Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Margot Livesey was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She is the author of a collection of stories and nine other novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, and The Boy in the Field. She has received awards from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Margot Livesey's website
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Where did the idea for this novel come from?
In 1998 I read a story in the newspaper about a Scottish student who
came to Miami for his summer holidays, was mugged and ended up trying to rob a
bank. Something about the young man's bewilderment, his parents' dismay,
crystallized two long held writerly ambitions: to depict someone who saw the
world differently and to explore the difficulties of knowing another person. I
sat down almost at once and wrote what became the first chapter. I then set it
aside for almost two years while I worked on Eva Moves the Furniture.
When I returned to my pages I realized at once that my character, Zeke, would
never rob a bank and that I was also writing a love story.
The book's narration alternates effortlessly between the
point of view of a young man with a personality disorder and the point of view
of a female, pregnant radio show host. How did you cultivate these two very
different voices and was it difficult to switch back and forth, writing from
both perspectives?
Switching back and forth between Zeke and Verona was
one of the great pleasures of writing the novel. I loved trying to understand
the world from Zeke's particular angle. What do we actually see ...
Jill Bialosky is the author of four poetry collections: The Players; The End of Desire; Subterranean, a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets; and Intruder, a finalist for the 2009 ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Banishing Verona
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Nickolas Butler was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. He is the author of the ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Mercury
Try:
The Hearts of Men
by Nickolas Butler
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