• Why he writes Mormon fiction
• What he means by “serious” Mormon fiction
• What he thinks about the “great Mormon novel”
• Why serious Mormon fiction will offend Mormon readers (but in a useful way)
• What he defines as the Mormon audience and how thinks it can be reached
• The state of Mormon publishing and what he thinks is missing (in particular he sees a need for “a major popular web site for serious Mormon literature” [and also suggests that it might need a rating system, which we have also discussed around these parts])
• Some theories on why Mormon literature “doesn’t flourish as it might be expected to”
• How he answers LDS-centric criticism of serious fiction
• Possible “themes, conflicts and plots” for Mormon novelists and some of the types of Mormon novels he would personally like to read
• How Mormon doctrine might inform the themes of serious Mormon fiction
• Who is going to write these Mormon novels (not his creative writing students, he says)
• The craft of fiction writing
• The fact that the novelists he is hoping for are likely to be Mormon women (and why)

That’s a lot of ground to cover and Thayer basically tackles here all of the major issues of the field and ties them together and sums it all up, and it’s well worth seeking out.

*It’s a pity these aren’t better documented.

Title: Mr. Monster
Author: Dan Wells
Publisher: Tor
Genre: YA suspense/horror
Year Published: 2010
Number of Pages: 287
Binding: Trade Paperback (also available in hardback and as an ebook)
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2790-1
Price: $11.99

Title: I Don’t Want to Kill You
Author: Dan Wells
Publisher: Tor
Genre: YA suspense/horror
Year Published: 2011
Number of Pages: 320
Binding: Trade Paperback (also available in hardback and as an ebook)
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2844-1
Price: $11.99

Reviewed by Jonathan Langford.

Includes spoilers for Book 3 in a very general sense, but no specifics.

John Wayne Cleaver, the main character of I Am Not a Serial Killer, is kind of a weird kid. 15 years old. Helps out in his family mortuary. Obsessed with serial killers.

And then a real-life serial killer comes to his small town. Only it turns out to be a demon. And it becomes Cleaver’s job to kill it. And then the same thing happens again (Mr. Monster). And again (I Don’t Want to Kill You, released just last month).

It sounds like a clever premise for an ongoing series, one that combines a half-cockeyed look at teen life with a ration of suspense, violence, and gruesomeness. And that’s the way it starts out. But it’s also a lot more, as I Don’t Want to Kill You brilliantly (and I don’t use that word lightly) demonstrates. All credit due to the genre of teen horror, but this series transcends the genre. Really. I say this as someone who doesn’t usually like horror as a genre, because I find real life terrifying enough, so take my comment as you will…

*****

Perhaps the best part of the books is Cleaver himself, a sympathetic teenage boy whom it’s surprisingly easy to like. In a lot of ways, he’s a fairly normal teenager: socially awkward, more than a bit geeky when it comes to his areas of interest (serial killers), at least a touch neurotic, beset by bullies in school, attracted to girls and unsure how to deal with that, saddled with a dysfunctional family past and a mother who loves him but whose attempts to help often drive him up the wall. To a great degree, what he wants are normal things, and what he wants to be is a normal person.

Alas, the latter seems unlikely to be achieved. I’m no psychologist, but I have to say that Cleaver’s recitation of symptoms displayed by serial killers and how well he matches them is all too convincing. Normal boys who are attracted to a pretty girl don’t automatically start thinking, with loving possessiveness, about unspecified acts of torture. Cleaver’s behavior is genuinely over the top, though much of it represents potential that hasn’t yet been acted on, as in the following quote from Mr. Monster:

Brooke Watson was the most beautiful girl in school, and she was my age, and she lived two houses down from me, and I could pick out her scent in a massive crowd. She had long blond hair, and braces, and a smile so bright it made me wonder why other girls bothered smiling at all. I knew her class schedule, her birthday, her Gmail password, and her social security number — none of which I had any business knowing. (p. 25)

But the critical defining element of Cleaver’s character isn’t his sociopathic personality type (diagnosed as antisocial personality disorder by the counselor in his first book, a sympathetic figure who, alas, doesn’t survive to book two), but rather his strong desire not to be a serial killer and the vast self-discipline he applies to that effort. Cleaver is both a strong and a moral character — all the more so since for him, acting morally is so clearly an act of will, as opposed to natural inclination.

Wells does a good job at depicting teenage dialect, as in the second book when Cleaver’s  best friend takes to starting every conversation with the words “Shut up,” for no terribly clear reason except that he’s a teenage boy. The fact that Cleaver himself doesn’t sound much like a typical teenager is part of Wells’s characterization of him as both brighter and less socially clued in than other kids his age. It also is part of what makes him appealing as a character. Cleaver is in some ways not that far removed from the tradition of bright adolescent misfits so well exemplified by Orson Scott Card’s Ender Wiggin. The atypical teenager, despised for his differences but with hidden worth and a secret power to save others, is a powerful trope and one I daresay is particularly likely to resonate with adolescents and adults who read for pleasure. Not to mention that a full book, let alone a series, that presented teenagers acting entirely like regular teenagers would get tedious pretty quickly, and not just I suspect for adult readers.

Having said that, and acknowledging that most teenage boys really aren’t budding sociopaths, I have to add that this is a series that says a lot about what it feels like to be a teenage boy, especially the second and third book. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. John Wayne Cleaver is memorable, and he’s real, and he’s someone I wouldn’t mind getting to know and spend time with, though I have to admit I’d be a little nervous if he were dating my daughter.

The stories are helped along by frequent touches of humor, many of them arising out of the juxtaposition between the normal realities of teenage life and Cleaver’s specific challenges. Here’s an example of a paragraph (from early in the second book) which I as a reader can’t stop snickering over, though it may be that you have to have spent some time with Cleaver as a character before it will seem funny. Cleaver has just baked a cake for Mother’s Day, and they’re waiting for his sister to show up:

The cake was already done and cooling on the counter, so I was browsing through the paper. I noted with pleasure that Karla Soder had been admitted to the hospital for extended care; she was one of the oldest people in Clayton, and I’d been waiting for her to die for a while now. We hadn’t embalmed anybody in more than a month. (p. 47)

To some degree, this is funny because we’ve been pulled into Cleaver’s world, where a death means more business and a chance for Cleaver to satisfy his desire to cut up bodies in a harmless and even socially acceptable way. Unlike many stories that feature violence as a dominant theme, however, Wells’s books don’t invite us to put our conscience on hold for a while and just accept the blood and gore. Even when Cleaver is forced to kill — because how else are you going to deal with a demon who’s killing people to perpetuate its own existence? — we’re all too aware of the cost.

Which brings me to the supernatural element, which at first seems like an almost unnecessary gesture toward the current market reality that books about teenagers fighting demons seem to do better than books where the teenage protagonists face more mundane opponents. But there’s more to it than that. Many years ago, J. R. R. Tolkien, writing about the supernatural monsters in Beowulf, declared: “It is the strength of the northern mythological imagination that it . . . put the monsters in the centre, gave them Victory but no honour, and found a potent but terrible solution in naked will and courage.” Cleaver isn’t a doomed northern hero. But there are elements of his situation that work better, both thematically and from a plot perspective, with demons who must be fought if innocents are to survive, who cannot be countered by regular law enforcement.

Some might argue that this makes things too easy by giving Cleaver a clear moral justification for his actions. But that’s not the point. This isn’t a story about some Hamlet who must decide whether or not violent action is justified. Rather, it’s the story of a warrior like David who must somehow learn how to fight without staining his soul with the blood he’s spilled. Or something like that. A moody teenage David, who has to worry about whether he’s becoming a psychopath. (And wouldn’t that make an interesting historical novel? Or maybe not.)

*****

On reading I Am Not a Serial Killer (and knowing there were two more to come), I worried whether the basic idea was going to get stale. Let’s face it: part of the attractiveness of the first book is its novelty. This is a premise which mostly hasn’t been done before (although some reviewers have compared the book to the TV series Dexter, which I have never watched). More of the same could get old very fast.

For me that doesn’t happen, not because Wells comes up with clever new twists and variations (though there are some of those) but primarily because of the changes in Cleaver — and because of the successively broader lenses each story occupies. The first book is largely private, focusing on what happens when the imaginings of Cleaver’s inner life start to confront him outside the confines of his own mind. The second book shows us where Cleaver comes from, his family and his intense desire to protect and strike back against those who threaten what is precious to him. The third book shows him coming to understand what love and sacrifice for others really mean, ultimately at a great cost.

It’s a devastating progression. Wells has said in no uncertain terms that this is the last in the series, and I for one am glad, because I honestly don’t know where he could go from here that wouldn’t diminish the story he’s told so far. The first book is clever and fun; the second well-written and thought-provoking; the third . . . astonishing, and sad, and deeply moving. Well worth it, in my view — undoubtedly the best of the three — but also undoubtedly the hardest to read. You’ve got to be willing to face some really tough stuff to get through this book.

*****

John Wayne Cleaver isn’t Mormon. On the whole, I think that’s a good thing. Not only does it avoid possible stupidities from publishers about Wells limiting his audience, it also avoids the need to spend a lot of time and space on Mormon beliefs about the supernatural, which would I suspect have been boring to most non-Mormon readers (and many Mormons as well) and probably couldn’t have been handled to anyone’s satisfaction. Put another way: the book is chock-full of issues and plot twists and life realities as it is. Working Mormon issues into top of that would have been like adding chocolate syrup and butterscotch sauce on top of a piece of baklava. It would be overkill, if you’ll pardon the expression.

A critical question that the books persistently raise is whether Cleaver’s small acts of propitiation toward his own inner demon — his research on serial killers, helping out in the family mortuary, minor acts of controlled arson in an abandoned warehouse — represent necessary compromises or a fascinated dalliance with evil that makes it all the more likely that he’ll eventually be sucked in fully. His white-knuckled adherence to rules that are intended to keep him away from the more dangerous behaviors typical of serial killers — for example, complimenting someone when he desires to strike out violently against them — seems ultimately doomed to failure. Certainly the circumstances that keep forcing him into violent confrontations with demons do nothing for his self-control.

Part of the problem is that some of his rules seem like such disastrously bad ones. Don’t look at a pretty girl more than three times in the day, even if she comes up to you and starts talking? That’s a strategy that seems doomed to make Cleaver’s social isolation even worse. At the same time, we as readers understand why he does it. And even though his specific issues aren’t ours, the whole thing reminds us of the hell that is adolescence, when self-control often seems like an elusive holy grail and half or more of the time what you do seems to wind up accomplishing the opposite of what you had hoped, for reasons that don’t even make sense.

Below is a brief selection that I think captures Wells’s skills in depicting Cleaver’s character and the knife edge he walks. It’s the night after Mother’s Day, and Cleaver has decided he has to go out and burn something in order to relieve stress following a disastrous family dinner.

The fire was calling to me.

The warehouse reflect bright gray moonlight from its cinder block walls, shining dully in the clearing. I was grinning now. This was the time when the lines inside me blured, and Mr. Monster became simply John Cleaver: not a killer but a boy; not a monster but a human being. Fire was my great catharsis, but this prelude moment was my purest freedom — the one brief respite when I didn’t have to worry about what Mr. Monster wanted to do, because he and I wanted the same thing. Once I’d made my decision to light a fire, I wasn’t at war with myself anymore; I was just me, and everything made sense. (Mr. Monster, p. 61)

What Wells gives us, here and elsewhere in the books, is an unflinching look into the darkness that threatens all of us. Cleaver fights the good fight, but in the end we sense that he doesn’t really have it in him to escape his own nature. Not, at least, without help from others — help that for most of the books, no one seems capable of giving him.

For much of the books, Cleaver is sympathetic enough that we don’t take his dilemma with full seriousness. That’s our mistake as readers. Wells doesn’t make the same mistake, which I suppose is why the series has to end, instead of just continuing on indefinitely. Ultimately, Cleaver is redeemed, or at least we sense that he can be, and in a way that doesn’t feel forced or allegorical because it makes sense in terms of characters we have come to know and believe in.

So should you read these books? Yes, if you can stand to do so. If you can put up with a little teen humor, embarrassment, and gruesomeness, with an undertone of genuine feeling leading up to some real emotional gut punches in the final book — then yes, it’s well worth the ride. And if you care about Mormon literature and want to know what an LDS writer can do with Mormon themes in a series without a single LDS character, then you should probably read these books too. Taken together, they are, quite honestly, some of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

• canon formation and promulgation (especially as presented by anthologies, syllabi and awards
• the intersection of literary and genre fiction, especially literary speculative fiction (slipstream, weird) and speculative literary fiction (allegory, magic realism, folk realism)
• indie/DIY publishing and marketing
• narrative theory, especially point of view and characterization
• censorship and literary production
• small magazines
• theorizing the radical middle
• hilobrow and the middlebrow and related issues (camp, kitsch, avant garde, etc.)
• gaming as storytelling (from pen-and-paper RPGes to FPSes to social gaming)
• fiction and landscape (especially prairie- and desert-scapes)
• authorship and authority (from author interviews and public appearances to uses of social media by)
• authorship and copyright
• collaborative storytelling
• Romanticism and post-Romanticism especially in relation to belated ethnic/minority/national literatures
• the novel as discourse (especially Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia)
• aesthetics
• readership and reader response (everything from the cult of the author to strong misreadings to fan fiction)
• representations of faith (and faiths) in narrative art
• history of the book
• the book/film review as literary discourse/form
• Mormon literature as ethnic and/or minor literature
• the history of Mormon literary criticism especially in relation to defining the field of Mormon literature
• humor in fiction
• permutations of narrative art (fiction, film, graphic novel, etc.) and how theory shifts to accomodate these forms

This is why I didn’t go on to a PhD program.

Author: Douglas Thayer

Publisher: Zarahemla Books

Genre: Adult Fiction

Year Published: 2009

Number of Pages: 384

Binding: Trade Paperback

ISBN10: 0978797175

ISBN13: 978-0978797171

Price: $16.95

Reviewed by Jonathan Langford

Note: I received a free copy of this book from the author, in trade for a free copy of my book, No Going Back.

Harris Thatcher has pretty much everything a 15-year-old boy could want, in his opinion at least: a perfect dad, a good family, and Luke, his best friend. He’s a good Mormon kid living in Provo, Utah, where his dad is a high school science teacher. It’s summer, with swimming and fishing to look forward to and high school starting in the fall. His only complaint is that World War II is winding down, so it’ll be over before he can be part of it.

And then things start going wrong. His dad’s diabetes, which he hasn’t been taking care of very well, flares up suddenly. His death at the beginning of chapter 2 brings harder times, as the same unambitious attitude that made Harris’s father spend time with his kids instead of trying to get ahead leaves them financially strapped. They take in a boarder, with Harris moving into a room with his younger brothers. Harris has to get a job at a local cafe, where he washes dishes and learns how to make pies. A little over a year later, his girlfriend dies of pneumonia. After graduating from high school, Harris serves a mission in Germany — and then he and Luke are both immediately drafted to serve in Korea, where Luke is killed and Harris becomes, in his own eyes at least, a hardened killer.

Coming home to Provo is hard for him, as he worries that he doesn’t fit there anymore. And then a fire while he’s at work kills his mother and two younger brothers, leaving him pretty much alone in the world despite the concern of Luke’s parents and the bishop and even the owner of the cafe where he works.

#####

So what is it that makes life worth living and belief worth hanging onto when you feel like you’ve lost everything that was important to you?

That’s a one of the Big Tough Questions. For someone like Luke, more religious than Harris, simple faith might be enough — though in fairness to Harris, it has to be pointed out that Luke doesn’t get put through the same things Harris went through. Luke’s father doesn’t die. Luke goes to Korea, but serves as a medic, his job not killing but saving lives. He dies heroically, trying to save others, while Harris instead must find a way to survive.

After the death of his family, Harris simply drifts, apparently unable to move out of the place he’s in. He stops going to Church. He moves into a one-bedroom apartment. He goes nowhere except work and visits no one.

And then his appendix bursts and he’s nursed back to health by Jennifer, an active Mormon girl who had been two years ahead of him in high school. They start dating. She asks what he wants out of life:

“Harris, look at me. This is serious. Do you want your kids to go to Primary and Sunday School? Do you want your boys to have the priesthood and pass the sacrament and bless it and go on missions and be Eagle Scouts and not drink or smoke or sleep around? Do you want your girls to be Mia Maids and Laurels? Do you want them to get married in the temple for time and eternity? Do you want to live in a ward and go to sacrament meeting and hear boring talks nearly every Sunday? Do you want your kids to grow up believing all the wonderful things you and Luke believed about God and Jesus and the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and eternal families and life after death and love that lasts forever?” (p. 365)

They talk. He tells her about the things that happened in Korea, the enemy soldiers he helped to kill. She tells him that doesn’t make him unworthy and urges him to move on and make things right in his life. Harris thinks a little, talks with the non-Mormon owner of the cafe — about as close to a mother figure as he has left at this point — and makes his decision. A few weeks later, he and Jennifer are married in the temple.

And then the following April, Luke’s body is found. Harris speaks at the funeral. Afterwards at the cemetery, Luke’s mother asks him:

“Oh, Harris, we’ll see him again on resurrection morning! Our boy will be so beautiful, so beautiful. We’ll all be here together once more, won’t we, Harris? And your family will all be here too, your dad and your mom, and Todd and Garth, and your grandmother, everybody, won’t they?” . . .

“Yes, yes,” he said, which was what he had to say, wanted to say, had enough faith for. Otherwise there was nothing, and there could not be that. And the suffering and pain had to be paid for too, somehow, the incredible loss, the waste, the incalculable stupidity, the hate, the greed. And there had to be mercy, justice, grace, redemption, but mostly redemption because, oh, sweet Jesus Christ, how the world needed to be redeemed! (pp. 371-372)

It’s a well-earned, quiet, but powerful and faith affirming resolution to a challenging and well-written story.

#####

I found Thayer’s style in this book took some getting used to. The story is told largely in short, third-person declarative sentences that reflect the wandering, free-associative pattern of Harris’s thoughts without a lot of the connecting verbal tissue that mediates the experiences of reading in the most common contemporary narrative styles. Paragraphs often feature apparently random shifts in topic, as in the example below:

Luke was his best friend. Harris had a warm, good feeling about Luke, which was something like he felt for his dad, so he knew how much he liked Luke, but he never told Luke because it would have been too embarrassing. Luke was the best player on the sophomore basketball team. (p. 45)

Or the following, though the connecting thread’s a bit more obvious here:

The house was frame; all the other houses in the neighborhood were brick. Harris knew that his mom wanted a brick house because it was safer, looked nicer, and cost less for fire insurance. Harris’s mom was more religious than his dad. She bore her testimony in fast and testimony meeting and said she knew the Church was true. His dad never bore his testimony. He’d lived in the Sixth Ward all his life, but he didn’t seem to worry too much about going to the highest degree of the celestial kingdom after he died. Harris wondered why his dad wasn’t more religious, but he didn’t ask. It was okay. He didn’t think his dad paid tithing. (p. 12)

Or more horrifyingly, the following paragraph after Harris has helped dig out two fellow soldiers in Korea who were killed by shelling:

Standing back in the trench in the rain, Harris looked down at his hands. The dirt was so worked under his fingernails and into his skin that his hands had turned completely brown. The rain did not cleanse his hands. He didn’t think he would ever get his hands clean again. He knew he still had blood under his nails. Gutting a deer, you got blood under your nails. He turned his hands palms up. (p. 315)

The effect reminds me of an impressionist painting, composed of thickly laid brush strokes that viewed close up form no evident pattern but seen from a greater distance coalesce startlingly into the intended image. Once I got used to it, the style was both intimate and effective.

Despite the age of the protagonist and the coming-of-age theme, this isn’t a book (as I’ve commented before) that I think anyone would label as a young adult novel, largely because of the writing style. Much of the story rests in the growth and change in Harris’s perspective and understanding over time. It takes an active and alert reader to pick out those details.

#####

Stories of missionary service represent one of the most distinctive categories of Mormon literature. The Tree House incorporates one of the best examples I’ve seen, partly because it doesn’t try too hard to amuse or inspire or typify or appal, and because the focus of the narrative remains steady on describing Harris’s particular experiences. That very specificity works better to depict the spirit of a mission (at least in my view) than a more self-consciously “universal” missionary story could do. Even though Harris’s missionary service took place more than three decades before mine, in a post-World War II Germany that was very different from Italy in the 1980s, I still found much that resonated with my own experience. I’m looking forward to sitting my son down after he gets back from his mission (in western Washington state) to see if those parts of the story resonate for him as well.

I can’t speak to the veracity of the war scenes, though like the rest of the novel they’re well-written, rounded out with the specificity of carefully drawn details. With quiet insistence, Thayer brings home the fundamental contradiction between war and the gospel of Christ, as in the following paragraph:

The body was so easily smashed and destroyed. After a day lying in the hot Korean sun it bloated and stank. It wasn’t beautiful, sacred. . . . War was an organized way for men to kill and wound each other. That’s what Harris had spent the last three weeks doing. In the Book of Mormon, the Nephites and Lamanites killed without mercy. Did Helaman’s stripling warriors kill without mercy and without regret? It didn’t say. (pp. 316-317)

Harris wonders if he had ever had the faith he thought he had while he was on his mission. Luke wouldn’t have reacted the same way Harris did, or so he thinks. “Others would have to pray for him; he was now incapable of doing that for himself” (p. 316).

#####

So what’s the value of a book like The Tree House?

A while back, I remember reading a comment about The Tree House from a Mormon reader who hadn’t liked it because it was so bleak. The hope of the gospel, she felt, was not there as an active force in the main character’s life.

I can understand that perspective, though it’s not one I share. Sometimes, I think, we are each other’s angels. Paul may have promised the Corinthians that we won’t be tempted more than we are able, but sometimes the way of escape is other people. To me, that’s a profoundly moving theme, though hardly an exclusively Mormon one.

One of The Tree House’s great virtues is its faithful, sympathetic, but ultimately tough depiction of a particular kind of experience. I believe this book has great potential to help non-Mormon readers feel and understand part of what it means to be Mormon, in a way that makes them see and feel the commonality with their own experience. As a Mormon, reading it made me feel that I know myself better as well.

There’s a point in Thayer’s novel when Harris, in Provo waiting to ship off to Korea following basic training, thinks back on all the stories Jack, his trainer in piemaking at the Starlite Cafe, had told him in years past about his own experiences in World War I:

Jack stood silhouetted in the lit doorway as Harris drove off. They both waved. Harris understood how all of Jack’s stories had helped prepare him for being in the army. Basic would have been a lot harder if he hadn’t had Jack’s stories. Harris was grateful. A boy needed a man’s stories to help prepare him for his own life. (p. 267)

I’ve never been to war. I hope I never have to, or (worse yet) watch my children do so. And yet I feel as if, reading Thayer’s book, I’ve managed somehow to take a portion of his character’s experience into my own life. I’m a better man as a result.

#####

It’s wonderful that Chris Bigelow and Zarahemla Books published The Tree House. In a way, though, it’s also a shame, because Zarahemla isn’t positioned to publicize and distribute this book the way it deserves.

There’s been a lot of talk over the years here, on AML-List, and elsewhere about the importance and difficulty of writing literature that is intensely Mormon, that speaks in an authentic Mormon voice while at the same time communicating that experience in a way that will resonate with nonbelievers and those without firsthand experience of Mormon culture. This book does that. I wouldn’t hesitate to push this book on anyone with a taste for fiction in the realist tradition. It stands up to the best of Willa Cather, which is the highest compliment I can imagine for a work of this kind. (I’ve read some reviewers who compare it to Stephen Crane, but since I don’t much care for Crane, that’s not a comparison I really want to make.)

This is a book I think could reach both Mormon readers and a general non-Mormon readership — including the kind of readers who hang out in university literature departments and creative writing programs. Unfortunately, I doubt they’ll ever know about it. Who reviews literary novels these days? It might be worth trying to get them to take a look at The Tree House, though I personally don’t know how to go about doing that.

I don’t believe in the Great Mormon Novel, partly because I think stories can be great for different audiences and purposes, and partly because I believe there is no singular Mormon experience that can be captured in one novel. But if I were making a short list of candidates for the position, The Tree House would be on it.

So I’ve posted different versions (with different titles) in the two places. The version at my blog focuses on the original question of whether No Going Back is a YA novel. The version here retains most of that content, but also considers some more general questions about the nature and status of YA novels, particularly in the Mormon universe.

Who’s the intended audience of No Going Back? In particular, does No Going Back fit the definition of a young adult (YA) novel? That’s proved to be a tricky question — one that raises, for me, broader questions related to the teen market in general, and in particular the market for teen Mormon fiction. And other fiction too, for that matter.

As best I can tell, “young adult” is a label used by publishers and librarians in trying to target books to an early-teen to mid-teen clientele (sometimes stretching down to preteens in practical application), whether by appealing to kids themselves or to the adults who buy, recommend, and/or assign books for them to read. There’s also a general perception (whether justified or not) that such books tend to be shorter, focused on teen protagonists dealing with teen issues, and often written in a simpler style, compared to novels labeled as adult fiction.

Chris Bigelow (my publisher) and I didn’t label No Going Back as a YA book, for reasons that made sense to us at the time. Evidence continues to accumulate, however, that many readers — including some who almost certainly know better than Chris and I — see it as a YA novel. For instance, there’s the review in the spring 2010 newsletter of the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered Round Table, which evaluates No Going Back as an example of Mormon YA literature.

I’m happy, of course, with people buying and reading my book, whatever they choose to call it. Let’s pretend for a moment, though, that this question of definitions has some importance, and look at some arguments each way.

First, reasons why No Going Back is a YA novel:

• Most of the action centers on a teenage protagonist, his best friend, and their agemates at school and Church.
• The central story arc is about growing up.
• The central issue is how the teenage protagonist will deal with his increasing awareness of the conflict between his homosexual attractions and the religious beliefs he’s been raised with, together with a large side helping of questions about popularity and peer group loyalties — classic teen issues, just the sort of stuff you might have seen in those much-dreaded After School Specials of yesteryear.
• Much of the story is taken up with details of teenage life, from lunch-table conversation to video games.
• The style is relatively simple and straightforward, with a lot of space devoted to dialogue and internal monologue.

On the other hand:

• Not all of the characters are teenagers. One of the three characters who gets a lot of air space is an adult, the protagonist’s bishop and father of his best friend.
• There’s a major subplot (seen as irrelevant by some readers, but praised by others) about that adult character and his relationship with his wife, which has been strained by the demands of his calling as bishop.
• The book is grittier and more realistic in areas such as teenage language than titles that are sold as standard Mormon YA fiction.
• Although it reads quickly, the book is actually longer than typical size for a regular novel, let alone a YA novel, weighing in at about 110,000 words (standard adult novel size is considered 80,000-100,000).
• Perhaps most important, the book wasn’t written with a teenage audience in mind. So far, in fact, the only teenager I’m aware of who’s read it is my own daughter. (No, I didn’t twist her arm.) To be honest, I don’t think it’s a story that would interest many teenagers (unless they’re dealing with this issue personally) or that they would enjoy.

Readers so far have been divided in whether they think it’s suitable for a YA audience. A criticism some readers have made (both from a faithful LDS perspective and from a gay perspective, interestingly) is that the book could easily be depressing for teenage readers who are themselves same-sex attracted (SSA) and Mormon. Certainly it doesn’t spell out any easy answers for them. And the main character gets hit with a lot of hard things, partly as a result of choices he makes but largely as a result of things that are completely out of his control. When it comes down to it, I’m not sure I’d want a same-sex attracted teenage Mormon kid to read this book. (Though I think it might be good if his bishop had read it.)

Perhaps more to the point, as I indicated above, there’s little evidence so far that teen readers will want to read the book, or will like it if they do read it. This, however, raises a broader question to me: Who actually is buying YA novels? Who is reading them? Who is choosing who reads them?

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There’s a key definitional question that centers, I think, on differences between the Mormon YA market and the category of YA fiction in the larger non-Mormon world. Mormon YA titles are expected to be pretty much squeaky clean as regards language and what is considered inappropriate behavior, especially sexual behavior. You might have a (pretty daring) YA Mormon novel where a character or a character’s friend slips and falls morally, but all of the inappropriate behavior — and the feelings leading up to that behavior — would happen offstage. You could never (for example) allude to a straight teenage boy’s physical reaction to being next to a pretty girl — at least, that’s my perception — let alone a SSA teenage boy’s physical reaction to seeing a cute guy, as No Going Back does.

This is far from true as regards YA fiction nationally. In fact, YA fiction in general takes a certain pride in tackling the issues that are most relevant (if often embarrassing) for teenagers, like unwanted and socially distressing physical reactions. The very scenes in my book that would horrify buyers and editors of Mormon YA fiction actually increase its qualifications as YA fiction, judged by a national standard.

I think part of the reason for this — on top of a general prudishness in what’s usually referred to as the Mormon market — is that YA Mormon fiction, unlike YA fiction nationally, is a category that’s been created largely by publishers and booksellers, not librarians. Furthermore, it’s being sold largely to parents, grandparents, etc., not directly to teenagers themselves. The primary marketing niche for Mormon YA fiction, as I see it, is as an alternative to mainstream YA fiction, for those who are horrified by the very realism that mainstream YA fiction is so proud of. Marketing No Going Back as a YA novel in a Mormon market would have targeted it at precisely those buyers least likely to like it, while guaranteeing that it would have been overlooked by many who might have liked it but who know what the code of “Mormon YA fiction” generally means.

But then I have to wonder: Do teenagers really like all those issue-oriented YA books that are being sold and praised in the national market very much? Are they books that teenagers generally choose to read? Or do they read them because they’re assigned in classes and pushed on teenagers by librarians?

From my experience, when teenagers read at all by choice, they usually read genre fiction: science fiction and fantasy, mysteries, romances, or whatever their particular preferred flavor may be. (Adults aren’t much different in that respect.) I think there’s some evidence that teenagers tend to like books with teenage protagonists, dealing with themes related to growing up and coming of age. It seems to me, though, that they tend to like them in works such as Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game — a book with younger-than-teenage protagonists for most of the book, which resonates for many sf nerds with their experiences of unpopular brilliance, but not written, marketed, or (mostly) read as a YA novel, though it has many of the generic markers I mentioned above.

On the other hand, searching online, I found the following:

Orson Scott Card is the recipient of the 2008 Margaret A. Edwards Award honoring his outstanding lifetime contribution to writing for teens for his novels “Ender’s Game” and “Ender’s Shadow.” An accomplished storyteller, Card weaves the everyday experiences of adolescence into broader narratives, addressing universal questions about humanity and society. The award was announced January 14 at the 2008 Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association (ALA) in Philadelphia.

So maybe Ender’s Game really is a YA novel, even if he and most of his readers don’t think it is. Kind of like No Going Back. Wait…

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Teenagers, I would argue, of all of us, very often most live in a fallen world beyond their ability to change. What good is done with stories featuring lives so unreal that their happy endings happen to people utterly different from those our teenagers know themselves to be? Of course, that’s assuming that teenagers do or will want to read such books at all, which as I’ve pointed out above is something I just don’t know. This, however, is an approach that conventional Mormon publishing absolutely cannot take, for market reasons.

I should acknowledge here that there are, by all accounts, some positive and fairly groundbreaking things that have happened in Mormon YA fiction. I’d be interested to know more about these, and to know if the experimentation that I heard about 5-10 years ago is still happening today. What drives Mormon YA fiction? What are its potentials and possibilities? Where is it headed? Clearly it’s not going to be the entering wedge for gritty realism within Mormon fiction, but are there other ways it might help push the boundaries? E.g., genre categories? I’m under the impression that a lot of the sf&f that’s coming from mainstream LDS publishers is YA fiction, though I’m not sure how much of it is distinctively LDS. Are there places Mormon YA fiction is leading (or has the potential to lead)? Inquiring minds want to know!

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There are, within the Mormon universe, a great many stories stories about growing up that are clearly intended for an adult audience. For a few examples off the top of my head, I need only think about The Tree House by Doug Thayer and On the Road to Heaven by Coke Newell. Not to mention The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall.

What marks these novels as non-YA is a combination of things, but style perhaps more than anything else. In some cases, such books are written from a clearly backward-looking stance: adolescence recollected from adulthood, as in the case of On the Road to Heaven. In other cases, the sheer sophistication of language and approach makes it clear that the expected reader isn’t teenagers. Doug Thayer does a particularly neat trick with this, writing with a highly literary style that nonetheless reflects the internal “voice” of the character, as in the following paragraph which starts The Tree House:

Harris walked out the back door and down through the dark garden past the antler pole, chicken cook, rabbit pens, and fruit trees. Lady, his dad’s big golden Lab, followed him. Harris looked up at the starry night. He walked down to the big, thick sycamore, which his dad said was at least seventy-five years old and one of the tallest trees in Provo. He climbed the rope ladder up to the tree house, climbed the trap door ladder, and crawled onto the low-pitched roof. He lay down on the old rug, his hands under his head, looking up into the sycamore just to watch the leaves move. He and Luke liked to do that.

The style is spare and lean. On a sentence-by-sentence level, there’s nothing you couldn’t expect teenage readers to process. At the same time, the prose is also dense, composed of short but thickly laid verbal brush strokes. It demands processing. Internal thoughts and feelings are reported simply but indirectly, creating a portrait of a young man that is at once intimate and somewhat distanced. It’s a very good, possibly great novel with an effective style, but not one (book or style) that I expect to attract young readers who would be looking to see their current selves in the adolescent protagonist.

I wonder whether it’s generally true — possibly even a requirement for such writing — that “adult” novels about a YA protagonist move so quickly to establish a literary distance of some kind between the protagonist and the expected age and sympathies of the readers? That would be an interesting question to look at more broadly. Examples, anyone?

Let’s take, by way of contrast, the first paragraph from Kristen Randle’s Slumming, a YA novel with a highly Mormon storyline, but from a national publisher:

There’s something about traveling to another country: you can never see your own home quite the same way again. I believe it was this experience that inspired by Great Philosophical Idea. Not that I am necessarily blaming the French. Or my mother.

The style is far more immediate than Thayer’s. Thayer’s first paragraph sketches a picture of a teenage boy; but Randle’s first paragraph is written in the voice of a teenager, and not just because it’s in first person, though I think that choice (highly typical of much YA fiction) is also not an accident.

And then just to round things out, let’s take the first paragraph of No Going Back. This, by the way, is a real-time experiment: I’ve written the foregoing without actually looking at my own first paragraph, and don’t have quite that good a memory for my own work. It will be interesting to see what comes out. Double-click the file… waiting… waiting…:

Paul had no intention of telling Chad that he was gay. Not anytime soon. Not ever, if he could get away with it. Eight years as Chad’s best friend told him Chad’s reaction wouldn’t be good. So why did he keep thinking about doing something he already knew was really, really stupid?

Even though this is in third person, it seems pretty evident to me that it’s a lot closer stylistically to Randle than to Thayer, particularly in the aspect of voice: you hear the adolescent character (at least, if I’ve done my job right). So maybe it’s understandable that readers are confused about whether or not this is supposed to be YA fiction.

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I can’t really be unhappy about the choices I made for No Going Back. I think it does what I wanted it to do, for a large part of my main intended audience: that is, believing adult Mormons with a tolerance for realism in their reading, without a particular investment in the issue of same-sex attraction but willing to consider how we as Church members can be more supportive in this area. I think, though, that for future ventures I shall try to be more cautious about the dividing line between YA and adult fiction, and work more clearly to stay on one side or the other — if only to keep from confusing the heck out of everyone. Then again…

It’s always interesting seeing what non-Mormon readers of No Going Back have to say about the book. For one thing, it includes an awful lot of Mormon detail. Since I never imagined that it might have a large non-Mormon audience, I didn’t go to any trouble to explain that detail. No real accommodations for any readers who don’t happen to be Mormon.

At a more basic level, I’ve wondered if non-Mormons would even be able to identify with the characters and their motivations. Sure, there’s a lot of universality to the basic conflicts in the book. Every teenager struggles with issues of identity and peer pressure. Every married couple struggles with issues of communication and priorities. But that doesn’t necessarily make the particulars of one person’s conflict easy to identify with on the part of readers whose lives are very different.

I particularly wonder if there’s much possibility for non-Mormon readers to identify with the main characters in No Going Back in their Mormonness. Granted, there are other conservative churches that reject homosexuality as a lifestyle, and even some that embrace the delicate balance of viewing the attraction itself as not a sign of sin but rather as a trial that must be resisted. It’s my perception, however, that being a Mormon is rather different on an experiential level from being a Baptist or a Catholic or what have you. Certainly on a theological level the reasons why Mormons reject homosexuality are quite different, so far as I know, from the reasons given by any other religion — because we’re the only ones who believe that (a) it is human destiny (if we accept it) to become like God, and (b) that the definition of God includes, and is indeed partly defined by, heterosexual marriage. That’s far more than just rhetoric for Mormon teenagers; it’s a fundamental part of how we view ourselves. One of the first songs we learn in childhood starts, “I am a child of God” — and for us, that’s literal.

So I’m always interested to read or hear what non-Mormon readers think about No Going Back, and whether it makes sense to them. All of which made me particularly interested in a review that showed up earlier this week on Amazon.com by Amos Lassen, a veteran Amazon reviewer (almost 3,000 reviews!) who apparently tries to read as many GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) titles as he can and who also has strong interests in religion, but not specifically LDS religion. Awarding No Going Back 5 stars (out of 5), he writes in part:

“Everyone tries to understand [Paul’s] feelings and provide him with love and support but he remains somewhat in pain…. He doesn’t try to cure himself but he feels he needs the support of others but he does not want to come out and he knows that gay sex is forbidden by his religion. He wants a life of virtue and to be accepted for the person that he is…. The struggle between desire and faith seems to always be with us and the author has us examine ourselves closely so that we can be more understanding and accepting of others. The book is not an attack on gay people and is just the story of a boy who understands that he has the right to make the choice about how he wants to live his life.”

After reading Lassen’s review, I emailed him to thank him for his thoughts and find out more about how he’d become aware of my book. (Answer: browsing Amazon.) He mentioned that he teaches a class in gay literature at the college level, and is thinking of adding No Going Back. I’d love to find out what his students think.

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It’s a perpetual question among many Mormon writers just how we as Mormons can effectively present Mormon experience to a national audience. Examples that are frequently held up for emulation from other traditions include the novel The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, depicting the coming-of-age of a Jewish boy during World War II, and the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

I freely admit that No Going Back isn’t a terribly good candidate for that. It’s got too many other things going on to really be a good depiction of Mormon experience for non-Mormons — including the gay issue, which kind of overshadows everything else. But the positive responses I’ve received from a few non-Mormon readers — including the one from Amos Lassen, and one from a non-LDS retired literature professor published in my Wisconsin hometown newspaper, and even the surprisingly positive response I got from a vehemently atheist gay British acquaintance — make me wonder if maybe the target isn’t a little closer than I’d thought.

Looking at what I’ve seen of Mormon attempts to portray our experience in literature intended for Mormons and non-Mormons both, I find that a lot of it suffers from one or more of the following problems:

- Eccentricity — showing characters that would be oddballs in any Mormon ward (or anywhere else, for that matter)

- Over-the-top slapstick

- Whitewashing

- Focus on superficial elements of Mormon experience

- Attempts to convert

All of these have their place, but they get in the way of helping non-Mormon readers come away from the reading with a better understanding of what it means to be Mormon.

Some characteristics of a Mormon literature that would speak meaningfully to non-Mormons are obvious inverses of the problems I listed above. Such a literature would present its Mormon characters as being fundamentally ordinary, in both good and bad ways. It would show them as flawed, but sincere in their beliefs. It would take the Mormon context seriously enough not to exaggerate or turn things into a joke. It would not shy away from showing some of the deeper aspects of what it means to be a believing Mormon — the spiritual experiences and such —but would do it in a way that invites readers to accept those elements as part of understanding the character, rather than demanding that readers make a decision as to whether they personally accept Mormonism as true. It may be that such a literature will be more successful if it doesn’t attempt to explain elements of Mormon culture, but simply puts the reader into the middle of it.

Certainly we’ve seen some examples of this. Personally I think the first two Dutcher movies (God’s Army and Brigham City) did this quite well. (I haven’t watched States of Grace and so don’t have an opinion on it.) And Orson Scott Card’s Lost Boys is, bar none, the best depiction of modern suburban Mormonism that I’ve yet read, though I suspect the supernatural element in it functions kind of like homosexuality in No Going Back to distract non-Mormon readers from the Mormonness of it all.

But I think there’s a lot more that can be done. And reading the responses of non-Mormon readers to No Going Back gives me, I think, a clearer idea of what that might involve.

Farland chooses to tell the story of the Willie handcart company through the eyes of three of the company’s most historically grounded members: Captain James G. Willie, educated non-Mormon British immigrant Eliza Gadd, and guileless Dane Baline Mortensen. Rotating through the three character’s perspectives Farland brings to light not only the struggles of the destitute handcart pioneers but struggles central to the adoption of the LDS faith.

Captain Willie, as Farland recreates him, struggles as leader of the handcart pioneers when temporal concerns (fresh water, food, weather) don’t bend to his spiritual authority. As much as Willie wants to get his pioneers across the plains before winter sets in and lives are lost, what he really wants is to keep their faith in God intact. When faced with a massive storm and nowhere to hide, Willie doesn’t pray for the elements to be tempered so that the company can avoid hardship but so that the non-member Eliza Gadd will become a believer. As the trek continues and apostles glide through in comfortable carriages leaving only inspirational speeches and broken promises Willie’s own testimony comes under fire. He asks himself, is it okay to doubt the words of an apostle? Is the seemingly cursed trek and the ever-rising death count really God’s will? Are all trials evidence of sin? Why does God let bad things happen to good people?

Eliza Gadd’s spirituality acts not only as a catalyst for Captain Willie’s questioning but also as an entry point for modern readers who may not be able to comprehend why the handcart pioneers set out at all. As the only non-member of the company Eliza isn’t afraid to point out the strangeness of polygamy and other Mormon beliefs or the heavy reliance on charismatic leaders in place of logical thinking. And while her overall character arc seems a little forced, she poses probably the most important question for a modern reader: does asking questions make a person essentially unfaithful? Is there a way for a “thinking person” to accept an essentially non-rational religion?

Baline Mortensen is everything Eliza Gadd and Captain Willie are not. She doesn’t doubt, question, or over-think. She prays for guidance and acts on her feelings, convinced that even though she is only ten years old she is powerful enough to be angel to others in the handcart company and speed them to Zion. It is Baline, however, who ends up paying the ultimate price for her faith. Captain Willie suffers severe frostbite and loses his pride. Eliza loses her husband and several children. But both survive the trek and both receive spiritual boons. Baline–who pulled cripples through mudbeds and gave up her ration for a best friend with dysentary–freezes to death while searching for firewood in a snowstorm and gnawing on her own knuckles to stave off starvation. She is the ultimate Saint, consecrating her all and lending substance to the somewhat frightening idea that a true religion requires its people to sacrifice everything.

In the Company of Angels is at turns inspiring and gruesome (Farland doesn’t flinch at details of Indian attacks or rampant disease) and will likely offend some readers. Other readers will be offended by the book’s frank discussion of the personal failures of priesthood holders. Also, it is not without flaws: the characters lack subtlety and there are times the prose could use finessing. The book is self-published and there are sections with quite a few typos. But In the Company of Angels is clearly the work of a man who has grappled with the dilemmas of a faith-based life and loves his religion and will therefore resonate with many readers. In writing this novel Farland has secured himself a place with Mormon literary mainstays like Gerald Lund and Orson Scott Card and In the Company of Angels will likely be widely read and appreciated.

Both Austenland and A & H tackle romantic fantasies and the nature of romantic comedies, their “grotesque mimicry of actual love (A & H 304).”  And when Becky tries to decide whether or not she could actually love Felix romantically, she writes a screenplay with a movie ending.  But the novel’s conclusion isn’t a “Hollywood ending.”  Did you feel that writing it the way you did was risky?

Oh sure. I knew some readers would be angry, and I was sorry for that, because I knew absolutely that the ending was the right one for this story. I think it goes back to genre–those who expected a certain ending might not be willing to go with me where I wanted to take the story. And this story just might not be a good fit for their sensibilities. That’s okay. I knew (was told) that the book would sell better if I made the Hollywood ending work, but for me that would have made the story pointless and been sheer betrayal of the characters. I try to do right by the characters.

Speaking of that ending, it isn’t really an ending, especially as far as romantic comedies go.  How have readers reacted to it?

One of my sisters sobbed when a certain character died, and was elated by the ending. Another of my sisters was dry-eyed throughout the book then sobbed at the ending because it wasn’t what she wanted. I’ve had many letters from women who have experienced Becky’s personal tragedy who were so happy and relieved by the ending, and that was a huge validation for me. I crafted the book carefully to lead to that moment, and I wonder if those readers who were unhappy with it could read the book a second time, what they’d think then. We are often shackled by notions of genre! And the truth is, our lives don’t fit cozily into any particular one. I love genre fiction–I write genre fiction–but I think there’s a place for this kind of story too. I think exploring the great mystery of a genre-less life is exciting, and it gave me a chance to look at how stories affect how we conceive of our own lives and how we tell ourselves our own stories.

Do you think of A & H as subverting the romantic comedy, or does it do something more like open possibilities for other stories than what the conventions of romantic comedies allow for?

Someone said that all artists are by nature subversive, and I guess that’s true. And maybe true of me too, insofar as I’m a possibilities junkie. For me, that’s the most beautiful part of the religion I follow: agency. Choices. We can trap ourselves in life by expecting things to go like they do in a story, and being disappointed when they don’t. The romantic comedy is a fine and ancient genre, and one I respect tremendously. And I think it deserves exploration: why do we honor it? Why do we revisit this story again and again? And what does it mean in our own lives? What draws me as an author, what fascinates me, is both the clash and marriage of two very different things. Becky and Felix. Fantasy and reality. Comedy and tragedy. Ancient and new. Spiritual and mundane. My life is a series of clashing and coupling in strange and enticing ways. I want stories to provide that. A great story should be a place where we can see the messy wonderfulness of life from arm’s length, be entertained, and come away from it seeing our own world a little bit differently.

As I read this novel, I got the feeling that writing it might have changed you. Did it?  How?

I went to a place in A&H I never thought I’d go. Grief is so hard for me. When I write a book, I live in the world where I wrote it, and the death of one character especially was agonizing. But it was good too. I kept chanting that old Greek word to myself–cathartic, cathartic, it’s cathartic. It helped me own the pain and make it productive. I lost a sister a few years ago, as most people have lost someone, and it made me very wary of tragedy and death. Why seek it out in stories when it can accost us so suddenly and so horribly in life? And of course the kind of death in the book is a horror that I tried to never contemplate without shuddering away. But it was good for me to face it and see what it would be like, and to move through it to a different place again. I think that’s part of the wonder of stories. They can take hold of all those kinked emotions inside us and lay them out straight where we can view them, thoughtfully.

What do you hear about A & H?  Is it generating as much discussion as you’d hoped?

I don’t google myself or eavesdrop on others’ conversations in that way, so I only know what comes to me. What I hear both delights and discourages me. I am very sorry when people refer to Becky Jack as “evil.” The judgement in that word makes me worried for us as a people. Is no one allowed to make mistakes? To think differently than we do? I hear the book often dismissed because of the premise, which I’m sorry about as well. The premise was a place to start and a way to explore and ask questions that intrigued me, as well as a way to play with a kind of a story that I’d never read. I’d hoped it could be read and thought about. I think sometimes our lives are precarious, and we can be afraid if they’re nudged a bit, it’ll all come falling down. And some people very honestly have reasons to be worried by the premise, and I understand that. I am so grateful for those readers who are willing to set aside prejudgement and go on this journey with me.

Austenland and A & H seem to be establishing a trajectory of romantic comedy/social prodding for your writing.  Do you think you have more books like these two in your head?

I am writing another Austenland book, which has been tremendous fun. I never considered it until a few months ago when a new story occurred to me, ever so tauntingly. It’s a very different exercise than writing a period fantasy, and I really enjoy doing comedy. As a teenager, I was all about drama, but as I get older, I think making people laugh is one of the noblest things on this planet. Humor requires intelligence, and to laugh and cry together is divine. I haven’t yet explored all that I want to with these stories–why do we need romance? How do stories affect our self-concept and how we see others? Where do fantasy and realism meet? I write whichever story shouts at me the loudest, and I’m always listening, so we’ll see what comes.

Thank you, Shannon, for this wonderful interview!

What artistic works have inspired you?

That’s a big question. I was raised on fairy tales, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Joan Aiken, etc. High school and college was mostly the “classics,” then grad school was literary fiction (living authors do exist!). After selling The Goose Girl, I discovered YA lit, and that makes up 50% of my reading material now. And then there’s music, movies, plays, visual art…hard for me to dissect it, but it all gets into my brain.

You’re a mother with young children.  In your novel, The Actor and the Housewife, Becky wonders if it’s possible to support a spouse and a best friend of the opposite gender. But for aspiring writers with young children, the question of how to support a writing career while meeting the needs of family may be equally compelling.  How do you manage the challenges?

One of the things that fascinates me is the question of balance. I think women are asked to be professional balancers, and we learn on-the-job. I’m somewhat methodical about it: I make a list of priorities; I set aside time for writing then try to keep the writing hounds at bay during the other hours of the day; I make daily writing goals; I constantly reevaluate. As a woman, as a human being, I need a creative outlet. I need to play with words and tell stories. I believe making the time to pursue it makes me a better mom.

On your website, you tell how Actor and Housewife began with a dream.  The dream, which you describe as a glance at a relationship between two people, resembles in its snapshot nature the dream Stephenie Meyer says began her narrative journey. Is something rising in the dreams of Mormon women writers?

Ha! That’d be awesome. There should be an epidemic of Mormon women having novel-inspiring dreams that take over the book world! That’ll get the newspapers talking. I’ve been writing for 26 years (I started young! I swear!) and this is the first story I’ve written that began as a dream, though I knew many writers in college who often trolled their dreams for story fodder. Like Stephenie, I didn’t dream the whole book but used a moment between two characters from a dream as a place to begin. It was serendipitous and I’d love to be so fortunate again, but most of my dreams are just weird.

On your website, you describe A&H as a “labor of love.”  That’s a wonderfully ambiguous phrase.  How was the writing of this novel a labor of love for you?

Well, this is a wonderfully ambiguous novel! The only audience I had in mind for this book was myself. That may seem self-indulgent, but it’s absolutely necessary in order to shut out the other voices and be true to the story. I didn’t know what market would embrace this, if any–Utah? Out of Utah? LDS? Religious? Not religious? Chick lit readers or chick lit loathers? I didn’t even know if my publisher would be willing to get behind it. But I knew I loved this story and these characters, and I knew I wanted to share them. I spent two and a half years on this book. It does mean a lot to me.

Could you tell us a little about why you went the route of the romantic comedy screenplay for the storyline of A&H rather than writing the story in the more lyrical style of your YA novels?

Ooh, good question, and there are so many reasons for this, but I’ll try to narrow my response to just a couple. The 3rd person narrator of my YA novels is so set in stone in my head, she’s not flexible. She is a way to stay close to my main character and yet use language that character couldn’t employ, and so add meaning the character might not see. I love that narrator. But she is limited. For one thing, she has no sense of humor. In order to add humor, I needed a different narrator.

I also needed one who was a strong personality, almost a tangible character in herself. This was for several reasons, but partly because I played with genre in this novel. In my experience, this can make adult readers uncomfortable. By the time we’re adults, we are taught to depend on genre as a handle to hold a story (compare the children and teen sections of a bookstore to the rest–we poor adults only know how to shop by genre!). There’s a huge risk I’ll lose my reader by fiddling with and bending genre so much, so I needed a very strong narrative presence, a lifeline, a feeling that someone was in control, who could see it all and assure the reader in moments of darkness.

And of course it all ties into how Becky met Felix and how they re-met again, and what happened in the end. The romantic comedy movie–its archetypes, charms, and detriments–are the underpinnings of the whole story. We live in an age when this genre largely defines the female viewer in movie theaters. There is always at least one romantic comedy at any multiplex. If I’m tackling questions about femininity, that is something I need to explore. (And interesting side note: most romantic comedies are written and directed by men.)

And other reasons…blah blah blah.

On your website, you speak of the risks of writing this novel—“huge,” you called them.  The first risk you mention seems a personal one, standing on a cliff in a high wind.  The second is writing religion into the story.  Did those risks pay off?

Hm, I’m not sure. That’s tough. The risk paid off for me personally as a reader because I wrote the book I wanted to read. I know the risk paid off for those readers who have sent me personal notes of thanks for this novel, but not for many others. So how do we judge the success of anything overall? If it was a blessing to one single reader, is that enough? I knew it would be risky to write a “genre-less” story about a religious main character, and I would be very, very hesitant to do it again. The judgements against this book and against me personally have been loud at times. I’ve never had this experience before–I’d always felt that my home state and my home religion were very supportive of me as an artist and a person, so it can be a little bewildering when that support is weakened. I don’t regret a single word of the book and feel so privileged that I got to write this story, but the next time, would I be able to turn off the shouting voices? I don’t know. It’s been interesting from an intellectual standpoint. I used to have people ask me all the time to please write a book about an LDS character. But there was an unspoken caveat there, I realize. LDS readers largely want a certain kind of LDS character–one who represents them personally, or perhaps the ideal of themselves, so that the book can positively represent this religion to the rest of the world. I failed at that wish for many readers. Inevitably. Of course, that was not my intention. A book written with that goal in mind would have self-imploded. The wonderful thing I’ve learned is there is no LDS stereotype! No one can agree on what it means to be an “ideal” LDS person. That should be good news.

What have been some of the reactions to the religious material in the novel?

All over the place. I’d say in general, I’ve had the most positive responses from non-LDS Utahns and LDS non-Utahns. I wonder if it’s harder for LDS Utahns, because Becky is one, and if she doesn’t represent the reader personally, then they have a hard time with her. And for non-LDS non-Utahns, while I’ve had many wonderful responses, I think many are a little uncomfortable with the presence of religion. Usually religion in a non-religious book is the big “issue” of the story. The religious person is evil or else questioning and ultimately rejecting it. It’s rare to read about a character whose religion is just a fact of their personality, especially when that religion is Mormonism. The reaction has confirmed for me that I cannot possibly anticipate how each reader will read a story or try to make it work for everyone. I have to write to myself and hope the book finds kindred spirit readers, whoever and wherever they may be.

Clearly, writing a character’s death in the novel was difficult.  I found reading the first nightclub scene just as disturbing.  In that scene, Becky and Felix face the first hard test of what they have between them.  Working out the trouble their actions give rise to requires finer qualities, such as patience and restraint—rather like in a marriage.  At this point in the story, they pay the price for their bond.  The tensions of that scene open the way for a new kind of story.  Where did that scene come from? How did writing it affect you?

It’s interesting that you mention that scene. It was one of the most important scenes in the book for me, a lynch pin of the plot… Okay, I went on to explain why it was important, what the scene meant in terms of Becky’s character arc and where it allowed her, Mike, and Felix to go later on, how it set up the story for a moment of grace, etc., and then I deleted it. Whenever I find myself explaining these sorts of things, I feel wrong about it. I try not to be the Voice of Authority. Once the author says what things Mean, I fear it takes away a reader’s right and ability to decide for herself. The true magic of storytelling never happens in the book but in the mind of each reader. Ooh, that sounds hokey, but I believe it passionately! I can talk about the writing process and more general things, but I try not to pontificate about specific meaning in my own books. At least not in writing. Get me in private, serve me a couple of milkshakes, and I’ll tell you everything.

It’s a deal.  In milkshakes veritas, as the Romans liked to say.

Part Two will post 3/16.

Either way. On to Part 3.5.

Roughing Out a Theory and a Course in Mormon Lit

i. The Theory

As I was scripturing this morning in Jacob 5, I was struck (as I’ve been struck before) by verse 48: After the master of the vineyard laments over having done so much for his trees that have, nonetheless, been corrupted, “the servant said unto his master:”

Is it not the loftiness of thy vineyard—have not the branches thereof overcome the roots which are good? And because the branches have overcome the roots thereof, behold they grew faster than the strength of the roots, taking strength unto themselves. Behold, I say, is not this the cause that the trees of thy vineyard have become corrupted?

And then by verse 66:

For it grieveth me that I should lose the trees of my vineyard; wherefore ye shall clear away the bad according as the good shall grow, that the root and the top may be equal in strength, until the good shall overcome the bad, and the bad be hewn down and cast into the fire, that they cumber not the ground of my vineyard; and thus will I sweep away the bad out of my vineyard.

Today’s reading of these two verses in particular brought to mind two things: 1) the nodal model of Mormon religion/culture that I sketched out in Beyond Prescription? Part 3 and 2) a line from my patriarchal blessing that encourages me to pursue a vocation that will parallel my mission for the Father on Earth.

In reference to the latter, I’ve been considering lately that my (increasing) professional commitment to Mormon Studies, as part of the broader academic package I’m pursuing, is at least a partial answer to that encouragement, as is my commitment to teaching. But as I worked my way through part 3 of Beyond Prescription, I started to think about the parallel relationship this posits between Mormonism as a religion and Mormonism as a culture less linearly. In an earlier draft of the post, I wrote that the religion and the culture plot parallel paths through the rhetorical field of mortality, sometimes intersecting, sometimes trailing each other, sometimes at cross purposes, etc., etc. That was too limited, though, too linear. Then I sat through my folklore seminar and the professor glossed over a model that explained culture/s, texts, and contexts in terms of nodes and networks—and my thinking on the relation between Mormon religion/Mormon culture shifted to a more complex organismic model, one that I’m still trying to work out.

And that brings me back to Jacob and my patriarchal blessing, which both led me to ask, “What if my professional/spiritual development and (more apropos to the theory I’ve been tinkering with) the Mormon religion/culture relation are like one of these trees—an interdependent system of roots and branches connected in a sprawling human (eternal?) network such that, as in a healthy, cared for tree, growth in one parallels/presupposes growth in the other?” This accounts, I think, for inextricable link between Mormonism’s dual aspects and, as a corollary, to the connection I sense between (my) discipleship and (my) scholarship.

Of course, I’ve only just begun to explore the analogy and I recognize its limitations. But I thought I’d share and see what the AMV community thinks…

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ii. A Course in Mormon Lit

In response to Boyd’s recent post on Mormon Studies through Literature, Drama, and Film and in my effort to create the best possible reading experience for any interested in contemporary Mormon literature, I’m posting the reading list for the course in Mormon lit that I’ve been drafting for a program internship. I’ve decided to lay the course out based on themes I’ve noticed in my reading of late and because I think it would create an interesting reading experience. Though my list is incomplete (specially in light of the anthologies I’ve listed and the poets I still need to include) and though some of the texts obviously cross thematic boundaries, reflect my own reading tastes, and might be changed for something else at any time, this is what I’ve got at present. Feedback (on texts, themes, ambitions, etc.) is most welcome:

Reading the Mormon Experience: Contemporary LDS Literature

Main Course Texts

Anthologies

The Fob Bible
The Best of Mormonism
Bright Angels and Familiars

Family Hi/stories

Short Fiction:

“Ida’s Sunday” Phyllis Barber
“Bread for Gunnar” Phyllis Barber
“The Willows” Eileen Kump
“Clothing Esther” Lisa Torcasso Downing

*

Long Fiction:
Bound on Earth Angela Hallstrom

*

Drama:

“Little Happy Secrets” Melissa Leilani Larson
“The Prodigal Son” James Goldberg

*

Poetry:

“When I Do Go on My Honeymoon” William C. Bishop
“Weary” Sarah E. Jenkins
Other poems from The Fob Bible
Selections from Timothy Liu, May Swenson, Lance Larsen, Philip White

**

Onward to Zion . . . and Beyond: The Clash of Worlds (without End)

Short Fiction:

“The Fringe” Orson Scott Card
“Spirit Babies” Phyllis Barber
“Wild Sage” Phyllis Barber
“Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenberg” James Goldberg
“The Christianizing of Coburn Heights” Levi S. Peterson
“Where Nothing is Long Ago” Virginia Sorensen
“They Did Go Forth” Maureen Whipple

*

Long Fiction:

Angel of the Danube Alan Rex Mitchell OR
Rift Todd Robert Petersen OR
Lost Boys Orson Scott Card

*

Poetry:

Selections from Michael Collings

*

Non-fiction:

“Confessions of a Secular Mormon” Ryan McIlvain

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Peculiar (Re)Visions: Variations on an Open Canon

Short Fiction:

“Abraham’s Purgatory” B. G. Christensen
“The Changing of the God” B. G. Christensen
“The Faith of the Ocean” A. Arwen Taylor
“The Book of Job’s Wife” Danny Nelson
“Scattered” Kate Woodbury

*

Drama:

“Adam and Eve” Davey Morrison

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Poetry:

Excerpts from Psalm & Selah Mark Bennion

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Voices from the Wilderness

Short Fiction:

“Opening Day” Douglas Thayer

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Poetry:

Selections from Kim Johnson, Susan Elizabeth Howe (Stone Spirits)

*

Non-fiction:

Excerpts from Refuge Terry Tempest Williams

**