Talking with author Tess Callahan
Print- •
-
Share
- Share this item
-
Grab the link
Copy and paste the link:
- Blog about it
- Close
- •
-
Post a Comment
- •
Favorite- •
By Aileen Jacobson
Newsday
(MCT)
Tess Callahan's first novel, "April&Oliver" (Grand Central, $23.99), has received glowing reviews: Library Journal calls it "wise beyond words," Publisher's Weekly "a memorable debut."
The author, 47, grew up in Baldwin, N.Y., and now lives in Boonton, N.J., with her husband and 12-year-old twins. In her book, set on Long Island, the close childhood friends of the title meet again after the death of April's brother. April is a bartender with an order of protection against her boyfriend. Oliver is a law student with a devoted fiancee.
Callahan spoke with us from her home.
Q. Your life seems sharply at odds with April's. Are you at all alike?
A. April is very different from me, though some things in our backgrounds are similar. Her father is a bartender, and my dad, though he commuted to the city, bartended for extra income on Saturdays. My father was a very gentle man, unlike April's, but I had the experience of hanging out with him, drinking my cherry Cokes. It was an "old cronies" kind of place — the North End Tavern on Grand Avenue. It's no longer there.
Q. But no dying siblings or abusive boyfriends.
A. I had a very close childhood friend, who was incredibly bright and resourceful and imaginative. We would ride our bikes together, and she was a great friend. When I saw her 10 years later, she had gone through a devastating, harrowing time. I don't want to say more, but I think that sense of mystery about her, the way our lives had unfolded so differently, was the point of origin for the novel.
Q. What about Oliver?
A. Oliver is closer to my personality, in that he is always trying to do the right thing, sometimes at the expense of trusting his own instincts. He was a repressed musician. I was good at art, but it seemed impractical as a career choice.
Q. So how did you come to writing?
A. I started to write as a kid. I kept journals as a way of navigating through life. After college, when I traveled throughEastern and Western Europe, and spent a couple of months in India and China, I published three articles in Viewpoints.
Q. How did you write a book while raising twins and teaching middle school?
A. It actually started a year or two before the twins, with a short story I brought with me to the Squaw Valley writers conference. An editor said, "This wants to be a novel." I started expanding it. I wrote a complete first draft while I was pregnant. Then, I tried to work on it while they were napping or with a baby-sitter. Once they were toddlers, I put it aside, which turned out to be useful. When I went back to it, I had the stretching experience of parenting. I could look at it with fresh eyes.
___
(c) 2009, Newsday.
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
