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‘The Travelers,’ A Conversation with Chris Pavone

January 10, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

‘The Travelers,’ A Conversation with Chris Pavone

Chris Pavone, formerly a book editor, is the author of two previous New York Times bestsellers, The Accident and The Expats, and winner of the Edgar and Anthony Awards. His latest novel is The Travelers.

The Travelers features Will Rhodes, his wife Chloe, and Malcomb, his boss at the magazine Travelers at which Will is an international correspondent writing about food, wine, foreign cultures, celebrities and expats. But Will has no idea of the secret agendas of some people, including those of his wife and Malcomb. When Will travels to Capri, Bordeaux, Paris, London and Argentina, he finds himself at the center of a dangerous web, one imperiling his marriage, career, and his life.

The Travelers takes readers from the beaches of France, to Barcelona, New York, Argentina and to Iceland, all places hiding a dark story of surveillance, lies and espionage. How did you acquire so much knowledge about clandestine espionage operations?

[Laughter] I don’t think I’ve acquired much knowledge about espionage.

I imagined this novel as a story about people who don’t really know for whom they work. We all live in a universe in which we’re either asked to or are forced to accept certain premises about our employment without having the opportunity to verify them. There are some types of employment where it’s perfectly clear for whom you’re working: for instance, teaching in a public school, your boss is the principal, who works for the Board of Education which is publicly funded, it’s very clear.

It’s less clear in the private sector. We go to work every day and often don’t know who owns the company or what their real agenda may be. We don’t truly know what kind of contribution we’re making to some hidden end-game. It took me a decade of working for a large company before I had the curiosity to find out who actually owned that company.

That experience became the premise of this novel. Espionage is somewhat incidental to the story I wanted to tell.

In most espionage novels, the characters risk their lives trying to save somebody, or while protecting a nation from some threat. In The Travelers, that’s not what’s going on. I used espionage as a device to heighten the characters’ personal dramas.

Self-interest thrusts the characters into conflict with one another. Deceit in both personal and business relationships results in their lives spinning out of control.

Speaking of conflicts, I loved your depictions of the inner workings of various characters’ minds, especially Will’s and his boss, Malcomb’s. Will you talk about that?

I try to construct each of my novels around one central theme—core tensions shared by the characters. In The Travelers, everyone is defined by his or her relationship to work. I put each character on a different rung of the ladder: from the lowliest assistant to a powerful man in the world of media.

Will occupies a middle rung; while Malcom, as the editor, is perched at the top.

Their seemingly comfortable and enviable lives have been intertwined for many years, and they consider each other friends; but certain tensions are added to the mix when Will finds himself working for Malcom. That tension is central to the drama in this book.

One man is lying to the other about something critically important to the other.

We’re not  worried someone’s going to get killed, but rather, we’re worried someone will be found out.

Much of The Travelers orbits around marital secrets, as did your novel, The Expats. Will you talk about secrets and lies in a marriage?

I think secrets are a compelling issue for a novel to explore. Most people are married and I don’t think Im going too far out on a limb by saying no one is completely truthful about everything. What if a particular lie your spouse is telling you has enormous consequences ?

What if he or she isn’t who they claim to be ? What if what they actually do for a living is not what you’ve been led to believe they do? What if you’re waking up each morning next to someone who at least in part, is a stranger?

Although I don’t have those concerns about my wife [Laughter]; at times, I  do have those irrational thoughts about people in general. And, I don’t think I’m alone in that regard. So, I like that kind of tension in a novel.  It allows the reader to root for both sides: on one hand, you want the person to be found out, but you also want the secrets to remain intact.

I was impressed by your rich descriptions of even the most quotidian things: an airport, a party, a yacht, a room, or a building’s basement or lobby. How would you describe your writing style?

I think my writing style is sensual. I attempt to engage all the reader’s sense memories when I’m writing descriptive passages. I use descriptions to set a mood and drive the reader to expect or worry about something. It helps to engage every sense—not just seeing things, but tasting, smelling, and hearing things. I try getting as much of that onto the page as is reasonable. I try to engage readers so it feels like they’re actually there, in the scene.

Who are the writers who have influenced your own writing?

That’s such a hard question to answer. The truth is that I’m influenced in some way by practically everything I read, and I read an enormous amount of fiction. I’m constantly taking notes on things that occur to me while I’m reading someone else’s book. The jottings have nothing to do with the book I’m reading, but something I’m reading triggers my own imagination in a completely different direction. There’s very little that makes me want to write more and better than my being immersed in a very good book.

What do you love about the writing life?

I absolutely love writing. As a kind of labor that people will pay you to do, I can’t imagine anything better. I love making things up and my favorite part of writing is when creating the first draft of a novel. I love making decisions and finding new plot twists. I love the invention. The one thing I don’t like is that too frequently, I get ideas in the middle of the night. I have to write them down or I won’t remember them. Then, I can’t get back to sleep because my imagination is all fired-up.

What’s coming next from Chris Pavone?

I’m writing a sequel to my first book, The Expats. This one is called The Paris Diversion and features some of the characters from the first novel.

Congratulations on writing The Travelers, a propulsive, richly imagined, insightful, literary thriller that had me guessing all the way to the last pages.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a medical/psychiatric memoir.

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column, Interviews Tagged With: Conflict, espionage, lies, novel, secrets, writing

‘The Marriage Lie,’ A Conversation with Kimberly Belle

December 31, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Kimberly Belle’s previous novels are The Last Breath and The Ones We Trust. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Agnes Scott College.

Her third novel, The Marriage Lie, begins with the depiction of Iris and Will’s marriage as a blissful union. They both have rewarding careers and have decided to try for their first baby. On the morning Will leaves on a business trip to Orlando, Iris learns a plane headed for Seattle has crashed, killing all on board. According to the airline, Will was on that plane. Stunned, Iris seeks answers about why Will was going to Seattle, not Orlando. A series of secrets and lies emerges, and Iris’ life is changed forever.

The Marriage Lie depicts a marriage beset by secrets. How did this idea come to you?

I love writing about secrets because, when they are revealed, as they always are, they can disrupt a relationship. One of my children lives in Holland, so my husband and I are back-and-forth all the time. When I began thinking about my next story, flying and plane crashes were at the forefront of my mind. I began thinking what a plane crash is like for the people left behind, especially if some sort of deception was involved as happens in The Marriage Lie.

What about secrets intrigues you?

I love writing about suspenseful issues and using that tension in a plotline. But the meat of my story is the relationship between Iris and Will, and how the discovery of certain secrets impacts their relationship. The intrigue for me is what happens to a relationship when people find out about the other person’s secrets.

Speaking of relationships, tell our readers about Iris’ and Will’s relationship and the issue of accountability for one’s past.

Iris and Will are very much in love and seem to have it all. As a student counselor, Iris always talks to her students about being accountable for what they do. When Will goes missing and certain questions arise, Iris wants to know the truth about him. When she learns the truth, she must re-evaluate everything in the relationship—not just things moving forward, but everything that has gone on before Will disappeared. She thought she knew her husband, but didn’t know him at all.

The Marriage Lie depicts Will as having changed completely by the time he and Iris marry. Do you believe people ever truly change?

I think people can want to change, but I haven’t met anyone who has completely changed. I think Will wanted to change and become a better man for Iris, but in the end, I don’t think he achieved that sort of encompassing goal.

The Marriage Lie is written in the first person, present tense. What made you choose that format?

I’ve tried other formats, but that’s just the way my voice works best. When it comes time for me to sit down and write, that’s the best way for me to get inside my characters’ heads. I love the immediacy of the first-person narrative, and of the present tense. The action is happening right then and there in front of the reader.

What’s the most important lesson you feel you’ve learned about writing?

There are two. The first is that every book you write is different. When I think I’ve finally figured out writing—how to structure a novel or create characters—I come up with another story that needs to be told differently, and in a way, that makes me feel I haven’t learned anything. [Laughter] It’s humbling and frustrating. Maybe that’s what keeps writers on their toes.

The other lesson is I must show up every single day at my computer. If there are no words, there’s no story.

What has surprised you about the writing life?

First, I’ve been so positively surprised by how supportive other writers are. It’s competitive, for sure, but I’ve been so pleasantly surprised by how willing other authors are to tweet and help me promote my books.

Another surprise has been how long it took me to figure out that writing is what I’ve wanted to do. I love doing it so much, I wish I’d discovered it earlier.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be doing today?

This is my second career. Previously, I worked in fundraising for non-profit organizations. I’m still passionate and active about certain causes, so I’d probably still be working in that field if I weren’t writing.

If you could experience reading one novel again as though reading it for the first time, which one would it be?

There are so many I’ve loved. One that surprised me in unexpected ways was The Book Thief. It’s completely out of my genre, but every page had a sentence or phrase that floored me.

What’s coming next from Kimberly Belle?

I’m working on a story about a botched kidnapping. The kidnapper snatches the wrong child and the blunder pits both mothers in a race against time to save the boy. To do that, they’ll have to take a closer look at the people around them. The working title is Mistaken.

Congratulations on writing The Marriage Lie, a suspenseful, multilayered and gripping novel that had me turning the pages until late into the night.

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column Tagged With: crime, deceit, lies, marriage

Silence Once Begun: A Conversation with Jesse Ball

February 10, 2014 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

2014-02-10-JesseBall-thumbJesse Ball’s new novel Silence Once Begun has just been released by Pantheon. His three previous novels are The Way Through Doors, Samedi the Deafness, and Curfew. He’s also written several works of verse. He won the 2008 Paris Review Plimpton Prize and is the recipient of a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. He teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago’s MFA Writing Program.

Silence Once Begun concerns a Japanese fishing village where eight elderly residents have disappeared. Although he didn’t commit a crime, Oda Sotatsu signs a written confession prepared by Sato Kakuzo. He’s arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death, yet remains inexplicably silent throughout this ordeal. The novel is written as a series of transcripts of interviews with those who knew Oda, providing different versions of what may have happened.

Read more on the Huffington Post >>

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column, Interviews, On Writing Tagged With: Art Institute of Chicago's MFA Writing Program, Conrad, Curfew, dreams, fiction, hopes, investigate, japan, Japanese fishing village, Japanese justice system, Jesse Ball, Justice, Kafka, lies, lucid dreaming, lying, National Endowment for the Arts, novel, Paris Review, perceptions, Plimpton Prize, poetry, rules, Samedi the Deafness, The Secret Agent, The Way Through Doors, trust, truth-telling

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