Here’s the elevator pitch for my novel, Rebirthday: Natalia Garces, a 16 year old girl living in pre-pandemic St. Paul, receives an urgent bone marrow transplant from her non-twin sister. The family helps her through. This sounds more tragic than comic, but on the whole, it’s a pretty humorous book.
Finding a comic and dramatic tone for this story has been a rewarding process. I like to write snappy teenage dialogue, it turns out. When I started my project four years ago, the tone was dreamy, serious, maybe a little self-important. The mother of the sick girl was the main point of view. About a year ago, when I turned the voice over to Natalia, the scenes came alive with smart-ass dialogue from her, as well as her twin, Paige, and their older sister, Izzy. These girls flirt with the residents, they argue in the hospital room with the door open, they dispassionately argue why it’s time to shave their sister’s head. They remain resolutely teenagers even as they skirt death.
I recently read Sarah Hepola’s memoir Blackout (See also her jubilant Substack with Nancy Rommelmann, Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em). At the end of her funny and moving addict-in-recovery story, she gave five mini-reviews of drinking memoirs that she wanted her own book to resemble.
I thought about what novels have led me to this comic/dramatic project. The list was far too long, but as I narrowed it, three standards emerged. The story is about a close-knit family. The central crisis is often medical and it’s always spiritual. Hope is hard-won by the family and they hold on to it.
1. Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
First discovered at a Scholastic book fair in fifth or sixth grade. It was a copy with a photo of Meghan Follows from the film adaptation we all watched on PBS. Anne was kind of mean, kind of funny, and I hung in there with her for 8 or 9 books because I loved her company so much.
2. E. M. Forster, Howards End
“Only connect,” I remember reading. This is the gold standard for dialogue that characterizes, plots, and entertains me. Every line is perfect. As for how I acquired the book, I must have bought a film-edition paperback after seeing Merchant Ivory’s Room with a View and Howards End.
3. Zadie Smith, On Beauty
I tore through all of Smith’s books after discovering her through bookclub. She was my model star-novelist (I still admire her fashion sense and wry interview style). This book was an homage to Howards End, updated to our times. I still remember individual lines of dialogue. Kiki, the mother, says to Howard, the father, about their rebellious son staying out all night, “I’m not a jailer.”
4. Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Sam Taylor, The Heart (also with Jessica Moore in a UK translation, Mend the Living)
This one grabbed me as one of my relatives was going through radiation treatments for a tumor. It’s more artsy than the other books, following the heart of a donor to its recipient over the course of a day. It’s wrenching and sad and hopeful.
5. Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet
A bookclub selection by my friend Christine. The book found me by pure coincidence, but now she’s the living writer I admire most in the world. It feels as if O’Farrell entered Anne Hathaway’s actual mind through a tour of Shakespeare’s home. How else could she describe, grain-by-grain, what their family was like?