A Window Opens: A Novel (44 page)
Read A Window Opens: A Novel Online
Authors: Elisabeth Egan
This part of the book is 100 percent autobiographical. I was born into a family of bookworms and had no choice but to become one myself. Reading transported me from a hot, boring afternoon in New Jersey to a cool fall day on Prince Edward Island. It gave me a preview of what it might be like to have a dog or to fall in love. I read a novel set in Vermont and decided to go to college there—and in my house, this was a perfectly logical way to make a choice. Here are the books that carried me through adolescence: anything by L.M. Montgomery, with a bias for the unsung
Emily of New Moon
(apologies to
Anne of Green Gables
);
A Separate Peace
by John Knowles;
The Pigman
by Paul Zindel;
The Outsiders
by S.E. Hinton and anything by Lois Duncan or V.C. Andrews. Like most kids who grew up in the 1980s, I learned a lot from V.C. Andrews.
Are you an “agnostic” reader, as Genevieve would say, or do you prefer the traditional printed book or e-book exclusively? What do you think is the best formula for a good reading experience?
I’ll read a page, a screen, a Post-it, or a cereal box—it doesn’t matter as long as the words are interesting, engaging, and in a legible font. (Now that I wear reading glasses—if you must know—I’ve become a little persnickety about the font.) Most of the time, I read fiction in a galley or a manuscript, and when I read on my iPad, it’s usually nonfiction. I bring a bunch of books home from work every night, and I try not to check my phone on the train back to New Jersey. If I’m hooked on one after forty minutes, that’s a good sign. I definitely give preferential treatment to the books I read on the front porch with a glass of wine. Those are my favorites!
What are your thoughts on traditional publishers and booksellers versus companies like Amazon, which incorporate greater technology? What role do you think technology should play in the literary world?
So much depends on the reader and what kind of book they’re looking for. I loved my first-generation Kindle. Two of my three kids have e-readers—they’re great for that late-night emergency when you just
have
to get your hands on the next installment of the Shredderman series. I like buying my books at the local bookstore because this gives me a chance to combine my greatest passions: chatting and reading. I love the sociability of the transaction and the little bowl of Werther’s caramels by the cash register. As for technology, I’m only a Luddite when it comes to remote controls, which I think are needlessly complicated. I love the smell of pages; other people love the glow of pixels. The point is to lose yourself in a great story.
How has
A Window Opens
influenced your current writing projects or changed the way you write? Do you think that you will revisit any of the characters or themes from this novel?
A Window Opens
has definitely changed the way I write insofar as it inspired me to write fiction for the first time since college—twenty years! It was fun to get back in the saddle. Much as I love these characters, I don’t think I’ll write about them again. I feel like they’ve said what they needed to say. and now I need to move on to other people—maybe ones who live in more exotic places than New Jersey so I can live vicariously. The themes in this novel are the themes of my life, so in that sense I think I will continue to write what I know.
As a reader, who are some of the storytellers you find inspiring and why?
Anna Quindlen, Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler—partly because my middle name is “Ann” and mostly because they tell it like it is. I’ll follow these three into any world they create. And fine, Lorrie Moore too, even if her name ruins my alliteration.
You currently work as the books editor for
Glamour
magazine. As an editor, what do you keep an eye out for? Do your choices as an editor differ from what you would choose to read personally or do you find that your choices are closely aligned in both of these instances?
I’m lucky that my reading choices align with the kinds of books we cover in
Glamour
: page-turning and thoughtful fiction, honest and brave memoirs, with the occasional creepy thriller or celebrity tell-all thrown in for good measure. I love stories that make me change my mind about something.
What role do you think women’s magazines fulfill within contemporary book culture? What changes, additions, or improvements would you like to see in this area?
I’d like to see more coverage of books in all magazines, not just ones for women. It seems to me that people are having a very hard time figuring out what to read. We’re short on bookstores, so it’s harder than it used to be to get a personal recommendation, and Amazon or bn.com still don’t really help us discover books we haven’t heard of before. So instead we see the crowdsourcing approach on Facebook and Twitter, which helps build these mega-bestsellers:
Gone Girl
,
The Goldfinch, All the Light We Cannot See.
Magazines can help spotlight other books, the ones we might not hear about otherwise. I’m as excited as the next reviewer about the “big” books, but I also like to have a chance to spotlight the unsung heroes.
When Alice begins her job at Scroll, she gets to live out every booklover’s fantasy by picking out a first edition of any book of her choosing. If you had the same opportunity, what book would you choose and why?
Like Alice, I would choose
A Room of One’s Own.
I love every word of the book and I love the memories of when I first read it. Of course, I’d cherish the first edition, but my marked up paperback from the college bookstore would always be top dog on the shelf.
ELISABETH EGAN
is the books editor at Glamour. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in
Self, Glamour, O, People, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, The Huffington Post, The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, and Newark Star-Ledger.
She lives in New Jersey with her family.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Elisabeth Egan
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition August 2015
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Excerpt from “Little Gidding” from FOUR QUARTETS by T.S. Eliot. Copyright © renewed 1970 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Extract taken from “Little Gidding” taken from
Four Quartets
by T.S. Eliot. Copyright © Estate of T.S. Eliot and reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.
Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs
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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui
Jacket design by Jennifer Heuer
Author photo © Beowulf Sheehan
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Egan, Elisabeth.
A window opens : a novel / Elisabeth Egan.
pages cm
I. Title.
PS3605.G354W53 2015
813'.6—dc23
2014047742
ISBN 978-1-5011-0543-2
ISBN 978-1-5011-0546-3 (ebook)