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| photo: Kim Fuller Photography | |
Ellen Baker worked as a museum curator, and as a bookseller and event coordinator at an independent bookstore in northern Wisconsin before her first novel, Keeping the House, was published in 2007, followed by I Gave My Heart to Know This in 2011. Her third novel, The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson (Mariner, February 20), is a saga of family secrets and one woman's determination to survive. Baker lives on the coast of Maine.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
A sweeping historical novel of love, loss, and the families we make, involving surprise DNA results in 2015, and a 1930s traveling circus.
On your nightstand now:
Two books I'm in the middle of and loving: Horse by Geraldine Brooks and Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro. Two books I recently finished that both knocked my socks off: Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh and The Night Parade by Jami Nakamura Lin. And three I'm about to start: Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson; Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald; and an advance copy of A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke. Also: a whole stack of old Ross Macdonald paperbacks that I'm hoping to reread. It's been long enough since I last read them that I don't think I'll remember how they turn out.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. I remember loving everything about this book and feeling it so viscerally--Louis's pain at not being able to speak, the impact of the father swan crashing through the window to steal the trumpet, the moment when Louis's webbed foot gets sliced so that he can operate the trumpet's valves, the watercress sandwiches at the hotel. I haven't read this book in decades, and these moments still stick with me.
Your top five authors:
An impossible choice! But here are five that come immediately to mind that I really admire: Amy Bloom, Dani Shapiro, Elin Hilderbrand, Wally Lamb, and Beatriz Williams.
Book you've faked reading:
One of my characters in I Gave My Heart to Know This had read The Complete Works of Shakespeare and was always quoting lines from it, but I haven't actually read much Shakespeare myself.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. Since it came out in 2005, I've read and listened to this book at least six times. I think it is the most beautiful, haunting, meaningful story, and I love the way it's crafted. I made my new book club read it recently, and they loved it, too.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I bought The Matchmaker by Elin Hilderbrand in 2019 based on the cover. I hadn't read any of her books before that, and I loved it so much I immediately read almost all of her other novels (at least 20 of them, I think) over the course of the next three months or so. I think she is a genius, and of course, I'm yearning to visit Nantucket now.
Book you hid from your parents:
I can't remember needing to hide any books from my parents, exactly; although, I do remember my mom and I had a complicated collusion about Forever by Judy Blume. When I was about 11, I secretly read most of it (or, the really interesting parts) while at the library, and I must have been too embarrassed to check it out, but maybe I mentioned to her that I had discovered a new book by Judy Blume that I wanted to read (having read and loved all of her others, of course). I was probably laying the groundwork and trying to pass it off as simply another innocent Superfudge. Then, a short time later, I received a gift certificate to a bookstore, and when my mom asked me what books I was going to buy with it, I said I was going to buy Forever. She seemed a bit alarmed, then confessed that she had already bought it for me, "but I thought you were too young for it!" She went straight to her dresser drawer, though, and pulled it out from where she'd hidden it and gave it to me. I never told her that I had already read all the really interesting parts.
Book that changed your life:
It's hard to pick just one, and the changes to my life weren't dramatic as much as incremental. Chronologically, I would say: The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White, Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart by Joyce Carol Oates, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, and Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. The feeling I had when I read each of these--the first when I was about 8 and the last when I was about 19--was of being absolutely transported and so, so intrigued by how the author had accomplished that using only words on a page. Each time I had that feeling, I would think, I want to learn how to do that. And finally, as a result, I ended up becoming a novelist.
Favorite line from a book:
"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." --from The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.
Five books you'll never part with:
The Mentor Book of Major American Poets, Zen Heart by Ezra Bayda, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, The Cider House Rules by John Irving, and Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
As I work my way through the old Ross Macdonald paperbacks, I'm hoping I'll find the one that kept me, at age 19 or so when I last read it, in suspense until the very last page. I remember the feeling of being so surprised at the ending, which I hadn't seen coming at all, and how satisfying the experience was, because the instant you learned what the answer was, everything in the book made absolute sense for the first time. While I remember being so amazed, and appreciating his genius so much, I don't remember what the title is, or what happens in the book, so I think and hope I have a good shot at being surprised all over again in the same way!