FAQ's: Ohio
Angels
How did you get the idea for this first novel?
The first fictional writing I ever did surprised me completely;
I just had the urge to write in a voice I could half-hear. It
was the voice of someone who spoke about looking for angels
in the Baptist Church of her childhood. Soon afterward,
on a visit from my home in Connecticut to Peoria, Illinois,
to see my grandmother, I started writing more fully in my
hotel room; characters and voices started to come to me in
a rush, and I just listened and wrote. I wrote about
thirty pages of this early work, and then, after a few
months, started again, with Hallie and Rose.
Why did you decide to shift point of
view?
I loved the idea of each chapter as a
window into one figure’s
consciousness; each window could offer an architecture and
a small but significant glimpse into the character in the
present moment. I liked working with the sense of knowledge’s
limits; Hallie, Rose, and Virginia know each other well,
in certain ways, and yet each one protects herself, holds
onto secrets.
Is this an autobiographical book?
Well, if you go to Granville, Ohio, my
childhood town (where my dad still lives), people who know
this book call it “your
book about Granville”! I have to say, I know
what they mean, because I definitely brought into this first
fictional work all sorts of details about the place; on this
level, the novel is a tribute to this landscape and town. Yet
the characters are purely fictional; the story is fictional;
and, insofar as I changed an enormous amount about the place
itself, the place is essentially fictional too. I would
add, though, that, as with many first novels, the emotional
truth of this book is palpable.
Do the ideas and images in this book come into your
later fiction?
I’m sure many do. I love colors, for instance,
and this is a book filled with colors’ significance
and richness. It’s filled with images of art
too; Hallie is an abstract painter, whereas Mary Cassatt,
in my second novel, is a representational painter, yet for
both artists, the painting becomes a way of interpreting
and shaping the world. Other images I resist but often
succumb to: deserts, flight, inland landscapes vs.
seashore, sea birds, rocks, trees on city streets, landscape
as seen from a car. I’m a quite visual writer,
and a lot of my imagination appears to be tied up in the
essence of landscape: earth, water, sky.
How did you come up with the chapter titles?”
The titles came to me quite simply. Often I named
chapters as I might name a poem. I liked playing with
the notion of one-word titles; I loved the spareness and
suggestiveness of this. I am a minimalist!
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Read excerpts from:
Ohio Angels
Read more FAQ's about
Someone Not Really Her Mother
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Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper
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