Claire Messud is the author of a new novella called A Dream Life. She is also the author of five novels (including The Emperor’s Children and The Woman Upstairs), a book of novellas and a book of essays. Her novels have been widely translated and several have been international bestsellers. She writes regularly for the New York Review of Books and writes a books column for Harper’s magazine. She teaches at Harvard University and lives in Cambridge, MA with her family.
Today, Claire Messud is on the blog to answer a few of our questions about A Dream Life. Read on …
Claire Messud
Please tell us about your book, A Dream Life.
CM: It’s set in Sydney in the early 1970s, and tells the story of an American woman, Alice Armstrong, and her family, who move to the city on account of her husband’s job. Having come from a small flat in New York, they move into a grand house in Point Piper, where Alice is suddenly cast into the role of ‘lady of the manor’, with a household to run and staff to employ. It’s like taking a part in a play, but it’s her life – and it’s all a bit surreal.
Why was it important to you to write this story?
CM: I was an expatriate kid in Sydney – in the early 1970s, in fact – and it was a very happy time. I loved every second of my Australian life. But I wanted, when I wrote this, to try to get my head around what that experience was like for my mother. Hers was a different generation, and this was a different time: there was the excitement of Women’s Lib, but that was relatively new, and most women still had pretty traditional roles in their families. What was it like to come to a new country and to be cast as a totally different person in every way, and to find that you’re both an employer of domestic help (which you never imagined being) and that your employees are also pretty much your closest social connections?
This novel is set in Sydney in the ‘70s, which is where you spent part of your childhood. How much did you draw on your own experiences to create those of Alice, your protagonist?
CM: The book isn’t really about my experiences, even though it draws on them – it’s about imagining my mother’s experiences. A lot of the details are invented, needless to say. But the framework is taken from my life – we did live in Point Piper, on Wolseley Road, in the grandest house I’ve ever lived in, and my sister and I attended a private girls’ school – first in Vaucluse, and then in Rose Bay. And we did have, for a while, a live-in housekeeper, who was both amazing and mysterious – a kind of off-Mary Poppins, almost – and who vanished overnight. We adored her.
Your characters are described as unscrupulous self-deceivers. As a writer, what interests you about these kinds of characters?
CM: Most of my characters – in this book, but in almost everything I write – are self-deceivers of one kind of another. Aren’t we all? But I don’t know about ‘unscrupulous’ – I’m not sure what distinguishes scrupulous from unscrupulous self-deception. Seriously though, I’ve always been interested in how any of us deceives ourselves, in order to keep going, in order to make life make sense, in order to render ourselves acceptable to ourselves or others. When I was young, I wanted to tear away deception of all kinds, in favour of the bright, transparent light of honesty. And over time I came to realise that’s impossible. But fiction is a place to acknowledge and explore the layers of deception, and in doing so, to try to get, even a little, closer to that light.
‘I’ve always been interested in how any of us deceives ourselves, in order to keep going, in order to make life make sense, in order to render ourselves acceptable to ourselves or others.’
Can you tell us a little bit about your journey towards becoming a writer?
CM: Once I understood, when I was very small, that stories were not like rocks and rivers, things that had always been there – once I understood that stories were made up by people, I wanted to do that with my life. How to get from wanting to doing – it’s a short and long story both. You’re always still learning. And always struggling with the balance of writing and living – a particular dance if you have kids, of course. I started out working in journalism, and have been teaching for years – those things, great as they are, aren’t the same as writing fiction, and they take up a good bit of time. So I’m still on the journey towards becoming a writer, towards being the writer I’d like to be. It’s like yoga – you need Beginner’s Mind, every day.
You’re also a creative writing teacher across various institutions and programs. What do you find to be the most rewarding part of teaching?
CM: It’s a gift to talk about writing with other people who love literature, and who are also trying to write richer, fuller, more accomplished works. I’m always learning from my students – whether reading and discussing their work, or whether we’re talking about published writers. I ask my students to bring in work that they love for everyone to read – thanks to them, just in the past week, I’ve been reading Calvino, Knausgaard, Lispector, Didion – and discovering a terrific graphic novel called Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki.
What is the last book you read and loved?
CM: I’m always discovering amazing books, fiction, poetry and non-fiction – I’ve got piles of books by my bedside that I’ve started & want to finish. Recently, I’ve loved Damon Galgut’s The Promise and Louise Glück’s new book of poems Winter Recipes from the Collective; and I’m currently passionately immersed in Eve Curie’s 1943 book Journey Among Warriors about her travels in ’40-’41 to non-European Allied battlefields across the globe.
What do you hope readers will discover in A Dream Life?
CM: I hope it’s fun to read, even as it raises some more serious questions. It’s a glimpse of an earlier time, when a lot was wrong, for sure, but where, in this case, there was no tragedy. Everyone picked themselves up and carried on.
And finally, what’s up next for you?
CM: I’m working on a new novel, inevitably – I’m always working on a novel!
Thanks Claire!
—A Dream Life by Claire Messud (Tablo Publishing) is out now.
A Dream Life
When the Armstrong family moves from New York at the dawn of the 1970s, Australia feels, to Alice Armstrong, like the end of the earth. Residing in a grand manor on the glittering Sydney Harbour, her family finds their life has turned upside down. As she navigates this strange new world, Alice must find a way to weave an existence from its shimmering mirage.
Lies and self-deception are at the heart of this keenly observed story. This is a sharp, biting and playful tale with a cast of unscrupulous characters adrift in a dream life of their own making...
Comments
No comments