The Best Place to Be by Lesley Dorman (with interview and giveaway)

When I learned that The Best Place to Be by Lesley Dormen was a novel in stories, I was intrigued. I read a book last year that claimed to be a novel in stories, but I was disappointed. In my mind, the stories should stand up by themselves (they are stories, after all), but together, they should enhance one another and pull it all together. Dormen accomplished this and more.

The Best Place to Be grabbed me from the very first page. Dormen tells the story of Grace, a woman trying to find herself in the hustle and bustle that is New York City. She chronicles Grace's difficult relationships with men, but mostly the challenge of maintaining a relationship with a difficult mother and a father who hasn't been present since she was young.

Telling the stories in the first person (and out of order, beginning with Grace at age 50) showcases Grace's quirkiness and humor (including her obsession with documentaries about the Kennedy assassination, her inability to fire the housekeeper who doesn't do anything right, and her need to purchase thousands of dollars worth of clothes and then rush off to her therapist to discuss her shopping). In the final story, "The Best Place to Be," Grace says:

My plan had been to meet middle age with exquisite dignity and chic restraint. As usual, I have veered off course. I was headed in the Dame Edna direction. (page 157)

While I couldn't relate to being 50 or having affairs with married men, I could understand Grace's feelings of not being where you thought you'd be...and then realizing you're content where you are. My favorite passage comes from the same story:

I looked out the window and was filled with contentment. I was on a train. There was no landscape, ugly or beautiful, to demand my attention. No aspiring terrorist had taken the seat next to me. None of the passengers within view were badly dressed. . . . I was happily married but alone, nothing in the immediate past to regret, nothing in the immediate future to fear. In between--the best place to be. (page 161)

You can read an excerpt from The Best Place to Be here.

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Lesley. I had so many questions about the stories, Grace, and her writing process, and she graciously answered them all!

What inspired you to write The Best Place to Be?

I wrote the very short story "I Asked My Mother," and fell in love with the voice of this funny, angry, confused young woman who had such a complicated relationship with her mother and with herself. That first-person storyteller made me laugh and moved me. I wanted to hear more from her.

The Best Place to Be is "A Novel in Stories." Did you intend that from the beginning or had you written a short story or two about Grace and decided to turn them into a novel?

I didn't know that I was writing a novel--I just wanted to take this voice and shape it into stories. So yes, I wrote a second story ("The Old Economy Husband") in which we hear from Grace later in life. By the third story, I still wasn't done with Grace. I began to think, Hmm. Maybe they'll add up to something larger. Then I put that idea out of my mind and refocused on the next story.

I'm intrigued by the novel-in-stories construct, and I thought you pulled it off brilliantly. Each story can stand on its own, but reading them together was so fulfilling. Were the stories published individually elsewhere?

Most of the stories were published individually--all but one, actually--in various literary journals and in The Atlantic Monthly. When I sold the collection, my editor asked me to fill in a few holes for consistency. It was my idea to order the stories non-chronologically.

What inspired you to create the character of Grace? It was so easy to fall in love with her quirkiness and humor despite the pain. Was it difficult to create such a well-developed character within the confines of a short story? I loved how I learned a little bit more about her from story to story, and with the stories out of order chronologically, it was fun to put all the pieces of Grace together in my mind as I went along.

My inspiration for Grace was definitely her quirkiness and humor. She really made me laugh. At the same time, I understood that her humor came from the deepest core of her and covered up a lot of pain and vulnerability. This was a character who was so flawed, certainly damaged, yet so resilient. I loved that resilience and found it poignant. My challenge as a writer was to connect to Grace's vulnerability, to "play dumb" as it were as a writer, to let Grace's voice come through me, to hear her tell her own story at different ages. But you can't create a three-dimensional character--especially in first-person--if you aren't connected to her sadness and anger, to all her feelings, because the humor comes out of that. It's a point of view. Each time I finished a Grace story, I'd have to begin the discovery process all over again, to tap into her heart and soul, as if she were a brand-new character. Which in a certain way she was, since I have her telling her story at different ages--from eighteen to fifty-something.

What is your favorite story in the book?

My favorite story is "General Strike." It was the last Grace story I wrote, and it was the hardest for me to write. I think all the themes come together in it--her sadness over the loss of her father, her sustaining marriage, her special intimacy with her brother, her longing to reconcile the past and present.

Where do you do most of your writing? Could you describe your writing process? How much time do you spend every day writing?

I write in my apartment in Greenwich Village, at a beautiful old oak desk my husband found for pennies many years ago and that we recently learned is being slowly eaten from within by some kind of termite. So the wood is developing all these cracks and creaks, and I'm scared it's going to come crashing down one day, taking my computer with it. Actually, that's a pretty good metaphor for the writing life. I do spend every day writing when I have something "cooking." Getting started is what's hard. I'm a big procrastinator, and I'd be lying if I said I wrote every day. But when I'm on to an idea, a voice, a situation, I tend it like a slow-cooking pot of soup on the stove. I can't stay away.

Who are your favorite authors? What kinds of books do you most enjoy?

Oh, there are so many writers I love and admire. Philip Roth, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Mary Gaitskill, Joan Didion, Julie Hecht, Annie Ernaux, to name just a handful of living writers. I love writers who can both move me and make me laugh, and I love writers who can take me inside the experience of being female in some surprising, illuminating way.

You teach fiction writing at the Writer Studio in Greenwich Village. Any advice for us aspiring novelists?

My advice as a teacher is to read wonderful writers, allow yourself to feel competitive with the best of them, ask yourself, how did she do that? A terrific piece of writing should move you in some way. Focus on the craft of a piece of writing that does move you. Try to take it apart, to look at it clinically, as a writer and not a reader. Wonderful writers put on a show. Try to get backstage and figure out how the magic is being created. What feels most urgent inside you to communicate--feelings, ideas, images--will be the clay, but you need technique to mold it. Poetry is a terrific inspiration and a tool for a fiction writer. A narrative poem, for example, offers up an emotionally fueled short story in a page or less. Some surprising marriage of feeling and form is what I'm always after.

I think that's some great advice that I'm going to try to put to use. Thanks, Lesley! It was a pleasure working with you!

**Would you like to win a copy of The Best Place to Be? Lesley has generously offered a copy to one lucky reader. (Thanks again, Lesley!)

~~Please leave a comment on this post telling me why you want to read The Best Place to Be or what you found most interesting about my interview with Lesley. Leave your email address with the comment so I can contact you if you win. **You MUST leave an email address! Any comments without email addresses will not be counted.**

~~You can get an extra entry by blogging about the interview and giveaway. Just leave the link to your post in the comments. **If you don't have a blog, you can get an extra entry by emailing 5 friends to tell them about The Best Place to Be with a link to this post. Please cc me on the message.**

~~The deadline is Midnight EST on Saturday, Oct. 18.

I want to give a special THANK YOU to the ladies at TLC Book Tours for this wonderful opportunity!

Follow Lesley around the blogs! Click here for the complete list of tour stops!

Disclosure:  I received a free copy of The Best Place to Be from the author for review purposes.