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| photo: Sejal Soham | |
Julia Argy is a writer from Massachusetts. Her debut novel, The One (Putnam, April 18), is about the very fantasy of falling in love. She graduated from Harvard University with a degree in statistics and from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program with an MFA in fiction.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
The One will change the way you look at your favorite reality dating show: addictive and engrossing, but so much deeper below the surface.
On your nightstand now:
Linea Nigra, written by Jazmina Barrera and translated by Christina MacSweeney, and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (a reread) are on my literal nightstand. On my virtual nightstand, aka desperately and indefinitely waiting for the audiobook to come through on my library app, is the latest Leigh Bardugo, Hell Bent.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I loved Mandy by Julie Andrews for its incredible girl-learns-how-to-garden-alone plot and the nascent dream of home ownership.
Your top five authors:
Susan Choi, Miriam Toews, Patricia Lockwood, Elif Batuman, and Helen Oyeyemi.
Book you've faked reading:
I took a class while I was studying abroad in Ireland where we were supposed to read one Shakespeare comedy a week. I read not a single one of them and, instead of attending lectures, I went rock climbing. I still feel guilty about it. I'm sorry, Shakespeare!
Book you're an evangelist for:
I'm out there proselytizing for Indelicacy by Amina Cain. It is a very short, precise novel about labor and art. I'm obsessed with it and usually able to convert whatever poor subjects are on the receiving end of my spiel. It's a perfect book.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses. The beautiful woman/cow mishmash and bright colors appealed to me.
Book you hid from your parents:
I surreptitiously read Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen when I was in middle school. It's about a teen pregnancy, so I thought it was scandalizing, but I doubt my parents would have cared. I recently went to an open house in my neighborhood and saw it used as a staging prop on the master bedroom nightstand and felt vindicated for my teenage self.
Book that changed your life:
Antarctica by Claire Keegan. I read this during the winter break of my senior year of college, right as I was applying to take a creative writing class during my last semester, despite years of statistics requirements. The story I submitted to get in was basically a Keegan knockoff and, had I not taken that class, I doubt I would have ever become a writer.
Favorite line from a book:
Not from a book per se, but from Joan Didion's "Art of Fiction" Paris Review interview. In response to an interviewer asking Joan about why she thinks writing is a hostile act, she responded: "It's hostile in that you're trying to make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture. It's hostile to try to wrench around someone else's mind that way. Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream."
Five books you'll never part with:
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. I bought this in high school, hoping it would last me a month-long trip away from home. I must have read it once a week while I was away, even though it was 675 pages.
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Everyone talks about how good this trilogy is and they are right.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I have my mom's copy from when she was in college. It is one of my favorite classics, because I love drama and moody weather.
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. I bought this in Athens when I ran out of books to read at my Greek grandmother's house. It's set on Corfu and is about a kid who loves animals. It's insanely charming.
Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat. I read this in college during a course from a Divinity School professor with amazing taste in fiction. It has all my annotations in it from class, and it totally blew me away.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I listened to Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive the first time around, so I missed all the visual elements of the text, but I still loved it so much. I wish I could read it in physical form for the first time.