps in part because I was an undergraduate student with Shaughnessy in Santa Cruz. These poems are powerful and illuminating.

When I was growing up, my mother was a graduate student getting her Phd in psychology. She loves telling me that I read most of her coursework. I know I read One Child in those years. I was probably ten when I discovered this book by Torey Hayden, about a six year-old with severe PTSD, and how Hayden as a young teacher broke through the girl’s severe trauma to forge a deep bond. What I remember powerfully when I recall this book is that the girl and the teacher discovered together that love can mend a broken heart. And what made such a lasting impression on me, and informed my latest novel, is that a stranger can save your life.

This Lorrie Moore novel from 2009 portrays a babysitter, Tassie, who made me full of unease from the first page. Actually there’s not a single character in this novel who is secure. It’s that painful vulnerability that lingers for me, even more than the turns of plot. I recognized my own unstable and ordinary young adulthood in this novel, and may have begun to ponder the interconnectedness that arises between humans, which I explore in Confuse the Wind.

It’s the original movie, Mary Poppins, that I fell in love with long before I read the book by P.L. Travers, published in 1934. Several years ago I was given a third edition copy of the book, as I delicately turned the pages, I noticed that the title character was just as magical, just as forthright, just as self-assured as the character made famous by Julie Andrews , but also bemusingly vain. I hope my character Aimee has a healthy sprinkling of Mary Poppins in her.

This book is one of many architecture and skyscraper history and engineering books I read for research. Starting in 2005, I began working in an office building directly north of the pit that was the Twin Towers. And on every lunch break I walked the streets, and sat for lunch at Amish Market amidst the construction workers, foremen, and engineers of the new World Trade Center. I eavesdropped like hell on what they talked about, and I grew increasingly awed by these mortals who knew how to build a skyscraper. My skyscraper engineer, Jonathan Brooks, emerged from watching these ordinary men with extraordinary knowledge.

Just anything Roddy Doyle at all. I could live with just this one author’s body of work on a desert island. I love contemporary Irish fiction overall. Of all the Doyle books, I’m putting Paula Spencer (2006) because if you’ve read Doyle you probably didn’t read this one. I love stories of harm reduction/recovery from dependency on substances, and I loved the character Paula from The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, and never expected her to reappear 10 years later in a sequel. I wonder if Doyle expected her to. Paula Spencer was another seedling for my Irish babysitter character, Aimee and her own mother, Pauline.