September 10, 2025 • 36 mins
On this episode, I chat with author Tova Mirvis about her novel, We Would Never, a psychological exploration inspired by a real murder case she discovered on Facebook.
Mirvis reveals how true crime reporting always left her hungry for the human story beneath the headlines, and how she carefully crafted characters who start as a typical family with typical problems before spiraling into darkness.
Having written a memoir about leaving Orthodox Judaism and her marriage, Mervis brings profound insight into the gap between our public and private selves. "What does it mean to not be the person you were expected to be?" she asks, a question that resonates throughout her fiction.
Mirvis says of writing We Would Never, "It taught me about the willingness to go dark," and the craft of creating suspense. Her insights into character development, the ethics of fictionalizing real events, and the thin line between ordinary people and extraordinary acts offer a valuable perspective for writers and readers alike.
Ready to explore the shadowy corners of family dynamics? Listen now, and discover why fiction reveals what true crime can never tell.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (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
bookshop owners and booksellersfrom around the globe and
publishing professionals.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
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(00:33):
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
You're listening to episode 306.
Tova Mervis is the author ofthe Book of Separation, a memoir
, as well as three novelsVisible City, the Outside World
(00:53):
and the Lady's Auxiliary, whichwas a national bestseller.
Her essays have appeared in theBoston Globe magazine, the New
York Times Book Review, poetsand Writers and Good
Housekeeping, and her fictionhas been broadcast on National
Public Radio.
She lives outside of Boston andher latest novel is we Would
Never Hi.
(01:14):
Tova, it's lovely to see youagain and have you on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Well, let's begin with learning about you.
Where did you grow up, and whendid writing first become more
than just an interest?
When did it start to feelessential to who you are?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I grew up in Memphis, tennessee, and I'm actually a
sixth generation Memphian and so, being part of Memphis and part
of a very small, close-knitJewish community, there has
always been so much a part ofwho I am.
And I left Memphis to go tocollege and I always was
interested in I think I was areader.
(01:49):
I love to read, especiallynovels.
I was one of those kids who wasalways buried inside a book and
then, when I was in college, Istarted taking a few creative
writing classes.
I didn't really have any sensethat it was what I wanted to do,
but it was something to explore.
And when I was, I guess, maybetowards the end of college, I
(02:10):
started writing what I thoughtwould be a novel about Memphis,
about the community I grew up in.
It was a highly early draft.
I would never let it see thelight of day right now it lives
buried somewhere in my files butit was my first interest in
thinking about fiction and howyou tell a story and how.
Stories can, I think, helpilluminate our own questions
(02:34):
about who we are and where wefit into the world that we are
raised inside of.
And do you remember if therewas a moment or a teacher or a
(02:58):
mentor who inspired you tobecome a writer.
And just being around her,listening to her talk about what
fiction can do, how it was away to delve into who people
really were.
It just spoke to me and so Itook a few classes with her and
something happened in my familywhen I was a junior in college.
(03:19):
There was sort of a big familydrama and a rift that happened
in my extended family and thatwas really when I started to
write.
I felt like somehow I couldn'tunderstand what was happening.
It was, you know, this verystressful family situation and I
felt like somehow my immediateimpulse was to turn it into a
novel, to write fiction about it, and I felt like somehow taking
(03:42):
reality that felt so unwieldyand complicated and trying to
think about it as a story on thepage.
I always feel like that familymoment was really when I became
a writer, when I felt likefiction was somehow the window
into a world or was the entryway, that I could find some sort of
(04:03):
a way to think about things ora way to forge understanding.
And Mary Gordon was the teacherwho I told her what was going
on and she just said write yourway through it and that to me.
I've never forgotten thatreally.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's wonderful advice and I do believe that
reading well-written fictionhelps inspire empathy within the
reader and, as a writer offiction, I think that when we're
writing each character,especially from the different
characters' point of view, ithelps us to become more
empathetic and morecompassionate toward others.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Exactly, I feel like writing.
I feel like the central tenetof fiction writing is empathy.
I mean that to me, I feel likewriting is really this act of
imaginative empathy.
It's, you know, so much of myimpulse to write fiction comes
from this urge to understand.
You know what is it like to besomeone else.
You know to.
You know, we all live insideour own worlds and our own heads
(05:01):
.
But what is it like to besomeone else and our own heads?
But what is it like to besomeone else, to be in their
experiences, to sort of imagineour way out of our own bodies,
our own worlds and into someoneelse's?
And I think anything I write,certainly in my new book, but
really in all my novels.
I feel like that curiosityabout people is what makes me
(05:21):
want to write.
I want to know what people arereally thinking, not you know
who we are on the outside, kindof our performance self, our
facades, but all the complicatedinner messy spaces that we all
have.
And that's what fiction reallyilluminates.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, I definitely agree with you there.
Across your novels you returnto themes of inner conflict.
Definitely agree with you there.
Across your novels you returnto themes of inner conflict,
faith, tradition and personaltransformation.
In Invisible City, a woman'squiet unhappiness simmers
beneath her daily life.
The outside world exploresreligious structure and
spiritual doubt, and the lady'sauxiliary enters the insulated
(06:01):
world of Orthodox Judaism.
Now, in we Would Never you stepinto the aftermath of a murder.
What emotional or philosophicalthreads have carried across
these stories and wound theirway into this new novel?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Right in so many ways .
You know, some people laughedwhen they heard what I was.
You know we Would Never.
It was sort of a murder mysteryin some sense.
My friends who know me well, ormy writer friends were like a
murder.
Really I don't think of that asbeing like your territory and
on one hand, yes, there is amurder and it's a mystery, but
really that wasn't the piece ofit that was so compelling.
(06:36):
It was in some ways I feel,like it's my same kind of novel,
it's my same preoccupations,just with a different kind of
plot.
There's a plottier part to thisbook, but I think through all
my work I'm interested in thoseinner struggles we have, who we
are on the outside and who weare on the inside, the parts of
(06:57):
ourselves that we let people seeand the parts we tuck away.
And that sense that there'sthis underworld or an underside
to all of us, I think, is whatkeeps me coming back to stories.
I feel like that's sort of likemy fictional wound in some
sense.
Maybe we all write from a kindof wound or a question or
(07:19):
unresolved place, and I thinkthat question of do you match
who people see you as, do youfit in what happens when you
veer from who you are supposedto be.
And for me those questions aremy fiction because they're also
my personal questions.
I wrote a memoir about leavingthe Orthodox Jewish community I
(07:43):
was raised in and gettingdivorced, and really the book of
separation.
That memoir is so much, I think, about change.
What does it mean to not be theperson you were expected to be?
Or what does it mean to decideat the ripe old age of 40 that
you don't want to be the personyou imagine you are going to be?
(08:05):
You want to do somethingdifferent.
And what happens?
Not just inside yourself but inall the relationships around
you.
And so I think I come back tothose themes and look at it from
this angle and then that angle.
But it always comes back topeople, to people and all our
complicated pieces of our lives.
And I draw on my own life, Idraw on my own questions and my
(08:29):
own imagined versions of otherpeople.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
It takes a lot of courage to know, first of all,
when to leave a marriage, and italso took you courage to
realize and leave the OrthodoxJewish community, so I commend
you on that.
Going through a divorce on itsown can be traumatic, but when
you did both together, that's alot.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I think any leave-taking, any kind of change
, has pain and trauma, even ifthat change is for the better,
if it's something that you'vedecided, even if you're the one
making the decision to leave.
I think all leave-taking comeswith loss.
Even leaving worlds that don'tfit for you or don't work,
there's still parts that do.
(09:13):
It's never black and white andit's never all or nothing, and
so for me, leaving thisclose-knit world that shaped me,
that my entire family is partof, it took years of, I guess,
living with a quiet, naggingdoubt about who I was and what I
was supposed to believe.
But I knew that to act on itwould really topple all the
(09:34):
structures of my life and I hadto be ready to do that.
And I think in writing about it, one of the things that was so
gratifying about writing amemoir was hearing from so many
people who had similarexperiences.
They weren't leaving myparticular religious world and
their marriages were differentand their families were
different.
But I found that in memoir, whenyou are willing to tell a
(09:58):
vulnerable story, I think itinvites other people to be
vulnerable and to tell their ownversions of those stories, and
I think the people I heard afterI wrote a few essays based on
the book and when the book cameout I started getting emails
from people who had left allsorts of religious communities
or even just close-knit familystructures or marriages or
(10:22):
people working with, leavingneighborhoods.
Just any change, any sense thatI'm going to do something
different.
And I think it's really themost gratifying experience I've
had as a writer.
That feeling that you know it'sso vulnerable to put a memoir
in the world.
I mean now I feel like, oh, howdid I have the stomach to do it
?
I don't even know how I did it.
Now it feels like so just toimagine putting something so
(10:44):
personal and painful out in theworld.
But those emails, they justwould come every day, someone
saying I read your book, here'smy story, and they really it
reminded me why I write in thefirst place.
That sense of one story invitesanother story.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And also that sense of putting your book out in the
world and having people read itand acknowledge it.
That's kind of like the icingon the cake, I feel.
That's when you know you'vecompleted your story.
Yes, we Would Never is based ona real murder you first read
about on Facebook.
We Would.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Never is based on a real murder you first read about
on Facebook.
You've said that news articlesprovided the facts but left out
the why, the deeper humanreasons behind the crime.
Which character did was?
I was on Facebook just kind ofscrolling along and I saw that
someone who I knew verytangentially had been murdered.
It was, you know, horrifying.
I was shocked and also reallycurious.
I wanted to know what hadhappened and so I started
Googling.
This news story was a lawprofessor in Tallahassee had
(12:00):
been shot, and there was allthis speculation.
People thought maybe it was acolleague or a student.
And then the last line in oneof these news articles said that
he had been in the middle of avery contentious divorce.
And at the time I was on thetail end of this very
contentious divorce and so Ijust thought, oh, I don't know
if it's that student or thecolleague, it just felt like
that divorce seemed to be wherethe heart of that story lay.
(12:22):
And so I followed the story foryears.
I was trying to write adifferent novel and I would take
these long, long breaks fromthat other novel to just read
about this new story, and Ithink what was so compelling to
me was.
You know, there is so muchinformation online.
I mean, there was a Datelinespecial.
It became this true crimephenomenon and I could pull up
(12:44):
so much information.
There were YouTube videos.
There were expert people whowould talk about their theories
of it.
There was footage of so manythings and I learned a
tremendous amount, but nothingthat ever gave me the why, the
human story.
There was speculation.
This man's ex-wife's family wasimplicated in the murder and
(13:06):
eventually they were arrested.
Help me understand you know,what do you think about the
night before you do something sohorrific and how do you go to
sleep the night after?
And who brings up the idea, whosays it and who?
How do you react?
(13:28):
And do you have guilt andregret, like all those pieces of
the story are left out becausethere's no way to have access to
them, and I feel like in somuch of true crime that I
sometimes consume I'm not a hugetrue crime person, really, but
certain stories will get undermy skin and I start to read
about them and I think whatkeeps me coming back for more is
(13:50):
almost a sense of frustrationthat no matter how much I read,
no matter how many times IGoogle the news story.
I never get that human sidethat fiction can give.
I never get their souls ortheir inner lives.
We're always kept away fromthat and that was sort of, I
guess, in deciding to write wewould never.
(14:12):
I felt like fiction andfamily-driven, character-driven
fiction could fill in those gapsand so that was where the idea
for the book came.
And, you know, I could createthe characters I had to really.
You know, I knew so much aboutthe true life versions of them,
but I had to put them aside andlet them become characters, the
same way that I create anycharacters, and some came harder
(14:33):
and some came easier.
But I think the hardestcharacter for me to write was
the character of Haley.
So Haley is the character whois getting divorced and she's
sort of known as the good girlin the family, the one everyone
loves.
She's soft-spoken, she doesn'treally stand up for herself and
when she's married she's sort ofpulled between the strong
(14:53):
wishes of her mother and thestrong wishes of her husband.
And that being caught betweenmaybe it was hard for me to
write to her, because I relateto her a little bit, the good
girl sense, I have that goodgirlness so so deeply ingrained
inside me, but she was hard forme to write because I wanted her
to be both weak and strong atthe same time.
(15:15):
I wanted her to be someone whocould be buffeted by other
people's desires, but I stillwanted the reader to feel her,
who she was, and that it justtook so many drafts.
I, when I, every time I, when Iwrite a book, I always started
it's always called new novel one.
That's always the first draftand every time it's always every
single one.
It's new novel, new, new novel,new, new, new novel one.
(15:39):
And then every time I make abig change, I update that file
number.
So it was new novel one in thebeginning and by the time I gave
it to my editor it was newnovel 58.
So it just went through so manyiterations of the characters
and working out the dynamics andtrying to make the characters.
I guess they call it to belikable, but maybe relatable is
a better word than likable.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And she was so protected.
So that becomes a big facet ofher personality.
And while I felt good for herbecause of that, it also made me
feel uncomfortable, and Ienjoyed that feeling as I was
reading the novel.
Oh, thank you.
Did writing the novel bring youcloser to an answer and, if not
a resolution, did it at leastshift the kinds of questions you
(16:24):
were asking or what you feltmattered most?
I often wonder that if someoneis alive in the morning and then
they die suddenly in theafternoon, does the ether change
around them?
Do they have a sense ofsomething changing?
I don't know.
I often think about that.
How about you?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
I think about that sense that you know, on one hand
, we're just living our livesand we have no idea.
We have no idea what is goingto befall us.
I think that's scarier thanlike you know the scariest true
crime or you know the footstepsin the dark.
I mean that scares me.
But what really scares me is wedon't know.
We don't know what is going tohappen next.
(17:03):
We don't know what is going tohappen all around us.
And that idea, I think it's wehave to live with that sense
that we have.
We don't have control over ourown life, the people we'd love,
that we would want to protect atall costs.
We can't always do that.
And that idea, I think, wasimportant to me in writing this
book.
That sense that maybe one ofthe things that I came to
(17:24):
understand in writing it wasthat I fully believe I would
never do something like this.
I really do not think I have itin me to hire a hitman.
I truly, truly believe thatabout myself, but everyone I
know.
And yet I think that we don'talways know what we might do in
situations we cannot even beginto imagine.
(17:46):
And that's have followed theKaren Reed trial.
It's been a big, big thing inBoston.
It's been going on for years.
It's one of these stories, it'sin the news, there's did she
kill her boyfriend or not, kindof story and two trials
(18:08):
testimony.
And I think what I have learnedabout these stories is that when
we tune into them as true crimestories, they're after things
have already gone to the extreme, it's after the story's gone
off the rails.
But if you rewind them back afew months or a few years,
(18:29):
they're ordinary people.
They're like us.
These are stories.
When we read about them they'recrazy.
You're like, oh my God, theydid that but a few months
earlier.
There are people grappling withfamily dynamics, with
parent-child relationships, withcomplicated marriages, and
they're maybe not as far from usas we wish to believe.
(18:52):
And that was what I felt inwriting this novel.
I felt like these people, thesecharacters I was writing about.
They start off as a family.
They start off as people whomaybe they're a little
over-involved, they're a littlemuch.
They have their pathologies,like so many of us.
They're overprotective, theyhave a secret, a wound.
(19:15):
They have all this stuff, butso do so many people, and
somehow they lose control.
The story escalates and itescalates and no one pulls back,
no one holds the reins, andthat I felt like a lot of these
stories that we read about now.
They start off a lot morenormal and then they go to these
(19:37):
extremes, and that was how Icame to understand this true
crime story and so many of theother ones that we tend to
follow.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, it's almost like there's a tipping point.
You know a clog gets stuck inthe wheel.
Yeah, exactly.
And did writing the novel giveyou clarity as to what you felt
was going on in people's headsthroughout this story of the
murder?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
I did.
I felt like I didn't know thatI could say it's what the real
people were thinking, but I feltlike it gave me a sense of what
they could have been thinkingor what a story like that could
have played out.
I felt like the book took fiveyears to write and so much of
that time you know, new novelsone through through 58 were all
about really burrowing deeperand deeper into their psyches.
(20:23):
You know, how do we sort ofcreate denial for ourselves?
How do we create like sort ofdelusional ideas that we're
going to get away with somethingor that it's justified?
How do we turn a blind eye tothings?
So, just trying to reallyimagine my way into these
characters and think of them ascomplicated people with a whole
(20:45):
slew of experiences andhistories and anxieties and pain
, and sort of paint them asrounded as I could, yeah,
Writing fiction from a realevent must be a delicate
balancing act.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Did you ever find yourself wondering is this mine
to tell?
And how did you navigate theethical and emotional
complexities between fiction andcreative nonfiction?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I did worry about that a lot.
You know I was taking a truestory that I, even though it was
in the news and all over youknow the social media and the
media.
I knew that for some people itwas a real story.
It was in the news and all over.
You know the social media andthe media.
I knew that for some people itwas a real story, it was their
lives and I think a writeralways has to wrestle with that.
You know, in every novel thatI've written I'm working on a
new novel now and I'm thinking,I've been thinking about it a
lot, you know, these past fewweeks there's that question of
(21:33):
how much can you take from reallife.
You know, do you, can you take?
Is everything fair game formaterial?
Is everything?
You know?
Can you take things and changethem?
You know that people alwaysjoke.
You know, oh no, when you havea writer in the family.
You know there's a quote.
You know you're doomed whenthere's a writer in the family.
And you know what my father,when I was growing up, when
you'll end up in my novel and Iwore it.
I wore it for years and now mydaughter wears it.
(22:04):
So I have that same feeling ofyou know she wants to be a
writer and you know there'salways a question of what is
fair game or not.
And I draw a distinctionbetween memoir and fiction.
I feel like when I wrote mymemoir I was careful about what
I kept out of the story and whatI kept in, because there it was
not transposed or disguised itwas.
You know, it was a version ofmy own life and I was really
(22:26):
very wary of that.
In fiction, I feel like there'sa little more room because
things are transformed.
It's never one to one.
My first novel, the Lady'sAuxiliary, was about my own
community and it was reallyfiction.
I mean, there were pieces, bitsand pieces.
It was like a stew.
I took things and changed them.
But everyone, when that bookcame out, it was big news in
(22:49):
Memphis and everyone played thisguessing game of who were the
characters and I thought theycould match them up one-to-one.
And I feel like, no, it's not.
It's never one-to-one,everything is sort of filtered
through your own experience.
But I've carried that questionwith me and with this particular
story I felt like, because itwas such a public story, because
(23:12):
it was on Dateline and therewas a podcast, I felt like the
story itself was sort of apublic story.
It felt like it was not afamily's private story, in the
way that if I had heard a storyabout my friend's family that no
one knew about there, I wouldfeel like there was a different
set of questions.
And then I changed the story.
I started with the real versionand changed many, many things,
(23:35):
and one of the biggest changes Imade was the man who was
murdered.
I knew him very little and Ihad friends who knew him, but my
character in the book bearsnothing, has nothing to do with
him.
There I made the biggest changebecause I felt like he was not
going to be part of my novel.
Anything I knew about himactually veered my character in
(23:56):
the opposite direction, becauseI didn't want it to be a version
of this man whose family hassuffered a terrible tragedy, and
so I wanted the book to departfrom that as much as possible.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
And while we're on that subject, I would love to
talk about Jonah and Haley.
Can you speak to what initiallydrew them to each other and
what pulled them apart?
And did you always know howtheir relationship would unravel
, or did they surprise you?
It's interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I always had this phrase in my head that sometimes
the things we love about peopleare the things we end up coming
to really not like about them.
I mean, in my own marriagethere was some truth of that and
, before I was divorced, thatsense that sometimes the things
we think are the perfect fit forus turn out not to be.
And for Jonah and Haley.
(24:43):
Jonah is a writer.
He's kind of complex and darkand a little moody and quiet, a
little remote, and one of thethings he loves about Haley
initially is that she's sobright and cheery, she's sunny
Her nickname is sunshine, shesort of positive.
She doesn't have that dark andstormy side as he does and he's
(25:05):
drawn to it.
And I think Haley is drawnMaybe.
Maybe he represents somethingshe wishes she was.
So there's some way.
There's a gap between them butthere's some wish, I think, on
the part of both of them and atfirst it works well for them.
But A few years into thatmarriage that you know, for
Jonah he begins to see Haley asa lightweight.
(25:27):
He feels like she doesn't havethe depth and he's impatient
with her and one of their mainstruggles is really about
whether Haley is able to standup to her mother or not.
I was interested in also thesaying of you know, when you
marry someone you marry thewhole family.
I think when you divorcesomeone you also divorce, often
divorce the whole family.
So that loomed very large forme and the idea that you know
(25:51):
Haley feels like you know Haleyhas an overprotective mother.
Her mother's very involved inher life, but Haley is able to
see that that kind ofoverprotectiveness comes from a
kind of love and I think whenit's our own parent often we're
willing to be a little moreforgiving.
But a mother-in-law isdifferent.
And so for Jonah he sees hismother-in-law, sherry, as being
(26:16):
domineering, intrusive,controlling.
He has no willingness toforgive her her flaws, and that
is a tremendous area of conflictfor them.
I think it's probably theirchief conflict in their marriage
.
And Haley is someone who iscaught between.
She wants to stand up forherself, she wants to please her
(26:37):
mother and she wants to pleaseher husband and she feels like
she's being pulled in these twodirections simultaneously.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
I enjoyed reading through their relationship.
It was fractured, but it feltreal, thank you.
Now Sherry Hayley's motherreturns to the pool for solace
and contemplation.
Jung described water as asymbol of the unconscious, a
place of renewal andpsychological rebirth.
Were you thinking about thatkind of symbolism when shaping
Sherry's character, or did itemerge more intuitively?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I think that's what I love about the writing process
the way an idea kind of you know, speaking of water, kind of
emerges out from like the waterin your mind, this sort of like
murky place.
And I knew it was going to beset in Florida, and so I thought
about swimming pools and then,all of a sudden, the pool became
this place.
I think probably my favoritescenes to write were in the
(27:29):
swimming pool.
I felt like the pool, I feltlike it was this like primordial
space, this unformed space, andSherry swims every day, she
swims back and forth, andsomething about the rhythmic
nature of thinking I just alwayspictured her sometimes like a
shark cutting through that water, sometimes, in that I feel like
(27:49):
water is sort of this looseningof ourselves, and so I think,
you know, it's always a mystery,like where ideas come from,
where we get them, and it's, youknow, today I was working on my
new book and I had an idea.
It was like one little piece,and I was like, oh, like one
piece of my 5 million piecepuzzle was put into place today
and it's so thrilling.
(28:11):
There's this like I had thislike ecstatic feeling of like I
didn't know that and now I doand of course though of course
that was the piece and that youknow, it's the part of writing
where I feel like it's so muchof it is it's buried in the
subconscious and it comes up.
And so the swimming pool to me,you know, I didn't explicitly
think I'm going to choose aswimming pool for this reason,
(28:32):
but I feel like our minds supplyus with those things, and then
there comes a moment when Istart to think about the pool in
that way, and then I did morewith it and expanded it, and
then, the same way with thecherry, has a garden that grows
around the pool, and in anearlier draft it was just a
little garden, and with eachdraft I wrote, the garden got
bigger and wilder and I, youknow, I started thinking about,
(28:55):
like the landscape, and I thinkthose really are the parts that
I love, that sense ofdescriptiveness and certainly
for this book, the climate ofthe book felt really important.
I thought about the Florida land, like the hot, sticky, sweaty
Florida climate, and I keptthinking about entanglement and
(29:16):
the family is so enmeshed, and Ithought about these gardens,
that overgrown, and vines andhow you can get tangled in them,
and so I just you know, that'sthe part when I really feel like
I.
You know, there are a lot ofhard days, a lot of days when I
feel like, oh, I wish I didsomething different.
Or frustrated days.
But the days I love writing arethose days when I feel the
(29:37):
connection and the themes.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, For me as a reader.
I felt that the pool becamealmost like a living thing.
I guess it was kind of like apulse throughout the story.
I loved reading that essence ofwater throughout the story.
Thank you, tova.
What did writing?
We Would Never teach you aboutyourself.
I was wondering if there wassomething this novel required of
(30:01):
you emotionally, spiritually orpsychologically that previous
books did not.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
It did teach me something.
It taught me about thewillingness to go dark, to go to
a darker place.
There's a part in the bookwhere Hayley wants to be a
writer and she writes these sortof happier, sunny stories and
Jonah says to her if you want tobe a writer, you have to be
willing to go dark.
And I felt like when I firstwrote that line I was like, who
(30:28):
are we talking to?
I wonder, you know?
Who is this really?
Who might we be talking about?
I think that willing is to gointo the dark places and to have
characters who are going toplan a murder.
I mean there's no way, you know.
I feel like, oh, they're sonice, my characters.
You know they're, they, they'renice, nice family, my
characters.
You know they're a nice, nicefamily, whatever that means, but
they do.
(30:48):
I mean it's not giving anythingaway to say that a murder was
planned in this book and to bewilling to go into that, to
really to sit inside our darkimpulses.
And I think it also taught mesomething as a writer in terms
of craft, about plot.
I think my earlier books theyhave a plot, you know, kind of,
you know they're not superplotty books, but it taught me
(31:11):
the pleasure of plot, of havingsomething big happen and
creating a sense of suspense,and I think I learned a lot
about how to move those, thesort of the wheels of the book,
how they can of a book, how theycan spin faster and how to
create suspense and intrigue,and that for me, just as a
writer, was a really fascinatingdiscovery or thing to learn
(31:34):
that I hope to pull into myother books.
I think with each book youwrite, you learn something new.
Each book feels like its owndiscovery, and so I think that
the mechanics of plot feltreally eye-opening for me in
writing this book.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I think, every artist , on every creative platform.
The only way to grow is tothrow yourself into something,
dark or light or whatever it is,but to take that next step into
something, and often it's goingdark, and that does take
courage.
Tova, tell us about what you'recurrently reading, and is there
a book, recent or somethingfrom long ago, that changed your
(32:11):
sense of what a novel could do?
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Interesting.
So I'm in the middle of so manybooks.
I'm in this weird mode of likeI'm reading, I get distracted, I
pick up a different book, Idon't know what is going on, but
I'd say it's a funny mode.
Usually I'm a finish every book, but I've just sort of had this
like scattered few months oflike books on the go.
I really love the novel theSafekeep by Yael van der Woorden
(32:35):
.
It won the Women's Prize a fewweeks ago and was a Booker
nominee, and that book wasreally astonishing.
It was.
I think what I loved about itwas how a book could take you by
surprise.
I thought I was reading onebook and all of a sudden I was
reading a very different book.
The other book that I think isreally taking me by surprise
(32:56):
that I'm in the middle of rightnow is Orbital, which won the
Booker Prize this past year, andit's a novel only in the
loosest sense.
It follows the astronauts asthey orbit the earth in the
space station and there's not atraditional plot and even the
characterization is not sort ofwhat you would expect, and yet
it's the most gorgeous thing.
(33:17):
I'm just.
I feel like I'm reading.
Maybe it's a poem, or I don'teven know what I'm reading, but
I just keep reading and reading,and it's these little
shimmering moments of beauty allalong the way, and that you
know, those two books.
To me, I think, just that senseof being immersed inside
something beautiful is what Ireally is moving me right now as
(33:37):
a reader.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
That's interesting because I had one friend who
read Orbital and she said thatit was life-changing for her.
So now of course I have to readit.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
It's enthralling.
I can't even say why, but it'sfunny.
I've been reading with my penin hand and I'm underlining.
I don't usually do that, but Ifeel the need to underline parts
of it.
There's something astonishing,really, about its simplicity and
its beauty.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
It would be remiss of me to say goodbye without
mentioning the cover of we WouldNever.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
It's absolutely beautiful.
I love the cover.
You know it's funny with thecover.
When I first saw it it was adifferent version of that and I
was like, uh no, I was like Idon't like it.
And then there was a lot ofplaying with it and changing
things and I love.
I love the color.
There's the blue, the moodinessof the blues and the swim.
I love that the swimming poolis on the cover, that in the
(34:30):
garden, but I like that it has adarkness to it, which felt
important to me.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, it definitely captured the essence of what
we've been talking about.
Tova, thank you so much forbeing on the show.
It was great seeing you inSanta Barbara and I look forward
to the next book and the nexttime we get to talk to each
other.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
It's such a pleasure to talk to you.
You've been listening to myconversation with Tova Mervis
about her new book.
We Would Never.
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(35:13):
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(35:33):
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Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a
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Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast.
Each week, I present interviewswith authors, independent
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(00:33):
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podcast.
You're listening to episode 306.
Tova Mervis is the author ofthe Book of Separation, a memoir
, as well as three novelsVisible City, the Outside World
(00:53):
and the Lady's Auxiliary, whichwas a national bestseller.
Her essays have appeared in theBoston Globe magazine, the New
York Times Book Review, poetsand Writers and Good
Housekeeping, and her fictionhas been broadcast on National
Public Radio.
She lives outside of Boston andher latest novel is we Would
Never Hi.
(01:14):
Tova, it's lovely to see youagain and have you on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Well, let's begin with learning about you.
Where did you grow up, and whendid writing first become more
than just an interest?
When did it start to feelessential to who you are?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I grew up in Memphis, tennessee, and I'm actually a
sixth generation Memphian and so, being part of Memphis and part
of a very small, close-knitJewish community, there has
always been so much a part ofwho I am.
And I left Memphis to go tocollege and I always was
interested in I think I was areader.
(01:49):
I love to read, especiallynovels.
I was one of those kids who wasalways buried inside a book and
then, when I was in college, Istarted taking a few creative
writing classes.
I didn't really have any sensethat it was what I wanted to do,
but it was something to explore.
And when I was, I guess, maybetowards the end of college, I
(02:10):
started writing what I thoughtwould be a novel about Memphis,
about the community I grew up in.
It was a highly early draft.
I would never let it see thelight of day right now it lives
buried somewhere in my files butit was my first interest in
thinking about fiction and howyou tell a story and how.
Stories can, I think, helpilluminate our own questions
(02:34):
about who we are and where wefit into the world that we are
raised inside of.
And do you remember if therewas a moment or a teacher or a
(02:58):
mentor who inspired you tobecome a writer.
And just being around her,listening to her talk about what
fiction can do, how it was away to delve into who people
really were.
It just spoke to me and so Itook a few classes with her and
something happened in my familywhen I was a junior in college.
(03:19):
There was sort of a big familydrama and a rift that happened
in my extended family and thatwas really when I started to
write.
I felt like somehow I couldn'tunderstand what was happening.
It was, you know, this verystressful family situation and I
felt like somehow my immediateimpulse was to turn it into a
novel, to write fiction about it, and I felt like somehow taking
(03:42):
reality that felt so unwieldyand complicated and trying to
think about it as a story on thepage.
I always feel like that familymoment was really when I became
a writer, when I felt likefiction was somehow the window
into a world or was the entryway, that I could find some sort of
(04:03):
a way to think about things ora way to forge understanding.
And Mary Gordon was the teacherwho I told her what was going
on and she just said write yourway through it and that to me.
I've never forgotten thatreally.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's wonderful advice and I do believe that
reading well-written fictionhelps inspire empathy within the
reader and, as a writer offiction, I think that when we're
writing each character,especially from the different
characters' point of view, ithelps us to become more
empathetic and morecompassionate toward others.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Exactly, I feel like writing.
I feel like the central tenetof fiction writing is empathy.
I mean that to me, I feel likewriting is really this act of
imaginative empathy.
It's, you know, so much of myimpulse to write fiction comes
from this urge to understand.
You know what is it like to besomeone else.
You know to.
You know, we all live insideour own worlds and our own heads
(05:01):
.
But what is it like to besomeone else and our own heads?
But what is it like to besomeone else, to be in their
experiences, to sort of imagineour way out of our own bodies,
our own worlds and into someoneelse's?
And I think anything I write,certainly in my new book, but
really in all my novels.
I feel like that curiosityabout people is what makes me
(05:21):
want to write.
I want to know what people arereally thinking, not you know
who we are on the outside, kindof our performance self, our
facades, but all the complicatedinner messy spaces that we all
have.
And that's what fiction reallyilluminates.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, I definitely agree with you there.
Across your novels you returnto themes of inner conflict.
Definitely agree with you there.
Across your novels you returnto themes of inner conflict,
faith, tradition and personaltransformation.
In Invisible City, a woman'squiet unhappiness simmers
beneath her daily life.
The outside world exploresreligious structure and
spiritual doubt, and the lady'sauxiliary enters the insulated
(06:01):
world of Orthodox Judaism.
Now, in we Would Never you stepinto the aftermath of a murder.
What emotional or philosophicalthreads have carried across
these stories and wound theirway into this new novel?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Right in so many ways .
You know, some people laughedwhen they heard what I was.
You know we Would Never.
It was sort of a murder mysteryin some sense.
My friends who know me well, ormy writer friends were like a
murder.
Really I don't think of that asbeing like your territory and
on one hand, yes, there is amurder and it's a mystery, but
really that wasn't the piece ofit that was so compelling.
(06:36):
It was in some ways I feel,like it's my same kind of novel,
it's my same preoccupations,just with a different kind of
plot.
There's a plottier part to thisbook, but I think through all
my work I'm interested in thoseinner struggles we have, who we
are on the outside and who weare on the inside, the parts of
(06:57):
ourselves that we let people seeand the parts we tuck away.
And that sense that there'sthis underworld or an underside
to all of us, I think, is whatkeeps me coming back to stories.
I feel like that's sort of likemy fictional wound in some
sense.
Maybe we all write from a kindof wound or a question or
(07:19):
unresolved place, and I thinkthat question of do you match
who people see you as, do youfit in what happens when you
veer from who you are supposedto be.
And for me those questions aremy fiction because they're also
my personal questions.
I wrote a memoir about leavingthe Orthodox Jewish community I
(07:43):
was raised in and gettingdivorced, and really the book of
separation.
That memoir is so much, I think, about change.
What does it mean to not be theperson you were expected to be?
Or what does it mean to decideat the ripe old age of 40 that
you don't want to be the personyou imagine you are going to be?
(08:05):
You want to do somethingdifferent.
And what happens?
Not just inside yourself but inall the relationships around
you.
And so I think I come back tothose themes and look at it from
this angle and then that angle.
But it always comes back topeople, to people and all our
complicated pieces of our lives.
And I draw on my own life, Idraw on my own questions and my
(08:29):
own imagined versions of otherpeople.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
It takes a lot of courage to know, first of all,
when to leave a marriage, and italso took you courage to
realize and leave the OrthodoxJewish community, so I commend
you on that.
Going through a divorce on itsown can be traumatic, but when
you did both together, that's alot.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I think any leave-taking, any kind of change
, has pain and trauma, even ifthat change is for the better,
if it's something that you'vedecided, even if you're the one
making the decision to leave.
I think all leave-taking comeswith loss.
Even leaving worlds that don'tfit for you or don't work,
there's still parts that do.
(09:13):
It's never black and white andit's never all or nothing, and
so for me, leaving thisclose-knit world that shaped me,
that my entire family is partof, it took years of, I guess,
living with a quiet, naggingdoubt about who I was and what I
was supposed to believe.
But I knew that to act on itwould really topple all the
(09:34):
structures of my life and I hadto be ready to do that.
And I think in writing about it, one of the things that was so
gratifying about writing amemoir was hearing from so many
people who had similarexperiences.
They weren't leaving myparticular religious world and
their marriages were differentand their families were
different.
But I found that in memoir, whenyou are willing to tell a
(09:58):
vulnerable story, I think itinvites other people to be
vulnerable and to tell their ownversions of those stories, and
I think the people I heard afterI wrote a few essays based on
the book and when the book cameout I started getting emails
from people who had left allsorts of religious communities
or even just close-knit familystructures or marriages or
(10:22):
people working with, leavingneighborhoods.
Just any change, any sense thatI'm going to do something
different.
And I think it's really themost gratifying experience I've
had as a writer.
That feeling that you know it'sso vulnerable to put a memoir
in the world.
I mean now I feel like, oh, howdid I have the stomach to do it
?
I don't even know how I did it.
Now it feels like so just toimagine putting something so
(10:44):
personal and painful out in theworld.
But those emails, they justwould come every day, someone
saying I read your book, here'smy story, and they really it
reminded me why I write in thefirst place.
That sense of one story invitesanother story.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And also that sense of putting your book out in the
world and having people read itand acknowledge it.
That's kind of like the icingon the cake, I feel.
That's when you know you'vecompleted your story.
Yes, we Would Never is based ona real murder you first read
about on Facebook.
We Would.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Never is based on a real murder you first read about
on Facebook.
You've said that news articlesprovided the facts but left out
the why, the deeper humanreasons behind the crime.
Which character did was?
I was on Facebook just kind ofscrolling along and I saw that
someone who I knew verytangentially had been murdered.
It was, you know, horrifying.
I was shocked and also reallycurious.
I wanted to know what hadhappened and so I started
Googling.
This news story was a lawprofessor in Tallahassee had
(12:00):
been shot, and there was allthis speculation.
People thought maybe it was acolleague or a student.
And then the last line in oneof these news articles said that
he had been in the middle of avery contentious divorce.
And at the time I was on thetail end of this very
contentious divorce and so Ijust thought, oh, I don't know
if it's that student or thecolleague, it just felt like
that divorce seemed to be wherethe heart of that story lay.
(12:22):
And so I followed the story foryears.
I was trying to write adifferent novel and I would take
these long, long breaks fromthat other novel to just read
about this new story, and Ithink what was so compelling to
me was.
You know, there is so muchinformation online.
I mean, there was a Datelinespecial.
It became this true crimephenomenon and I could pull up
(12:44):
so much information.
There were YouTube videos.
There were expert people whowould talk about their theories
of it.
There was footage of so manythings and I learned a
tremendous amount, but nothingthat ever gave me the why, the
human story.
There was speculation.
This man's ex-wife's family wasimplicated in the murder and
(13:06):
eventually they were arrested.
Help me understand you know,what do you think about the
night before you do something sohorrific and how do you go to
sleep the night after?
And who brings up the idea, whosays it and who?
How do you react?
(13:28):
And do you have guilt andregret, like all those pieces of
the story are left out becausethere's no way to have access to
them, and I feel like in somuch of true crime that I
sometimes consume I'm not a hugetrue crime person, really, but
certain stories will get undermy skin and I start to read
about them and I think whatkeeps me coming back for more is
(13:50):
almost a sense of frustrationthat no matter how much I read,
no matter how many times IGoogle the news story.
I never get that human sidethat fiction can give.
I never get their souls ortheir inner lives.
We're always kept away fromthat and that was sort of, I
guess, in deciding to write wewould never.
(14:12):
I felt like fiction andfamily-driven, character-driven
fiction could fill in those gapsand so that was where the idea
for the book came.
And, you know, I could createthe characters I had to really.
You know, I knew so much aboutthe true life versions of them,
but I had to put them aside andlet them become characters, the
same way that I create anycharacters, and some came harder
(14:33):
and some came easier.
But I think the hardestcharacter for me to write was
the character of Haley.
So Haley is the character whois getting divorced and she's
sort of known as the good girlin the family, the one everyone
loves.
She's soft-spoken, she doesn'treally stand up for herself and
when she's married she's sort ofpulled between the strong
(14:53):
wishes of her mother and thestrong wishes of her husband.
And that being caught betweenmaybe it was hard for me to
write to her, because I relateto her a little bit, the good
girl sense, I have that goodgirlness so so deeply ingrained
inside me, but she was hard forme to write because I wanted her
to be both weak and strong atthe same time.
(15:15):
I wanted her to be someone whocould be buffeted by other
people's desires, but I stillwanted the reader to feel her,
who she was, and that it justtook so many drafts.
I, when I, every time I, when Iwrite a book, I always started
it's always called new novel one.
That's always the first draftand every time it's always every
single one.
It's new novel, new, new novel,new, new, new novel one.
(15:39):
And then every time I make abig change, I update that file
number.
So it was new novel one in thebeginning and by the time I gave
it to my editor it was newnovel 58.
So it just went through so manyiterations of the characters
and working out the dynamics andtrying to make the characters.
I guess they call it to belikable, but maybe relatable is
a better word than likable.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And she was so protected.
So that becomes a big facet ofher personality.
And while I felt good for herbecause of that, it also made me
feel uncomfortable, and Ienjoyed that feeling as I was
reading the novel.
Oh, thank you.
Did writing the novel bring youcloser to an answer and, if not
a resolution, did it at leastshift the kinds of questions you
(16:24):
were asking or what you feltmattered most?
I often wonder that if someoneis alive in the morning and then
they die suddenly in theafternoon, does the ether change
around them?
Do they have a sense ofsomething changing?
I don't know.
I often think about that.
How about you?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
I think about that sense that you know, on one hand
, we're just living our livesand we have no idea.
We have no idea what is goingto befall us.
I think that's scarier thanlike you know the scariest true
crime or you know the footstepsin the dark.
I mean that scares me.
But what really scares me is wedon't know.
We don't know what is going tohappen next.
(17:03):
We don't know what is going tohappen all around us.
And that idea, I think it's wehave to live with that sense
that we have.
We don't have control over ourown life, the people we'd love,
that we would want to protect atall costs.
We can't always do that.
And that idea, I think, wasimportant to me in writing this
book.
That sense that maybe one ofthe things that I came to
(17:24):
understand in writing it wasthat I fully believe I would
never do something like this.
I really do not think I have itin me to hire a hitman.
I truly, truly believe thatabout myself, but everyone I
know.
And yet I think that we don'talways know what we might do in
situations we cannot even beginto imagine.
(17:46):
And that's have followed theKaren Reed trial.
It's been a big, big thing inBoston.
It's been going on for years.
It's one of these stories, it'sin the news, there's did she
kill her boyfriend or not, kindof story and two trials
(18:08):
testimony.
And I think what I have learnedabout these stories is that when
we tune into them as true crimestories, they're after things
have already gone to the extreme, it's after the story's gone
off the rails.
But if you rewind them back afew months or a few years,
(18:29):
they're ordinary people.
They're like us.
These are stories.
When we read about them they'recrazy.
You're like, oh my God, theydid that but a few months
earlier.
There are people grappling withfamily dynamics, with
parent-child relationships, withcomplicated marriages, and
they're maybe not as far from usas we wish to believe.
(18:52):
And that was what I felt inwriting this novel.
I felt like these people, thesecharacters I was writing about.
They start off as a family.
They start off as people whomaybe they're a little
over-involved, they're a littlemuch.
They have their pathologies,like so many of us.
They're overprotective, theyhave a secret, a wound.
(19:15):
They have all this stuff, butso do so many people, and
somehow they lose control.
The story escalates and itescalates and no one pulls back,
no one holds the reins, andthat I felt like a lot of these
stories that we read about now.
They start off a lot morenormal and then they go to these
(19:37):
extremes, and that was how Icame to understand this true
crime story and so many of theother ones that we tend to
follow.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, it's almost like there's a tipping point.
You know a clog gets stuck inthe wheel.
Yeah, exactly.
And did writing the novel giveyou clarity as to what you felt
was going on in people's headsthroughout this story of the
murder?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
I did.
I felt like I didn't know thatI could say it's what the real
people were thinking, but I feltlike it gave me a sense of what
they could have been thinkingor what a story like that could
have played out.
I felt like the book took fiveyears to write and so much of
that time you know, new novelsone through through 58 were all
about really burrowing deeperand deeper into their psyches.
(20:23):
You know, how do we sort ofcreate denial for ourselves?
How do we create like sort ofdelusional ideas that we're
going to get away with somethingor that it's justified?
How do we turn a blind eye tothings?
So, just trying to reallyimagine my way into these
characters and think of them ascomplicated people with a whole
(20:45):
slew of experiences andhistories and anxieties and pain
, and sort of paint them asrounded as I could, yeah,
Writing fiction from a realevent must be a delicate
balancing act.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Did you ever find yourself wondering is this mine
to tell?
And how did you navigate theethical and emotional
complexities between fiction andcreative nonfiction?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I did worry about that a lot.
You know I was taking a truestory that I, even though it was
in the news and all over youknow the social media and the
media.
I knew that for some people itwas a real story.
It was in the news and all over.
You know the social media andthe media.
I knew that for some people itwas a real story, it was their
lives and I think a writeralways has to wrestle with that.
You know, in every novel thatI've written I'm working on a
new novel now and I'm thinking,I've been thinking about it a
lot, you know, these past fewweeks there's that question of
(21:33):
how much can you take from reallife.
You know, do you, can you take?
Is everything fair game formaterial?
Is everything?
You know?
Can you take things and changethem?
You know that people alwaysjoke.
You know, oh no, when you havea writer in the family.
You know there's a quote.
You know you're doomed whenthere's a writer in the family.
And you know what my father,when I was growing up, when
you'll end up in my novel and Iwore it.
I wore it for years and now mydaughter wears it.
(22:04):
So I have that same feeling ofyou know she wants to be a
writer and you know there'salways a question of what is
fair game or not.
And I draw a distinctionbetween memoir and fiction.
I feel like when I wrote mymemoir I was careful about what
I kept out of the story and whatI kept in, because there it was
not transposed or disguised itwas.
You know, it was a version ofmy own life and I was really
(22:26):
very wary of that.
In fiction, I feel like there'sa little more room because
things are transformed.
It's never one to one.
My first novel, the Lady'sAuxiliary, was about my own
community and it was reallyfiction.
I mean, there were pieces, bitsand pieces.
It was like a stew.
I took things and changed them.
But everyone, when that bookcame out, it was big news in
(22:49):
Memphis and everyone played thisguessing game of who were the
characters and I thought theycould match them up one-to-one.
And I feel like, no, it's not.
It's never one-to-one,everything is sort of filtered
through your own experience.
But I've carried that questionwith me and with this particular
story I felt like, because itwas such a public story, because
(23:12):
it was on Dateline and therewas a podcast, I felt like the
story itself was sort of apublic story.
It felt like it was not afamily's private story, in the
way that if I had heard a storyabout my friend's family that no
one knew about there, I wouldfeel like there was a different
set of questions.
And then I changed the story.
I started with the real versionand changed many, many things,
(23:35):
and one of the biggest changes Imade was the man who was
murdered.
I knew him very little and Ihad friends who knew him, but my
character in the book bearsnothing, has nothing to do with
him.
There I made the biggest changebecause I felt like he was not
going to be part of my novel.
Anything I knew about himactually veered my character in
(23:56):
the opposite direction, becauseI didn't want it to be a version
of this man whose family hassuffered a terrible tragedy, and
so I wanted the book to departfrom that as much as possible.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
And while we're on that subject, I would love to
talk about Jonah and Haley.
Can you speak to what initiallydrew them to each other and
what pulled them apart?
And did you always know howtheir relationship would unravel
, or did they surprise you?
It's interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I always had this phrase in my head that sometimes
the things we love about peopleare the things we end up coming
to really not like about them.
I mean, in my own marriagethere was some truth of that and
, before I was divorced, thatsense that sometimes the things
we think are the perfect fit forus turn out not to be.
And for Jonah and Haley.
(24:43):
Jonah is a writer.
He's kind of complex and darkand a little moody and quiet, a
little remote, and one of thethings he loves about Haley
initially is that she's sobright and cheery, she's sunny
Her nickname is sunshine, shesort of positive.
She doesn't have that dark andstormy side as he does and he's
(25:05):
drawn to it.
And I think Haley is drawnMaybe.
Maybe he represents somethingshe wishes she was.
So there's some way.
There's a gap between them butthere's some wish, I think, on
the part of both of them and atfirst it works well for them.
But A few years into thatmarriage that you know, for
Jonah he begins to see Haley asa lightweight.
(25:27):
He feels like she doesn't havethe depth and he's impatient
with her and one of their mainstruggles is really about
whether Haley is able to standup to her mother or not.
I was interested in also thesaying of you know, when you
marry someone you marry thewhole family.
I think when you divorcesomeone you also divorce, often
divorce the whole family.
So that loomed very large forme and the idea that you know
(25:51):
Haley feels like you know Haleyhas an overprotective mother.
Her mother's very involved inher life, but Haley is able to
see that that kind ofoverprotectiveness comes from a
kind of love and I think whenit's our own parent often we're
willing to be a little moreforgiving.
But a mother-in-law isdifferent.
And so for Jonah he sees hismother-in-law, sherry, as being
(26:16):
domineering, intrusive,controlling.
He has no willingness toforgive her her flaws, and that
is a tremendous area of conflictfor them.
I think it's probably theirchief conflict in their marriage
.
And Haley is someone who iscaught between.
She wants to stand up forherself, she wants to please her
(26:37):
mother and she wants to pleaseher husband and she feels like
she's being pulled in these twodirections simultaneously.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
I enjoyed reading through their relationship.
It was fractured, but it feltreal, thank you.
Now Sherry Hayley's motherreturns to the pool for solace
and contemplation.
Jung described water as asymbol of the unconscious, a
place of renewal andpsychological rebirth.
Were you thinking about thatkind of symbolism when shaping
Sherry's character, or did itemerge more intuitively?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I think that's what I love about the writing process
the way an idea kind of you know, speaking of water, kind of
emerges out from like the waterin your mind, this sort of like
murky place.
And I knew it was going to beset in Florida, and so I thought
about swimming pools and then,all of a sudden, the pool became
this place.
I think probably my favoritescenes to write were in the
(27:29):
swimming pool.
I felt like the pool, I feltlike it was this like primordial
space, this unformed space, andSherry swims every day, she
swims back and forth, andsomething about the rhythmic
nature of thinking I just alwayspictured her sometimes like a
shark cutting through that water, sometimes, in that I feel like
(27:49):
water is sort of this looseningof ourselves, and so I think,
you know, it's always a mystery,like where ideas come from,
where we get them, and it's, youknow, today I was working on my
new book and I had an idea.
It was like one little piece,and I was like, oh, like one
piece of my 5 million piecepuzzle was put into place today
and it's so thrilling.
(28:11):
There's this like I had thislike ecstatic feeling of like I
didn't know that and now I doand of course though of course
that was the piece and that youknow, it's the part of writing
where I feel like it's so muchof it is it's buried in the
subconscious and it comes up.
And so the swimming pool to me,you know, I didn't explicitly
think I'm going to choose aswimming pool for this reason,
(28:32):
but I feel like our minds supplyus with those things, and then
there comes a moment when Istart to think about the pool in
that way, and then I did morewith it and expanded it, and
then, the same way with thecherry, has a garden that grows
around the pool, and in anearlier draft it was just a
little garden, and with eachdraft I wrote, the garden got
bigger and wilder and I, youknow, I started thinking about,
(28:55):
like the landscape, and I thinkthose really are the parts that
I love, that sense ofdescriptiveness and certainly
for this book, the climate ofthe book felt really important.
I thought about the Florida land, like the hot, sticky, sweaty
Florida climate, and I keptthinking about entanglement and
(29:16):
the family is so enmeshed, and Ithought about these gardens,
that overgrown, and vines andhow you can get tangled in them,
and so I just you know, that'sthe part when I really feel like
I.
You know, there are a lot ofhard days, a lot of days when I
feel like, oh, I wish I didsomething different.
Or frustrated days.
But the days I love writing arethose days when I feel the
(29:37):
connection and the themes.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, For me as a reader.
I felt that the pool becamealmost like a living thing.
I guess it was kind of like apulse throughout the story.
I loved reading that essence ofwater throughout the story.
Thank you, tova.
What did writing?
We Would Never teach you aboutyourself.
I was wondering if there wassomething this novel required of
(30:01):
you emotionally, spiritually orpsychologically that previous
books did not.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
It did teach me something.
It taught me about thewillingness to go dark, to go to
a darker place.
There's a part in the bookwhere Hayley wants to be a
writer and she writes these sortof happier, sunny stories and
Jonah says to her if you want tobe a writer, you have to be
willing to go dark.
And I felt like when I firstwrote that line I was like, who
(30:28):
are we talking to?
I wonder, you know?
Who is this really?
Who might we be talking about?
I think that willing is to gointo the dark places and to have
characters who are going toplan a murder.
I mean there's no way, you know.
I feel like, oh, they're sonice, my characters.
You know they're, they, they'renice, nice family, my
characters.
You know they're a nice, nicefamily, whatever that means, but
they do.
(30:48):
I mean it's not giving anythingaway to say that a murder was
planned in this book and to bewilling to go into that, to
really to sit inside our darkimpulses.
And I think it also taught mesomething as a writer in terms
of craft, about plot.
I think my earlier books theyhave a plot, you know, kind of,
you know they're not superplotty books, but it taught me
(31:11):
the pleasure of plot, of havingsomething big happen and
creating a sense of suspense,and I think I learned a lot
about how to move those, thesort of the wheels of the book,
how they can of a book, how theycan spin faster and how to
create suspense and intrigue,and that for me, just as a
writer, was a really fascinatingdiscovery or thing to learn
(31:34):
that I hope to pull into myother books.
I think with each book youwrite, you learn something new.
Each book feels like its owndiscovery, and so I think that
the mechanics of plot feltreally eye-opening for me in
writing this book.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I think, every artist , on every creative platform.
The only way to grow is tothrow yourself into something,
dark or light or whatever it is,but to take that next step into
something, and often it's goingdark, and that does take
courage.
Tova, tell us about what you'recurrently reading, and is there
a book, recent or somethingfrom long ago, that changed your
(32:11):
sense of what a novel could do?
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Interesting.
So I'm in the middle of so manybooks.
I'm in this weird mode of likeI'm reading, I get distracted, I
pick up a different book, Idon't know what is going on, but
I'd say it's a funny mode.
Usually I'm a finish every book, but I've just sort of had this
like scattered few months oflike books on the go.
I really love the novel theSafekeep by Yael van der Woorden
(32:35):
.
It won the Women's Prize a fewweeks ago and was a Booker
nominee, and that book wasreally astonishing.
It was.
I think what I loved about itwas how a book could take you by
surprise.
I thought I was reading onebook and all of a sudden I was
reading a very different book.
The other book that I think isreally taking me by surprise
(32:56):
that I'm in the middle of rightnow is Orbital, which won the
Booker Prize this past year, andit's a novel only in the
loosest sense.
It follows the astronauts asthey orbit the earth in the
space station and there's not atraditional plot and even the
characterization is not sort ofwhat you would expect, and yet
it's the most gorgeous thing.
(33:17):
I'm just.
I feel like I'm reading.
Maybe it's a poem, or I don'teven know what I'm reading, but
I just keep reading and reading,and it's these little
shimmering moments of beauty allalong the way, and that you
know, those two books.
To me, I think, just that senseof being immersed inside
something beautiful is what Ireally is moving me right now as
(33:37):
a reader.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
That's interesting because I had one friend who
read Orbital and she said thatit was life-changing for her.
So now of course I have to readit.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
It's enthralling.
I can't even say why, but it'sfunny.
I've been reading with my penin hand and I'm underlining.
I don't usually do that, but Ifeel the need to underline parts
of it.
There's something astonishing,really, about its simplicity and
its beauty.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
It would be remiss of me to say goodbye without
mentioning the cover of we WouldNever.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
It's absolutely beautiful.
I love the cover.
You know it's funny with thecover.
When I first saw it it was adifferent version of that and I
was like, uh no, I was like Idon't like it.
And then there was a lot ofplaying with it and changing
things and I love.
I love the color.
There's the blue, the moodinessof the blues and the swim.
I love that the swimming poolis on the cover, that in the
(34:30):
garden, but I like that it has adarkness to it, which felt
important to me.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, it definitely captured the essence of what
we've been talking about.
Tova, thank you so much forbeing on the show.
It was great seeing you inSanta Barbara and I look forward
to the next book and the nexttime we get to talk to each
other.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
It's such a pleasure to talk to you.
You've been listening to myconversation with Tova Mervis
about her new book.
We Would Never.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
thebookshoppodcastcom and makesure to subscribe and leave a
(35:13):
review wherever you listen tothe 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
the contact form atthebookshoppodcastcom.
(35:33):
The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, mandy
Jackson-Beverly, theme musicprovided by Brian Beverly, and
my executive assistant andgraphic designer is Adrian
Ottahan.
Thanks for listening.
I'll see you next time.
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