I loved Fragile, so I was thrilled when given the opportunity to send some questions to Lida Unger for her to answer here on this blog! YEAH... Hope they are questions you would have asked too!
I
didn't grow up in New Haven, though that's where I was born. I
traveled all over with my family and then eventually moved to a smallish
town in New Jersey. The Hollows isn't based on that town exactly, but
I'd say there's a familiar essence. Having moved around -- I lived in
England, Holland, and other areas in New Jersey before my family finally
settled - I found myself as more of an outsider in a small community.
Because of that, I think I was more able to observe the nuances and
dynamics of the town. A writer is an observer before all things. And
so I absorbed a lot, without ever truly being part of it. And that,
among myriad experiences, certainly informed my ideas about the type of
community we find in FRAGILE.
2. Was
there a real-life police case/file that you based the book on? I know
it was based on a true story, but what type of research did you do?
When
I was a teenager, a girl I knew was abducted and murdered. I wouldn’t
go so far as to say that we were friends. But we were acquaintances,
played together in the same school orchestra. And her horrible, tragic
death was a terrifying and hugely traumatic moment in a quiet, suburban
town where nothing like that had ever happened before. This event
changed me. It changed the way I saw the world. And I carried it with
me in ways I wasn’t aware of until I was metabolizing it on the page --
more than twenty-five years later.
This story has tried to make its way out in other partials that I have discarded or abandoned. The voices that had tried to tell it before were never strong enough to center a novel around. It is notable that the voices who finally were able to tell the tale are much older, people with a lot of distance from the fictional event. In other words, it’s almost as if we all -- the characters and the author -- needed to grow up a little to have access to the heart of the story, to really understand it.
But all that said, FRAGILE is not about the actual abduction and murder. My memories of what actually occurred, the police investigation, the trial and conviction are vague at best. And I did nothing to rectify that fact. I did not track down key players, conduct interviews, find news accounts. I didn’t want it to be that kind of book. I had a fear of exploiting someone who had met a tragic end, of causing pain to people who surely didn’t deserve any more. Everything in FRAGILE is purely fictional.
This story has tried to make its way out in other partials that I have discarded or abandoned. The voices that had tried to tell it before were never strong enough to center a novel around. It is notable that the voices who finally were able to tell the tale are much older, people with a lot of distance from the fictional event. In other words, it’s almost as if we all -- the characters and the author -- needed to grow up a little to have access to the heart of the story, to really understand it.
But all that said, FRAGILE is not about the actual abduction and murder. My memories of what actually occurred, the police investigation, the trial and conviction are vague at best. And I did nothing to rectify that fact. I did not track down key players, conduct interviews, find news accounts. I didn’t want it to be that kind of book. I had a fear of exploiting someone who had met a tragic end, of causing pain to people who surely didn’t deserve any more. Everything in FRAGILE is purely fictional.
3. Do you feel that you ‘learn on the job’ so to speak with each book, and did that help you write a better book with this one?
I
do feel that way. It's the thing that motivates me most as a writer.
Every day, when I sit down to write, I try to be a better writer than I
was yesterday. And I truly do believe that it took me the writing of
eight novels to develop the skills I needed to write FRAGILE. It's
interesting to learn that you can have ambitions to tell a story but not
have the skill necessary to do it well. It takes time and effort to get
better at your craft. At least it did for me.
4. Are you going to write more women's fiction/family drama books now that depart from your normal mystery/thrillers?
In
writing FRAGILE, I didn't really make a conscious decision to do
something “different.” Not much about my process is conscious. Most of
my novels start with a voice, and in this case it was Maggie. We first
meet her in a moment when she was feeling the loss of her son -- not in
any tragic way. It’s in that normal way that we say goodbye to our
children every day, as they grow and change into someone new. In a
moment of conflict with her teenager, she’s missing the loving little
boy he was -- even as much as she loves the person he has become. So it
was her voice, her story, that brought me into The Hollows. Once I was
there, I was meeting different types of people than I had met before.
And their experiences, their way of telling was very different.
As
much as FRAGILE is different than the novels that came before it, it
felt like a very natural evolution of my writing. This week I will turn
in my next novel. And I’m not sure I can say what people will call it.
Certainly, it has a dark side, like all my novels. But I suppose I’d
say it’s more like FRAGILE than some of the others. And I suspect it
offers everything my readers expect --and hopefully a little more. But
more than anything, I hope that I have been true to my characters and to
the story itself. Because ultimately I think that’s what matters most.
5. Will you be doing any book signings with the new book?
Yes, I will be on the road for this new book. Please visit http://www.lisaunger.
About Lisa Unger: Lisa Unger is the award winning
author of Die for You and the New York Times bestsellers Beautiful
Lies, Sliver of Truth, and Black Out and a new
book, Fragile, coming August 2010. Her novels have been
published in over 26 countries around the world. She lives in Florida
with her husband and daughter. www.lisaunger.com
