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SUMMER READING CORNER

This Is Not A Love Song, by Sarahbeth Purcell

Order: www.amazon.com
www.simonandschuster.com

Excerpts from an interview with This Is Not A Love Song author Sarahbeth Purcell (www.sarahbethpurcell.com), which will be published in the Fall 2007 issue of Literazine on www.wordjourneys.com.

Q: What decisions led you to structure the book in the striking manner you did, using three points-of-view, letters, monologues, telephone conversations and even a non-linear, out-of-sequence time line metered in fragments?

A: I think in fragment often, and maybe this is just the way I think, but when I’m imagining a story, or when I’m remembering a time in my life, whether it be painful or joyful, I remember scenes. Conversations. Smells. My line of reasoning at the time. Someone else’s line of reasoning. I don’t recall events in a completely clean, filtered, chronological way unless I purposely try to piece it all together. So it made sense to me that my characters, especially Julia, who is going through a really devastating time, wouldn’t be thinking in the most linear, sensible way. When you have a devastating event happen to you, in my experience, everything is sort of muddled together at first. People say things and you might only take certain words to heart. You’re in a daze. Nothing seems complete. I wanted above all to transfer that sense of confusion and utter desperation into every corner of the story.

Q: What are some of the advantages—and challenges—of using a non-linear timeline with your chapters and vignettes?

A: The advantages for me were that it came naturally. I’ve been through some fairly devastating events in my life, where at the time they might have felt like they were the most important thing happening, and so I knew how it felt. I knew the color of grief very well. The challenge, of course, is describing that color to everyone else, especially readers who might not know it as intimately, or in quite the same way. It’s also emotionally draining. Because although I never use events or people from my own life, if you are tied to your characters and your story, as I believe any author is (we’re their mothers and fathers, after all), to watch them go through so much, and even moreso, to be the creator of the challenges and pain and heartbreak they’re enduring is intense, and sometimes can really affect you even when you think the story is finished.

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