A CONVERSATION WITH DEBORAH HARKNESS
Q: In
your day job, you are a professor of history and science at the University of
Southern California and have focused on alchemy in your research. What aspects of this intersection between
science and magic do you hope readers will pick up on while reading THE BOOK OF
LIFE? There’s quite a bit more lab work in this book!
A. There is. Welcome back to the present! What I
hope readers come to appreciate is that science—past or present—is nothing more
than a method for asking and answering questions about the world and our place
in it. Once, some of those questions were answered alchemically. Today, they
might be answered biochemically and genetically. In the future? Who knows. But
Matthew is right in suggesting that there are really remarkably few scientific
questions and we have been posing them for a very long time. Two of them are:
who am I? why am I here?
Q: Much
of the conflict in the book seems to mirror issues of race and sexuality in our
society, and there seems to be a definite moral conclusion to THE BOOK OF LIFE.
Could you discuss this? Do you find that a strength of fantasy novels is their
ability to not only to allow readers to escape, but to also challenge them to
fact important moral issues?
A. Human beings like to sort and categorize. We
have done this since the beginnings of recorded history, and probably well back
beyond that point. One of the most common ways to do that is to group things
that are “alike” and things that are “different.” Often, we fear what is not
like us. Many of the world’s ills have stemmed from someone (or a group of
someones) deciding what is different is also dangerous. Witches, women, people
of color, people of different faiths, people of different sexual
orientations—all have been targets of this process of singling others out and
labeling them different and therefore undesirable. Like my interest in
exploring what a family is, the issue of difference and respect for difference
(rather than fear) informed every page of the All Souls Trilogy. And yes, I do
think that dealing with fantastic creatures like daemons, vampires, and witches
rather than confronting issues of race or sexuality directly can enable readers
to think through these issues in a useful way and perhaps come to different
conclusions about members of their own families and communities. As I often say
when people ask me why supernatural creatures are so popular these days:
witches and vampires are monsters to think with.
Q: From
the moment Matthew and a pregnant Diana arrive back at Sept-Tours and reinstate
themselves back into a sprawling family of witches and vampires, it becomes
clear that the meaning of family will be an important idea for THE BOOK OF
LIFE. How does this unify the whole series? Did you draw on your own life?
A. Since time immemorial the family has been an
important way for people to organize themselves in the world. In the past, the
“traditional” family was a sprawling and blended unit that embraced immediate
relatives, in-laws and their immediate families, servants, orphaned children,
the children your partner might bring into a family from a previous
relationship, and other dependents. Marriage was an equally flexible and
elastic concept in many places and times. Given how old my vampires are, and
the fact that witches are the keepers of tradition, I wanted to explore from
the very first page of the series the truly traditional basis of family: unqualified love and mutual responsibility.
That is certainly the meaning of family that my parents taught me.
Q: While
there are entire genres devoted to stories of witches, vampires, and ghosts,
the idea of a weaver – a witch who weaves original spells – feels very unique
to THE BOOK OF LIFE. What resources helped you gain inspiration for Diana’s uniqueness?
A. Believe it or not, my inspiration for weaving came
from a branch of mathematics called topology. I became intrigued by
mathematical theories of mutability to go along with my alchemical theories of
mutability and change. Topology is a mathematical study of shapes and spaces
that theorizes how far something can be stretched or twisted without breaking.
You could say it’s a mathematical theory of connectivity and continuity (two
familiar themes to any reader of the All Souls Trilogy). I wondered if I could
come up with a theory of magic that could be comfortably contained within
mathematics, one in which magic could be seen to shape and twist reality
without breaking it. I used fabric as a metaphor for this worldview with
threads and colors shaping human perceptions. Weavers became the witches who
were talented at seeing and manipulating the underlying fabric. In topology,
mathematicians study knots—unbreakable knots with their ends fused together
that can be twisted and shaped. Soon the mathematics and mechanics of Diana’s
magic came into focus.
Q: A Discovery of Witches debuted at # 2 on
the New York Times bestseller list
and Shadow of Night debuted at #1.
What has been your reaction to the outpouring of love for the All Souls Trilogy?
Was it surprising how taken fans were with Diana and Matthew’s story?
A. It has been amazing—and a bit overwhelming. I
was surprised by how quickly readers embraced two central characters who have a
considerable number of quirks and challenge our typical notion of what a
heroine or hero should be. And I continue to be amazed whenever a new reader
pops up, whether one in the US or somewhere like Finland or Japan—to tell me
how much they enjoyed being caught up in the world of the Bishops and de
Clemonts. Sometimes when I meet readers they ask me how their friends are
doing—meaning Diana, or Matthew, or Miriam. That’s an extraordinary experience
for a writer.
Q: Diana
and Matthew, once again, move around to quite a number of locations in THE BOOK
OF LIFE, including New Haven, New Orleans, and a few of our favorite old haunts
like Oxford, Madison, and Sept-Tours. What inspired you to place your
characters in these locations? Have you visited them yourself?
A. As a writer, I really need to experience the
places I write about in my books. I want to know what it smells like, how the
air feels when it changes direction, the way the sunlight strikes the
windowsill in the morning, the sound of birds and insects. Not every writer may
require this, but I do. So I spent time not only in New Haven but undertaking
research at the Beinecke Library so that I could understand the rhythms of
Diana’s day there. I visited New Orleans several times to imagine my vampires
into them. All of the locations I pick are steeped in history and stories about
past inhabitants—perfect fuel for any writer’s creative fire.
Q: Did
you know back when you wrote A Discovery
of Witches how the story would conclude in THE BOOK OF LIFE? Did the
direction change once you began the writing process?
A. I knew how the trilogy would end, but I didn’t
know exactly how we would get there. The story was well thought out through the
beginning of what became The Book of
Life, but the chunk between that beginning and the ending (which is as I
envisioned it) did change. In part that was because what I had sketched out was
too ambitious and complicated—the perils of being not only a first-time trilogy
writer but also a first time author. It was very important to me that I resolve
and tie up all the threads already in the story so readers had a satisfying
conclusion. Early in the writing of The
Book of Life it became clear that this wasn’t going to give me much time to
introduce new characters or plot twists. I now understand why so many trilogies
have four, five, six—or more—books in them. Finishing the trilogy as a trilogy
required a lot of determination and a very thick pair of blinders as I left
behind characters and story lines that would take me too far from the central
story of Diana, Matthew, and the Book of Life.
Q: A Discovery
of Witches begins with Diana Bishop stumbling across a lost, enchanted
manuscript called Ashmole 782 in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, and the secrets
contained in the manuscript are at long last revealed in THE BOOK OF LIFE. You
had a similar experience while you were completing your dissertation. What was the story behind your
discovery? And how did it inspire the
creation of these novels?
A. I did discover a
manuscript—not an enchanted one, alas—in the Bodleian Library. It was a manuscript
owned by Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, the mathematician and alchemist John
Dee. In the 1570s and 1580s he became interested in using a crystal ball to
talk to angels. The angels gave him all kinds of instructions on how to manage
his life at home, his work—they even told him to pack up his family and
belongings and go to far-away Poland and Prague. In the conversations, Dee
asked the angels about a mysterious book in his library called “the Book of
Soyga” or “Aldaraia.” No one had ever been able to find it, even though many of
Dee’s other books survive in libraries throughout the world. In the summer of
1994 I was spending time in Oxford between finishing my doctorate and starting
my first job. It was a wonderfully creative time, since I had no deadlines to
worry about and my dissertation on Dee’s angel conversations was complete. As
with most discoveries, this discovery of a “lost” manuscript was entirely
accidental. I was looking for something else in the Bodleian’s catalogue and in
the upper corner of the page was a reference to a book called “Aldaraia.” I
knew it couldn’t be Dee’s book, but I called it up anyway. And it turned out it
WAS the book (or at least a copy of it). With the help of the Bodleian’s Keeper
of Rare Books, I located another copy in the British Library.
Q: Are there other lost books like this in the
world?
A. Absolutely! Entire
books have been written about famous lost volumes—including works by Plato,
Aristotle, and Shakespeare to name just a few. Libraries are full of such treasures,
some of them unrecognized and others simply misfiled or mislabeled. And we find
lost books outside of libraries, too. In January 2006, a completely unknown
manuscript belonging to one of the 17th century’s most prominent
scientists, Robert Hooke, was discovered when someone was having the contents
of their house valued for auction. The manuscript included minutes of early
Royal Society meetings that we presumed were lost forever.
Q: Shadow of
Night and A Discovery of Witches have
often been compared to young adult fantasy like Twilight, with the caveat that this series is for adults interested
in history, science, and academics. Unlike Bella and Edward, Matthew and Diana
are card-carrying members of academia who meet in the library of one of the
most prestigious universities in the world. Are these characters based on
something you found missing in the fantasy genre?
A. There are a lot
of adults reading young adult books, and for good reason. Authors who
specialize in the young adult market are writing original, compelling stories
that can make even the most cynical grownups believe in magic. In writing A
Discovery of Witches, I wanted to give adult readers a world no less
magical, no less surprising and delightful, but one that included grown-up
concerns and activities. These are not your children’s vampires and witches.
GIVEAWAY:
We’ll be giving 10 board games total away via our Twitter @PenguinPbks over the course of the next two weeks (among other great All Souls prizes). These will be random giveaways taking place on Tuesday 5/26 andThursday 6/4. To enter, check the Penguin Twitter during the mornings (ET) on those days and be sure to retweet the giveaway post by Tuesday 5/26—we’ll be randomly selecting winners around Thursday 6/4 from among the people who retweet.
This product or book may have been distributed for review, this in no way affects my opinions or reviews.
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