Ottessa, welcome to London, welcome to Waterstones.
Thank you.
Since we last spoke, which was I think about two years ago, a lot has happened and in fact when
we spoke last I asked you what you were working on and you said you were writing
a novel about a woman who locks herself in her apartment for a year and you
weren't joking because here we have My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Tell me a
bit if you can about where the idea for this book came from.
It's hard to say that there was one source but I started sketching out the character when
I was staying on the Upper East Side of Manhattan one summer and as I wrote
the voice out and got what the voice was, the premise sort of revealed itself to
me through the character. And that's sort of how the story began. There was never,
there wasn't like a, like I didn't try this or, you know, I didn't hear of
someone who was doing this, but I think I was probably, and continue to be, really
tired all the time, so this is sort of a projection of a fantasy. It really just
came out of, it came out pretty organically.
You mention that it came from the character and obviously many UK readers will know you
because of your novel Eileen which was on the Booker list. And there we had a book named after its
main character and here we have a book where the main character isn't
named at all. They're very different characters I know that a lot of
people focused on the sort of the disgust around the body in Eileen and I
think I remember reading somewhere that you said okay fine so now I'll
write you a book where the woman is beautiful and let's see how you feel
about her. Was that part of the challenge to create a very, very different
female character from Eileen?
It wasn't a challenge but it was the early decision
that I made. And I knew this is a different kind of person.
I haven't really done this yet but if I were to compare the protagonist
from My Year of Rest and Relaxation with Eileen, I'd say that Eileen
has a really different kind of ambition. And they come from completely different
backgrounds, I mean they have certain things in common actually, they both have
a parent who's a very sick addict, alcoholic, and they both escape to
live in New York City but they're living like 50 years apart forty years apart
and this character in my year at rest relaxation yeah and she's and she she
isn't this sort of pubescence self-obsessed bodily creature she's kind
of not like she's more of a non-physical entity because she spent so much time
sleeping or in in an inner realm of consciousness that is less attached to
mundane physical reality and part of the project that she sets out off on this
year sleep to attempt to sleep as much as she can and the purpose of that is in
many ways to erase her identity so when it came to - I love naming characters, I
think there's so much in a name. The other names in the book feel really good.
Like I love 'Reva', I love that
there's a 're' because she's such a, she's always re-iterating or re-cycling or re-doing
something in a conversation. I like Dr. Tuttle. I don't know if Tuttle
is actually a word but I can see Dr. Tuttle sort of tuttling around and
things like that. But this protagonist could not be named and it made perfect
sense and once I realized that, that she was trying to erase herself from the beginning
She couldn't be named, it would do too much,
it would give too much away about her.
This idea of erasing her identity allows
you, or her project of sort of sleeping from the world I guess, allows
you to poke great fun I think at a particular period in American history. So
this is the year leading up to 9/11 and so a lot of readers will pick up on the
sort of the satirical jabs that you're taking at certain types of people and a
certain way of America thinking about itself in the lead-up to something which
was a paradigm shift for American society. But I felt very personally
focused on her as a character and you've just mentioned there some of the things,
but also she's dealing with grief as well. She's been orphaned
after her father has died from cancer and her mother has killed herself and
is her project in many ways her processing that grief as well as what's
going on in the wider world?
I think so. I think that she thinks that
in order to process grief she needs to erase the trauma that caused it. But it's
not so simple. I mean and thank God she has this, there is another
character in the book that sort of pushes her into actually looking at what
is causing her grief. I don't think people can read the, maybe they
could read the beginning and say oh this is a satire but I think if you read the
whole book you wouldn't say it so simply. Because she's the narrator, she's
the one satirizing all these things that you've named about American culture
and I think in a way that is her way of dealing with grief. I mean comedy is a
way to deal with pain but there is a deeper story and I think part
of what she allows you to see of herself is that she isn't just this sort of
cocky misanthrope. There is a vulnerability and a need there to
connect with something deeper.
As I say it has been great fun to read a book
which from the outside you'd think how is this going to work as a sort of
narrative driven novel because it's about somebody absenting themselves
from life. But it is funny, caustically funny, but also I thought very touching,
this idea about grief and this idea about her needing to erase and start
again I think is actually very touching so thank you very much.
Thank you.