Using
her trademark blend of psychological suspense, complex characters and razor-sharp
crime writing, Laura Lippman returns with I'd Know You Anywhere (Morrow,
$25.99, 9780061706554/ 0061706558, August 17, 2010), the story of Eliza
Benedict, whose peaceful life is upended when she receives a Death Row note
from Walter Bowman, the serial killer who kidnapped and held her hostage
decades earlier. Here, in an interview with Shelf Awareness reviewer and
author Debra Ginsberg, Lippman reflects on the nature of memory, the human
capacity for evil and the inspirations for her characters.
In
Life Sentences you showcased the slipperiness of memory and its ability
to distort reality. In this novel, you illustrate how memory creates a
certain emotional reality. What is your sense of the real nature of memory?
It's
essential to our survival that our memories be flawed and predisposed to
forming stories that are beneficial to us, or at least shaping them in ways
that make them useful. I had a pretty happy childhood, but every family has its
difficult moments. As an adult, I found my memory had chosen not to preserve
everything in amber, as it were, which was a blessing. I also discovered that
memories wear down like everything else. I've been interested in the
fallibility of memory for a very long time.
Does
Eliza's memory of her kidnapping help or hinder her?
It
has helped her for much of her life, but now it's hindering her, in part
because her own daughter is turning into the sort of golden girl that Holly
(one of Walter's victims) appeared to be--pretty, popular, poised. She has to
resolve her feelings about her role in what happened to Holly because they're
beginning to mingle with the problem of being the mother to an adolescent girl.
By
giving part of the narrative over to Walter's point of view, you've made it
frighteningly easy to understand (if not sympathize with) him and his crimes.
How did you get inside his head--and what was it like to live there for the duration
of this novel?
I
didn't like it. I got very depressed and sullen while writing the Walter
chapters and I had a hard time knowing if they would be similarly off-putting
to readers. But I committed myself to inhabiting him, seeing the world through
those eyes. All adult women know men like this, not killers but guys who are
slightly "off." They seek women who look like adults but still think
like girls.
Part
of what makes Walter so scary is the almost casual nature of his pathology. He
is competent, "almost handsome" and a skilled manipulator, yet his
frustration and lack of emotional problem-solving lead to horrifying
consequences. Is Walter evil? How defined is the line between good and evil?
If
Walter was more self-aware, he might be evil. But up until the end, he's still
rationalizing. I think it's hard to be evil, but frighteningly evil to
rationalize one's way into doing evil things. I perform this constant mental
checklist, where I try to catch myself rationalizing an action I find
indefensible in others. For example, it makes me crazy when someone enters,
say, the local Motor Vehicle Administration, sees a long line and instantly
goes to the front, apparently thinking: "This is line is not for the likes
of me." (We call this Secretary of State syndrome in my household.) And
yet... I have done the same thing on occasion. Or started to, then caught
myself. It's funny, the things we will and won't do. I would never park
in a handicapped/disabled spot. I just wouldn't. I would never steal. But I'll
speed. I'm sometimes late, much as I dislike lateness. I've been known to gossip,
although I quite despise gossip. Walter wants a girlfriend and he thinks he
should have one. He never starts out thinking he's going to kill a girl, yet
that's what he ends up doing.
Although
Eliza still harbors fear and guilt, she's remarkably well-adjusted for a woman
with such a traumatic event in her past. Where did you find the inspiration for
Eliza?
Eliza
was inspired by a friend. I'm not even sure she knows it. But when she was
young, she experienced a traumatic illness, something with a 1% survival rate.
And she lived. I knew her for a long time before she mentioned this and it was
my sense she wanted to shut the conversation down very quickly. It didn't
define her. She also happens to be this incredibly calm, down-to-earth, happy
mom.
I
had just come off writing Life Sentences, a book about the kind of
writer whose book is read by book clubs. I wanted to write about the kind of
woman who belongs to a book club, if that makes sense. When I was a journalist,
I belonged to a school of reporters--admittedly, a small school--who believed
that a good reporter should be able to open a phone book, blindly pick out a
name, call the person and be able to develop that call into a full-blown
feature story. Everybody has a story. I wanted people to look around them, at
the grocery store or PTA and think: Do I really know you? What secrets might
you harbor?
I
think Eliza is the most likable character I have ever written and it was very
hard to let go of her. To me, her defining moment comes when another character
tells her that he/she always does what's right and Eliza replies: "That's
a nice way to be." She's utterly sincere, but she also knows it's a luxury
to live a life in which right or wrong is readily apparent. By the way, for all
of Eliza's protestations about her averageness, her lack of special talent--I
think her time with Walter shows she has a genius for empathy. Plus, her
made-up version of Travels with Charley isn't bad at all.
The
complicated relationship between mothers and daughters is a theme throughout I'd
Know You Anywhere. How did that develop?
In
2008, I wrote a novella in which my series character, Tess Monaghan, had a
baby. Because of that, mothers and daughters were very much on my mind already.
I wanted to write about good mothers, and I think every mother in this book is
a good one. Except, perhaps, Walter's, but whatever her failings, she can't be
blamed for the man he became. At one point, I had hoped to tell all the mothers
stories, to see how the mother of each victim was faring, but I think the book
would have sagged under the weight of so many characters. But I had those stories
in my head. Trudy, the mother of Walter's final victim, is not a character
whose values I share. But you know what? I would not deign to tell a parent who
has lost a child how to be. Over the past few years, I've become good friends
with Ann Hood, a brilliant novelist who wrote a memoir about the death of her
daughter. Knowing Ann, knowing the book, knowing the novel that also was drawn
from her experience--it has opened my mind to the idea that grief comes in a
thousand hues, that it's something that lives and breathes and mutates, but it
never leaves. The same is true of my mother-in-law, to whom this book is
dedicated, along with my late father-in-law. She lost her only daughter to
cancer 20 years ago. She thinks about her every day.
You've
written 10 novels in your series featuring Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan; I'd
Know You Anywhere is your fifth stand-alone. What are the challenges and
rewards of writing a series vs. those of writing the stand-alones?
By
the luckiest of happenstances, I managed to create a character with whom I have
now spent almost 20 years of my life. But her world is very defined so I've
used stand-alones to try things that wouldn't work in Tess's world. And the
stand-alones give me a chance to play with structure. The challenge and the reward of a stand-alone is that
it takes me into uncharted waters. Although I've tried not to write the same
Tess book twice, I do have the advantage of knowing the characters, the
setting, the larger world. The stand-alones, in fact, tend to tell the same
story, but in very different ways. A woman--or women--has/have a secret. The
reader has all the factual information and can begin to piece the story
together if intent on doing that. The basic facts of the story are not
contradicted; I don't really do twists. But the "why" remains
tantalizing--I hope.
Laura Lippman discusses I'd Know You Anywhere.