Sarah Sawyer, THE UNDERCURRENT: A Novel
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[0:38]Thanks for listening. Sarah Sawyer is the author of The Undercurrent.
[0:45]This is the ZibiBooks title for October and we are so excited for it. Gillian Flynn,
[0:51]who wrote Gone Girl is one of the people who blurbed it, including Chris Whitaker and others.
[0:57]People are going crazy for this book, so you have to check it out. Sarah Sawyer is an English teacher
[1:02]who lives and works at a boarding school in Western Massachusetts where she finds endless humor and
[1:07]inspiration in her colleagues and students. She is a graduate of Amherst College and the
[1:12]Breadlove School of English. The Undercurrent is her first novel.
[1:15]Welcome Sarah. Congratulations on the Undercurrent. So excited to talk to you today about this fabulous
[1:21]debut novel of yours. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
[1:27]Okay. Tell everybody what is the undercurrent about? The big question.
[1:31]About a lot of things. I think it is about a lot. Well, it is the story of a new mom named B,
[1:38]who becomes fixated with the story of a girl who is missing in her neighborhood when she was a kid.
[1:44]And because she is struggling with her new motherhood, she gets the idea in her head that she's
[1:49]going to go back to her hometown and unravel this mystery and she ends up uncovering
[1:56]some family secrets that have been beneath the surface of her life all along. That's the story.
[2:04]So you are an English teacher. This is your first book ever. Why this topic? Why these characters?
[2:13]Like how did this whole thing happen? Why now? Like maybe back up and just give us a background on
[2:18]how we even got here and how this is the book that you ended up writing. Well, there are a lot
[2:23]of ways to tell that story. I think that this sort of immediate thing that made me sit down and
[2:29]write was that my daughter when she was going, let's see, going into 10th grade ended up having a
[2:39]thyroid disorder that made her lose 40 pounds and her resting heart rate was like 158. And just in the
[2:48]span of just months this happened, right? And nobody could figure it out. And it was a whole thing.
[2:54]And then when they solved the thyroid problem, she gained 40 pounds again. And first off,
[3:00]more girl, this was like a little rough, I think. And it got me thinking about just the girl
[3:06]behind how it transforms. So spectacularly, even if you don't have a wacky thyroid, like over the
[3:13]course of your life, you have to live in all these different bodies. So that was the first
[3:17]thing I was thinking of. I loved being a little girl. I felt so strong. I won all the presidential
[3:21]fitness. It was amazing. And then all of a sudden it's like, well, at least that's what it felt
[3:27]like to me. So I was thinking about that. And I think that at that same time, I started to say,
[3:32]I was reading Madam Bauvery. And I started to think about her as a character and wondered what
[3:40]would happen if a woman had written that book, wondered if she was just bored, wondered if she
[3:47]was a creative person who was sort of stuck. So those things kind of came together and really
[3:54]made me sit down and start writing other than that. I can't truly tell you where it all came from.
[4:01]I don't know. And had you always wanted to write a novel? Was that a goal? Yeah. Yeah. I have tried a few
[4:08]times. I wrote many years ago when I turned 40. I have a family scrapbook that's super intriguing.
[4:15]And I wrote a very bad novel about the woman that the scrapbook is about and tried to tell
[4:22]it in that way. So I think I'm always interested in just sort of the experience of women in the
[4:28]world and in the ways that like mothers and daughters interact if that's really fascinating.
[4:33]Yeah. And you said a minute ago, but it got cut off a little bit. Oh, no. How you felt,
[4:39]this is before, but how you felt as your own body was changing and fitness and all that,
[4:45]could you just tell that piece again? Oh, sure. So actually, the opening scene of the novel is
[4:51]sort of inspired by something that I remember very vividly as a child. I don't know if I
[4:57]got cut off, but I was talking about the presidential fitness tests and how I loved them
[5:01]because I won them all the time and I loved them. And this is like push-ups and sit-ups and all that.
[5:06]Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a mile. Yeah. You do. Arm hang and stuff like that.
[5:11]And in the Texas public schools, these were a very big deal. So when I was little, I loved them.
[5:19]And when I, I think when it between third and fourth grade, you know, things started shifting and
[5:25]moving and all of a sudden I didn't win anymore and had like all kinds of things happening.
[5:32]And I just didn't have that like strong little girl body anymore. And I can remember standing
[5:37]in a field next to my house and being like, what has happened and like trying to run really fast
[5:44]and trying to figure out if I could still run really fast. So for me, that was like a sad experience.
[5:51]It wasn't, it didn't feel magical and wonderful because I watched all my friends who were boys get
[5:56]bigger and stronger. And I was like, wait a minute. What's happening? And then, you know, over the
[6:01]course of my life, obviously, you know, you have babies, all kinds of things happen to your body.
[6:07]And meanwhile, I feel like I've watched my husband and like, what, you just get to just be
[6:14]just nothing happens to you. You don't grow milk ducks like that. I'm nice for you, you know.
[6:19]So it just felt not magical, but maybe like a little bit of a betrayal of the body. And I'm
[6:26]very grateful, obviously, for what I have in my good health. But I also, I also think there is
[6:32]that selfishness of me that I wanted to write about. Interesting. So one of the perspectives is
[6:39]as a new mother from B and her life today, and then you go back in time. And by the way, the
[6:45]craft involved in the multiple perspectives and timelines, how did you do that? And like,
[6:52]how did you decide that that was the way to tell the story? And how did you execute it?
[6:57]Well, there is a line in the novel that is really just me talking about what it felt like to
[7:02]tell the story. And it's, I'm going to get it wrong. And it's my own novel. But it's something
[7:06]like the story is rotating slowly in a liquid darkness. And that's kind of what stories feel
[7:11]like to me. They have all these different parts to them. And I think probably because I'm a
[7:16]a teacher and I'm just very aware of trying to make the experience in the room as common as it
[7:23]can be, but also being aware that there are just, you know, if you have 15 kids in the room,
[7:28]they're having 15 different days and experiencing the room in 15 different ways. So I'm very aware
[7:34]of that in just my lived experience. And I think to tell the story, I really felt like,
[7:41]you know, the problem with the women in the novel is that they think they understand the story
[7:47]as we all like to think we understand the story. But that it needed all these different perspectives
[7:52]in order for that point to become clear that that we don't know everybody's story. And then we have
[7:58]to listen and we have to be open right to to what other people are living craft-wise, it was
[8:05]hard. You know, I, you know, I wanted B to be in the present time. But then there was a desire to
[8:13]have her speak in the past, which would have been a mess. It was just kind of, it just took a lot of
[8:19]discipline and sort of clarity of purpose. I think to make it. And I hope it was successful,
[8:23]but I can thank Brydie, my editor for that as well. But, you know, you have to really keep your eye
[8:30]on what it is that you mean to do if you're gonna mess around with multiple perspectives. That's
[8:35]for sure. Well, it was, you know, from an execution standpoint, it was so well done. You are such a
[8:41]great writer. I mean, I remember reading even the first draft. And oh my gosh, you're just so talented.
[8:48]So it's amazing. I'm not surprised that it's gotten so much praise and all the rest.
[8:54]Can we go back for a second to the experience of what happened to your daughter? And I'm so sorry
[8:58]that that happened. But you were like, oh, you know, when nobody was happening and blah,
[9:02]blah, blah, blah, but I feel like that would derail my life in such a big way to have that
[9:07]panic. And anytime anything happens to a kid, especially something you can't figure out,
[9:12]like everything, it like you feel it in your own body so much. Like tell me what that whole
[9:17]experience was like and how can you talk about that anymore? Sure. You know, well,
[9:22]your only as happy as your unhappy as child, right? It was hard because it was right after COVID.
[9:28]So we had that our school was open during COVID. So my daughter was in ninth grade, going to
[9:37]school, wearing a mask, trying to, you know, be a ninth grader. And then this happened. And it was
[9:45]hard because her pediatrician sort of said, well, you know, it's anxiety or she's anorexic. And
[9:50]I was like, no, no, girl loves to eat. I'm like, not to offend your professionalism. But I work
[9:57]with lots of teenagers. And I know, I know why you're saying,
[10:00]that, but that's not what this is. So it just took maybe longer than it should have to sort of
[10:04]solve. And once it was solved, it was quickly solved, right? And it's sort of an easy fix minus
[10:12]seven million times going to the doctor. So it ended up being fine. And she's a pretty determined
[10:19]person. She had a hip surgery last year. She's not a lot of things. But she, you know, she would
[10:24]wear this heart rate monitor for field hockey and like, you know, have to go sit down. And she
[10:30]was just very determined to do everything. So I wasn't worried. And in that way, I was more just sort
[10:36]of frustrated because I was just watching her shrink. And she's, you know, she's 5-11. She's not a
[10:41]small girl. So I was like, what somebody needs to fix this. She's quite athletic. And she couldn't do
[10:46]the things that she loved. So yeah, it was hard. But it was more just sort of bizarre, you know,
[10:52]to watch. It was just bizarre. I can't explain to you. And then I sort of thinking, maybe,
[10:57]maybe the thyroid is my problem. Maybe everybody should check their thyroid.
[11:02]Oh my gosh. My, I'm like, I have had my thyroid tested so many times that my, my husband
[11:08]makes a joke of it. And, but yeah, that all of us have something like that going on.
[11:13]Wow. And it's wobbly, right? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it goes to your point of the
[11:19]betrayal of the body and how it's all out of our control. I mean, right? Not only do we become
[11:26]nursing moms and have all this stuff happen, but then, you know, even on a good day, is anything
[11:32]really consistent. And what can we do? What can we do with that? So you have, you have so many
[11:37]things in the book. You have moms who live across the street from each other and have pursued very
[11:41]different paths in life, which is another one of these relationships. I mean, all of these different
[11:45]threats. It's almost like a grid. I want to like draw the connections of all the different
[11:50]really important relationships in the book. But those two who live across the street and,
[11:54]you know, raise their kids together, but have very different outlooks on life,
[11:58]professionalism versus stay at home. Like their own sort of tense relationship and how that
[12:03]evolves every time. Tell me about May and that's where I think what's the other name. Oh my god.
[12:09]We have Diana. We have Mary. We have Mary and Diana. Okay. Tell me about
[12:14]tell me about Mary and Diana and what you were trying to do with that juxtaposition.
[12:20]So that sort of came out of the mad and bovary thing. I was thinking it was just sort of three
[12:25]different versions of women. And so Diana is sort of based on my father's in the classics
[12:32]professor and he always was bringing home, you know, academics when I was a kid. And I think,
[12:40]you know, cocktail parties at the house with a bunch of classicists. So fun.
[12:46]So that really Diana comes from me just sort of eavesdropping on those people, those experiences.
[12:55]And Mary is, well, my mother did say to me the other day, if there's a movie, I'd like to be
[13:01]played by Meryl Streep. I was like, you're not in the book. My mother believes herself to be
[13:07]in the book because it is true that she would sit on the back porch and smoke cigarettes. That is
[13:11]that it's right. But that's just like another, you know, just the sort of a woman who
[13:18]due to, you know, choices she made when she was very young, you know, is living this life that,
[13:24]you know, is abhorrent to her, really. And the sort of the sickness that that kind of unhappiness
[13:30]can cause, I think. So yeah, so there are just these different versions of women who
[13:35]whose creative lives have been sort of curtailed in various ways who feel like it's either this
[13:42]or that, you know, which I don't personally feel, though I can understand it for sure. I was not
[13:47]writing anything when my children were small. It's very hard and I don't know how people do that.
[13:53]But yeah, so I can understand absolutely how they feel.
[13:58]And then talk a little more about Gus and what happens to a group of three and how all of that
[14:06]can, you know, talk more about that. It's making me go back to the other question about how did
[14:12]I believe all together. I'm like, there's a lot of threes. They're a lot. They're a lot of threads.
[14:17]They're a lot. But they're great. They're so vivid. Yeah. Yeah. So that to me was sort of thinking
[14:23]about the way that your relationships change as you grow older. Hardly the way that it's really
[14:30]hard to maintain friendships with people who knew you as a child. I have one very dear friend
[14:38]who I'm so excited will be in Philadelphia at my event that I've known since I was born,
[14:43]but people sort of sloth away, right? And just thinking about how you can think you know the reason
[14:51]for that, but you might not. And you can think you know everything about the house you grew up in,
[14:56]but you might not. But mainly it was about, like I said before, the idea of the importance of
[15:02]really listening, not just bumbling along and thinking that you know something, but really listening.
[15:08]Gus is so sad. Gus doesn't want to tell his story. And Leo doesn't want to betray him.
[15:14]And it's an awful story that he has. And there's, you know, he's a hard person, but there's like
[15:20]a nobility to him that I appreciate. And I think it's part of that story of sort of refiguring
[15:29]your relationships with people as you grow older, if those relationships are valuable to you.
[15:34]So what do you want readers to take away once they put down the undercurrent?
[15:39]I want them to think and pay better attention to the people in their lives. That's sort of a
[15:46]calling for the book. But I think that would be the best thing. And I also think just to
[15:52]consider for mothers how truly transformative that experience is. I think it's such a common
[16:02]experience and an ordinary experience, you know, in that so many people do it, that I think we don't
[16:10]necessarily register how much change it really requires in a person. My mother who says beware of
[16:19]life events that require parties. If you need a party thrown by women, you know you're in trouble.
[16:28]But it's sort of it's it's a little bit true. It is hard. And I can't think of anything
[16:33]that I've done that that has been harder. And it certainly was in the easiest possible
[16:38]circumstances with lots of people who love me and nobody's hungry and all that. So I think that
[16:43]that is important just to register. And I think for if you were a mother reading the story
[16:50]to feel that you don't maybe have to ascribe to the maybe obsessive positive talk about motherhood.
[16:58]It's like it's okay to be bad at it or not love every minute or and I think that's better for
[17:05]your kids if you're not trying to be perfect or superhuman or something as the cultural narrative
[17:12]would have it. But yeah, that's what I was so in a way, is the disappearance of the girl actually
[17:18]you? I think it's I think it's any girl, right? I think the other thing I didn't say at the
[17:24]beginning when you're asking about the inspirations for the bucket that my husband and I watched
[17:29]so much television during COVID. And one thing we watched so much of was British detective shows
[17:35]and every every time there's a girl disappearing, there's a fascination with that. And I think
[17:42]the fascination is because it has metaphorical possibility, right? The girl in you does disappear
[17:48]and like how do you do for there? I loved being eight, right? I loved being strong and feeling like
[17:55]I could do anything and I try to keep that with me. I try to keep that kind of, I don't know,
[18:01]confidence before you feel the the buffets of the world, you know, but yeah, I think yeah,
[18:06]absolutely for sure. Well, launching a book is one of those life events that has a party.
[18:12]So I'm not not just thrown by women. Not just thrown by women, okay, that's a caveat I guess.
[18:18]When you think about like the people you're gonna meet and getting this book out into the world
[18:26]and what some of the goals are, like what would what are your grand visions? What would you like
[18:31]to have happen from this point forward? Wow, I don't know. My friend, Deborah Emmergot, who is
[18:38]great once had like an event at her house and she per, you know, female artists in the valley where
[18:44]I live and she talked at that event about equanimity because I think that's really my
[18:53]personally my goal is just to sort of enjoy and I don't have any expectations for how it will go
[19:00]just because I have learned in the course of this process that, you know, you could write world's
[19:06]best novel and nobody might like it or write or buy it or whatever and those are those are
[19:13]industry issues right or or something and it's a bit mysterious all of that. So I don't have any
[19:18]expectations for how it will go. I am really glad and grateful that people who read it seem to like
[19:25]it. My my colleague who was reading it last week kept coming every day. He's like, I've got it.
[19:32]I've got it. He's Leo. He died every day. He would come with like a new theory which was he was
[19:37]a very best kind of reader so engaged. He was quoting sentences to me and it was so so to me that's
[19:43]I mean that's amazing and I didn't write it thinking that anybody would ever read it. I just wrote it
[19:48]to write it. So I think yeah, I think my expectations are to enjoy myself and meet people and see
[19:56]see what this is all about.
[19:57]Amazing. If you could.
[20:00]go back and do the writing of this book over again. Would you have changed anything? Would you
[20:06]like have started it years ago? Would you have like just knowing where you've ended up today?
[20:11]I think maybe because I teach writing, I don't really think that there's a perfect final
[20:18]version of anything. It just sort of is finished when the forces around you say it's finished.
[20:24]I think if it weren't to be published, I would still be finished tinkering with it just
[20:30]because I think that you know at some certain point the story is behind you right and you're not
[20:36]in it anymore. I think I would have maybe in just in terms of the way I wrote it, the actual
[20:41]nitty-gritty of the pieces. There were so many charts and color coding and all kinds of things.
[20:47]And like you know if you, one character is wearing a sweater on page two and you change that,
[20:53]then you've got to change. I find all the sweaters on changing. It's like really. So I think I maybe
[20:59]would try to be more methodical. But I think that might just be how I am. I don't know.
[21:07]And how much has what you're reading with your students or just for fun? How much does that
[21:14]inspire? I know with Madam Boveray you said obviously it did and there was a direct connection.
[21:18]but how talk about sort of the influences of some of the books in your life and especially
[21:23]the ones you delve deep into. So I really love simplicity and prose and I love prose that is not
[21:32]afraid to try to be both simple and kind of luminous. I think that is really hard to do. And so
[21:39]that's kind of what I try to do and what I really love when I see it. I've read Gilead and all those
[21:45]books and I think those are just perfect in terms of their construction or trying to French I love
[21:51]for I mean they're a different flavor of book but for a similar reason I think they're very
[21:55]precise and simple and clear and very complex at the same time which which I really appreciate.
[22:02]I like novels that think about time. I think maybe that's obvious but I really love
[22:08]Emma Klein and I think her two the girls and then the guest treat times so differently and I was sort
[22:14]of amazed by that and I love those. So yeah I'm always just sort of I'm a pretty avid reader
[22:20]and so I'm always just kind of looking for things that I like and then thinking about because I
[22:26]very kind of strong gut reactions to things and then trying to consider why I like them and usually
[22:31]the answer is that kind of combination of simplicity and beauty or complexity if that answers your
[22:38]question. That answers my question. And do you have advice to aspiring authors? Oh I don't know.
[22:43]I mean I think for me the hardest thing is just sitting, right? So if that is your particular
[22:51]problem I have advice which is just to like you know the Pomodoro situation. I really I set timers
[22:57]I'm like I'm only sitting for an hour it is okay you know even right now I'm standing like I really
[23:02]I really have trouble. I have trouble sitting which makes it hard to type but I think I think the
[23:08]best advice I've received that I would pass on is just to know that the writing is the fun part
[23:15]right so that sort of playing in the sandbox and focusing and thinking deeply about something
[23:22]is really fun and trying to get to some form of expression that is pleasing to you is really fun
[23:30]so my advice would just be like why not you know it's I wouldn't have any expectations about how
[23:34]it's going to go because I think those things are really complex and out of most people's
[23:39]control right but but I think just to kind of sit and try is great I'm organizing my launch party with
[23:46]our dining services and and as it turns out two of them are writing novels it's like a murder
[23:52]mystery about the dining services. I think I had a dream and I'm like that's amazing like yes go do
[23:58]that thing because that's the fun part is she's like I look forward to it when I get home from work
[24:02]I sit down and I write she's like it's so silly I'm like no it's not it's what anybody does right
[24:08]who's doing that and some people are fortunate to do it you know for for their life and that's
[24:12]that's amazing but I think most people are not right so most people need to kind of wedge it in
[24:18]where they can because it brings them joy yeah I would say is there a character in here you miss
[24:23]the most now that the book is done oh I think I like the most the one that probably nobody
[24:28]should like who's dying and I really love dying she's so I don't know she I just really enjoyed
[24:34]writing those parts and she's kind of mean she's a little ruthless she just is I don't know I
[24:42]just enjoyed her and I like those art toys so much when I was so happy to sort of stumble
[24:48]across them so yeah I would say she's the one we're amazing my secret bias lies Sarah congratulations
[24:57]we're so honored to be publishing your book it's so good and everybody must read it it is
[25:03]just amazing you're so talented really talented it's so exciting so thank you so much for
[25:10]trusting us and very excited to be long for the ride of this one we'll see how it goes right
[25:17]it's already going right all right well best of luck and watch out for all those parties by
[25:22]women thanks for listening to moms don't have time to read books if you love it please leave
[25:33]a review and follow us on social at city oans and at city readers