On the topic of, of religion, I'm just extremely fascinated by the way that the Rector, Mr. Montpellion is represented, and sort of, his struggle between faith and doubt. And, for me like, I was just amazed by, every single time he opens his mouth, something beautiful and eloquent came from him. And his face seemed to just sort of, spill out, from this overflow within him. and he remains resolute and steadfast throughout so much of the book. And on page 168 when, it's the scene where he's preaching to the congregation, and he's talking about, how the Lord will come through, the Lord will come through for them. Then he says, he's a good shepherd and he'll not abandon, even the least of his flock. And comparing that, to where we see him at the end of the book, where he seems to have lost his faith entirely, and he's this shell of a man, who's extremely broken. and on the bottom of the page 280 he says, and now it seems, there is no God and I was wrong, in what I asked of Elinor I, and in what I asked of myself. and then later down in that paragraph, he goes, my whole life, all I have done, all I have said, all I have felt, has been based upon a lie, untrue in everything. So now, I have learned to do, as I please. So, I was really interested in that progression in that sort of, little monologue there, where he starts this with saying, it seems, there is no God. He can't see God in the situation, then he makes this leap to well everything that I've based my life upon, has been a lie. And I was one, in, interested in, how that process looked. Like for you, developing this character, this man who seems to really, care about his faith, who really seems to care about his people and has been so steadfast in that, and he arrives at this place of brokenness, and that's where his story ends. And, I mean, the irony, I mean, really shouldn't be lost, in essence the name Michael means, he who is like God. So what does that mean for a man, who embodies so much of this exuberant faith, and then sort of, ends in that, in that very tragic way. >> Yeah, well, you know, it's just, I wasn't sure what was going to be with him, when I started the novel, and I think, characters develop their own momentum. But it just seemed to be the, arc of his character, that his character needed to take because he tried so hard to know the mind of God. And I think, you know, it might've been influenced by spending a great deal of time in Middle Eastern countries, where there are a tremendous number of people who think that, they know exactly what God wants. And the consequences of that kind of faith, sometimes can be remarkable outpourings of charity and good works. And other times, it can be this devastating hatred because if you know what God wants and somebody's not doing it, well they're sub-human to you. And, I guess, I was thinking of a character, you know, I was thinking of this young minister comes into this community, he's an outsider, he's from a different religious conviction, than a lot of people in the village. And yet within a year, he's able to bring them to this incredible consensus and that kind of guy, has to be absolutely magnetic and charismatic and persuasive. But with that, often there's a dark side and it's sort of like a Jim Jones phenomenon, like you are so charismatic that you can convince people to act in ways that are against their selfish self-interests, even to the point, where you can lead them to their death. So you know, there's, there's a dark side to that charisma, and you know, I just learned in the Middle East, if somebody thinks they know what God wants, you want to run 100 miles in the other direction, as fast as you can. Because, you know, I think that, it's much better to say, how would we ever know? You know, this is ineffable, ineffable stuff, there's no answer to it. So, I guess his loss of faith was the arc that I felt, his character had to take, having done everything that he thought God wanted him to do, and yet, he couldn't bring the deaths to an end. And even in the end, his own wife is taken from him, so he's cast into self-doubt. Whether he stays that way, you know, that is an open question, but I think that Anna is the one who really speaks to the nature of a challenged faith in the end, when she says, I can't say, I have faith anymore, hope, maybe. And I think that, that, to me, was the kind of journey that you would go on if you, if you tried to do everything right, and yet, you didn't see an answer to your prayers. >> I wonder, you know, the plague is such a, I mean, it's historical in its monstrosity, and so in a way that, the facts are there. but I also, multiple times, wondered, if you took anything from the Book of Job. Because, it's on 166 in, in my edition, and it's in the chapter, Among Those That Go Down to the Pit. And, the passage reads, my dear friends, God has tried us sorely these months. You have met his tests with courage and be sure, you will be rewarded for it. I had dared to hope, we all had hoped, that the test would not be so long nor so hard as it is, as it has been, as it continues to be, but who can presume, to read the mind of God? Who can understand the intricacy of His design? For, God is subtle, he does not always point at what he intends, but is more dark, and we must seek his face and entreat him, that he will, in his mercy, show it to us. Beloved, do not lose sight, etc. and this to me, I don't know, especially the line, but who can presume to read the mind of God, it just made me wonder, if, if you had much of the Book of Job in mind or if it simply was, sort of, the historical backing, that gave life to these words? >> Well, I think it wasn't Job, so much as you know, the old God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform, which was one of the inspirations for calling this, Year of Wonders. And, you know, that was, that's what people of belief always take as their consolation, that we can't see the whole design, and it's through a glass, darkly. I think those were more on my mind, than Job was, to be honest. But, so certainly, Job is a fabulously powerful piece of writing, that, you know, it's one of those things, that's probably resonant in your mind, even if you're not calling on it directly. >> Can I ask a general question about your, in listening to you talk about this novel and also, being familiar with, with your other work. I'm thinking particularly of, of People of the Book, and the, the way that you, speak about your own historical fiction, I, I, I don't think I've heard you say anything, that hasn't found a kind of contemporary resonance in, in our world. And so many writers of historical fiction will have a, have a very ascetic kind of approach, like this is about the past. It's the past on its own terms, the past in its own values, its own language. But you seem to have a kind of, past-present, tension, that's really wonderful, not just in the book, but in the way you talk about it. And I wonder, is there polemical edge there, with respect to the world of historical fiction, as it exists today, or is that more of just a, personal conviction about what you're writing? And I only ask this question because this is a class on the genre, so I'd love to hear, what you think. >> Yeah, I alluded to this briefly earlier, and I think it's, it's, there's, I think, there's a fundamental rift in writers of historical fiction and it's a rift that runs through other aspects of life too, which is same or different? Is what unites us, more than what divides us? And as a foreign correspondent in the contemporary world, I would hear people all the time saying, they're not like us. One side saying about the other, white South Africans about black, Palestinians about Israelis. Their values are different, they don't love their kids, they're willing to sacrifice them, they don't have the same material needs that we have, and it's all BS in my view. You know, the sound of somebody keening for a dead child, is exactly the same. No matter if they're in an, you know, New York apartment, or an Eretrean refugee camp. There's fundamental belief, that the human heart hasn't changed that much. So, you can argue that, but certainly, circumstances are different. I think, you know, at a time when you couldn't expect to raise your kids, when death was ever present, there would've been a different approach to loss. But I don't think it felt any different, I don't think the emotion of loss felt any different, and I don't think hatred felt any different, and I don't think, love did. And so, that for me is, where you start, with believing that human beings have these strong emotions in common. And that, that is more crucial to shaping consciousness, than the furniture in the room. And it's, you know, there's the famous letter that Henry James wrote to Sarah Orne Jewett, that you guys might have come across already. Because Sarah Orne Jewett was a novelist in Maine, and she sent her manuscript to James. It was a historical novel, and James wrote back to her, in the most disparaging terms. he said any attempt to write about a period more than fifty years removed from one's own, is worthless, and should not even be attempted. You can multiply the little facts that can be got from pictures and documents, as much as you like, but the real thing, the old consciousness, will not be within your reach, because, and I'm paraphrasing now, because half the things that make our modern world, didn't exist for them. And I read that when I was right in the thick of, of writing Year of Wonders, and feeling pretty good about the quality of my research. And I read him saying, it's worthless, and shouldn't even be attempted. So I went downstairs and poured myself an adult beverage. [LAUGH] And and I thought, I wonder how this sat with Sarah Orne Jewett, so I looked up her bibliography, and I found that, that novel she'd sent to Henry James, was the last she'd ever written. And I thought, he discouraged her, and then I read more about her and I found out that no, what actually happened was that, she was in a carriage accident very soon after that correspondence and she was gravely injured and died, within the year. And I started to imagine it immediately, I started to imagine Sarah and the carriage, and I imagined the horses' hooves losing their footing on the ice, in Maine. And the disarray and the crunch of the metal of the wheels, and her starched skirt, flying into the air. And then, the crunch of her breaking bones as she landed. And I thought, a pox on you Henry James because this is what we do, we empathize, we put ourselves in someone else's shoes. This is what the nature of being a human being is, at its best, is empathy, and carriage accident, car crash, what's it matter, what the mechanics of it were? I can presume to know her consciousness, her pain, her frustration, at not being able to do to the work that she loved, her fear of death. Her frustration with her own frailty and weakness, because these things are what make us human, and they don't change. So, there's a lot of obstetrical grimness in, Year of Wonders. my son was delivered, it was an obstetrical emergency, it was a terrible, terrible, bloody, protracted, panic-stricken birth. And the fact, that it happened in a modern hospital with highly-engineered forceps, does that make it really different, from somebody who used a thatcher's hook in the same predicament? Because what really mattered that night, was I thought, I was going to lose that baby. So, that's my conviction about historical fiction, and it sort of, drives everything for me. >> along the lines of, you know, working with characters, who are inevitably doomed, I think it's really interesting, whenever you have, whenever you have a plot line where the audience knows what's going to happen and it's not good, and that happens a lot with historical fiction because that's what people like to read about. You know, you like to read about, you know, the big events that have happened in history and a lot of them are inevitably, kind of upsetting. So, I was wondering, how you approached this as an author, in terms of writing a story. How do you write a story that compels the audience, when a, they know what's going to happen, and b, it's not, it's not looking good for the characters that they love. So, what do you do [LAUGH] in terms of, in terms of the crafts of writing? How do you make the audience, still want to read it to the end and see what happens, when they really know, a lot of, what's about to happen? >> It's a bit, it's a bit mysterious, actually, and, and this book is a prime example about that. Because you know, everybody's dead, right at the beginning. So there's no suspense about, what's going to happen to Anna's kids, or the minister's wife, I've given that all away, right at the get-go. But I was hoping, that people would want to know, how it happened. And then in the end, so the ending of this book has been quite controversial. in the end I wanted it to be okay for Anna, and so what's okay, when you've lost everything? How do I make it okay for her? And so, you know, it leads me back to, well, what do women want, what do I want, as a woman? I want time and space to get my work done and decent child care. [LAUGH] You know, at that time, because I had a very young child and I'm trying to write and it's very frustrating. So I thought, I want to send her somewhere that's completely different because I knew, that the actual historical fact is that, Eyam didn't recover from the plague really. I mean, the disease was gone, but the village was devastated, for another 100 years. People were very superstitious about going there, they were, you know, completely, because they didn't understand germ theory. There was always a fear, that it could come again, and so there's this depopulated, grief stricken, miserable place, I'm not going to leave her there! So I thought, I'd like to send her somewhere loud, and noisy, and bright, and crowded. And I thought, I know a few places like that, but would it be feasible for a woman alone, to make that journey? And so, I started researching journeys of 17th century women, and some of them are amazing. My favorite one, actually, concerns a, a Quaker woman who is beaten on the village green for her beliefs and then later she decides that, God wants her to convert the Ottoman Sultan to Christianity. So, she travels alone to Istanbul and manages to get a meeting with the Sultan, which was extraordinary, because nobody saw the Sultan. She didn't convert him, but anyway, it was an extraordinary journey, and then she goes on to Charleston, where she has six or seven kids, and, her grave is there, unfortunately, under a parking lot now, but, [LAUGH] you know. So women did extraordinary journeys, and I found this one journey that I liked, of these two Irish midwives, who had also taken ship for the American colonies, but their boat had been hijacked by Barbary pirates. And these two midwives were about to be sold into chattel slavery, but because of their skills in midwifery, they became respected pillars of the community. And I thought well, that's what I want for Anna, I want her to be able to pursue this healing gift, that she has developed. And so a little naughtily, I decided, that I would send her to Oran because that's where Camus' book, The Plague, is set. [LAUGH]
