"Maine," a novel by J. Courtney Sullivan
Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?
Courtney Sullivan: The Kelleher family's beautiful house in Maine is based on the family home of my best friend from high school. It was there on the beach three summers back that I first conceived of this novel. I borrowed the layout of the fictional cottage from that real-life house, as well as the story of the family building it themselves from the ground up.
I wanted to explore how certain things--like alcoholism, religion, resentments, and secrets--move from one generation to the next. The mother-daughter dynamic is powerful and often fraught, and I wanted to really dig into that as well. A secluded family beach house seemed like the perfect place to let all this percolate.
JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?
CS: I initially thought that there would be 10 or 12 different narrators, male and female, but four women rose to the top. Alice and Maggie are the generational bookends. Kathleen represents the one who went away--the complex blend of guilt and freedom that comes from throwing off one's familial responsibilities. Ann Marie is essential because, as an in-law, she represents a sort of outsider, even though she is Alice's main caretaker.
Though we're not inside the heads of the other characters, I tried to make every member of the family three-dimensional. Many early readers have said that Daniel, the grandfather, is their favorite character, and he died 10 years before the present day action of the book. There's something about that that seems right to me, since often the people whose presence looms largest are the ones who are no longer here.
JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?
CS: I've always secretly wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. When I was 19, I lived in London for a year and worked as a nanny for a family with three boys under the age of 2. I've never had a more challenging, fast paced job. I loved every second of it.
JG: What else are you reading right now?
CS: I'm loving "A Good Hard Look" by Ann Napolitano. It's a beautiful novel about Flannery O'Connor's life in her small hometown. Next up are Tina Fey's "Bossypants" and a collection of short stories by Emma Straub called "Other People We Married." I'm heading to Maine for vacation in August, and dreaming of spending long, leisurely hours reading on the beach.
JG: What's next for you?
CS: I'm in the early stages of a new novel. It's a portrait of four very different marriages that span the course of the twentieth century, and have something surprising in common.
One character is a paramedic in the 1980s, and I recently got a chance to do an ambulance ride-along, to get a sense of what his average day might look like. I love having the ability to peer into people's private worlds. That might be the best part of being a novelist.
For more on "Maine," visit the Random House website.
