Author Spotlight: Paullina Simons

Recently I cor­re­sponded with Paul­lina Simons to ask her sev­eral ques­tions and one was why she likes to write about depress­ing sub­jects. Why so much strife for her char­ac­ters? Why must her char­ac­ters suf­fer so much for their happy ending? Wait. I must check myself because in her books a happy end­ing is an uncertainty. If you’ve read The Bronze Horse­man or Tatiana and Alexan­der or The Sum­mer Gar­den, you’ll know what I mean about “strife.” There is always some human con­flict. A bit of pain and a bit of suf­fer­ing. All you care about by the journey’s end is that they are alive and whole in body and spirit. There might be some wear and tear along the way but at least they are alive. But then again these are not romances. How­ever they have a com­pelling love story in them.

Here was her response to my ques­tion about writ­ing such depres­sive topics:

I write about the human con­di­tion, which is multi-layered. Some of those lay­ers are angst, strife, and suf­fer­ing. Suf­fer­ing is con­flict, con­flict is strife, strife is drama, drama makes good sto­ries. Most fic­tion con­tains in it human con­flict because with­out it, you just have peo­ple look­ing out the win­dow, paint­ing, watch­ing TV, talk­ing with friends, bike-riding maybe. That’s the kind of life I want, but I’m not sure I’d want to read a book like that.
Anne Lamott’s Trav­el­ing Mer­cies is noth­ing short of mirac­u­lous. It’s the only thing I’m rec­om­mend­ing these days. That and Tru­man Capote’s In Cold Blood (talk about strife).

I did email her a sec­ond time to ask one, last, final ques­tion which was: what is The Bartered Bride all about? Will we have another emo­tional roller coaster journey? As of now I haven’t heard back from her but what I did find was a syn­op­sis online that had this to say about her nineth novel:

This is the story of three girls just out of high school on a jour­ney across Amer­ica. It’s 1981 and Shelby Sloane gets a canary yel­low Mus­tang con­vert­ible as a grad­u­a­tion present. She sets out on an odyssey to find her mother who left her many years ear­lier. When Shelby’s for­mer best friend Gina asks to come along, Shelby reluc­tantly agrees. And so the two girls, who at eigh­teen think they know every­thing, are about to set out to find out how much they don’t know. The girls think the trip will last a week at most. This will be their first mis­take. Some other things they don’t know: map skills; geog­ra­phy; God; gam­bling; how to deal with real ter­ror; what it’s like to love. And as the trip con­tin­ues in spurts and starts, they feel the stress of their past con­flict and the secret heart­breaks between them — secrets that fill every empty space in the tiny Mus­tang. When they see a young woman hitch­hik­ing on the side of a coun­try road, they don’t want to pick her up. They turn their gaze away. But days later, they find her again. Candy, the Bartered Bride, gets in. She sucks them into her treach­er­ous world and her own fright­ful jour­ney, which is as far removed from theirs as the moons of Sat­urn are from Earth. The ride that began with high spir­its and good humour pro­ceeds into the dark­est back­roads of Amer­ica, when Shelby, Candy and Gina are forced to make real moral choices that have crit­i­cal con­se­quences for their future, and by their ordeals they learn some of those things they did not know. 

Well, does that sound like another emo­tional jour­ney to you or what? The Bartered Bride is to be pub­lished by ANZ and will be released this Novem­ber. Plus she is going on tour. Ms. Simons goes on to say that most of her books are being pub­lished in the US by Dou­ble­day and Book of the Month book­clubs first and then by the trade pub­lish­ers in the near future. Any­way, it’s good to see her books pub­lished in the United States.  Many of us after read­ing The Bronze Horse­man had to order the sequel from the UK as well as the third and last entry in the tril­ogy, The Sum­mer Gar­den. How­ever first two are now avail­able to pur­chase at Ama​zon​.com. The third title is only avail­able through Dou­ble­day bookclub. Ms. Simons also has a cook­book and anec­dote book com­ing about called Tatiana’s Table which will be released in Aus­traila and New Zeland on Mother’s day.

I also found more author info on her offi­cial web­site paul​li​nasi​mons​.com and a wiki that states that she is cur­rently writ­ing a screen­play for The Bronze Horse­man. Inter­est­ing because I can’t imag­ine who could play Alexan­der or Tatiana. Would you watch it? I’m wary but then if the author had a more sig­nif­i­cant role in who was play­ing what I might watch it. Maybe. How­ever I did find this quote by Ms. Simons about the adap­ta­tion of the movie:

The fas­ci­na­tion about a pos­si­ble movie being made out of Bronze Horse­man is aston­ish­ing. But this is the one book that I can­not and will not entrust to some­one else to adapt to the screen, and I myself am flooded with prose work. I hope to have a screen­play fin­ished soon.

In con­clu­sion, I wish I had more juicy gos­sip to share with you but alas this is all there is my friends. Of course if I learn any­thing new I will share it with you. If you haven’t read The Bronze Horse­man you should. It’s not a book that has uni­ver­sal appeal but it has stayed with me for years. Why? I love Ms. Simons autho­r­ial voice, her real­is­tic dia­logue, her char­ac­ters and their tale of over­com­ing strife and adversity.

For Fur­ther Reading

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