November 12, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode, I chat with Mary Morris about her latest novel, The Red House.
A lost button at an airport. A plaque on a modest olive tree. A red monolith on a hill that once held people in limbo. My conversation with Mary Morris reveals how these small, stubborn details evolved into The Red House, a propulsive and intimate novel about a daughter following her missing mother’s trail across Italy and through the overlooked corners of World War II history.
Mary shares how speaking Italian—and loving languages—let her move beyond postcards and step inside local memory, building the kind of empathy that makes fiction feel true.
The heart of this episode beats with maternal absence and creative courage. Mary reflects on the teacher who named her a writer, the dream that pushed her to New York, and the decision to return to the sheer pleasure of story over market expectations. We chat about the joy of reading books translated into English, reading for texture, and why art—visual, poetic, and narrative—can hold what direct speech cannot. If you’re drawn to literary fiction, historical mystery, Italian settings, WWII history in southern Italy, and novels that braid love, loss, and identity, you’ll feel at home here.
If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves books, and leave a quick review—your notes help more curious readers find us.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly, and I'm a
bibliophile.
Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast.
Each week I present interviewswith authors, independent
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publishing professionals.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
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(00:32):
And remember to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
listen to this podcast.
You're listening to episode 312.
Hi, and before we get started, Iwould like to thank FeedSpot for
voting the Bookshop Podcast asthe number one in the 20-top
(00:53):
bibliophile podcast for 2025.
That's two years running.
Thank you, FeetSpot.
We appreciate it.
Okay, now let's get on with thisweek's episode.
Mary Morris is the author ofnumerous works of fiction,
including the novels The WaitingGame, Gateway to the Moon, The
Jazz Palace, A Mother's Love,and House Arrest, and of
non-fiction, including thetravel memoir Nothing to
(01:16):
Declare, Memoirs of a WomanTraveling Alone.
She is a recipient of the RomePrize in Literature and the 2016
Annis Field Wolf Award forFiction.
She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Mary's latest novel is titledThe Red House.
And here's the synopsis.
(01:36):
She left behind her purse, herkeys, and her mysterious
paintings of a red house.
Viola was never found, and herfamily never recovered.
Laura, an artist herself, heldon to the paintings.
On the back of each work, hermother scrawled in Italian, I
will not be here forever.
The family never understood whatViola meant.
(01:57):
Decades later, at a crossroadsin her marriage and her life,
Laura returns to Italy, whereher parents met after World War
II.
Laura spent the earliest yearsof her childhood there before
the family moved to New Jerseyand settled into an American
dream that eventually became anightmare.
Viola, who claimed to be anorphan, staunchly refused to
(02:19):
speak of her life beforemarriage.
In Italy, Laura finds herself ona strange scavenger hunt to
solve the puzzle of her mother'slost years.
She is certain that thepaintings of the Red House hold
the answer to her mother's past,and her search takes her from
her hometown in Brindisi deepinto Puglia, where she
encounters a man who knew hermother and who illuminates
(02:41):
little-known secrets of Italy'sSecond World War.
Blending elements of true crimewith settings that evoke Elena
Ferrante, Laura follows hermother's trajectory as she
ventures north to Naples, Turin,and finally home.
Along the way, she confronts thedark truth of her mother's story
and at last makes sense of herown.
(03:01):
Hi Mary and welcome to the show.
It's great to have you here.
Thank you, Mandy.
SPEAKER_00 (03:06):
It's lovely to be here.
I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02 (03:08):
It's my pleasure, and I have to say, I absolutely
loved The Red House.
What a wonderful book.
Anytime I read a novel ofhistorical fiction, I end up
down rabbit holes looking upfacts.
And the Red House was wonderful.
I learned so much from readingthe book.
Let's begin with learning aboutyou and your mother's love of
(03:29):
travel.
And then the first time you weretold you were going to be a
writer because I love thatstory.
SPEAKER_00 (03:35):
I mean, the kind of cool thing about my mother was
that she was a person who lovedtravel, who never was able to go
anywhere.
She was a suburban housewife.
She wanted to go everywhere.
She named our first dog Renoirbecause she wanted a Renoir and
she wanted to go to France andshe loved France, but she'd
never gone.
So when she was 15, she actuallytook me with her to girl because
(03:56):
my dad wouldn't wouldn't travel.
But the story I love to tellabout my mother, and it's in the
my first travel memoir, Nothingto Declare, is my parents were
invited to a suppressed desireball.
Now, I don't think they havesuppressed desire balls anymore,
but then they did.
And you were to go as yoursecret wish.
(04:16):
And my mother, who had a degreein fashion design from the Art
Institute of Chicago in 1930,okay, she had a scholarship.
She went into a kind of weirdtrance and she wound up, she
bought home all this stuff.
I didn't know what she wasdoing.
And she went down to thebasement and she had a
mannequin, she started buildingthis thing.
I didn't know what it was.
And I'd go down there at nightand she'd say, Where should I
(04:39):
put the Taj Mahal?
Where should the Eiffel Towergo?
And I was like, What do you?
You know, I didn't know what shewas doing.
Well, anyway, the night of theball, I was quite little, and I
remember standing at the bottomof the stairs and looking up at
my parents.
And my father looked absolutelyhandsome and debonaire and
striking in a tuxedo.
(05:00):
And it seemed as if he had nocostume.
But in fact, his barber hadgiven him a toupee, and he
looked just like Carrie Graham.
I mean, he was very, veryhandsome.
My mother had made a costume ofthe world for herself.
My mother became the world.
And that is probably the mostformative image of my mother
that I will ever have.
And I fell in, I fell in lovewith travel then.
(05:21):
I fell in love with her longing.
And um, you know, I fulfilledher dreams.
And she did wind up travelinglater in her life.
SPEAKER_02 (05:30):
So oh Mary, I love the story of your mother
building this stress or makingthis piece of art.
I used to work in fashion and asa stylist and costume designer
in the film industry, and I canjust see her building the stress
of the world.
Oh, what a beautiful image.
SPEAKER_00 (05:49):
I mean, it it's probably it's it's an
extraordinary story for me, youknow.
And and she was good, you know,she really could do those.
So she was very good at it.
SPEAKER_02 (06:00):
Making clothes is kind of a dying art, I think,
for for mothers anyway.
I don't know about you, but whenI was younger, I got all the
hand-me-downs, and most of themwere uh clothes that my mother
had made for my older sister.
Um, she did make me a few piecesof my own, which are treasured.
I still have them.
But yeah, it's kind of a dyingart.
I I guess it's because clothinguh can be bought so cheaply now.
(06:24):
And also we have thrift storeswhere people can buy clothes at
affordable prices.
SPEAKER_00 (06:29):
My mother um she quilted um on my bedspread, she
made my curtains.
It took her seven.
I you know, I actually think Iwas ready to leave for college
by the time she finishedquilting my bedspread.
Oh my goodness.
But she she really, really wasvery, very gifted.
And I think you're right thatit's it's now viewed as kind of
quaint, you know what I mean?
That I don't know anyone whodoes their own seamstressing
(06:50):
anymore.
SPEAKER_02 (06:51):
Yeah, it's sad to think of it as being a dying
art.
And what about the story, one ofmy favorites about you, when you
were a little girl and someonetold you you were going to be a
writer?
SPEAKER_00 (07:02):
Um well, there are two stories about this.
One was my third grade teacher,Ms.
Dorsch, who was very formativealso in my life.
And Ms.
Dorsch, if I was writing astory, if I was writing stories,
and I guess I wrote, I don'tremember the writing stories
when I was in third grade.
But if I was writing a story,um, Miss Dorsch would let me
stay in from recess to work onmy story.
(07:23):
Now I love to go out for recess.
It wasn't that I didn't want togo out, but I preferred to stay
in and write my stories, whichis kind of true for my whole
life, if you know what I mean.
I'm sort of the same way.
I mean, you know, I love to goout and have fun, but I also
love to stay home and and andwrite stories.
Um, so Miss Dorsch in my thirdgrade report said to my mother,
told my parents that I was goingto be a writer.
(07:44):
So that was formative one.
And then, I mean, there areother formative moments, but the
there's another moment when Iwas a graduate student at
Columbia where I was writing allthe time, but I didn't feel that
I could show the world my work.
You know, I felt like, I don'tknow, I just kept it to myself.
And there was a woman across thehall, and she played very, very
loud music.
And I would occasionally knockon her door and she would scream
(08:07):
at me.
And one day I knocked at herdoor and I said, and she
screamed at me really loud, andI thought, okay, I have to, I
have to move somewhere else.
So I moved somewhere else in thedorm.
And then this Pakistanigentleman came up to me one day
and he said to me, Um, I'morganizing poetry reading and I
want you to read your poems.
And I said, Well, I don't haveany poems.
And he said, Well, you're agraduate student in literature,
(08:28):
you have a full fellowship.
Clearly, you write poetry.
And I said, I don't have anypoems.
So I said, Okay, I'm going tostop by your room tonight.
I thought that was messed up, Ididn't know what that was about.
He said, I'm going to stop byyour room tonight and you will
show me your poems.
So I literally sat on my bedwhile he went through a drawer.
He opened the drawer, literally,and went through the poems.
And he picked out three or fourand he said, I want you to read
(08:51):
these on Friday.
And I said, I said, I can't.
I said, No, you're you're goingto read.
He just didn't sit, he wouldn'tleave me alone.
So I thought, okay, so I got tothe reading and I thought, I can
do this, I can do this.
And then my arch enemy, thereshe was, sitting across from me
in the front row.
And I thought, oh my God, thisis like literally the worst
moment of my entire life.
And I managed to get through thepoems and I read them.
(09:12):
And she came up to me afterwardsand she stood right in front of
me and she said, if I knew thatyou were writing those poems, I
would have kept my music down.
And that was it for me.
I thought, I can be in the worldnow.
You know, we all need a guide,right?
We all need somebody to help usopen the door and open the
drawer.
SPEAKER_02 (09:28):
Oh, and I love the fact that your so-called nemesis
had the courage to come up toyou and say the kind words that
she did.
I mean, how inspiring is that?
It's just wonderful.
Now, I've also heard you speakabout a dream that you had when
you had pretty much hit rockbottom uh in your twenties.
Can you share that, please?
Because that was kind of like areal turning point for you.
(09:50):
And it was based around a dream.
And I happen to have beenjournaling my dreams for
decades.
And I'm sure Alice Ness wouldlove to hear this dream.
SPEAKER_00 (09:59):
I was really, it was actually the beginning of
graduate school.
I was um, you know, I've hadlike three dreams in my life
that have been absolute I Iwrite my dreams down too, and so
I so relate to that fact thatyou write your dreams down.
I don't really remember themanymore.
I don't know what that whatthat's about, but we don't need
to go into that.
But um, you know, I wrote themdown for for years and I I have
all of them.
The one you're talking about, Iwas a graduate student at
(10:22):
Harvard.
I was um living with an engagedto a Frenchman, and um I was at
class one day and I was studyingDante's Inferno.
I was studying Dante, I was acompliment major, and um, I was
literally in the middle of theinferno, and I came home one
day, and he had just moved outand left me a note and said,
like, this isn't working out,and that was it.
(10:43):
And I was like, oh my god, mylife is over.
I'm 23 years old, and this ishorrible.
And I think my bicycle had beenstolen the day before, it just
wasn't a really good week.
Anyway, so I was reallydepressed, and the only thing I
had going was I was taking thisclass in Dante's Inferno with a
wonderful professor.
And uh one afternoon I fell Ifell asleep while reading, and I
(11:04):
had this dream.
I dreamt that I was walking downa street in Paris, and there was
the cafe, a cafe.
And the name on the cafe inItalian, I'll try to do it in
Italian, was Lasciati OgniSperanza Voi Centrare Cafe.
It's written over the gates ofhell, which means leave behind
all help ye who enter here cafe.
So I'm like, okay, I look in thecafe and there's Fitzgerald,
(11:28):
Hemingway, and Gertrude Steinsipping camparian soda.
And I thought, well, I want tobe a writer, and obviously, this
is the cafe I have to go to if Iwant to be.
This is the writer's cafe,obviously.
The leave behind all help ye whoenter here cafe.
So I um I go in, I order acamparian soda because that
seemed to be the drink you hadto order if you wanted to be a
writer.
And I sat down a little table,and my table fell into a deep
(11:49):
dark hole in this in the middleof the earth with no way out,
and it was only blackness aroundme.
So I thought, okay, I'm this isit.
I'm I'm done.
This is again in the dream.
And um all of a sudden, somehow,six pall bearers arrived with a
coffin, and they left the coffinin front of me.
And I knew that whatever mydestiny was was in the coffin,
(12:11):
and I had to open it.
And I opened the coffin and itturned into a roll top desk with
paper for eternity.
And I woke up from that dreamand I said, I'm gonna move to
New York, I'm gonna be a writer.
Um, I finished my Dante class, Iwrote a letter to Columbia
University, they had alreadyaccepted me.
I went to Columbia, I reallydidn't study, as the story with
(12:34):
my nemesis tells you that I waswriting even then, and that was
it.
SPEAKER_02 (12:39):
And I never looked back.
I have a quick question aboutyour dream.
Do you remember drinking any ofthe Camparian soda?
SPEAKER_00 (12:46):
I hate Camparian soda.
I have never had a Campariansoda.
So no, I didn't, I I don'tbelieve I drank it, but to this
day, I literally maybe I'mafraid I'm gonna fall back into
that ouviet, you know, one ofthose holes.
No, I I it's not my drink, no.
SPEAKER_02 (13:00):
I think our subconscious is a powerful,
powerful tool.
If we listen to our dreams andif we document them and look at
what's happening in our life,you know, along with the dreams,
it can sometimes be as good asgoing to a therapist.
SPEAKER_00 (13:14):
Well, I think what you're saying, I think there is
a way.
I mean, look, I do I believe inlike destiny and all of that.
I mean, I do, I do in my ownway, and and I and I feel there
are things in my life that haveshown me this there is destiny.
But I also think that that somein some part of some part of us
knows, some part of us knows ourpath if we could just listen to
(13:36):
it, you know, and maybe that'sreally the goal of therapy is
just learning to listen to youknow what your neurons are
really telling you that you youwant.
SPEAKER_02 (13:44):
What I find interesting about aging is now I
can look back and see myselffrom my party days, which is
probably from age 14 to say 30.
With a long stint, Mary.
I look back and I think, oh mygoodness, I wasn't listening.
I wasn't listening to my body.
You know, the sensations thatwould come to me if I met
(14:08):
someone who maybe if I'd beenlistening, I'd have known that
that person wasn't really goodfor me, or no, don't do that
because it's not going to besafe.
Not that I did a lot of unsafethings, but a few too many, I
think.
Um but the other thing Iremember is sometimes I was too
scared to listen.
But then I woke up and thought,okay, this isn't working.
(14:31):
I'm not really healthy rightnow.
And I started listening to mybody, uh, the little goosebumps
on my arms, all the feelings inmy stomach, and life gradually
began to turn around.
That whole part of my life feltlike I was trying to get back to
my original self.
I was trying to learn to listen.
I was trying to learn to takenotice of myself, my body, and
(14:55):
my emotions.
And this for me became theultimate lesson in understanding
myself.
Okay, let's get back to you.
I got carried away.
Sorry, that's just such aninteresting topic for me.
Um, you speak quite a fewlanguages.
SPEAKER_00 (15:08):
I do.
Well, so I, you know, again,this is, you know, my my my dear
mother, with whom, again, I hada complicated relationship, but
she she made me study Frenchfrom the time I was eight years
old.
I mean, she wanted me to learnFrench.
And then I actually fell in lovewith languages.
And um, so I speak French,Italian, and Spanish quite
fluently.
And if if you put me in any ofthose countries for more than a
(15:29):
week or two, I'm I'm veryfluent.
Um, I speak a little German, andyou know, I can kind of get by
in a couple other places, butum, no Portuguese.
For some reason, I don't hearit.
I I I've tried, I've I justdon't hear Portuguese.
Um, but um, you know, I tend totravel to countries where those
languages are spoken, but it wasreally weird because we were in
(15:51):
Copenhagen recently, and Isomehow, my husband had freaked
him out because I couldunderstand Danish.
Now, of course, there's a lot ofGerman in it, but I I really
could understand things aroundme and read menus and things
like that.
So, you know, I don't know.
I um when I was when I was inhigh school, we had to take this
language aptitude test, and itwas in Kurdish because Kurdish
(16:14):
has no cognates in English.
Kurdish is a like one of thoselanguages like Basque or
Finnish, and they give you anhour to learn Kurdish and then
they'd give you a test in thelanguage, it was bizarre.
Um, but I scored off the chartsin that, and I never ever scored
very well in any other testing.
So I I've always had that, youknow, my dad was very musical.
They say music and of course,music, music, math, and language
(16:35):
is supposed to go together, butI don't know.
I also like to talk to people,you know, and I like to listen
to people.
SPEAKER_02 (16:41):
So And that comes through in your writing.
And it kind of leads me to mynext question because you've
lived across cultures andgeographies.
How has that shaped your empathyas a storyteller?
And how do you see fiction as atool for inspiring empathy?
SPEAKER_00 (16:55):
Well, you know, Mandy, it goes back to what you
were talking about aboutlistening and learning to listen
and how you weren't listening toyour own body and maybe to
others.
I mean, there's a couple ofthings that I found about living
across cultures, but also to me,part of the importance of living
across cultures is that you dohave language.
Because if you don't havelanguage, you're just in your
little enclave.
You know, you may as well be inthe diplomatic core, right?
(17:16):
Nothing wrong with thediplomatic core, but you know,
so for example, the the part ofItaly where the Red House is
set, I would not have been ableto write that book had if I
didn't speak very, very goodItalian, and I can explain that
a little later on.
But you know, that you're ableto enter and penetrate cultures
in a different way.
And in terms of storytelling, Imean, I love stories, I'm a
(17:39):
storyteller and I love to listento people's stories.
And so I don't want to justlisten to people that have the
same experiences that I do.
You know, I can go and listen tomy friends at the you know, cafe
down the road anytime I want,but you know, I want to hear
about, you know, people who'vehad different experiences.
And, you know, I think that isthe path to empathy.
(18:01):
I mean, compassion and empathyis understanding what other
people experience, what otherpeople live.
If you're only experiencing whoyou are and what you live, you
know, that's when we get intolike, you know, I'm right and
they're wrong.
You know, we get into thoseconversations that are not going
to make the world a betterplace.
SPEAKER_02 (18:17):
Yeah, I mean, I encouraged my sons to go live
and travel in other countries.
Uh, but one of the things I havefound for me is that I've lived
in Australia, the US, and UK.
And even though each countryspeaks English as their main
language, uh, man, have Ilearned a lot from those three
different cultures.
It has been fascinating.
(18:38):
One thing about the pandemic isI think publishers realized
their people were craving morebooks in translation.
And for me, that's beenwonderful because I love reading
translated books.
There's a certain cadence in thewriting that makes you pause and
explore the musicality of eachword, of each sentence and
paragraph.
(18:59):
So if you aren't able to travel,reading books that are
translated into English is agood way to experience another
culture.
SPEAKER_00 (19:06):
I'm I'm always fascinated.
You know, um, I'll tell you akind of a funny story one day.
Um, you know, I like to buydifferent translations also if
I'm reading things.
You know, if like if Lydia Daviscomes out with a new prouse
translation, I compare it to theI think it was the Moncrief
translation.
I can't really remember,whatever the translation before,
you know.
And um, we had to have someplumbing work done one day.
(19:27):
Richie the plumber came by andwe were doing the plumbing.
And then we came to he came tomy office to settle up and he's
looking at my books and he goes,So do you prefer the fagels or
the Mandelstam translation ofthe Odyssey?
Because I, you know, I like thefagels, and we and we started
talking about the translationsfrom you know of Greek myth from
Greek, you know, myths fromHomer.
(19:49):
And he like knew the, and I waslike, okay, I'm first of all, A,
I'm never judging a human beingagain by what they do or what
uniform they wear ever.
A.
But also, like, he was reallyinterested.
I mean, he knew the differencesbetween the translations and
which ones he preferred.
And and we had this, you know,and I mean translation really
does make a difference.
You know, one of the first jobsI ever had was at the Beacon
(20:11):
Press in Boston, and I worked onRobert Bly's translations.
I helped publish, was aneditorial assistant.
But he translated from all ofthese languages.
Now, I don't know that he spokethem all, but he he turned them
into poetry, you know, andthat's always kind of fascinated
me, also the sort of thenon-literal translations.
SPEAKER_02 (20:32):
Good Lord, that must have taken some work.
How did he get through that?
SPEAKER_00 (20:36):
I don't know.
I really don't know.
SPEAKER_02 (20:39):
I guess a bit like the same way you got through
that uh the exam for languages,and you were given it all in
Kurdish, right?
SPEAKER_00 (20:46):
Yes, fortunately, it was only one hour of grammar and
vocabulary.
Yes.
SPEAKER_02 (20:50):
Um, I couldn't help but marvel at how you were
guided to write the Red House.
In the story, Laura searches forViola, her mother, who went
missing when Laura was a child.
And Laura remembers the buttonsthey made to give to people in
the hopes someone wouldrecognize her.
What significance did buttonsand the name Viola have on your
(21:11):
need to write the Red House?
SPEAKER_00 (21:14):
Almost everything I write starts from a real place,
and then it just kind of twirlsoff into the wherever.
And that began for me at theMemphis airport in 2006 when I
was standing in a line.
It was when TSA had juststarted, you know, checking.
You know, you couldn't just goget on a plane anymore.
I'm in a line, and somethingfell behind me.
(21:36):
And um, I saw that a man haddropped something on the ground,
and it was in fact a button.
And I picked it up.
It was a large button.
I thought maybe it was apolitical button, or I didn't
know.
And on it was a woman's face,and written on it said, Have you
seen this woman?
And her name was Viola.
And I tried to hand it back tohim, and he said, No, you you
(21:58):
can keep that.
He said, I hand them outwherever I go.
It's my wife, and shedisappeared.
And um, I searched for her.
And I took that button, so I hadthis really crazy bullish board
at home, which unfortunatelythis is not my home because you
could see my bullish board, butyou know, everything I get, a
feather, I don't know, whateverit is, I put it on the bullish
board because I think maybethere's a shard in it, maybe
(22:20):
there's an idea, a little germof a story.
And um I put that button on mybullish board, and and and Viola
was up there looking at me forfor many years.
And then when I started writingthis book, and and to be honest
with you, I wasn't really sure.
Well, I can I'll tell you alittle bit about the that in
terms of the origin of it,because I I I knew the history
(22:42):
of the Red House.
I know I wanted to write aboutthe Red House, but I didn't have
quite a story for it.
And I looked up and I saw Violalooking at me from the wall, and
I thought, there's a motherwho's gone missing.
There's a missing mother, andher name is Viola, and that was
that was it for me.
So save those little things thatyou know, all those little
things you find in your pockets.
SPEAKER_02 (23:00):
And I think it's imperative for any creative to
have a bulletin board.
As you said, you never know whenyou're gonna get a shard of an
idea from something like abutton.
And 20 years later, I think yousaid, a button, a missing
mother, the name Viola, and hereyou are having written the Red
House.
SPEAKER_00 (23:21):
20 years later.
Well, you know, my daughterkicked me out of my office, um,
my original office a few yearsago because she had a baby.
She went and had a baby and shewanted the office.
I mean, it's it's we're fine,it's good.
I mean, the kids live downstairsin our house, but that was my
office.
And so I had to move upstairs toher old bedroom.
Um, so my husband and I liveupstairs and they have they have
(23:41):
their own apartment downstairs.
But anyway, um, the first thingI said to the person doing the
carpentry is I said, I need, Ineed the board, I need a
bulletin board.
You gotta move my board.
So that was that was the one ofthe first things.
SPEAKER_02 (23:54):
And Mary, when did you first become aware of the
detention center in Alberobelo?
SPEAKER_00 (24:00):
You know, Mandy, what I like to say is there are
stories that you choose as awriter, and there are stories
that choose you.
And this one chose me.
So my husband and I and ourdaughter with our family, we did
house exchanges for like 20years, and we went all over
Europe for summer vacations.
And we loved it.
You know, we'd swap our housewith somebody in County Carey,
(24:21):
Ireland, or you know, the southof France, or you know, we would
just do these swaps.
But they were a lot of work, andthe daughter grew up, and I just
said, I'm done, we'll figure outa different different way to
travel.
But as fate would have it, I gotan offer from this beautiful
farmhouse in Puglia in southernItaly from a family that wanted
(24:41):
to come to New York.
And I said, I I can't not, Ihave to do this.
So we we went, we went, ofcourse, and it was
extraordinary.
Um, and the other family memberslived in the area, and one came
to us one day and said, I wantto take you to this town.
I think you'll really like it.
It's called Arbello Bello.
Well, Arbello, I knew aboutArbalo Bello.
(25:02):
It looks like it was designedfor hobbits.
I mean, it's got these funnyconical shapes, it really does.
I mean, it's like Middle Earth,it's little conical-shaped
houses.
And um, it's it's really truly afascinating place, and of
course, it's one of those placesthat's been spoiled by mass
tourism.
And, you know, as a travelwriter, also I knew that it was
gonna be, you know, t-shirts andkeychains and you know, tour
(25:24):
guides walking around with, youknow, ducks on duck umbrellas
and all that.
So we got to Arabelo Bello.
Um, I took an instant dislike, Iwalked around for a little bit,
and then I said to my family andto our friends, uh, I'm tired,
there's a little courtyard, I'mjust gonna sit and rest in the
shade.
So I I went and got a gelato,I'm sitting in the little
(25:44):
courtyard, and there's a crummylittle tree in the middle of the
courtyard.
Like it was just this nothingtree.
This is where the iPhone, wherethe phone comes in handy.
And look at the tree, and thetree's kind of wearing a plaque
around it, right?
It's got a plaque on it, it'salmost as big as the tree.
So I I got up and I looked atthis plaque.
This originally was in the book.
I took it out because I realizedI didn't want it in the book,
(26:06):
but I like to tell it as astory.
The plaque was written in twolanguages that I happen to be
able to read.
Um, one is Hebrew and the otheris Italian.
And it said to the people ofArabelo Bello from the people of
Jerusalem, this olive tree foryour kindness during the racist
(26:27):
period.
And I'm like, what could thisstrange town have to do with the
Nazis and the you knowoccupation of well, I mean, they
weren't occupied, they were theywere Axis powers, but anyway,
what could it have to do withthe Jews here?
So I started asking, am I goingtoo long with the story?
Because I I I feel like I'mgonna wander a little bit.
(26:48):
Absolutely not.
Please keep going.
Okay, okay.
So um, you know, I went to thetourist bureau and I'm asking
around, and and and our friendsthat I was with, she was a very
knowledgeable person.
I said, nobody knew anythingabout this plaque, why it was
there, what the town could havepossibly had with the with the
Nazi era.
So I took a picture of theplaque.
Thank you, iPhone, right?
(27:09):
I forget this.
It was 13 years ago, so I can'tdo the math right now, but
whatever 13 years ago was.
But I I wasn't ready to reallypursue this.
I just, it was kind of justinteresting.
I was working on other things atthe time.
A few years later, I think thiswas right after COVID or right
before COVID, one or the other,maybe right before COVID.
(27:30):
I was walking my dog, myneighbor's walking his dog.
He goes, Hi, what are you doing?
And I said, I'm actually leavingfor Italy in three hours and I
can't talk, but it's great tosee you.
And he starts talking me influent Italian.
And I'm going like, and so Istart talking to him in fluent
Italian.
So we're talking in Italian, andI've known him for 30 years.
And I said, I didn't know you'reItalian.
He said, Well, my parents wereor my family, we're Roman Jews
(27:51):
and we're Holocaust survivors.
And um, you know, my family hasa really interesting story.
And I said, and I remembered theplaque in the tree in southern
Italy, which was he's Roman, sothat's quite a bit further.
It's like six hours south.
I said, Do you know anythingabout this town and what it
could possibly have with Jewishhistory?
Because it seemed weird to me.
And he said he didn't knowanything about it, but he had
(28:12):
taken a class and it had a lotto do with southern Italy, and
he would send me a bunch ofarticles.
So he sends me the articles, Idownload them on the flight
before the flight.
My husband, who annoys me somuch, can sleep through, you
know, he gets on a long distanceflight and he just goes to
sleep, and I'm like wide awake.
So I'm reading through thearticles, and in a footnote, it
(28:34):
said on the outskirts ofArabello Bello was a detention
center called the Red House, LaCasa Rosa.
So I woke Larry up and I said,We have to find it.
We have to go there.
And Mandy, we did find it.
I mean, it he's in longsuffering.
It's okay, we're great.
Um, we had to drive around alot, nobody seemed to know where
(28:54):
it was or what it was.
And then we came to thismonolith of a building that sits
perched alone on a hill.
Um, it looks like aconcentration camp.
Um, if you have ever seen aconcentration camp, that's
exactly what in fact it lookslike.
We went up to this building andwe're walking around it, and I
(29:16):
felt my heart just gettingheavier and heavier and heavier.
And on the outside of thebuilding was a graffiti, a very
large graffiti that said, Um, nosetoepe sempre, I will not be
here forever.
SPEAKER_02 (29:29):
Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00 (29:30):
And I'm like, What, you know, what is this?
So when we got home next towhere we were staying, always
our friend's place, um, I calledmy friend and I said to her, Do
you know about this building?
And she said, I don't know thebuilding, but I think I know
someone who could help you.
And anyway, long story short,she found the one person in that
(29:51):
part of Italy in the world whohad the key to the padlock to
that building, La Casa Rosso,that was a detention center
during the war.
And I Met that gentleman and heunlocked the door and I was able
to walk through this building,which very, very few people have
until now, and recently it wasabout to be turned into a
(30:11):
discotheque.
Okay.
I think that's in the novel.
And somebody in the historiccenter of Italy said, you know,
I think there's some value,historic value to this building.
I don't think it should be adiscotheque.
You know, I think it should besomething else.
And this gentleman who is was isthe kind of cultural proprietor
of La Casa Rossa.
Um, and I felt that once I'dwalked in the building, um, I
(30:35):
wasn't going to be able to walkout until I wrote about it.
I mean, I just felt that thatvery, very strongly.
Um, and may I just share withyou briefly about the graffiti
on the wall?
Because as we were leaving thebuilding, and there were all
kinds of artifacts in thebuilding too.
There's a list of library books,and that's why the Cantamone
Cristo is in the novel, becausethe Cantamone Cristo is one of
(30:55):
the books that, well, the fatherchecks it out in the novel, but
it is on this list of books.
You know, the Jews kept alibrary there.
So there's a list of books theyborrowed from each other, you
know, and they had to returnthem.
So I sent him as we wereleaving, I said, What is the
graffiti?
He said, Oh, it's not graffiti,it's an art installation.
And I said, What do you mean?
(31:16):
And he said, Well, those aredormant snails.
It's written in snails.
And snails sleep for threeyears, and they're sitting on a
piece of paper mache.
Each snail is asleep.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm just telling you what hetold me.
Each snail is asleep, andthey'll wake up in three years
and they will have their firstmeal of that paper mache, that
(31:39):
flower and paste, and thenthey'll leave.
And I thought, what an image fordetention and what a metaphor
for that.
And I just knew that I was goingto be writing about this.
That was that was it for me.
I was, you know, I was done.
SPEAKER_02 (31:55):
And can you give the emotion you felt at that time a
name?
SPEAKER_00 (31:59):
Dark, darkness.
I just felt so heavy in myheart.
Like um, I just felt that I wasin a sacred space that that, you
know, I I mean, the the goodpart of it is that the people
who lived there actually faredokay.
(32:21):
I mean, it was a detentioncenter, they were hungry, they
were cold.
And the the plaque I saw wasbecause the people of Aberlo
Bello, who had probably neverseen Jews and didn't know what a
Jew was, and probably thoughtthey were like, you know, the
demon, realized they were justpeople like them.
And um, I mean, there's a littlebit more.
I mean, the fact that that umthe the Joseph who goes into
(32:41):
town as a dentist and works,that's historically accurate.
They the professional peoplewould go into town.
And the townspeople were like,they're just like us.
And they took, they took care ofthem.
They they they fed them, theygave them clothes, they helped
them in, you know, and enough sothat the the people of Jerusalem
sent this olive tree, which Iassume has grown larger since I
(33:02):
saw it.
SPEAKER_02 (33:03):
And the snails come back later in the book through
Laura.
SPEAKER_00 (33:07):
Yeah, Laura gets into snails.
She has a terrarium of them, andshe she does an art, she winds
up doing an art installation andat the end.
Um, and and the the phrase, Iwill not be here forever.
So part of what motivates Laurain her journey, I mean, Laura
goes back to Italy and Laura'smother disappears when she's 12
years old, and she's 42 yearsold in the book, and she's gone
(33:30):
back to sort of search for hermother's story.
And one of her things that shehas to guide her are these
paintings that her mother did ofwhat basically the Red House.
And on the back of thepaintings, the mother would
write, I will not be hereforever.
So that that informs Laura inher search for her
understanding, her her mother.
SPEAKER_02 (33:51):
Yeah, I'd like to talk about a character in the
book who stood out to me.
Just thought he was a wonderfulcharacter.
To get to him, I'm going tobring up something that you
wrote on page 116.
You wrote about Angelo.
Quote Angelo is used to twistsand turns of fate.
He has lived through wars, thedeath of his parents, his wife,
(34:12):
and his only child.
Only the angels have stayed withhim.
Has he already done somethingwrong here?
He follows a soldier down aflight of stairs, then another.
Into the sub basement of the RedHouse.
He envisions what awaits himimprisonment, deportation,
torture, perhaps worse.
(34:33):
End quote.
How did Angelo's characterderive?
SPEAKER_00 (34:37):
So um there is a chapel.
That chapel does exist in theRed House.
There was an artist, I think hewas Hungarian.
Um I can't remember his name,but I have it, I mean it's in my
notes.
So the the commandante of theRed House wanted someone to do a
chapel, and this gentleman didthis chapel, you know, and I
don't know how long he wasthere, but he he made this
(34:59):
chapel.
One of the interesting thingsabout the chapel is when you go
into it, it looks like you know,a church in Naples.
I mean, it it's got, you know,it's got the angels and the
saints, and you know, the all ofthe stations of the cross, or it
has it has all of that, youknow, kind of going around it.
And it looks like mosaic, butum, the the artist actually
didn't have any mosaic, so hepainted, frescoed them, and then
(35:23):
he hand-carved into littlesquares to make it uh like look
like mosaic.
So it's fascinating.
And that is, you know, kind of Imean, I mean, this this person,
Carlo Palm Palma, I think hisname was, who had the keys, who
brought me into the Red House,brought us into this chapel.
I mean, it was so bizarre.
(35:43):
And then it's also bizarrebecause I've tried many, many
times to reach out to Carloagain.
He just doesn't get back to me.
But but maybe that was maybethat was his role was to just
guide me in, you know, and not,you know, I'm not really sure
why I I can't reach him again,but whatever that is.
But you know, Angelo, so Angelois based on that that artist and
(36:04):
that, you know, that chapel thatthat I saw.
SPEAKER_02 (36:07):
Angelo's quiet endurance contrasts with Laura's
restless searching.
Do you see them as mirrors oropposites?
SPEAKER_00 (36:14):
Uh obviously they're both tormented in their own way.
Laura is a more, you know,visibly restless soul, and and
Angelo has his demons that Idon't want to, no spoilers, but
you know, has his demons also.
But I think that, you know,look, art informs all of them.
Visual art, Viola, Angelo, andLaura.
And I think, you know, Laura islooking for a kind of peace that
(36:35):
I I like to feel she's found bythe end.
SPEAKER_02 (36:37):
The book carries a quiet tension between memory and
reality and what a childremembers as opposed to adult
memories.
Was it difficult for you movingbetween the two?
And did you write the story asit appears in sequence or in
scenes?
Maybe because I'm left-handed.
SPEAKER_00 (36:54):
I I have a sort of modular relationship to the
world as opposed to a linearrelationship to the world.
So I never do anything in astraight line.
I definitely don't write in astraight line.
I write in scenes.
I don't know where the scenesare going to go necessarily.
So I develop different momentsand then I kind of figure out
kind of where, you know, how tohow to line it all up.
SPEAKER_02 (37:13):
Another component of the Red House is that there's a
haunting quality in how love andloss intertwine throughout the
story.
Were there any works of art,literature, or personal
experiences that helped shapethat mood?
SPEAKER_00 (37:27):
Well, I I so there's several things.
I mean, certainly, you know, thequestion about literature, you
know, when I think about loveand loss, I mean, I think of
Anna Karen and I, I think of,you know, many of the great
works of literature.
Um, Jude the Obscure, you know,Hardy, I love Hardy for that
sense of longing and loss.
There was a book, I believe, wasnominated for the book or last
(37:48):
year called The Safekeep, that'sum a very interesting story
about loss.
You know, it's one of the bigthemes, right?
But to go back to thecomplicated relationship I had
with my mother, my mother hadthis habit of kind of losing me
in places.
Like she would sort of wanderoff.
I mean, it's kind of funny inretrospect, but you know, like
(38:10):
my brother and I, she took usfor, you know, we come from
Illinois, she decided she wantedto go to the Easter parade in
New York.
I was 12, my brother was nine,and she saw a hat she liked and
she wandered off into the Easterparade.
My brother and I were juststanding on a street corner,
like, what do we do now?
So I think it made me a goodtraveler because I got very good
navigational skills.
Um, it also made me not afraidto ask directions.
(38:32):
Like I did go to a policeman andI said, Um, you know, I think
we've lost our mother.
And um, you know, we're supposedto have lunch at something
called Rumpel Stiltskins.
And he looked at me and he said,Do you mean Rumpel Myers?
And I said, That sounds aboutright.
I mean, I didn't know we weregoing, I didn't know we're going
for lunch.
She made a reservationsomewhere, you know.
Cop helps us get to RumpelMyers, and my brother and I sit
(38:54):
and we order hot chocolate, andmy mother comes in screaming,
like, my children, where am I?
So she would lose us, you know,it it happened like a lot.
And um, the the last time ithappened, I remember was in the
the Harvard, um, the Harvardcoup where um I ran into this.
I I lost her.
She was, she wandered off, sheshe lost me.
And this lovely Indian couplewas there who I was friendly
(39:16):
with, and they said, I hi Mary,we haven't seen you in so long.
Is everything all right?
And I said, Well, I'm fine, butI've just lost my mother.
And they offered theircondolences.
They said, We're so sorry.
And I said, No, no, I've losther in the store.
So it's it's kind of funny, butalso it, you know, it's sort of
about abandonment, you know, andloss, and that kind of mother
that can just wander off becauseshe sees a hat or a dress or
(39:36):
something that interests her.
And um, so it's kind of apersonal theme for me.
But also in terms of things Iread, you know, I I don't read
comic fiction.
I don't really like, I don'treally like, I I love funny
things, but in my art, and Iguess in my heart, in my art, my
soul, um, I'm a pretty seriousperson, and and the question,
(39:59):
you know, loss and love,longing, I suppose, is is is a
big thing.
SPEAKER_02 (40:05):
Oh, I find that fascinating because it's almost
like your personal thoughts andfears of abandonment have come
up through your subconscious inthis story of the Red House.
SPEAKER_00 (40:16):
I'm I'm all about maternal abandonment.
Um it's a big thing for me.
SPEAKER_02 (40:20):
Yeah, thanks for sharing that with us, Mary.
Now that you've written thisbook and lived with its themes,
what does creative courage looklike for you today?
SPEAKER_00 (40:28):
You know, for so many years, um, I was worried
about money and I was raising afamily, and I had all these
things I was worried about.
And I was worried about mycareer and reviews and you know,
all this stuff.
And something about publishingthis book, I'm free.
I don't care.
I feel this sense of freedomthat I I don't know that I've
(40:52):
felt since I began writingstories.
Uh, my husband was really greatabout this once.
I was in a real slump a coupleyears ago.
And I said, I said, I don'tknow, I just feel like nothing's
working.
He said, Why don't you juststart writing stories again like
you wrote them when you were 20years old, and you just love to
write stories.
And that's what I've gone backto.
I've gone back to this girl,even third grade, you know, just
(41:13):
do I'm I'm doing it for the loveof it, and uh, and not because
of the market.
I don't I don't know what'sgonna happen with what I'm
working on now.
I'm doing it for a sense offreedom.
Um, there's a couple ofpainters, there's one painter,
an incredible, I think she'sNigerian British named um Jotty.
I'm gonna mess up her last name.
She paints with just incrediblefreedom.
(41:35):
And I love whenever I can go seeher work, just to experience
that sense of flow, I guess whatI'm saying.
Is it that artists and writerswho have a sense of flow?
I mean, I mean, story is veryimportant.
I mean, grounding.
I mean, I'm not talking aboutcraft particularly, but just the
internal process of like offreedom, you know, just freedom.
SPEAKER_02 (41:56):
I wonder if that feeling of freedom has come
through writing about maternalabandonment through Viola and uh
Laura.
SPEAKER_00 (42:04):
I think that's no, I think that's a great I I feel
that it, you know, I feel that Ihave gotten that out.
Um and and I'm I'm actually kindof taking on a bigger world now
in a different something thatI'm thinking working on.
You know, I'm I I don't believethat writing is therapy, but I
do believe it's therapeutic.
SPEAKER_02 (42:24):
My goodness, Mary, I love this conversation.
I could keep chatting with youall day.
I think we both could.
SPEAKER_00 (42:32):
Before we go, tell me what you're currently
reading.
I'm doing a lot of researchreading.
So that's kind of really uminteresting and fun.
And I can get a little obsessedwith it.
I've gotten slightly obsessedabout the history of silent
films and D.W.
Griffith's early films becauseuh my daughter got a piece of
property upstate about seven oreight years ago that we thought
(42:54):
was probably going to be adisaster that's actually turned
into quite a special, a specialplace.
Um, and and DW Griffith did hisfirst silent films on the banks
of the Never Sink River.
Um I'm reading a lot about D.W.
Griffith and silent films andand all of that.
Um and I'm reading a novel Ireally like right now called Um
The Correspondent by VirginiaEvans.
(43:17):
It's uh was recommended to me bya couple friends.
And um, so I usually try to reada mix of I don't sleep very
much.
Um I would love to sleep.
If anyone has any ideas, I'mopen to them.
Um, but I found that at late atnight I read on my Kindle so as
not to disturb my long-sufferinghusband.
So I'll I'll read different,usually contemporary things at
(43:40):
night.
Do you still read and writepoetry?
I do.
I actually just wrote a book inCopenhagen called The Tear
Eating Bat.
There is actually a bat thateats lives on, thrives on tears.
I get a little obsessed aboutthings, you know.
I find I find a lot of rabbitholes.
I'm really into this bat becauseit lives it lives on grief, not
(44:01):
blood, but grief.
Yeah.
So I do write poetry.
SPEAKER_02 (44:04):
Oh gosh, Mary, I have loved chatting with you.
Uh, we need to meet again and uhhave a cup of coffee together.
That would be lovely.
And thank you so much for yourtime and for offering to do this
interview when you have aterrible cold.
And for writing The Red House.
It truly is a beautiful,beautiful book.
SPEAKER_01 (44:24):
Thank you, man.
I've loved chatting with you.
It and I hasn't it's felt, Idon't know, it's been great,
really great.
I think we could keep chatting along time.
SPEAKER_02 (44:32):
You've been listening to my conversation
with author Mary Morris abouther new book, The Red House.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media.
And remember to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
listen to this podcast.
To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
(44:52):
thebookshoppodcast.com.
And make sure to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
listen to the show.
You can also follow me at MandyJackson Beverly, on Instagram
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If you have a favorite indiebookshop that you'd like to
suggest we have on the podcast,I'd love to hear from you via
(45:14):
the contact form atthebookshoppodcast.com.
The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, Mandy
Jackson Beverly.
The music provided by BrianBeverly and my personal
assistant is Kaylee Dichinger.
Thanks for listening, and I'llsee you next time.
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly, and I'm a
bibliophile.
Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast.
Each week I present interviewswith authors, independent
bookshop owners and booksellersfrom around the globe, and
publishing professionals.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
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(00:32):
And remember to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
listen to this podcast.
You're listening to episode 312.
Hi, and before we get started, Iwould like to thank FeedSpot for
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(00:53):
bibliophile podcast for 2025.
That's two years running.
Thank you, FeetSpot.
We appreciate it.
Okay, now let's get on with thisweek's episode.
Mary Morris is the author ofnumerous works of fiction,
including the novels The WaitingGame, Gateway to the Moon, The
Jazz Palace, A Mother's Love,and House Arrest, and of
non-fiction, including thetravel memoir Nothing to
(01:16):
Declare, Memoirs of a WomanTraveling Alone.
She is a recipient of the RomePrize in Literature and the 2016
Annis Field Wolf Award forFiction.
She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Mary's latest novel is titledThe Red House.
And here's the synopsis.
(01:36):
She left behind her purse, herkeys, and her mysterious
paintings of a red house.
Viola was never found, and herfamily never recovered.
Laura, an artist herself, heldon to the paintings.
On the back of each work, hermother scrawled in Italian, I
will not be here forever.
The family never understood whatViola meant.
(01:57):
Decades later, at a crossroadsin her marriage and her life,
Laura returns to Italy, whereher parents met after World War
II.
Laura spent the earliest yearsof her childhood there before
the family moved to New Jerseyand settled into an American
dream that eventually became anightmare.
Viola, who claimed to be anorphan, staunchly refused to
(02:19):
speak of her life beforemarriage.
In Italy, Laura finds herself ona strange scavenger hunt to
solve the puzzle of her mother'slost years.
She is certain that thepaintings of the Red House hold
the answer to her mother's past,and her search takes her from
her hometown in Brindisi deepinto Puglia, where she
encounters a man who knew hermother and who illuminates
(02:41):
little-known secrets of Italy'sSecond World War.
Blending elements of true crimewith settings that evoke Elena
Ferrante, Laura follows hermother's trajectory as she
ventures north to Naples, Turin,and finally home.
Along the way, she confronts thedark truth of her mother's story
and at last makes sense of herown.
(03:01):
Hi Mary and welcome to the show.
It's great to have you here.
Thank you, Mandy.
SPEAKER_00 (03:06):
It's lovely to be here.
I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02 (03:08):
It's my pleasure, and I have to say, I absolutely
loved The Red House.
What a wonderful book.
Anytime I read a novel ofhistorical fiction, I end up
down rabbit holes looking upfacts.
And the Red House was wonderful.
I learned so much from readingthe book.
Let's begin with learning aboutyou and your mother's love of
(03:29):
travel.
And then the first time you weretold you were going to be a
writer because I love thatstory.
SPEAKER_00 (03:35):
I mean, the kind of cool thing about my mother was
that she was a person who lovedtravel, who never was able to go
anywhere.
She was a suburban housewife.
She wanted to go everywhere.
She named our first dog Renoirbecause she wanted a Renoir and
she wanted to go to France andshe loved France, but she'd
never gone.
So when she was 15, she actuallytook me with her to girl because
(03:56):
my dad wouldn't wouldn't travel.
But the story I love to tellabout my mother, and it's in the
my first travel memoir, Nothingto Declare, is my parents were
invited to a suppressed desireball.
Now, I don't think they havesuppressed desire balls anymore,
but then they did.
And you were to go as yoursecret wish.
(04:16):
And my mother, who had a degreein fashion design from the Art
Institute of Chicago in 1930,okay, she had a scholarship.
She went into a kind of weirdtrance and she wound up, she
bought home all this stuff.
I didn't know what she wasdoing.
And she went down to thebasement and she had a
mannequin, she started buildingthis thing.
I didn't know what it was.
And I'd go down there at nightand she'd say, Where should I
(04:39):
put the Taj Mahal?
Where should the Eiffel Towergo?
And I was like, What do you?
You know, I didn't know what shewas doing.
Well, anyway, the night of theball, I was quite little, and I
remember standing at the bottomof the stairs and looking up at
my parents.
And my father looked absolutelyhandsome and debonaire and
striking in a tuxedo.
(05:00):
And it seemed as if he had nocostume.
But in fact, his barber hadgiven him a toupee, and he
looked just like Carrie Graham.
I mean, he was very, veryhandsome.
My mother had made a costume ofthe world for herself.
My mother became the world.
And that is probably the mostformative image of my mother
that I will ever have.
And I fell in, I fell in lovewith travel then.
(05:21):
I fell in love with her longing.
And um, you know, I fulfilledher dreams.
And she did wind up travelinglater in her life.
SPEAKER_02 (05:30):
So oh Mary, I love the story of your mother
building this stress or makingthis piece of art.
I used to work in fashion and asa stylist and costume designer
in the film industry, and I canjust see her building the stress
of the world.
Oh, what a beautiful image.
SPEAKER_00 (05:49):
I mean, it it's probably it's it's an
extraordinary story for me, youknow.
And and she was good, you know,she really could do those.
So she was very good at it.
SPEAKER_02 (06:00):
Making clothes is kind of a dying art, I think,
for for mothers anyway.
I don't know about you, but whenI was younger, I got all the
hand-me-downs, and most of themwere uh clothes that my mother
had made for my older sister.
Um, she did make me a few piecesof my own, which are treasured.
I still have them.
But yeah, it's kind of a dyingart.
I I guess it's because clothinguh can be bought so cheaply now.
(06:24):
And also we have thrift storeswhere people can buy clothes at
affordable prices.
SPEAKER_00 (06:29):
My mother um she quilted um on my bedspread, she
made my curtains.
It took her seven.
I you know, I actually think Iwas ready to leave for college
by the time she finishedquilting my bedspread.
Oh my goodness.
But she she really, really wasvery, very gifted.
And I think you're right thatit's it's now viewed as kind of
quaint, you know what I mean?
That I don't know anyone whodoes their own seamstressing
(06:50):
anymore.
SPEAKER_02 (06:51):
Yeah, it's sad to think of it as being a dying
art.
And what about the story, one ofmy favorites about you, when you
were a little girl and someonetold you you were going to be a
writer?
SPEAKER_00 (07:02):
Um well, there are two stories about this.
One was my third grade teacher,Ms.
Dorsch, who was very formativealso in my life.
And Ms.
Dorsch, if I was writing astory, if I was writing stories,
and I guess I wrote, I don'tremember the writing stories
when I was in third grade.
But if I was writing a story,um, Miss Dorsch would let me
stay in from recess to work onmy story.
(07:23):
Now I love to go out for recess.
It wasn't that I didn't want togo out, but I preferred to stay
in and write my stories, whichis kind of true for my whole
life, if you know what I mean.
I'm sort of the same way.
I mean, you know, I love to goout and have fun, but I also
love to stay home and and andwrite stories.
Um, so Miss Dorsch in my thirdgrade report said to my mother,
told my parents that I was goingto be a writer.
(07:44):
So that was formative one.
And then, I mean, there areother formative moments, but the
there's another moment when Iwas a graduate student at
Columbia where I was writing allthe time, but I didn't feel that
I could show the world my work.
You know, I felt like, I don'tknow, I just kept it to myself.
And there was a woman across thehall, and she played very, very
loud music.
And I would occasionally knockon her door and she would scream
(08:07):
at me.
And one day I knocked at herdoor and I said, and she
screamed at me really loud, andI thought, okay, I have to, I
have to move somewhere else.
So I moved somewhere else in thedorm.
And then this Pakistanigentleman came up to me one day
and he said to me, Um, I'morganizing poetry reading and I
want you to read your poems.
And I said, Well, I don't haveany poems.
And he said, Well, you're agraduate student in literature,
(08:28):
you have a full fellowship.
Clearly, you write poetry.
And I said, I don't have anypoems.
So I said, Okay, I'm going tostop by your room tonight.
I thought that was messed up, Ididn't know what that was about.
He said, I'm going to stop byyour room tonight and you will
show me your poems.
So I literally sat on my bedwhile he went through a drawer.
He opened the drawer, literally,and went through the poems.
And he picked out three or fourand he said, I want you to read
(08:51):
these on Friday.
And I said, I said, I can't.
I said, No, you're you're goingto read.
He just didn't sit, he wouldn'tleave me alone.
So I thought, okay, so I got tothe reading and I thought, I can
do this, I can do this.
And then my arch enemy, thereshe was, sitting across from me
in the front row.
And I thought, oh my God, thisis like literally the worst
moment of my entire life.
And I managed to get through thepoems and I read them.
(09:12):
And she came up to me afterwardsand she stood right in front of
me and she said, if I knew thatyou were writing those poems, I
would have kept my music down.
And that was it for me.
I thought, I can be in the worldnow.
You know, we all need a guide,right?
We all need somebody to help usopen the door and open the
drawer.
SPEAKER_02 (09:28):
Oh, and I love the fact that your so-called nemesis
had the courage to come up toyou and say the kind words that
she did.
I mean, how inspiring is that?
It's just wonderful.
Now, I've also heard you speakabout a dream that you had when
you had pretty much hit rockbottom uh in your twenties.
Can you share that, please?
Because that was kind of like areal turning point for you.
(09:50):
And it was based around a dream.
And I happen to have beenjournaling my dreams for
decades.
And I'm sure Alice Ness wouldlove to hear this dream.
SPEAKER_00 (09:59):
I was really, it was actually the beginning of
graduate school.
I was um, you know, I've hadlike three dreams in my life
that have been absolute I Iwrite my dreams down too, and so
I so relate to that fact thatyou write your dreams down.
I don't really remember themanymore.
I don't know what that whatthat's about, but we don't need
to go into that.
But um, you know, I wrote themdown for for years and I I have
all of them.
The one you're talking about, Iwas a graduate student at
(10:22):
Harvard.
I was um living with an engagedto a Frenchman, and um I was at
class one day and I was studyingDante's Inferno.
I was studying Dante, I was acompliment major, and um, I was
literally in the middle of theinferno, and I came home one
day, and he had just moved outand left me a note and said,
like, this isn't working out,and that was it.
(10:43):
And I was like, oh my god, mylife is over.
I'm 23 years old, and this ishorrible.
And I think my bicycle had beenstolen the day before, it just
wasn't a really good week.
Anyway, so I was reallydepressed, and the only thing I
had going was I was taking thisclass in Dante's Inferno with a
wonderful professor.
And uh one afternoon I fell Ifell asleep while reading, and I
(11:04):
had this dream.
I dreamt that I was walking downa street in Paris, and there was
the cafe, a cafe.
And the name on the cafe inItalian, I'll try to do it in
Italian, was Lasciati OgniSperanza Voi Centrare Cafe.
It's written over the gates ofhell, which means leave behind
all help ye who enter here cafe.
So I'm like, okay, I look in thecafe and there's Fitzgerald,
(11:28):
Hemingway, and Gertrude Steinsipping camparian soda.
And I thought, well, I want tobe a writer, and obviously, this
is the cafe I have to go to if Iwant to be.
This is the writer's cafe,obviously.
The leave behind all help ye whoenter here cafe.
So I um I go in, I order acamparian soda because that
seemed to be the drink you hadto order if you wanted to be a
writer.
And I sat down a little table,and my table fell into a deep
(11:49):
dark hole in this in the middleof the earth with no way out,
and it was only blackness aroundme.
So I thought, okay, I'm this isit.
I'm I'm done.
This is again in the dream.
And um all of a sudden, somehow,six pall bearers arrived with a
coffin, and they left the coffinin front of me.
And I knew that whatever mydestiny was was in the coffin,
(12:11):
and I had to open it.
And I opened the coffin and itturned into a roll top desk with
paper for eternity.
And I woke up from that dreamand I said, I'm gonna move to
New York, I'm gonna be a writer.
Um, I finished my Dante class, Iwrote a letter to Columbia
University, they had alreadyaccepted me.
I went to Columbia, I reallydidn't study, as the story with
(12:34):
my nemesis tells you that I waswriting even then, and that was
it.
SPEAKER_02 (12:39):
And I never looked back.
I have a quick question aboutyour dream.
Do you remember drinking any ofthe Camparian soda?
SPEAKER_00 (12:46):
I hate Camparian soda.
I have never had a Campariansoda.
So no, I didn't, I I don'tbelieve I drank it, but to this
day, I literally maybe I'mafraid I'm gonna fall back into
that ouviet, you know, one ofthose holes.
No, I I it's not my drink, no.
SPEAKER_02 (13:00):
I think our subconscious is a powerful,
powerful tool.
If we listen to our dreams andif we document them and look at
what's happening in our life,you know, along with the dreams,
it can sometimes be as good asgoing to a therapist.
SPEAKER_00 (13:14):
Well, I think what you're saying, I think there is
a way.
I mean, look, I do I believe inlike destiny and all of that.
I mean, I do, I do in my ownway, and and I and I feel there
are things in my life that haveshown me this there is destiny.
But I also think that that somein some part of some part of us
knows, some part of us knows ourpath if we could just listen to
(13:36):
it, you know, and maybe that'sreally the goal of therapy is
just learning to listen to youknow what your neurons are
really telling you that you youwant.
SPEAKER_02 (13:44):
What I find interesting about aging is now I
can look back and see myselffrom my party days, which is
probably from age 14 to say 30.
With a long stint, Mary.
I look back and I think, oh mygoodness, I wasn't listening.
I wasn't listening to my body.
You know, the sensations thatwould come to me if I met
(14:08):
someone who maybe if I'd beenlistening, I'd have known that
that person wasn't really goodfor me, or no, don't do that
because it's not going to besafe.
Not that I did a lot of unsafethings, but a few too many, I
think.
Um but the other thing Iremember is sometimes I was too
scared to listen.
But then I woke up and thought,okay, this isn't working.
(14:31):
I'm not really healthy rightnow.
And I started listening to mybody, uh, the little goosebumps
on my arms, all the feelings inmy stomach, and life gradually
began to turn around.
That whole part of my life feltlike I was trying to get back to
my original self.
I was trying to learn to listen.
I was trying to learn to takenotice of myself, my body, and
(14:55):
my emotions.
And this for me became theultimate lesson in understanding
myself.
Okay, let's get back to you.
I got carried away.
Sorry, that's just such aninteresting topic for me.
Um, you speak quite a fewlanguages.
SPEAKER_00 (15:08):
I do.
Well, so I, you know, again,this is, you know, my my my dear
mother, with whom, again, I hada complicated relationship, but
she she made me study Frenchfrom the time I was eight years
old.
I mean, she wanted me to learnFrench.
And then I actually fell in lovewith languages.
And um, so I speak French,Italian, and Spanish quite
fluently.
And if if you put me in any ofthose countries for more than a
(15:29):
week or two, I'm I'm veryfluent.
Um, I speak a little German, andyou know, I can kind of get by
in a couple other places, butum, no Portuguese.
For some reason, I don't hearit.
I I I've tried, I've I justdon't hear Portuguese.
Um, but um, you know, I tend totravel to countries where those
languages are spoken, but it wasreally weird because we were in
(15:51):
Copenhagen recently, and Isomehow, my husband had freaked
him out because I couldunderstand Danish.
Now, of course, there's a lot ofGerman in it, but I I really
could understand things aroundme and read menus and things
like that.
So, you know, I don't know.
I um when I was when I was inhigh school, we had to take this
language aptitude test, and itwas in Kurdish because Kurdish
(16:14):
has no cognates in English.
Kurdish is a like one of thoselanguages like Basque or
Finnish, and they give you anhour to learn Kurdish and then
they'd give you a test in thelanguage, it was bizarre.
Um, but I scored off the chartsin that, and I never ever scored
very well in any other testing.
So I I've always had that, youknow, my dad was very musical.
They say music and of course,music, music, math, and language
(16:35):
is supposed to go together, butI don't know.
I also like to talk to people,you know, and I like to listen
to people.
SPEAKER_02 (16:41):
So And that comes through in your writing.
And it kind of leads me to mynext question because you've
lived across cultures andgeographies.
How has that shaped your empathyas a storyteller?
And how do you see fiction as atool for inspiring empathy?
SPEAKER_00 (16:55):
Well, you know, Mandy, it goes back to what you
were talking about aboutlistening and learning to listen
and how you weren't listening toyour own body and maybe to
others.
I mean, there's a couple ofthings that I found about living
across cultures, but also to me,part of the importance of living
across cultures is that you dohave language.
Because if you don't havelanguage, you're just in your
little enclave.
You know, you may as well be inthe diplomatic core, right?
(17:16):
Nothing wrong with thediplomatic core, but you know,
so for example, the the part ofItaly where the Red House is
set, I would not have been ableto write that book had if I
didn't speak very, very goodItalian, and I can explain that
a little later on.
But you know, that you're ableto enter and penetrate cultures
in a different way.
And in terms of storytelling, Imean, I love stories, I'm a
(17:39):
storyteller and I love to listento people's stories.
And so I don't want to justlisten to people that have the
same experiences that I do.
You know, I can go and listen tomy friends at the you know, cafe
down the road anytime I want,but you know, I want to hear
about, you know, people who'vehad different experiences.
And, you know, I think that isthe path to empathy.
(18:01):
I mean, compassion and empathyis understanding what other
people experience, what otherpeople live.
If you're only experiencing whoyou are and what you live, you
know, that's when we get intolike, you know, I'm right and
they're wrong.
You know, we get into thoseconversations that are not going
to make the world a betterplace.
SPEAKER_02 (18:17):
Yeah, I mean, I encouraged my sons to go live
and travel in other countries.
Uh, but one of the things I havefound for me is that I've lived
in Australia, the US, and UK.
And even though each countryspeaks English as their main
language, uh, man, have Ilearned a lot from those three
different cultures.
It has been fascinating.
(18:38):
One thing about the pandemic isI think publishers realized
their people were craving morebooks in translation.
And for me, that's beenwonderful because I love reading
translated books.
There's a certain cadence in thewriting that makes you pause and
explore the musicality of eachword, of each sentence and
paragraph.
(18:59):
So if you aren't able to travel,reading books that are
translated into English is agood way to experience another
culture.
SPEAKER_00 (19:06):
I'm I'm always fascinated.
You know, um, I'll tell you akind of a funny story one day.
Um, you know, I like to buydifferent translations also if
I'm reading things.
You know, if like if Lydia Daviscomes out with a new prouse
translation, I compare it to theI think it was the Moncrief
translation.
I can't really remember,whatever the translation before,
you know.
And um, we had to have someplumbing work done one day.
(19:27):
Richie the plumber came by andwe were doing the plumbing.
And then we came to he came tomy office to settle up and he's
looking at my books and he goes,So do you prefer the fagels or
the Mandelstam translation ofthe Odyssey?
Because I, you know, I like thefagels, and we and we started
talking about the translationsfrom you know of Greek myth from
Greek, you know, myths fromHomer.
(19:49):
And he like knew the, and I waslike, okay, I'm first of all, A,
I'm never judging a human beingagain by what they do or what
uniform they wear ever.
A.
But also, like, he was reallyinterested.
I mean, he knew the differencesbetween the translations and
which ones he preferred.
And and we had this, you know,and I mean translation really
does make a difference.
You know, one of the first jobsI ever had was at the Beacon
(20:11):
Press in Boston, and I worked onRobert Bly's translations.
I helped publish, was aneditorial assistant.
But he translated from all ofthese languages.
Now, I don't know that he spokethem all, but he he turned them
into poetry, you know, andthat's always kind of fascinated
me, also the sort of thenon-literal translations.
SPEAKER_02 (20:32):
Good Lord, that must have taken some work.
How did he get through that?
SPEAKER_00 (20:36):
I don't know.
I really don't know.
SPEAKER_02 (20:39):
I guess a bit like the same way you got through
that uh the exam for languages,and you were given it all in
Kurdish, right?
SPEAKER_00 (20:46):
Yes, fortunately, it was only one hour of grammar and
vocabulary.
Yes.
SPEAKER_02 (20:50):
Um, I couldn't help but marvel at how you were
guided to write the Red House.
In the story, Laura searches forViola, her mother, who went
missing when Laura was a child.
And Laura remembers the buttonsthey made to give to people in
the hopes someone wouldrecognize her.
What significance did buttonsand the name Viola have on your
(21:11):
need to write the Red House?
SPEAKER_00 (21:14):
Almost everything I write starts from a real place,
and then it just kind of twirlsoff into the wherever.
And that began for me at theMemphis airport in 2006 when I
was standing in a line.
It was when TSA had juststarted, you know, checking.
You know, you couldn't just goget on a plane anymore.
I'm in a line, and somethingfell behind me.
(21:36):
And um, I saw that a man haddropped something on the ground,
and it was in fact a button.
And I picked it up.
It was a large button.
I thought maybe it was apolitical button, or I didn't
know.
And on it was a woman's face,and written on it said, Have you
seen this woman?
And her name was Viola.
And I tried to hand it back tohim, and he said, No, you you
(21:58):
can keep that.
He said, I hand them outwherever I go.
It's my wife, and shedisappeared.
And um, I searched for her.
And I took that button, so I hadthis really crazy bullish board
at home, which unfortunatelythis is not my home because you
could see my bullish board, butyou know, everything I get, a
feather, I don't know, whateverit is, I put it on the bullish
board because I think maybethere's a shard in it, maybe
(22:20):
there's an idea, a little germof a story.
And um I put that button on mybullish board, and and and Viola
was up there looking at me forfor many years.
And then when I started writingthis book, and and to be honest
with you, I wasn't really sure.
Well, I can I'll tell you alittle bit about the that in
terms of the origin of it,because I I I knew the history
(22:42):
of the Red House.
I know I wanted to write aboutthe Red House, but I didn't have
quite a story for it.
And I looked up and I saw Violalooking at me from the wall, and
I thought, there's a motherwho's gone missing.
There's a missing mother, andher name is Viola, and that was
that was it for me.
So save those little things thatyou know, all those little
things you find in your pockets.
SPEAKER_02 (23:00):
And I think it's imperative for any creative to
have a bulletin board.
As you said, you never know whenyou're gonna get a shard of an
idea from something like abutton.
And 20 years later, I think yousaid, a button, a missing
mother, the name Viola, and hereyou are having written the Red
House.
SPEAKER_00 (23:21):
20 years later.
Well, you know, my daughterkicked me out of my office, um,
my original office a few yearsago because she had a baby.
She went and had a baby and shewanted the office.
I mean, it's it's we're fine,it's good.
I mean, the kids live downstairsin our house, but that was my
office.
And so I had to move upstairs toher old bedroom.
Um, so my husband and I liveupstairs and they have they have
(23:41):
their own apartment downstairs.
But anyway, um, the first thingI said to the person doing the
carpentry is I said, I need, Ineed the board, I need a
bulletin board.
You gotta move my board.
So that was that was the one ofthe first things.
SPEAKER_02 (23:54):
And Mary, when did you first become aware of the
detention center in Alberobelo?
SPEAKER_00 (24:00):
You know, Mandy, what I like to say is there are
stories that you choose as awriter, and there are stories
that choose you.
And this one chose me.
So my husband and I and ourdaughter with our family, we did
house exchanges for like 20years, and we went all over
Europe for summer vacations.
And we loved it.
You know, we'd swap our housewith somebody in County Carey,
(24:21):
Ireland, or you know, the southof France, or you know, we would
just do these swaps.
But they were a lot of work, andthe daughter grew up, and I just
said, I'm done, we'll figure outa different different way to
travel.
But as fate would have it, I gotan offer from this beautiful
farmhouse in Puglia in southernItaly from a family that wanted
(24:41):
to come to New York.
And I said, I I can't not, Ihave to do this.
So we we went, we went, ofcourse, and it was
extraordinary.
Um, and the other family memberslived in the area, and one came
to us one day and said, I wantto take you to this town.
I think you'll really like it.
It's called Arbello Bello.
Well, Arbello, I knew aboutArbalo Bello.
(25:02):
It looks like it was designedfor hobbits.
I mean, it's got these funnyconical shapes, it really does.
I mean, it's like Middle Earth,it's little conical-shaped
houses.
And um, it's it's really truly afascinating place, and of
course, it's one of those placesthat's been spoiled by mass
tourism.
And, you know, as a travelwriter, also I knew that it was
gonna be, you know, t-shirts andkeychains and you know, tour
(25:24):
guides walking around with, youknow, ducks on duck umbrellas
and all that.
So we got to Arabelo Bello.
Um, I took an instant dislike, Iwalked around for a little bit,
and then I said to my family andto our friends, uh, I'm tired,
there's a little courtyard, I'mjust gonna sit and rest in the
shade.
So I I went and got a gelato,I'm sitting in the little
(25:44):
courtyard, and there's a crummylittle tree in the middle of the
courtyard.
Like it was just this nothingtree.
This is where the iPhone, wherethe phone comes in handy.
And look at the tree, and thetree's kind of wearing a plaque
around it, right?
It's got a plaque on it, it'salmost as big as the tree.
So I I got up and I looked atthis plaque.
This originally was in the book.
I took it out because I realizedI didn't want it in the book,
(26:06):
but I like to tell it as astory.
The plaque was written in twolanguages that I happen to be
able to read.
Um, one is Hebrew and the otheris Italian.
And it said to the people ofArabelo Bello from the people of
Jerusalem, this olive tree foryour kindness during the racist
(26:27):
period.
And I'm like, what could thisstrange town have to do with the
Nazis and the you knowoccupation of well, I mean, they
weren't occupied, they were theywere Axis powers, but anyway,
what could it have to do withthe Jews here?
So I started asking, am I goingtoo long with the story?
Because I I I feel like I'mgonna wander a little bit.
(26:48):
Absolutely not.
Please keep going.
Okay, okay.
So um, you know, I went to thetourist bureau and I'm asking
around, and and and our friendsthat I was with, she was a very
knowledgeable person.
I said, nobody knew anythingabout this plaque, why it was
there, what the town could havepossibly had with the with the
Nazi era.
So I took a picture of theplaque.
Thank you, iPhone, right?
(27:09):
I forget this.
It was 13 years ago, so I can'tdo the math right now, but
whatever 13 years ago was.
But I I wasn't ready to reallypursue this.
I just, it was kind of justinteresting.
I was working on other things atthe time.
A few years later, I think thiswas right after COVID or right
before COVID, one or the other,maybe right before COVID.
(27:30):
I was walking my dog, myneighbor's walking his dog.
He goes, Hi, what are you doing?
And I said, I'm actually leavingfor Italy in three hours and I
can't talk, but it's great tosee you.
And he starts talking me influent Italian.
And I'm going like, and so Istart talking to him in fluent
Italian.
So we're talking in Italian, andI've known him for 30 years.
And I said, I didn't know you'reItalian.
He said, Well, my parents wereor my family, we're Roman Jews
(27:51):
and we're Holocaust survivors.
And um, you know, my family hasa really interesting story.
And I said, and I remembered theplaque in the tree in southern
Italy, which was he's Roman, sothat's quite a bit further.
It's like six hours south.
I said, Do you know anythingabout this town and what it
could possibly have with Jewishhistory?
Because it seemed weird to me.
And he said he didn't knowanything about it, but he had
(28:12):
taken a class and it had a lotto do with southern Italy, and
he would send me a bunch ofarticles.
So he sends me the articles, Idownload them on the flight
before the flight.
My husband, who annoys me somuch, can sleep through, you
know, he gets on a long distanceflight and he just goes to
sleep, and I'm like wide awake.
So I'm reading through thearticles, and in a footnote, it
(28:34):
said on the outskirts ofArabello Bello was a detention
center called the Red House, LaCasa Rosa.
So I woke Larry up and I said,We have to find it.
We have to go there.
And Mandy, we did find it.
I mean, it he's in longsuffering.
It's okay, we're great.
Um, we had to drive around alot, nobody seemed to know where
(28:54):
it was or what it was.
And then we came to thismonolith of a building that sits
perched alone on a hill.
Um, it looks like aconcentration camp.
Um, if you have ever seen aconcentration camp, that's
exactly what in fact it lookslike.
We went up to this building andwe're walking around it, and I
(29:16):
felt my heart just gettingheavier and heavier and heavier.
And on the outside of thebuilding was a graffiti, a very
large graffiti that said, Um, nosetoepe sempre, I will not be
here forever.
SPEAKER_02 (29:29):
Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00 (29:30):
And I'm like, What, you know, what is this?
So when we got home next towhere we were staying, always
our friend's place, um, I calledmy friend and I said to her, Do
you know about this building?
And she said, I don't know thebuilding, but I think I know
someone who could help you.
And anyway, long story short,she found the one person in that
(29:51):
part of Italy in the world whohad the key to the padlock to
that building, La Casa Rosso,that was a detention center
during the war.
And I Met that gentleman and heunlocked the door and I was able
to walk through this building,which very, very few people have
until now, and recently it wasabout to be turned into a
(30:11):
discotheque.
Okay.
I think that's in the novel.
And somebody in the historiccenter of Italy said, you know,
I think there's some value,historic value to this building.
I don't think it should be adiscotheque.
You know, I think it should besomething else.
And this gentleman who is was isthe kind of cultural proprietor
of La Casa Rossa.
Um, and I felt that once I'dwalked in the building, um, I
(30:35):
wasn't going to be able to walkout until I wrote about it.
I mean, I just felt that thatvery, very strongly.
Um, and may I just share withyou briefly about the graffiti
on the wall?
Because as we were leaving thebuilding, and there were all
kinds of artifacts in thebuilding too.
There's a list of library books,and that's why the Cantamone
Cristo is in the novel, becausethe Cantamone Cristo is one of
(30:55):
the books that, well, the fatherchecks it out in the novel, but
it is on this list of books.
You know, the Jews kept alibrary there.
So there's a list of books theyborrowed from each other, you
know, and they had to returnthem.
So I sent him as we wereleaving, I said, What is the
graffiti?
He said, Oh, it's not graffiti,it's an art installation.
And I said, What do you mean?
(31:16):
And he said, Well, those aredormant snails.
It's written in snails.
And snails sleep for threeyears, and they're sitting on a
piece of paper mache.
Each snail is asleep.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm just telling you what hetold me.
Each snail is asleep, andthey'll wake up in three years
and they will have their firstmeal of that paper mache, that
(31:39):
flower and paste, and thenthey'll leave.
And I thought, what an image fordetention and what a metaphor
for that.
And I just knew that I was goingto be writing about this.
That was that was it for me.
I was, you know, I was done.
SPEAKER_02 (31:55):
And can you give the emotion you felt at that time a
name?
SPEAKER_00 (31:59):
Dark, darkness.
I just felt so heavy in myheart.
Like um, I just felt that I wasin a sacred space that that, you
know, I I mean, the the goodpart of it is that the people
who lived there actually faredokay.
(32:21):
I mean, it was a detentioncenter, they were hungry, they
were cold.
And the the plaque I saw wasbecause the people of Aberlo
Bello, who had probably neverseen Jews and didn't know what a
Jew was, and probably thoughtthey were like, you know, the
demon, realized they were justpeople like them.
And um, I mean, there's a littlebit more.
I mean, the fact that that umthe the Joseph who goes into
(32:41):
town as a dentist and works,that's historically accurate.
They the professional peoplewould go into town.
And the townspeople were like,they're just like us.
And they took, they took care ofthem.
They they they fed them, theygave them clothes, they helped
them in, you know, and enough sothat the the people of Jerusalem
sent this olive tree, which Iassume has grown larger since I
(33:02):
saw it.
SPEAKER_02 (33:03):
And the snails come back later in the book through
Laura.
SPEAKER_00 (33:07):
Yeah, Laura gets into snails.
She has a terrarium of them, andshe she does an art, she winds
up doing an art installation andat the end.
Um, and and the the phrase, Iwill not be here forever.
So part of what motivates Laurain her journey, I mean, Laura
goes back to Italy and Laura'smother disappears when she's 12
years old, and she's 42 yearsold in the book, and she's gone
(33:30):
back to sort of search for hermother's story.
And one of her things that shehas to guide her are these
paintings that her mother did ofwhat basically the Red House.
And on the back of thepaintings, the mother would
write, I will not be hereforever.
So that that informs Laura inher search for her
understanding, her her mother.
SPEAKER_02 (33:51):
Yeah, I'd like to talk about a character in the
book who stood out to me.
Just thought he was a wonderfulcharacter.
To get to him, I'm going tobring up something that you
wrote on page 116.
You wrote about Angelo.
Quote Angelo is used to twistsand turns of fate.
He has lived through wars, thedeath of his parents, his wife,
(34:12):
and his only child.
Only the angels have stayed withhim.
Has he already done somethingwrong here?
He follows a soldier down aflight of stairs, then another.
Into the sub basement of the RedHouse.
He envisions what awaits himimprisonment, deportation,
torture, perhaps worse.
(34:33):
End quote.
How did Angelo's characterderive?
SPEAKER_00 (34:37):
So um there is a chapel.
That chapel does exist in theRed House.
There was an artist, I think hewas Hungarian.
Um I can't remember his name,but I have it, I mean it's in my
notes.
So the the commandante of theRed House wanted someone to do a
chapel, and this gentleman didthis chapel, you know, and I
don't know how long he wasthere, but he he made this
(34:59):
chapel.
One of the interesting thingsabout the chapel is when you go
into it, it looks like you know,a church in Naples.
I mean, it it's got, you know,it's got the angels and the
saints, and you know, the all ofthe stations of the cross, or it
has it has all of that, youknow, kind of going around it.
And it looks like mosaic, butum, the the artist actually
didn't have any mosaic, so hepainted, frescoed them, and then
(35:23):
he hand-carved into littlesquares to make it uh like look
like mosaic.
So it's fascinating.
And that is, you know, kind of Imean, I mean, this this person,
Carlo Palm Palma, I think hisname was, who had the keys, who
brought me into the Red House,brought us into this chapel.
I mean, it was so bizarre.
(35:43):
And then it's also bizarrebecause I've tried many, many
times to reach out to Carloagain.
He just doesn't get back to me.
But but maybe that was maybethat was his role was to just
guide me in, you know, and not,you know, I'm not really sure
why I I can't reach him again,but whatever that is.
But you know, Angelo, so Angelois based on that that artist and
(36:04):
that, you know, that chapel thatthat I saw.
SPEAKER_02 (36:07):
Angelo's quiet endurance contrasts with Laura's
restless searching.
Do you see them as mirrors oropposites?
SPEAKER_00 (36:14):
Uh obviously they're both tormented in their own way.
Laura is a more, you know,visibly restless soul, and and
Angelo has his demons that Idon't want to, no spoilers, but
you know, has his demons also.
But I think that, you know,look, art informs all of them.
Visual art, Viola, Angelo, andLaura.
And I think, you know, Laura islooking for a kind of peace that
(36:35):
I I like to feel she's found bythe end.
SPEAKER_02 (36:37):
The book carries a quiet tension between memory and
reality and what a childremembers as opposed to adult
memories.
Was it difficult for you movingbetween the two?
And did you write the story asit appears in sequence or in
scenes?
Maybe because I'm left-handed.
SPEAKER_00 (36:54):
I I have a sort of modular relationship to the
world as opposed to a linearrelationship to the world.
So I never do anything in astraight line.
I definitely don't write in astraight line.
I write in scenes.
I don't know where the scenesare going to go necessarily.
So I develop different momentsand then I kind of figure out
kind of where, you know, how tohow to line it all up.
SPEAKER_02 (37:13):
Another component of the Red House is that there's a
haunting quality in how love andloss intertwine throughout the
story.
Were there any works of art,literature, or personal
experiences that helped shapethat mood?
SPEAKER_00 (37:27):
Well, I I so there's several things.
I mean, certainly, you know, thequestion about literature, you
know, when I think about loveand loss, I mean, I think of
Anna Karen and I, I think of,you know, many of the great
works of literature.
Um, Jude the Obscure, you know,Hardy, I love Hardy for that
sense of longing and loss.
There was a book, I believe, wasnominated for the book or last
(37:48):
year called The Safekeep, that'sum a very interesting story
about loss.
You know, it's one of the bigthemes, right?
But to go back to thecomplicated relationship I had
with my mother, my mother hadthis habit of kind of losing me
in places.
Like she would sort of wanderoff.
I mean, it's kind of funny inretrospect, but you know, like
(38:10):
my brother and I, she took usfor, you know, we come from
Illinois, she decided she wantedto go to the Easter parade in
New York.
I was 12, my brother was nine,and she saw a hat she liked and
she wandered off into the Easterparade.
My brother and I were juststanding on a street corner,
like, what do we do now?
So I think it made me a goodtraveler because I got very good
navigational skills.
Um, it also made me not afraidto ask directions.
(38:32):
Like I did go to a policeman andI said, Um, you know, I think
we've lost our mother.
And um, you know, we're supposedto have lunch at something
called Rumpel Stiltskins.
And he looked at me and he said,Do you mean Rumpel Myers?
And I said, That sounds aboutright.
I mean, I didn't know we weregoing, I didn't know we're going
for lunch.
She made a reservationsomewhere, you know.
Cop helps us get to RumpelMyers, and my brother and I sit
(38:54):
and we order hot chocolate, andmy mother comes in screaming,
like, my children, where am I?
So she would lose us, you know,it it happened like a lot.
And um, the the last time ithappened, I remember was in the
the Harvard, um, the Harvardcoup where um I ran into this.
I I lost her.
She was, she wandered off, sheshe lost me.
And this lovely Indian couplewas there who I was friendly
(39:16):
with, and they said, I hi Mary,we haven't seen you in so long.
Is everything all right?
And I said, Well, I'm fine, butI've just lost my mother.
And they offered theircondolences.
They said, We're so sorry.
And I said, No, no, I've losther in the store.
So it's it's kind of funny, butalso it, you know, it's sort of
about abandonment, you know, andloss, and that kind of mother
that can just wander off becauseshe sees a hat or a dress or
(39:36):
something that interests her.
And um, so it's kind of apersonal theme for me.
But also in terms of things Iread, you know, I I don't read
comic fiction.
I don't really like, I don'treally like, I I love funny
things, but in my art, and Iguess in my heart, in my art, my
soul, um, I'm a pretty seriousperson, and and the question,
(39:59):
you know, loss and love,longing, I suppose, is is is a
big thing.
SPEAKER_02 (40:05):
Oh, I find that fascinating because it's almost
like your personal thoughts andfears of abandonment have come
up through your subconscious inthis story of the Red House.
SPEAKER_00 (40:16):
I'm I'm all about maternal abandonment.
Um it's a big thing for me.
SPEAKER_02 (40:20):
Yeah, thanks for sharing that with us, Mary.
Now that you've written thisbook and lived with its themes,
what does creative courage looklike for you today?
SPEAKER_00 (40:28):
You know, for so many years, um, I was worried
about money and I was raising afamily, and I had all these
things I was worried about.
And I was worried about mycareer and reviews and you know,
all this stuff.
And something about publishingthis book, I'm free.
I don't care.
I feel this sense of freedomthat I I don't know that I've
(40:52):
felt since I began writingstories.
Uh, my husband was really greatabout this once.
I was in a real slump a coupleyears ago.
And I said, I said, I don'tknow, I just feel like nothing's
working.
He said, Why don't you juststart writing stories again like
you wrote them when you were 20years old, and you just love to
write stories.
And that's what I've gone backto.
I've gone back to this girl,even third grade, you know, just
(41:13):
do I'm I'm doing it for the loveof it, and uh, and not because
of the market.
I don't I don't know what'sgonna happen with what I'm
working on now.
I'm doing it for a sense offreedom.
Um, there's a couple ofpainters, there's one painter,
an incredible, I think she'sNigerian British named um Jotty.
I'm gonna mess up her last name.
She paints with just incrediblefreedom.
(41:35):
And I love whenever I can go seeher work, just to experience
that sense of flow, I guess whatI'm saying.
Is it that artists and writerswho have a sense of flow?
I mean, I mean, story is veryimportant.
I mean, grounding.
I mean, I'm not talking aboutcraft particularly, but just the
internal process of like offreedom, you know, just freedom.
SPEAKER_02 (41:56):
I wonder if that feeling of freedom has come
through writing about maternalabandonment through Viola and uh
Laura.
SPEAKER_00 (42:04):
I think that's no, I think that's a great I I feel
that it, you know, I feel that Ihave gotten that out.
Um and and I'm I'm actually kindof taking on a bigger world now
in a different something thatI'm thinking working on.
You know, I'm I I don't believethat writing is therapy, but I
do believe it's therapeutic.
SPEAKER_02 (42:24):
My goodness, Mary, I love this conversation.
I could keep chatting with youall day.
I think we both could.
SPEAKER_00 (42:32):
Before we go, tell me what you're currently
reading.
I'm doing a lot of researchreading.
So that's kind of really uminteresting and fun.
And I can get a little obsessedwith it.
I've gotten slightly obsessedabout the history of silent
films and D.W.
Griffith's early films becauseuh my daughter got a piece of
property upstate about seven oreight years ago that we thought
(42:54):
was probably going to be adisaster that's actually turned
into quite a special, a specialplace.
Um, and and DW Griffith did hisfirst silent films on the banks
of the Never Sink River.
Um I'm reading a lot about D.W.
Griffith and silent films andand all of that.
Um and I'm reading a novel Ireally like right now called Um
The Correspondent by VirginiaEvans.
(43:17):
It's uh was recommended to me bya couple friends.
And um, so I usually try to reada mix of I don't sleep very
much.
Um I would love to sleep.
If anyone has any ideas, I'mopen to them.
Um, but I found that at late atnight I read on my Kindle so as
not to disturb my long-sufferinghusband.
So I'll I'll read different,usually contemporary things at
(43:40):
night.
Do you still read and writepoetry?
I do.
I actually just wrote a book inCopenhagen called The Tear
Eating Bat.
There is actually a bat thateats lives on, thrives on tears.
I get a little obsessed aboutthings, you know.
I find I find a lot of rabbitholes.
I'm really into this bat becauseit lives it lives on grief, not
(44:01):
blood, but grief.
Yeah.
So I do write poetry.
SPEAKER_02 (44:04):
Oh gosh, Mary, I have loved chatting with you.
Uh, we need to meet again and uhhave a cup of coffee together.
That would be lovely.
And thank you so much for yourtime and for offering to do this
interview when you have aterrible cold.
And for writing The Red House.
It truly is a beautiful,beautiful book.
SPEAKER_01 (44:24):
Thank you, man.
I've loved chatting with you.
It and I hasn't it's felt, Idon't know, it's been great,
really great.
I think we could keep chatting along time.
SPEAKER_02 (44:32):
You've been listening to my conversation
with author Mary Morris abouther new book, The Red House.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media.
And remember to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
listen to this podcast.
To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
(44:52):
thebookshoppodcast.com.
And make sure to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
listen to the show.
You can also follow me at MandyJackson Beverly, on Instagram
and Facebook, and on YouTube atThe Bookshop Podcast.
If you have a favorite indiebookshop that you'd like to
suggest we have on the podcast,I'd love to hear from you via
(45:14):
the contact form atthebookshoppodcast.com.
The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, Mandy
Jackson Beverly.
The music provided by BrianBeverly and my personal
assistant is Kaylee Dichinger.
Thanks for listening, and I'llsee you next time.
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