The world-famous (well, among us) Fiction Book Club conference called last night with Roy Kesey pummeling him with questions about his stunning novella, Nothing in the World. That the book won a literary award (Bullfight Little Book Prize) is little surprise when you read it; that it's short means you can prove me right in one long sitting.
Here's how we did it: First the book club members met to talk as we typically do, discussing what we liked, what we wondered about, and, but not in this case, what we didn't like. Our overall opinion of the book was unanimous: everyone loved it.
This story about the war that consumed most of the Balkans during the 1990s is hair-raising, horrific, mythic, and supremely well written. Gorgeous. Such exquisite language that one of our members read out a section that he called poetry.
About an hour later, Roy called us from Lima, Peru, where he and his family are
living. (His wife, Lu, is a Peruvian diplomat.) Each person did a self-introduction while I snapped pictures and emailed them to Roy. Then we fired questions at him: Why did he write this book? How much time transpired from the beginning of the story to the end? How did he go about writing it? What was the meaning of a particular character? How did the book come to be published? What role did the vignettes play in the story? Why did he choose the title? And all kinds of other intrusive-none-of-our-business queries whose answers I'm not going to give away in hopes that you'll ask them yourselves.
Graciously, with humor and diffidence, Roy explained everything, including his telling us that in fact some of the prose began as poetry, that he had visited the area both before and during the war, that he knew some of the stories, variously, first, second, and third hand, and that it took much courage (he didn't use the word) to throw out some 40,000 words that were once in the draft.
It was a great evening and I recommend that you do the same with your book club. Read this book, invite Roy to attend by conference call, and you'll have an evening you never forget.
And, thanks, Roy. We'll be delighted to host you when you come to Boston on your next book tour.
Almost forgot! How do I know Roy? Zoetrope, of course. One aspect of being part of the Zoe writer community is critiquing the work of other writers. (In exchange for every five stories you critique, you can submit one of your own.) I was in the business of amassing critiques when Roy posted a story, which I loved--and wrote many notes back to him about, suggesting this that and the other thing. What I remember most was my feeling after reading it - that he must have written it, then fallen over in an exhausted heap. Such energy in his writing. And now having read more of his work, such range. We decided to read this book at the suggestion of our December '09 author-guest, Ron Currie Jr., who calls Roy "the best unknown writer in America." Not for long, both Ron and I wager.