Nessa Rapoport, EVENING
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[1:42]novelist and poet, Nessa Rappaport was born in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of the novel preparing for Sabbath and a collection of prose poems, a woman's book of grieving.
[1:53]Her essays and stories have been published in the New York Times, LA Times and forward.
[1:58]Nessa's column in her life appears in the Jewish week and her memoir House on the River was awarded a grant by the Canada Council for the Arts.
[2:05]Her newest novel evening explores the dissonant love between sisters, the body and longing, the pride we take in sustaining our illusions and the redemption that is possible only when they are dispelled.
[2:16]Welcome, Nessa. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss your novel evening.
[2:22]I'm glad to be here. Thanks.
[2:24]So first of all, this was such a beautiful book. I loved it so great. I love your writing style. So poetic and just great.
[2:35]I'm a big fan. And then after I read, I was going to say after I read it, I started investigating more and I read that it took you 26 years, really 30 years to work on this book.
[2:51]So tell me the whole story of this book. I know you also maybe tell a little bit about the memoir you wrote and your first book, which I know is a huge success.
[3:01]Just give me give me your own story. I began this book in 1990. The first chapter came to me in an instant. This has never happened to me as a writer before and certainly not since.
[3:13]And I thought, great, this is going to be my easy book. This one is just going to flow out of me and I'm just going to build on that first chapter and I'll be done really soon.
[3:22]And for once, writing will not feel as it usually does like hearing tiny pieces of skin off my body when at a time.
[3:29]That sounds like fun.
[3:31]Describe my current life as the further humbling of Nessa Rappaport and one instance of that is how long it took me to write evening because in essence, what happened was I created a setup with a kind of propulsive story and then I had all these obligations to the story.
[3:49]And I had never written a book like this. The opening is, as you know, two sisters, one is grieving for the other. They're in their 30s.
[3:57]The Eve, the narrator has come back from New York to Toronto where her sister died very prematurely. Her sister is a famous Canadian, the most famous Canadian anchor woman on TV.
[4:08]She has a devoted husband and two lovely children and Eve is almost deliberately indeterminate. She's endlessly writing a PhD.
[4:16]She can't quite finish on British women writers between the wars. She's always lived in tiny rental apartments. She teaches English at a community college to women who come in the evening.
[4:26]And her life drives her older sister, Tam Krazy because Tam is a whoosh into the future and Eve is in love with the past as Tam accuses her and throughout the whole book, although Eve has died, Tam is always in her head, as you know, talking to her and dialogue with her.
[4:43]So in this first chapter, you learn very quickly that these two sisters who have complex but definitely loving relationship.
[4:51]Abby's dependest fight two weeks before Tam dies and they never reconciled, which is not only an awful burden for Eve, but also against their principles as sisters because as you learn as the book goes on, whenever they had a fight when they were both alive, one would call back into the front door.
[5:08]I love you. I love you in case she died in the car accident and never got to reconcile with her sister. So this is that. Did I know what the fight was about. I did not.
[5:17]So that was probably number one issue and the one that threads through the whole book is that, as you know, and as readers know, the morning after the funeral Eve discovers a secret about Tam that upends her view of herself and her future, her sister, her family ecology.
[5:37]And it was my risk. I didn't know what the secret was, but I had no idea how to construct a narrative that would thread that secret through the book and keep you the reader engaged as it unfolded.
[5:51]I knew that it didn't matter if you figured it out sooner or later, and I think some readers figure it out right away and some to my thrill don't figure it out till the revealing scene.
[6:00]It's not a mystery. It's a novel. So it's okay. If you figure it out early, then you know something he doesn't know and that creates a kind of its own momentum.
[6:10]And if you don't figure it out, then you have the same surprise she has as she encounters it at that moment.
[6:16]It was a real challenge because I was a kind of interior, more of Virginia Woolf writer. I started out as a poet language matters a lot to me.
[6:24]And I felt I had responsibility to keep this story pushing forward as I shuttered back and forth from present to past in these scenes.
[6:33]I had the great grace to have a mentor named Ted Solatarov who was a very eminent editor who's no longer alive of blessed memory and I took him out for coffee early on and I said here's my setup.
[6:47]I don't know how to move forward. I can't figure out how to tell this plot.
[6:51]And he said to me,
[6:53]when you know your characters, you'll know how to do this. And that explains most of why it took 26 years.
[7:00]And now now we have this book in front of us that took you all this time and you know evolved. I also I read your interview with your daughter, which was so awesome. I think glamour.
[7:11]Happy to you. I assume your kids aren't quite as old as mine, but this is what happens.
[7:16]I hope so. I interviewed my dad on my podcast because he also wrote a book so that was really fun.
[7:20]So I hope that someone will interview me eventually.
[7:23]So tell me what that was like and also tell me about having all this all of this out in the world and how you relate to your family and how this relates to your
[7:35]relationship with your sisters. This is very, you know, sister heavy book. So tell me a little bit about all that.
[7:40]Well, I'll start with the sisters.
[7:43]Having sisters is a thing and we are four sisters within six years.
[7:48]Yeah, which was, you know, tribute to the mother, but those were the years after the war when eight typically actually women stayed home and wanted to be home.
[7:59]It was the great retreat from when women were actively participating because men were born in Toronto in Canada and then went to World War two also.
[8:08]So my mother, my mother had an utterly exceptional mother.
[8:12]And as you know from evening, the grandmother who is not quite my grandmother has it really isn't an autobiography, but little tidbits and tendrils entered and there's always a remarkable grandmother in everything that I write.
[8:26]And my friend says it's one of your signature moves.
[8:29]My grandmother was part of that pioneering generation of first doctors first lawyer.
[8:35]She was born in 1897.
[8:38]She was the first woman and the first two to get a PhD in physics from the University of front.
[8:43]And she was an observant you on top of it all.
[8:47]She was born in Canada, which for Canadian Jewry was very unusual because it's a much newer immigration than here.
[8:54]So, of course, in response, my mother who has many aptitudes and is still with me at 92 wanted to be married and raised children and have a big family which she went on to do.
[9:06]The thing about sisters is as my friend Francine Cleggsburn noted, your siblings know you longer than anyone if the creator is good and everybody dies in order.
[9:18]And sisters know each other in a very intimate way. Do you have sisters? I have a brother. I've become very close to sisters and law, but I don't have a sister.
[9:27]So it's different because you know the center of your sisters and you stood next to each other in the bathroom and you've exchanged makeup and you've inevitably if not competed, you compare.
[9:39]Because I was the eldest, I didn't have anyone ahead of me and it took me many decades to understand that my sisters coming behind me noticed and paid attention.
[9:51]Because my sisters were almost my peers at a certain point and then of course by now really are, but they really.
[10:00]know this. So we were in this kind of ecology. It's funny, you polarize each other into roles,
[10:06]and one of the things I wanted to show in the evening between these two sisters is that on the
[10:10]surface anybody would assume, and the people who come to this shiva house for mourning do assume
[10:16]that you is jealous of her sister. Her sister has, quote, everything and even unfinished.
[10:22]But in fact, Eve has never been jealous of her sister. She's aware of her sister.
[10:27]She's in awe of her sister, but she's not jealous. And by the end, in some ways you could
[10:32]certainly argue that it turns out town was jealous of Eve, which is one of the reasons that she makes
[10:37]such sardonic comments about Eve's lifestyle. Because as I used to say to my children,
[10:43]a secure person doesn't have to talk like that. So Eve may seem to have it all, but she's always
[10:49]sort of carving. Once you release a book into the world, it's no longer yours, and several readers
[10:56]have said to me that they were alarmed by Tim's hostility. That's the word they used
[11:01]to her sister. I really didn't experience them that way. I experienced them as sisters.
[11:06]But one thing that happens with siblings, I think brothers and sisters is you each adopt a role
[11:12]and because you don't want your own identity within a family, you're pretty protective of your
[11:19]role and you don't actually want to be the other person. So one of the amusing aspects of the
[11:24]sister issue is my mother's one of five. She's the only daughter. My father was one of three boys,
[11:30]so neither of them had sisters. They grow up in the depression when you defer to authority and
[11:35]you take on responsibility almost prematurely early. And they have these four daughters coming
[11:40]of age in the youth culture where Amy on is age-related and the economy is good and nobody's thinking
[11:47]too much about responsibility. They were totally out of loss. And my mother used to say that she
[11:52]worried that we would want each other's boyfriends. Well, what is your inner family? You never
[11:57]want the boyfriend of the other one. I mean, one of the things that's interesting in this novel is
[12:02]there are two other sisters. There's mana and her very beautiful kind of a moral sister.
[12:10]That sister. Now certainly is impinging on Nana's life and indeed on the life of anybody she can.
[12:18]So the last thing I'll say about your question is, I'm very interested in the role of beauty
[12:24]in a large family constellation. There's only someone or some few people who are exceptionally
[12:30]beautiful. And the way the family responds to that is fascinating. And I learned everything I
[12:37]know sitting around the kitchen table listening to women talk. And I think evening reflects that.
[12:43]Well, I'm actually jealous of, I mean, I love my brother and I love my family and you know,
[12:47]I wouldn't change anything. But the unique experience you had growing up with like three women and
[12:53]what that does to a person's sort of character ongoing and like your other relationships,
[12:58]that's such a gift. That's a gift. As you know and I know and I like to say, if you'd like to
[13:04]mythologize it great, but of course it's not like that. It's complicated. Loving. We're complicated.
[13:12]So the fact that one sister dies in this book and yours, thank God, they're all living.
[13:18]Where did that come from? Is this like your biggest fear? Is that this would happen or did it stem
[13:24]from other losses? Because I know you've written a lot about loss. That is a really good question.
[13:29]I, because this set up happened to me, I'm sure you've talked to so many writers. And don't
[13:35]silence and say, I kind of wasn't in control of my characters. They sort of took over. Yes, I did
[13:41]not understand that. And as I have said, I found it a little pretentious until it happened to me.
[13:48]I did lose a friend in her 30s to breast cancer, but I know she wasn't in my conscious thought.
[13:55]And one of the reasons I think this book is all unconscious, but in some ways that makes it more
[14:01]autobiographical, because it's coming from deep places of collected anxieties, as you note,
[14:08]and impressions that I wasn't entirely in charge of. In terms of the grief and the loss,
[14:14]I have had a very blessed life. At this point, I have lost four very close women friends
[14:21]at the point that I started and wrote that first chapter. I had lost only one, but I'm, you know,
[14:27]a porous person and the daughter whose interview you read used to say, oh, mom, you and your
[14:32]morose childhood, you know, writers are dark. And I think I wrote to alchemise suffering into
[14:40]something better. I'm a very, very, not believer in the silver lining of life. I see no point
[14:47]to suffering. I wish none of us had to endure it. But since we do, I feel I'd like to do something
[14:54]back. And what do I have? I have wisdom. And to come back to your first question, the signal
[15:00]biggest difference between when I started this book and now, it's not that my sister's character's
[15:06]changed. It's that I got older and life became more nuanced. And I endured losses myself. And I
[15:12]had to kind of to understand that loss is absolutely intrinsic to being alive. Tragedy, not necessarily
[15:20]if you're lucky, but loss, absolutely. And the last thing I'll say, but it's evident in this book
[15:26]and I didn't realize it was a main theme until I started talking to people who read it is that I do
[15:32]not believe that when someone leaves this world, you necessarily need to end that relationship.
[15:37]Even if it was fragmented and really not where you wanted it to be, I think we keep growing.
[15:44]I'd like to say the only physics I know compared to my grandmother is that we're always in motion
[15:50]and that energy doesn't die, it just changes form. And I believe that love is a galvanizing energy
[15:56]and that you can heal a relationship that was fraught even if the other person isn't there.
[16:01]And I think you see that in this novel. So the biggest change is not Tam and Eve. I was fascinated
[16:07]by them 30 years ago. And I luckily remained fascinated by them. But the biggest change is
[16:12]less. As I had to encounter so much more complexity in life, I mean, that's really beautiful.
[16:18]It's true. I mean, I feel like knowing that loss is such a fundamental part of life.
[16:25]It's a shame that we don't do more to prepare ourselves or our loved ones for its eventuality.
[16:31]Right. Like it always blindsides people because we sort of operate under this delusion of
[16:39]invincibility. And like we don't want to go there and think about it. But I wonder what life
[16:44]would be like if we all kind of checked into that every so often. And had some sort of mental
[16:51]preparation other than anxiety. I feel like I am always thinking about the worst case to prepare
[16:58]myself. You're having a false deal where it's like an amulet. If I worry about it enough,
[17:05]nothing will happen. But it turns out not to be that way. And you know, I'm thinking as you're
[17:09]speaking, the strongest indicator of this question is being apparent. Because when I started out,
[17:16]I wanted without even realizing it, I wanted to protect my children from absolutely everything.
[17:21]And as a group, I'm not of the small children's small problems metaphor. I loved watching
[17:27]my children get older. I really enjoy my teachers now. I really learned a lot from my young adult
[17:33]children. But I started to realize that it was very important to go to the school of adversity
[17:40]and learn resilience and teach my children that when things happened that were very hard,
[17:45]they had the fortitude to get through it. This was not in my repertoire. As one of my sisters
[17:50]like to say, the round of four women, they get an eight plus on the first try or they quit.
[17:55]This is not a good way. I had to memorize before I really believed it that understanding. Do you
[18:04]feel that way? Was you raised your fort? I mean, I find that the kids who have gone through the
[18:11]most as with any kids in any family not to pick out either one. But you know, like there's one
[18:16]child who's just had to overcome more stuff than the rest. And I feel like that particular child
[18:24]now has a sense of grit. And she has something that the others I couldn't teach. You have to
[18:31]like learn it yourself in other ways. Yes. I joke that I used to say, the other thing that you
[18:41]struck me when you spoke is if you had a childhood as I did that was very interior,
[18:46]addicted to reading, very dramatic inside being a very intense person, which is genetic,
[18:53]you have to fake understanding that the grasp of life will just go up that you're just going
[18:58]to be happier and happier as you get older and older, because how did such misery endure
[19:03]as you are so hungry for life and longing for things? So there's a lot of true humility
[19:08]about coming of age and understanding that you're going to grow not quit growing at 40,
[19:14]which is what I had resolved in my 30. I'm done with this. It's true to Sweden. You grow till you
[19:20]die. If you're lucky, you're lucky. So I think the course that this novel is short,
[19:26]but I tried to show that these people, both evil is alive and even tan, they are always in motion
[19:33]and their relationship is therefore in motion. Well, it's a comfort to hear what you said about
[19:38]relationships continuing on and love continuing on because I know there's just so much lost these days
[19:42]and to take away that sort of finality of it all is probably one of the most healing things
[19:48]you could say to somebody. So anyway, and I know you've spoken up to you. You have to get there
[19:53]yourself. You have to I know you have to get there yourself. There were so many quotes I wanted
[19:57]to read to you back to you. Of course.
[20:00]because I'm not gonna be able to find them at the right time.
[20:02]But I just wanna read at least one example of scenes
[20:07]that I love.
[20:08]Oh, I like this, when, I can't say I liked it, it's so sad,
[20:11]but when Eve was at Tam's funeral
[20:13]and saying her final goodbyes,
[20:14]he wrote, people are starting to go,
[20:16]but I cannot turn away from my sister.
[20:18]As if departing from my king,
[20:20]I walk backward from the grave,
[20:22]a soldier in an honor guard who's watches over,
[20:25]but he will not relinquish her duties.
[20:27]Oh, you can just see that.
[20:29]But just those sentences, you can see the whole grave,
[20:32]the cemetery, the walking, it's just amazing.
[20:36]And then this other passage I love,
[20:38]this is when Eve and Lori were having their long distance
[20:41]relationship back in the day
[20:43]before reuniting at the funeral, which was very juicy.
[20:46]You said during Lori's high school trip to Europe,
[20:49]I was a beggar at the den window,
[20:51]pleading with the smug despot of impeded love
[20:55]for the mailman to appear.
[20:56]Only when I gave up, did he manifest himself,
[20:59]a potentate in his authority to grant or withhold.
[21:02]However, disciplined I tried to be,
[21:04]I could not wait until the letters fell,
[21:06]but open to the door, hand thrust out speechless.
[21:09]I mean, what a way to describe waiting for the mailman.
[21:12]I mean, seriously, this is like an exercise
[21:16]in like creative writing masterpiece.
[21:19]So tell me about how you honed your craft.
[21:23]How did you learn to write this way?
[21:25]Well, I began as a poet,
[21:27]and I went to University of Toronto
[21:29]and then as soon as I could move to New York City,
[21:31]which I fell in love with I did.
[21:33]So at University of Toronto, I won prize for poetry,
[21:37]but I decided then that poetry was too marginal
[21:40]to the culture.
[21:41]I wanted to be more in communion with people.
[21:45]I've written a book of prose poems as you know,
[21:47]but we'll get an exhibit here.
[21:49]In addition to the story I had to work out,
[21:52]the other aspect of it, as you said, was language.
[21:55]And the last realm of my professionalism
[21:58]is writing is choosing each word.
[22:02]I jokingly say it's a very bad attribute for parenting.
[22:05]Your children don't care for it
[22:07]when you're a perfectionist, and I have to give it up,
[22:10]but in one zone you work in writing,
[22:13]the only harm is to myself.
[22:14]So I wanted to show you, this is the exhibit.
[22:18]This is a 32 page single space double column document
[22:23]of quite literally every word in the evening,
[22:26]except for not an end.
[22:28]Going on the basis of my friend Daphne Merkin's aphorism,
[22:31]you can have only one cerulean in a book.
[22:34]So true.
[22:36]I checked every word to make sure it wasn't too proximate.
[22:39]It's very short novel, as you know,
[22:41]and I didn't want to repeat very kind of studded words.
[22:45]I feel that it would be a great diminishment
[22:47]in my craft if I did that.
[22:49]So here you have long, long list by alphabet
[22:52]that sound like this.
[22:53]They're primed, the range, the ride,
[22:56]descent, desecrated desire with how many times they appear
[22:59]and whether I'm satisfied that they're far enough apart,
[23:02]that you wouldn't read it and think,
[23:04]didn't she just use that word?
[23:07]Wow.
[23:09]I am so glad you showed me that.
[23:13]I can't believe that had I not asked that question,
[23:14]it would have remained sitting by your side
[23:16]and wouldn't have known about it.
[23:18]What else do you have over there?
[23:19]You know what we have been saying
[23:21]I have is my husband is an artificial artist.
[23:24]So when I first started this book,
[23:26]I was using a computer, but it wasn't really native to us yet.
[23:31]And I start, I was still writing some things by hand.
[23:34]So this is what it looked like by hand,
[23:36]all these words before I started typing.
[23:39]And he said to me, I want to frame that.
[23:41]I thought it was frame that document with all the things,
[23:44]but how many instances words like light came up in here,
[23:48]I think.
[23:49]Wow.
[23:50]Well, gosh, I didn't know it was so intentional.
[23:53]All I could tell was the effect of it,
[23:55]but now seeing the work that went into it
[23:59]and how specific it was, that's really neat.
[24:01]That's also just a really interesting way to analyze
[24:06]anybody's work, right?
[24:07]How often words come, what does it mean?
[24:11]Which words come more often?
[24:13]I mean, I'm sure there's a whole science behind this
[24:14]that I just don't usually do, but anyway, very interesting.
[24:17]So what's coming next for you now?
[24:20]I think this one was 26 to 30 years in the making.
[24:23]Do you have another one that's been gestating for as long?
[24:26]Or is that this is the end or what do you think?
[24:29]I hope it's not the end.
[24:31]I certainly doing the math
[24:33]and following the actuarial tables
[24:35]cannot take another 30 years for a novel.
[24:38]But I do want to give a word of encouragement
[24:40]to anybody out there who has a dream of a project
[24:44]that seems as if it's not going to come to fruition,
[24:47]because there's a kind of serenity I have
[24:49]from having fulfilled my ambition for this book.
[24:53]Many was the soul who wondered,
[24:55]it's not so hanging onto this book for its own sake,
[24:58]but I wasn't.
[24:59]I knew I would feel that click and I did.
[25:02]And now I'm kind of, I have these little waves
[25:05]of wondering that could turn into the next book.
[25:08]I have certain experiences that I'm interested in,
[25:12]but and every day we should coalesce into a next project,
[25:16]because I wasn't editor for many years
[25:18]and I used to tell people when your book comes out,
[25:20]the most important thing you can do is be immersed
[25:23]in another book.
[25:24]But I also was thinking yesterday, I just can't force it.
[25:27]I mean, I'm an excellent procrastinator.
[25:30]I am not in the flow.
[25:31]One of those people that I tell everybody else to do this,
[25:34]sits down, writes every morning, writes badly,
[25:36]I know all the rules, but I don't follow them.
[25:39]So I think it's probably a little too early for me,
[25:44]given what I gave this book to have something fully born,
[25:48]but I'm playing around.
[25:50]And it is play, right?
[25:52]I hope so.
[25:52]I mean, it shouldn't only be work.
[25:58]Well, Nessa, thank you.
[25:59]Thank you so much for sharing evening with us,
[26:02]for telling me about your life and the backstory
[26:06]and showing me that amazing document.
[26:08]Now I'm gonna go back and read preparing for Sabbath.
[26:10]And this is just such a beautiful book.
[26:12]I love also that you structured it with the days of Shiva.
[26:15]And I just loved it.
[26:18]It's a great.
[26:18]I just loved it.
[26:19]So thank you.
[26:20]Thank you for being such a perceptive reader
[26:22]and especially for loving it,
[26:24]because that's it.
[26:24]There's nothing better.
[26:27]Well, thank you.
[26:27]And thanks, sorry again for the interruptions
[26:30]in this new outing.
[26:31]I think it was so appropriate to be.
[26:32]I can't think of anything more appropriate
[26:34]than interrupting a mom podcast with a mom necessity.
[26:38]I just love that.
[26:39]Ha ha ha ha.
[26:42]Yep.
[26:43]Yeah, you know, how can't make this up?
[26:45]Ha ha ha ha.
[26:46]You have to do it.
[26:49]All right, well, thank you so much.
[26:50]And thank you for your attention.
[26:52]Oh, great.
[26:53]Great.
[26:54]Great.
[26:55]Bye.
[26:56]Thanks so much to today's sponsor.
[26:58]My bookshop.org and my Amazon influencer store.
[27:02]You can check out my Amazon store at Amazon.com slash
[27:06]shop slash moms don't have time to read books.
[27:09]And my bookshop.org store, which is bookshop.org slash
[27:14]shop slash zibi Owens.
[27:17]And I hope that you will find every book
[27:19]that you are looking for.
[27:21]Thanks.
[27:22]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time
[27:24]to read books.
[27:25]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens
[27:28]and at moms don't have time to read books.
[27:30]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens.com and sign up
[27:33]for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom
[27:36]every other week.
[27:37]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[27:40]for the Sound Editing.
[27:41]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:43]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.