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.

In commemoration of yesterday’s holiday, I’m finally returning to my Couple-Creators series of interviews, featuring this time Shannon and Dean Hale who recently came out with their second comic book together, Calamity Jack.

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Theric: In the past, in this interview series, both members of the marriage have had clearly defined artistic lives. But I think that few people were aware Dean had a way with words before he was announced as co-author of Rapunzel’s Revenge. So, Shannon, tell us a bit about Dean the writer. (And then, if alterations are needed, we’d better let Dean make them.)

Shannon: Dean is a wit, in the very classic sense, no question. His email subject lines alone are publishable. His problem is he’s too good at too many things, so he was never forced to just write, as I was. So I’m the Motivator, and Dean gets swept up in my steamroller force.

Dean: I think she probably meant to say I’m a classical “twit,” as in “a weak or thin place in yarn caused by uneven spinning.” Also, love the steamroller. Except when I want to play video games.

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Theric: Rapunzel’s Revenge did well enough to warrant a sequel (though I get the sense that the sequel was sold before book one was published, yes?) and it’s wracked up awards including an ALA 2009 Notable Children’s Book award, a YALSA 2009 Great Graphic Novel for Teens award, the 2009 Leah Adezio Award For Most Kid-Friendly Work, and–most impressive to me as a comics guy–an Eisner Award nomination. And I have to compliment you both. As far I knew when I read it, neither of you had any comics experience, yet you knew how to use the panels, everything was well paced–you nailed it. Coming into the project, were you confident you could really make it fly?

Dean: No, not at all. I was a naysayer about the project up until, and including, today. I wanted to do it, I thought we *could* do it, but I didn’t think anyone would like it. Or buy it.

Shannon: When we first wanted to do the project, children’s book publishers weren’t publishing graphic novels. I thought we’d have to pitch to the impenetrable walls of DC and Marvel. It was a shock when I just mentioned the project to my editor at Bloomsbury and she was interested. Once we started writing, though, I had a lot of confidence in the story, and once we saw Nate’s art I reached the point of “anyone would have to be insane not to love this!” Dean and I balance each other well.

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Theric: Have you two worked on creative projects before? And if so, what was it like?

Shannon: Well . . . there’s the children . . .

Dean: Yes, the children. An ongoing project that may yet succeed or fail spectacularly. Frankly, I think Rapunzel and Jack have gone the smoothest of all our collaborations. Our experience building IKEA furniture together is better left unmentioned. So…cut that last line, I guess.

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Theric: Needing a third person to draw the Rapunzel comics (the no-relation Nathan Hale)–easy? awkward?

Dean: Initially unfortunate, because it reminded me of the fact that the artistic talent I have wanted all my life has yet to materialize. Once we started working with Nate, though, it was great.

Shannon: Nate was breezy beautiful. And his wife Mindy did the lettering, so there’s another husband-wife team of collaborators! But once we wrote the script, our part was over and the story was in Nate’s hands, so there wasn’t any confusion or husband-juggling, so to speak. Dean and I had to work together, but then we got to sit back and just appreciate what Nate did.

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Theric: Speaking of working with other people. I always have to ask creative parents how they share this passion with their kids. So . . . how do you involve your kids in creation? (Or, at the very least, keep from neglecting them?)

Shannon: Oh, we neglect them. I find if you lock them in a closet with a bag of marshmallows, they find ways to entertain (and feed) themselves.

Dean: And every time I try to question that parenting style, Shannon always shouts “if it was good enough for me and my sisters, it’s good enough for my kids!”

All I’m saying is that we should at least put a TV in the closet or something.

Shannon: When they deserve it. Yeah, so, our three-year-old has been pretty self-absorbed for the past three years, but our six-year-old is very aware of the books we write. He loves to write his own little books and illustrate them. Or we play “Picture-Word” (his title), which means Dean or I write the words to a little book and Max illustrates, or vice-versa. He loves it. He couldn’t care less about our being published authors. He’s like, Yeah, I write books too, big deal.

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Theric: It seems to me that the act of creation is particularly Mormon in the sense that Creators is what we intend to be someday. In that sense, how does your faith reflect your work?

Dean: I don’t know . . . I feel that creation is really the act of wringing order out of chaos, making something that is inexplicably greater than the sum of its parts just by being organized by a conscious hand. Any time you succeed at that, whether publicly or privately, I think you get closer to your true potential as a human being and a child of God.

Shannon: Whatever, he sounds so intellectual and deep, but he actually wrote “the some of its parts” before I corrected his typo. But I agree with everything he said. Go honey.

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Theric: How would you describe the relationship between faith, art and spouse?

Shannon: It’s all mashed up together, isn’t it? Faith is the underlying current of everything I believe and it affects all I do, consciously or not. Family is my life and reason to keep chugging along. Art is the expression to keep myself from going crazy and to create connections with others.

Dean: What she said. I probably would have left out the “connections with others,” though. Four connections is about my max.

Shannon: Dean gives “recluse” the style and class it has long been missing.

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Theric: You didn’t start off married life as Eisner nominees. How have your successes affected your relationship with each other?

Dean: Not much. I’ve always thought Shannon deserved awards and recognition. I just don’t think she deserves all the curtsies she makes me do.

Shannon: Only when I’m wearing my tiara. I don’t think anything has changed much. I’m happier when I’m doing what I love, and so is he, but we’ve known each other for 21 years so publishing books doesn’t affect the big picture of our relationship.

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Theric: Has success altered relationships with other people in your lives?

Shannon: Oh, I think “success” is a fancy word. We just write books because we enjoy it and have to in order to maintain sanity. I think my parents and siblings are pretty nonplussed by the whole thing, and old friends are old friends no matter what. It’s only ever awkward with new acquaintances.

Dean: And since I spend most of my energy avoiding making any new acquaintances, all seems to be status quo.

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Theric: What advice would you offer married couples embarking on creative endeavors together?

Dean: Make someone the boss. Not the “in perpetuity” kind, but decide beforehand who gets final word on that specific project. Or, if you can break the thing up into different pieces, make sure who is the “champion” of each of those pieces. You’ll probably end up with fewer bite-wounds that way.

Shannon: Any guesses on who was the Boss in our companionship?

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Theric: No. And don’t make me. Let’s just wrap up with some recent events: The sequel to Rapunzel’s Revenge just came out. Calamity Jack. Please. Plug it.

Shannon: Well, you know, it’s probably the single most important piece of art to be published in 2010, and I don’t think it’s going too far to say it will forever change the lives of all who open its brilliantly illustrated covers and perhaps save humankind. Wouldn’t you agree, honey?

Dean: Oh yes. It’s also a handy tool to see if you have a soul or not. If you read it and discover it not to your liking, you’ll know that you are naught but an empty husk. Try it on your friends!

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I’ve been reading Shannon Hale’s YA novels to my daughter, now 13, for four years.  The Books of Bayern are wonderfully emotionally textured, edgy enough to challenge my daughter, and filled with lots of girl power to encourage her to consider her options.  Hale’s attention to language attracts my interest sharply.  I’ve come to trust her writing as a source of fine language and narrative prowess for my daughter’s developing mind.  We snatch up her YA novels whenever they come out.

But I wasn’t interested in Hale’s adult novel, The Actor and the Housewife, until this discussion on AMV.  Complaints that the novel’s readers registered there piqued my curiosity.  Just before William’s not-necessarily-a-review, Kevin Barney put up this post reviewing the church’s article on emotional infidelity that drew a lot of comments.  In January, a BCC-er linked to this article in Slate on opposite sex friendship.  The stars seemed to align.  I decided to drop other projects and pick up The Actor and the Housewife, see what was what.  To make the narrative journey more interesting, I read it aloud to my husband Mark, who during our married life has done such gracious deeds as taking the kids outside so I could talk with male friends or helping me understand the man-side of baffling conversations.  I have included in this essay bits of our discussion of the novel as we read it.

We had a rough start.  The Actor and the Housewife opens with a flash flood of “spiritual signs” and unlikely coincidences that seemed to strain the storyline.  The banter between the main characters—Mormon housewife Becky Jack and movie star Felix Callahan—seemed at times to flip over into barely tolerable giddiness.  Sometimes the dialogue felt downright immodest, as in a scene where Becky tells her husband Mike about her first encounter with Felix.  In the wake of the recounting’s excitement, Becky and Mike wind up in bed.

Mark: Mike’s insistence on Becky’s femme fatale powers affects him.

I think I was expecting a story and language more along the lines of Hale’s Bayern Books—lovely, deep, connected all around and through, each book a satisfying environment in itself.  The tenor of the language in Actor and Housewife was so different, so abrasive by comparison that Mark and I wondered at times if Hale disliked Becky.

Patricia: This reads like a script.  And the witty dialogue seems contrived and irritating.
Mark: [Hale] is taking the book where she wants it to go.

Only my previous experience with the author’s writing made it possible for us to suspend our early judgment and trust that Hale would take us someplace interesting.  I began relaxing into the story when passages like these appeared:

“In a way, it almost feels like falling—“ No, she wasn’t going to say it.  “There should be a new term—falling in friendship or something like that.  I wish there was a word for it!  The English language is seriously flawed … (56)”

and

“I wish the English language gave us a better option.  ‘Pals,’ ‘chums,’ ‘buddies’ … but a word that implies the sudden and unusual nature—like ‘metabuddies’? (56)”

The “no language for this” issue surfaces repeatedly as Becky tries to relate her new experience to what she knows but can’t make it fit.  Through wordplay, Becky and Felix finesse the relationship, negotiating a space for its existence and continued development outside what the usual language of friendship allows for.  Language and relationship—for me, an absolutely dynamite combination.

Mark (speaking of the Valentine’s Dance scene where Becky and Felix go outside into the night air so Felix can test his theory that he’s falling in love with Becky): Becky wants to “get out there” and remain chaste.  How can she make it work?  She “goes outside” with Felix.

As the story progresses, the matter of social expectations and limitations—lines—where they are and whether or not Becky should cross them—arises frequently.  As Becky follows her instincts and her heart across her lines toward Felix while maintaining her lifelines to Mike and her kids, the flash flood turns into a deep, sinuously flowing river.  For this reader, the current became fully compelling.

Mark: The reader is not in control here.  The writer is.  Hale takes us through a series of emotional states.  By the break-up, the writer is exerting powerful control.

(By “break-up,” he means the point in the story where Mike expresses his misgivings about how deeply involved his wife and her movie star buddy are becoming. To save her marriage, Becky and Felix break up.)

As the story continues, Becky’s iconoclastic nature becomes increasingly apparent.  As she follows her attraction to Felix, she makes leaps of faith that shake up friends and extended family members, all of whom express their doubts about the relationship which they either expect or hope will fail.  Why would they expect or hope for the worst?  Because the friendship’s failure would confirm their own moral takes on the world.  The family get-together where Becky discovers her siblings are betting against her is one of the most important parts of the book.  There we begin to see just how deeply the Becky-Felix dynamic affects others’ lives as, watching the relationship intensify, Becky’s mother, her brothers, a sister, and a sister-in-law either manifest or confront their own social fears and limitations, including and especially, the fear of attraction.

Mark: As much as Becky loves her Mormon world, she has a hunger for something else—not instead of, but in addition to.  She has complete confidence in her social lines.  But she’s experimenting with various individuals to see “Can I make this work within the social universe where my children and husband live?”
Patricia: Becky and Felix’s relationship changes both their worlds.
Mark: Their relationship ends up relegating her older, primary relationships to supporting roles.
Patricia: She tries including the bishop.  He draws his line, re-thinks, changes.  Change is a main current in the book.
Mark: She was successful at integrating Mike.

One of the amazing elements of this book is how Hale makes Mormonism sexy.  This isn’t a matter of imbuing the book with only erotic energy but rather with life-begetting fertility operating within a Mormon moral context.  More than once, Felix calls Becky “a goddess” and clearly means it.  Likewise, he alludes to her physical fertility.  But the fertility language doesn’t just remark upon Becky’s childbearing prowess. Body and soul, Becky is a fountain of happy fecundity.

Mark: She is powerful as a demonstrably fertile woman, terrifyingly brave to outsiders.  Her character as a character is more developed than Felix’s.  More than Celeste’s also.  Celeste is supposed to be the demonstrable paragon.  But what is she in the face of this Becky power over her husband?  Celeste submits to the goddess.  She keeps what she can, relinquishes what she can’t hold on to.
Patricia: By virtue of their more open marriage, Felix and Celeste are completely vulnerable to the “cheeky [Mormon] minx” (12).

At the book’s outset, Felix and Celeste are statistics in Europe and Britain’s demographic winter.  Felix is hardened in his aversion to children and to fathering them.  This means that, philosophically, emotionally, and sexually a kind of sterility exists in Felix’s erotically charged bond with Celeste.  Following their involvement with Becky and her family, this cultural sterility leads to the collapse of Felix and Celeste’s marriage.

Mark: Becky could have Felix but doesn’t.  Celeste can’t have Mike.

Some readers complain that the story is unbelievable, a fact Hale herself has fun with toward its conclusion: “[S]eriously, who would buy a Mormon housewife as a romantic comedy heroine (320)?”  But Hale uses the device of extremity to frame up the story firmly.  If there weren’t unlikely extremes in the tale—the Hollywood scene vs. the Layton, Utah scene; Mormon housewife vs. famous actor—it might come off as “too Mormon.”  Yet via extremities, Hale brings Becky’s brand of Mormonism into relief.  Otherwise, the lines Becky draws and crosses wouldn’t show up nearly as vividly.

Mark: This is going to take everybody somewhere they haven’t been.  Is Hale working at illustrating a future archetype?

Some readers lament that Felix gets the best lines, making less stellar husband Mike look boring by comparison.  Me, I was amused by but not terribly impressed with Felix.  Nor did I find Mike boring.  Mike’s lines of dialogue are understated but impressively brave, since in a practical yet courageous way he navigates new seas he finds himself sailing as he opens his home to Felix.  Why does Becky love Mike?  She just does.  At first sniff she knows they have compatible pheromones and their genetic prospects are excellent: “His pheromones practically danced down my gullet and straight to my ovaries” (289). This line goes to the fertility motif woven throughout the book.

Mark: The best lines support the Becky character and they support the relationship.  It makes sense that Felix has charismatic lines.
Patricia: I want this to be a more beautifully written book, but it’s a screenplay.
Mark: The book is dependent on and devoted to that device.

Felix appears to have the male lead in this made-for-a-novel screenplay.  As it turns out, he can’t rival plain ol’ Mike, either his pheromones or his stolid Mormon stance.  Even after he dies, Mike exerts influence on the story and gets in Felix’s way, though many might wish that, when alive, Mike could have competed more compellingly against flamboyant Felix.  But it’s Becky that provides the narrative’s driving force. That neither Mike nor Felix as characters are as developed as is Becky’s character is hardly surprising.  The story is really about a Mormon woman and her “indomitable Mormon willpower” (214). In Hale’s stories, male characters commonly act in supporting roles, standing back as the strong female leads do their thing to keep the world in balance, plying extraordinary gifts separately and in alliance to unseat tyrants and preserve their families.

No tyranny overtly menaces the storyline of The Actor and the Housewife, only doubtful imperatives of social conventions and expectations bent on circumscribing the relationship.  Yet the language wrestles to pioneer a narrative trail for a definitely outside-the-usual mingling between two unlikely soul mates and their at-odds worldviews, thus directing its energy into deep space exploration.  In entering The Dance with Felix, Becky Jack, married Mormon mother of four, bravely goes where not very many Mormon mothers—maybe not many women at all, and with reason—have gone before.  Given the outcome for most of the story’s characters—more life for everyone all around—she does it with style, holding open prospects for everybody.

It’s important to the story that Becky and Felix not follow the usual romantic comedy script and become fully sexually entwined.  In my opinion, the reason is pretty simple. Becky is fully Mormon; Felix is fully not.  For Becky, family is everything.  Felix has estranged himself from even his mother.  By the end of the book, Felix, at nearly fifty years old, is only just coming to accept the prospect of being a father and “[settling] into [his] adult skin (301).”  By standards not just embedded in Mormon culture but also in other family-oriented societies, his social arc is way behind Becky’s.  But mainly, the idea that what she does and whom she does it with will affect prospects for others fully informs her sensibilities.  “Others” here include her children, whose lives are rather dramatically affected by her relationship with Felix; her husband, who must face his own fears and take his own leap of faith; her mother, who worries; her siblings, betting one an other that their doubts will be confirmed; her friends, who have their own lives to work out; and her church community, which at times behaves less than elegantly in response to Felix’s presence, an actual problem that exists between the church and the not-church communities.  Finally, there is Felix himself, so caught up in following Becky into “whatevership” that he makes himself vulnerable.  She is careful not to take advantage.  With her out there taking such chances, the agency and narrative prospects for everyone whose lives touch hers hangs in balance.  Fertility—not merely sexual fulfillment and not simply physical ability to bear children but also life-begetting, possibility-multiplying, world-building spiritual and emotional abundance—is the name of Becky’s Mormon game of risk.

Mark: The whole point is to prepare the Mormon reader to approach the point of agency.  Readers experience their own fears, doubts, expectations—all of which will be broken by this iconoclastic Mormon character.

Or not. Some readers, seeing Becky cross lines they themselves have taken pains to hold in place, will find the story unacceptable.  Many there be that have experienced worry, heartbreak, or the destruction of their families in situations that will uncomfortably resemble the arc of The Actor and the Housewife’s storyline.  To such people, the premise of the novel—that some men and some women can work through the confusion and intricacies of attraction—including sexual attraction—to establish positive, productive metafriendships might well come off as unbelievable, perhaps even painful.  This book isn’t trying to bully its point across, only to prompt thought: What if …?  The Actor and the Housewife is not for everyone, a fact Hale acknowledges and accepts.  I suspect that only a relatively small audience will find the novel to carry a stronger punch than can either an unconvincing and quirky romantic fantasy or an irresponsible and/or dangerous love story.  Yet The Actor and the Housewife’s intent is to be more than either-ors allow for.  I found it neither this nor that, but something else altogether different: a remarkably courageous work that chips away at the horns of social and spiritual dilemmas.

Books I wish I owned:

Byuck by our very own Theric, er, I mean, Eric Jepson. This is the best link I could conjure up for this quirky never-published novel about the fight to stay single while attending BYU. So sad it never made it into print. Maybe if we’re all really nice Theric will serialize it on his blog!

No Going Backwards by Jonathon Langdon. Gay Mormon teen. Need more? Then check out the website.

Slumming by Kristen D. Randle (To read my interview with Randle click here.) What I loved about this book was how uncompromisingly Mormon it was and how uncompromisingly national market it was. Okay. It wasn’t exactly Gossip Girl, but the fact that the book works in both worlds made me so happy.

Breaking Rank by Kristen D. Randle. This one had closet Mormons but the teenage protagonist’s decision making process was so true to teenage Mormons. I loved it.

Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems I had no idea how awesome Mormon poetry was until I bought this. It was truly the best forty-six cents I ever spent!

The Year My Son and I Were Born: A Story of Down Syndrome, Motherhood, and Self-Discovery by Kathryn Lynard Soper. If you know a Mormon mommy who loves memoirs and haven’t bought this book yet for her, then now is the time. Seriously beautiful book.

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams. I read this one for an ecobiography writing seminar and I was glad. TTW is a controversial and watershed figure not only in Mormon environmental writing but also in Mormon feminist writing and Mormonism as a culture and not just a religion. This book, part memoir and part ecology lesson, is a great place to start with her.

Long After Dark by Todd Robert Petersen. This book really pushed my litmus test, making me extremely uncomfortable in the process, but I felt like it was done artfully and purposefully and that made me glad. Read my interview with Todd Robert Petersen for more.

The Conversion of Jeff Williams by Douglas Thayer. This book about a California teen’s summer in the heartland of Mormonism is the novel that will shut the mouth of all the your Mormon fiction naysaying friends. Beautifully written, intensely thoughtful, this is one that demands repeat readings.

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George. For you readers who love teen fiction (it’s okay to admit it; I do too!) or just enjoy having a thought provoking book to read with your kids, this creative amalgam of Norse mythology and the Cupid/Psyche myth will delight. George is popular for her Dragon Slippers series and if you liked those you will LOVE this one.

The Candy Shop War by Brandon Mull. I love tween literature that encourages questioning and viewpoint broadening without being all Lord of the Flies or One Fat Summer about it. By creating an old lady of dubious motivations who makes candies that give kids super powers Mull does a great job of entertaining and pushing kids to think about consequences without preaching or settling for easy answers. I’m still waiting for a ten year old to read this book so I can chat with them about it. Really well done.

Books that were worth the inter-library loan:

Benediction: a Book of Stories by Neal Chandler. (Not everyone loves this book. A lot of people find it offensive. But I thought it was such a great parody of some of the wilder small town personalities I grew up with. Read my original post here.)

The Only Alien on the Planet by Kristen D. Randle. (Basically a novelization of the old “Cipher in the Snow” story. Interesting!)

Secrets by Blaine M. Yorgason (Quintessential Deseret Book “issue” novel. Tackles an important subject but tends to gloss over the difficulties.)

People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture by Terryl L. Givens (Probably the most important book for Mormon culture scholars and you should read it. But you might not tackle it more than once.)

A FUTURE FOR TOMORROW – Surviving Anorexia – My Spiritual Journey by Haley Hatch Freeman (Read my original review here. I also believe that this book should not be read without also reading Michael Greenberg’s Hurry Down Sunshine–just to give some context the psychotic break of it all.)

Books that are worth reading if someone hands it to you:

Circle Dance by Sharlee Mullins Glenn

Hold On, the Light Will Come: And Other Lessons My Songs Have Taught Me by Michael McLean

Abinadi by Heather B. Moore (For more of my thoughts on this book read here.)

River Secrets (The Books of Bayern)River Secrets (The Books of Bayern, #3) by Shannon Hale

Longshot: The Adventures of a Deaf Fundamentalist Mormon Kid and His Journey to the NBA by Lance Allred (My original review.)

Austenland: A Novel by Shannon Hale

Dragon Flight (Dragon Adventures) by Jessica Day George

All this has got me wondering, what Mormon books did you read this year and what did you think? Any you enjoyed enough to shell out money for? I need recommendations for next year!

That’s actually not why I owe her an apology. I wouldn’t presume to suggest that I should say something about everything even slightly Mormon related that hits the public eye. Rather, it’s that I did post a few comments here and there expressing major discontent with the novel. Those criticism are valid (in brief, they are that she pulls the punches when it comes to the unique Mormon content (I think she could have pushed things about 15-25% more without losing the national audience), she totally martyrs the husband (who is not The Actor, by the way) and doesn’t make him as interesting as he should/could be (and actually shows hints of being), and she totally muddles up the ending.

Or for my more raw reactions, here’s my GoodReads review (I gave the book 2 out of 5 stars):

I knew this going in, but…

So Very Much Not My Thing.

And, sadly, the Mormon elements, which I thought could be interesting, were quite mild and not very interesting.

And a comment I posted on MoJo’s blog:

Just finished this earlier in the evening. Here’s the thing: if you could take some of the angst and down-note ending of this novel and graft it on to Austenland, you’d have a pretty good, interesting, subversive novel. The problem with Austenland is that the heroine in the end gets Darcy and succumbs to his weak sauce pleas (and in a chase to the airport scene). If we’d taken elements to the Felix/Becky ending and used it there instead, then Austenland would have been a devastating take down of Romance Mormon Style or rather that whole thing so many Mormon women seem to have with Jane Austen. Instead, we get the happy ending where the heroine never really has to give up her hope of The Perfect Man. Not really.

On the other hand, as you’ve documented, The Actor and the Housewife is rife with problems (one of the major ones being that the Actor gets all the best lines and the husband gets non-explicit, vaguely asserted sex — if there was ever the time for a bit more explicitness, it’s with this novel where you could balance the Hawt Husband vs. the Witty Brit) and so the ending is just about as weird and anticlimactic as you can get and anticlimactic would have been good if the had been more depth to the characters.

Also: wow is the Mormonism glossed over.

I stand by all that. But as I’ve thought about it lately, I think that I perhaps have been looking beyond the mark. Yes, the novel has major problems. And I still don’t think that from a national market perspective it’s that great of a book. But even with all the deus ex machina and dancing around of things and non-explicitness, from a Mormon perspective, it does have the audacity to deal with opposite gender friendships and takes that idea fairly seriously within a gospel context. Even if I’m not satisfied with the way it’s handled, I have to give Hale credit for tackling the subject. And I do think that the novel is worthy of some critical attention. I’m not claiming that I’ll be the one giving it — in fact, I don’t feel very well-equipped to. But I really shouldn’t have waited so long to point out that, much like Meyer’s Twilight series, Hale’s The Actor and the Housewife very well may say some interesting things about Mormonism and, in particular, about Mormonism in relation to the larger culture. It also may have some interesting things to say about Mormon housewives and celebrity (*cough*HaleandMeyer*cough*).

Though this post is by it’s very nature heavily self-indulgent, I am going to try to spin it as more altruistic than it is.

Altruism #1: Katya’s Mormon Arts Wikia is exploding. BYU’s Mormon Literature & Creative Arts database is still an excellent resource and in many respects superior, but, for instance, Katya’s wiki offers scads more plays. And I don’t know how the discussion has been going, but I’ve been able to make additions and improvements to Mormon Arts Wikia without cutting my hair first. And it’s not Wikipedia–not only can you work on your own article, you are encouraged to. And once you fix it up, it’s fixed up. (Can you tell I’m a wikivangelist?) So go do some work on this handy resource that I used in writing up this post.

Altruism #2: I’m using this post to point you in the direction of some Mormon writers you might not know or have never read. There’s some dead people here. There some just-barely-not-teenagers-anymore on here.

Altruism #3: If this post inspires you to buy The Fob Bible, the proceeds go to LDS Humanitarian Services and help make me a famous commodity, righteous endeavors both.

Looping the Loop, with Theric

.

My “How Long Till Two Times” deals with the confusion of Adam and Eve after leaving the Garden, much like

Davey Morrison’s “Adam and Eve,” but both these works agree with

“Genesis” by Danny Nelson that mortality was totally worth whatever bad results accompanied. That’s a particularly Mormon idea stated most clearly by Eve in

The Book of Moses that we have through Joseph Smith. He was good friends with

Parley P. Pratt whose autobiography (at least the first half) is one of the great Mormon books.

Doug Thayer recently got into the autobiography game too with his Hooligan, for which he got a serious ribbing from

Patrick Madden in the essay “The Infinite Suggestiveness of Common Things.” That essay spends some time talking about dictionaries, something

Orson Scott Card once wrote one of. Saintspeak, it’s called. Not to be confused with

Sisters and Little Saints: One Hundred Years of Primary, though I’m sure one could make a sexist joke if one were so inclined. You know what kind of people I’m talking about. Anyway, one of that book’s authors shares a name with

David O. McKay, whose smokin’ hot correspondence with his wife was published as Heart Petals, which is about as cheesy a title as

The Heart Has Forever by Kerry Lynn Blair, who helped found the Whitney Awards. At the last Whitney’s, the winner for best novel was

Sandra Grey’s Traitor, which is about a European citizen resisting the Nazis. Only hers is set in France and

Michael O. Tunnell’s Brothers in Valor was set in Germany.

Dean Hughes’s Children of the Promise series also featured heroic WWII-era German Mormons, but probably most European Mormons in Mormon lit are emigrating converts, such as in

Nephi Anderson’s classic Added Upon, which also played in big ways with the preexistence  much like

Rachel Nunes’s In Your Place which was her first-written (but not first-published) novel. Another first-written-but-not-published-novel-writing novelist is

Betsy Brannon Green, making Hearts in Hiding her first published work.

Matthew Greene (no relation) had a play, “Variations on a Breakup“, premiere last year. And speaking of breakups,

The Nephiad is Michael Collings’s epic poem on the breakup of Laban’s head from his body. Epics. That reminds me of

Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy, which is an old-timey sort of thing I suppose, like

Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy only totally different. And now, because  we’re Mormons and thus we love hints of a vaguely chiastic structure, let’s make the obvious connection from her fairy tale back to one by

Danny Nelson–let’s say “The Giantess and the Shiverbird,” and from there to

Davey Morrison’s cleverly named “A Fairy Tale” and from there back to

me. Because I’ve also written things that end in death. for instance, “The Oracle.”

Now. My challenge for you. In the comments, break my loop open and work in yourself or someone you love. Or someone you think is totally overrated. That’s okay too.

As Motley Vision’s newest Official Contributor, I feel an obligation to have my first post explain something of my experience within and attitude towards the Mormon arts.

Several months ago, I plotted out a post called “Hero’s Journey of the Mormon Artist” which I had intended to submit to William. I’m glad I never finished it however as further reflection has suggested to me that I was implying that that my proposed version of the hero’s journey was a necessary part of being a good Mormon artist. As if being an Orson Scott Card or a Dean Hughes is more admirable than being a Heather Moore or an Anita Stansfield (no sexism intended). And so I continued refining the idea and now I feel that it is not Mormon artists who are on a hero’s journey, but the Mormon arts entire. I will not be going into all seventeen stages of the monomyth, but I will deal with the three major groupings and hit on the secondary levels when they seem helpful.

*

We call upon all members, those in the arts and those seeking to appreciate the message of good art, to expand their vision of what can be done. If we are going to fill the world with goodness and truth, then we must be worthy to receive inspiration so we can bless the lives of our Heavenly Father’s children.

Andrew Hall’s Mormon Literature Year in Review — Part 1b: National market books continued

In the wake of Harry Potter, Deseret Book’s Shadow Mountain imprint has made a big push into the national young adult fantasy genre.  They had four authors producing five novels in 2008. The most successful is Brandon Mull, whose Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague was the third in his series. The series reached #3 on the NYT Children’s Chapter Series bestseller list.  Obert Skye released two novels, Leven Thumps and the Wrath of Ezra, the fourth in a series, and Pillage, a stand-alone humorous novel. Shadow Mountain also brought in two authors who have previously published in the Mormon market. James Dashner published a successful fantasy series for the Mormon publisher Cedar Fort. Shadow Mountain contracted with him to write a national middle reader fantasy series, The 13^th Reality. It tells the story of a contemporary 13-year-old who is presented with a series of letters and clues drawing him into a adventure. A reviewer at Kirkus wrote, “Though there are chunks of text that are overwritten, the telling is generally laced with a strong sense of humor and a sure hand at plot; the author is plainly in tune with today’s fan base.”  A reviewer at School Library Journal wrote, “This book had great potential. The beginning of the adventure starts with a bang, but by the middle of the story things begin to drag. The immediacy gets lost in the daily struggle to figure out the riddles and the unending descriptions of Tick’s life as he awaits the next one.”  J. Scott Savage has written several mysteries in the Mormon market. Through Shadow Mountain he published the fantasy Water Keep: Farworld. Meridian Magazine reviewer Jeannie Hansen wrote, “There’s enough magic and strange creatures populating the book to please the most avid fantasy reader, but there’s an added dimension of mystery and philosophy that marks this fantasy as a cut above many fantasies currently being marketed to young adults.”

Outside of Shadow Mountain, Mormon authors have been able to publish a considerable amount of young adult and middle reader speculative fiction with national publishers. Jessica Day George has made a strong mark in the last two years.  Her novel Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow was a retelling of a classic Norwegian fairy tale. The review site “Curled up with a good kid’s book” wrote, “The characters are simply delightful. From sweet to stony and warm to ice-clad evil, the idiosyncratic array of creatures is never dull . . . George’s beautiful description and ridiculously engaging storytelling kept me captivated – so much so that this reader curled up and read the entire book in a sitting, not realizing that hunger and tiredness were both calling very loudly. Lost in an icy world full of wonderfully exotic words and names, I didn’t look up until I’d closed the book.” George also produced Dragon Flight, a sequel to Dragon Slippers, which won a Whitney Award in 2007 for Best Novel by a New Author.  A reviewer at VOYA wrote, “George creates a very satisfying sequel that adds just the right touches to complete the story . . . The clear conflict that leads to loads of tension in the book’s last half makes a wonderful action-packed page-turner. Ultimately the conclusion with plenty of romance makes everything complete. Even though the pacing in the first half of the book is quite slow and the extended setting could have been more defined, this novel is excellent.” A reviewer at Children’s Literature wrote, “It is great fun with enough twists and turns to keep readers glued to their copies until the very end. George also avoids being too derivative of other popular dragon novels . . . While the story’s conclusion is as idyllic as a fairy tale (the Disney kind, not the Grimm versions), Creel gets her prince because of her intelligence and integrity, not her beauty. George has deftly managed to stay true to the archetypes of fantasy literature but she has a unique perspective to share and this novel, while intended for young audiences, will entertain older readers as well.”

Shannon Hale has been a leader in the young adult fantasy market over the last decade, and has been one of my favourite authors. In 2008 she tried something new, a graphic novel, Rapunzel’s Revenge, co-written by her husband Dean Hale, and illustrated by Nathan Hale (no relation). The Hales set the Rapunzel tale in a wild west milieu.  A reviewer at School Library Journal wrote, “The Hales have a good sense of character and personality here. Rapunzel’s spirit is pretty evident, both visually and through her verve and words right from the get go. Heck, the first time you see her she’s hanging off a branch in the garden and falling into a small pond . . . The cowboy feel and characters in this book are a bit odd, but they work within the context of the tale. It’s certainly a more American take on the Rapunzel story than you’ll usually find in a library. All spurs and lassos and riding bucks . . . Nathan Hale was an interesting choice of illustrator for this particular outing. It took me a while to get attuned to his more cartoonish style, I admit . . . For this book, Hale scales back the complexity (at least until he needs to use it) producing a simpler product. Once you get into it, it kinda works. I liked Hale’s ability to render the multiple uses of extremely long hair during the Rapunzel-grows-up montages. I liked that he was as comfortable presenting a grey desolate wasteland as we was a beautiful ball gown . . . And I liked that he ends the book with a very sexy kiss. Very sexy. Or maybe I just like boys in white shirtsleeves.”

Other young adult fantasy authors were R. D. Henham (AKA Rebecca Shelley), whose debut novel, Red Dragon Codex is the first of a series, and James A. Owen, who produced the second and third volumes of his Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series, in which a series of real and fictional literary characters are summoned to help a group of adventures. Owen’s second volume, The Search for the Red Dragon, received generally poor reviews.  A reviewer at Children’s Literature wrote, “While a charitable reading of the story would see this hyper-abundance of endlessly derivative borrowings as homage to the deep and powerful themes that run through all myth and fantasy, the overall effect is of an extremely long, smug, and tedious exercise in ‘See if you can guess all these literary allusions.’”  A reviewer at School Library Journal wrote, “There are moments that transcend the mixed genres, especially toward the end of the book, and one can see the brilliance of the concept. However, most of the novel is rather stilted with cardboard characters and overly elaborate dialogue. Young readers will not recognize the literary allusions, making this more of a choice for lovers of children’s literature and less of a book for children and teens.”

There are so many Mormons writing fantasy young adult novels, it is easy to forget the few who write other kinds of young adult novels. Kimberly Heuston wrote The Book of Jude, about an intelligent Mormon girl’s fight against a debilitating psychological illness, set against the historical events of the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Prague. Elizabeth Ward at The Washington Post wrote, “[Jude's] a canny and poetic observer, but because we’re limited to her viewpoint, the fog is pretty thick before it dawns on us that this is no portrait of a spoiled, “stupid American teenager,” but a remarkable inside account of a mental illness unfolding . . . Heuston’s interweaving of these big themes is moving and often funny, and she rarely jabs you to think this or feel that. You could give The Book of Jude to any adult, young or otherwise.”  Lynn Rashid at the School Library Journal wrote, “The story starts off slowly as the teen leaves New York and the political and social details of Czechoslovakia are presented. While some less-savvy readers may be alienated by the historical context and setting, others will be drawn in as it becomes apparent that Jude is struggling with more than the usual teen angst. Other novels do a better job of illuminating the realities of teen mental illness; what makes this novel unique is the context in which it takes place.” A reviewer at Kirkus wrote, “Diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, Jude is placed on medication and returned to her family in Prague where, far from cured, she continues her self-destructive behaviour. Only when her father brings a Mormon bishop to bless her does Jude return to functional health. Although Jude’s illness is powerfully and convincingly portrayed, the deus-ex-machina resolution fails to satisfy. Readers who don’t know or share the Mormon faith may be perplexed or unconvinced by Jude’s beatific religious experience. The message that severe mental illness can be cured, or at least controlled, by faith is at best debatable.”  It sounds interesting to me.

Emily Wing Smith is one of a number of recent LDS authors to receive a Masters in Fine Arts from Vermont College, where LDS author Martine Levitt teaches.  Flux, a new young adult imprint from Llewellyn Publications, published Smith’s first novel, The Way He Lived. A starred review from Publisher’s Weekly said, “Besides living in the same Mormon community in Utah, six young people have something else in common: each had a special connection to Joel, who died of dehydration after giving away his water during a badly planned Boy Scout expedition. In vignettes showing the six teens’ differing points of view, first-time author Smith probes into the psychologies of the survivors to demonstrate Joel’s effect on their lives and their attempts to make sense of his death. . . . The author preserves each narrator’s complexity, investigating their defences and revealing their core selves while dropping clues about the enigmatic Joel. It’s a testament to Smith’s skills that although her central character speaks only through other people’s recollections, his identity emerges distinctly by the end of the novel, giving the audience enough information to judge his actions for themselves.” Several reviewers have praised Smith for her subtle and convincing portrayal of the role of religion in the lives of the characters, and the tensions around Joel’s possible homosexuality.

A. E. (Ann) Cannon produced The Loser’s Guide to Life and Love, a contemporary take on A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Mormon blogger Gamlia writes, “This was an extremely fun read. The author has such a fun and hilarious voice. The characters are unique and funny, and this is a really funny romantic teen comedy. I laughed out loud lots of times. It was refreshing to read a really great teen book that was humorous. The book has several Mormon elements, as Scout’s brother is on a mission in Brazil, which is one of the ways Ed finds out so much info about the country, so he can act like he’s from Brazil.” A reviewer at Kirkus Reviews, however, wrote, “The alternating voices that convey the narrative in a variety of forms are uneven instead of engaging: Though Ed and Scout are convincing enough in their roles as totally-regular guy and gal, Ellie and Quark never rise beyond their stereotypes of lonely, brilliant beauty and geek. Mediocrity of storytelling aside, the romantic tension is palpable, there is a Shakespearean climax replete with costumes and kissing, and thus-inclined readers will find here at least a few hours of satisfying, if fleeting, romance.”

Kristen Landon’s debut novel, Life in the Pit, is the story of a girl in a school orchestra. Richelle Roth at School Library Journal wrote, “The story line bounces between a dull romance and a predictable and linear mystery. Brittany is a flimsy character, one moment smart, confident, and strong, the next unnecessarily self-conscious, jealous, and irrational. Interactions with side characters do nothing to flesh out her true self, and her upgrade from orchestra nerd to popularity queen is far too easy. Kyle’s unabashed expressions of love are unrealistic for a high school boy. Unbelievably, Amanda seems surprised and hurt by the notion that guys only want to date her for one reason, and the sober cover art fails to portray the flighty mood of the book.” Another 2008 novel was Carol Lynch Williams’ Pretty Like Us, about a shy middle school girl who meets a girl with a disease that prematurely ages her.

In the latest issue of Irreantum I discovered a nationally respected literary author was also an active Mormon.  The journal published two poems by Hart Wegner, a distinguished UNLV professor, and author of two highly regarded short story collections, both of which featured stories about character who, like Wegner, lived in Germany before and during World War II, and moved to Nevada after the war.  Wegner has won the Pushcraft Prize and many other awards.

Note from Wm: We have a writing rookie on tap for Thurs. and Short Story Friday on Fri. so we’ll finish up Andrew’s Year in Review with two or three more posts next week. Trust me: it’ll be worth the wait.

This last time we attended, however, something stood out to me which I believe will remain with me for the rest of my life. This epiphany centered around authors Shannon Hale (author of young adult fantasy novels such as Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River of Secrets and the Newberry award winning novel Princess Academy– not to mention my wife’s favorite writer) and Stephenie Meyer (best selling author of the vampire romances, the Twilight series, and also her new sci-fi thiller/romance The Host). It almost seemed as if there was a spotlight on them during the entire conference in my mind. I was intrigued not only by the two women themselves, but by what was happening between them. They were attached at the hip, eating together, constantly chatting up a storm with each other and even breaking the rules a bit and attending all of the same group discussions with each other (people were supposed to be assigned to different groups in each session so that it wouldn’t be cliquey and that we would get to know a wider, inter-disciplinary range of people). It was almost as if they were two Jr. High BFFs (Best Friends Forever, for those who haven’t kept up on pre-teen lingo). I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them had gone up to go the restroom, that the other would have raised her hand and asked if she could go too. And this almost claustrophobic closeness in my mind was absolutely, remarkably refreshing. To see these two very accomplished writers, who are established and famous in their respective fields and markets, cling to each other, in my opinion, was like what it would have been to see David and Jonathan form the bands of friendship, instead of rivalry.

To get a better picture to see what I was seeing, I think it’s important to note my observations about both women in this setting:

Shannon Hale was exuberent, an absolute ray of sunshine. Warm, talkative, opinionated (I mean that as the most positive of terms), confident, animated, intelligent, beautiful and really, really, really funny. I mean, she was absolutely hilarious. She was never hesitent to throw in her opinion on a subject, nor was she hesitent to give some one a good natured ribbing. The kind of person who would look you straight in the eye because she was neither afraid that you were superior to her, but neither was she ever looking down on you. You felt like you were on equal ground with her, if not in talent, then as a human being. I was surpised that after one of the chats she took a good deal of time to talk to my wife and I, relative nobodies compared to who else was in the room. Never talked down to us, never seemed impatient to get away. Just a lovely and charming woman, that made my wife’s day– not to mention my own.

If Shannon Hale was the sun, then Stephenie Meyer was the moon. Quiet, polite, slightly hesitent in her speech, kind, shy, with a gentle beauty. Quite the opposite of what one would expect from the woman who knocked off J.K. Rowling from the New York Times best sellers list. She was not only one of the humblest writers I have ever met, but one of the humblest people I have ever met. Period. I had the chance to talk her privately for a few minutes and I discovered what is typical of her kind of personality: talk to them one on one and that’s when they open up. Away from the stares of the public, you positively find them to be what you had only assumed them to be before: a wonderful, good hearted, insightful individual. I asked her about the upcoming film version of Twilight and she was very open with me, talking about the initial fears she had, especially with the first draft of the script (which, I later looked up, had butchered the story and wasn’t a faithful adaptation at all), but how a different script saved the day and she’s quite pleased with the outcome.

It could have been my imagination, but at first the ironic thing about Stephenie Meyer among this group of Mormon artists seemed to be that she was almost… intimidated. Perhaps it was because she felt she was among “Artists,” with a capital A. What I mean by that is that certain artistic personalities can look down on anything that is populist, or, excuse the term, for the “unwashed masses.” That’s an exaggeration, of course, a stereotype, but that’s the sense I got. She seemed to be afraid that she was at a conference full of people who were critical of her work, despite its overwhelming popularity and unabashed fans. Again, this could be me projecting this on her, but whatever the case was, she certainly wasn’t broadcasting her fame, nor using her bragging rights, nor even holding her chin up high. Instead, at the beginning of the conference she seemed almost embarrassed, as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. Of course, I don’t believe this particular group thought any less of Stephenie Meyer. If anything, they were feeling the same thing– rather awed to have this very famous personality in their midst. I certainly know that’s how I felt at first.

And then comes Shannon Hale. She literally took Stephenie Meyer by the arm and was instantly her bosom buddy. Not that their friendship hadn’t before this moment, mind you. How Mrs. Hale told it, if I can remember it correctly, she saw the success that Mrs. Meyer was having and said to herself something to the effect of, “She’s going to need a friend.” So she e-mailed her and they became instant friends. And I think Shannon Hale was very perceptive in this. Sure, it’s obvious that fame can be heady and thrilling and tantalizing. But it must be awful lonely, for as soon as some one makes a name for themself, there are going to be jealous individuals who will want to take that name, tear it down and “humble” it beneath their cruel heels.

And this is one of the reasons that I am so impressed with Shannon Hale. Here she was, a Newberry winner, an established, prolific author and a darn fine writer, whose sparse but poetic (almost elemental) prose, and well realized characters seem to spurt fire and wind and water and life from the page. And then comes Stephenie Meyer, a first time writer who admittedly told Time Magazine that, “I don’t think I’m a writer; I think I’m a storyteller. The words aren’t always perfect.” Here was an obscure, Mormon housewife from Arizona who catapulted into fame and fortune, simply because she had a vivid dream about a vampire romance and decided to write it down. It would have been tempting to any writer to say, “Oh, here I have strived for my reputation as a writer, worked very hard to perfect my craft, and here comes a freshman author and woos the world on her first try. Does she really deserve it? Is it really literature? Is she deserving?”

Not so with Shannon Hale. Instead of being a jealous hearted spoil sport who can’t identify with any work that falls out of her narrow definition of “art”– instead this most deserving of women looks at this other very vulnerable woman who has been thrust into a whole new world and she says, “She’s going to need a friend.”

This, I think, is something that deserves attention, quiet and intimate as it may be. Artists can be a contentious, avarice eyed lot, if they feed their insecurities and egos too much. But at this Mormon Artists Retreat, I found that the vast majority, if not the entire congregation of this group of Mormon Artists had something else entirely in their hearts– they truly had let their religion seep in not only their art, but in their relationships as artists. And there was no better example of this kind of love that weekend than Shannon Hale and Stephenie Meyer.