Leigh Bardugo, THE FAMILIAR

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[0:43]Leigh Bardugo is the author of The Familiar, a novel.

[0:46]Leigh is the number one New York Times best-selling author of The Familiar, Nine Cows, and The Creator of the Cresheverse, now a Netflix original series,

[0:56]which spans the shadow and bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, the King of Scar's duology, and much more.

[1:04]Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy.

[1:10]She lives in Los Angeles and is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University.

[1:17]Welcome, Leigh. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss the familiar and your whole career and everything else.

[1:24]Welcome.

[1:24]Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

[1:27]Of course.

[1:28]Okay. Let's just start with The Familiar, because that's still fresh on my mind, having delved deep into a pronounced at Lucia or Lucy.

[1:36]It's the Spanish, as opposed to the Italian.

[1:39]Okay. I mean, I don't speak either of this language itself.

[1:42]Me neither.

[1:43]Well, my Spanish is getting better. It's definitely getting better.

[1:46]Yeah.

[1:47]Listen, there's a little more about the familiar if they haven't read it yet. And I know part of it was inspired by your own family history, fleeing the inquisition and 1400s and all that.

[1:58]So anyway, give us the whole background and everything.

[2:00]Okay.

[2:01]Well, the familiar is, I would say, historical fiction with just a little splash of the magical or miraculous.

[2:08]It is said in the Spanish Golden Age, which was a time of tremendous political upheaval.

[2:12]And it's about a young woman named Lucia Cuthavo who is a servant and impoverished noble ones house.

[2:18]And she does not have much going for her life is very hard.

[2:21]It is basically toil from set up to sundown, but she does have this gift, this ability to do small miracles.

[2:29]And this gains the attention of some very powerful men and King Philip II's court.

[2:35]Philip is reeling from the loss of the Armada.

[2:38]He is desperate for Holy champion to save the Catholic world and fight Elizabeth I, the Protestant Queen of England.

[2:46]And Lucia is just desperate for a better life, but this is the time of the inquisition.

[2:50]And so in order to earn it, she's going to have to use every bit of wit and will to hide her ancestry.

[2:56]And she's also going to have to earn the trust of the very notorious Guillain Santan Hill, who is a man with gifts and secrets of his own that could do them both.

[3:05]The story really grew out of my own history.

[3:08]One side of my family is from Morocco and Spain.

[3:12]They fled in 1492.

[3:13]1492 was, you know, we all know, you know, sale the ocean was big year for Spain, but it was also the year that they expelled their Jewish population.

[3:22]And they said, you can either convert.

[3:24]You can die if you prefer to choose death or you can go into exile.

[3:28]And most of the Jews did choose to flee, but a number of them stayed and became converts.

[3:35]And Lucia is descended from those converts.

[3:38]And for me, it was this way of kind of filling in the blanks on my own family tree, because we know that some of my relatives did choose to remain in Spain and convert and then other people came here.

[3:49]Yes.

[3:50]Yes.

[3:51]Got it.

[3:52]This became a real problem.

[3:53]I can get deeper mainstream.

[3:54]But the inquisition is born out of this moment.

[3:56]The inquisition, which I didn't understand when I started researching this book lasted 300 years over 300 years.

[4:03]The last person was put to death by the inquisition in the mid 1800s to give you an idea of how long this went on.

[4:11]And it was so brutal that even there were inquisitions in multiple countries in every Catholic country.

[4:17]But the Pope even stepped in at one point to say, look, we really want people to convert, right? Like, let's maybe not torture them and put them to death.

[4:24]And Philip's response to this was, you know, I have a massive army.

[4:28]So maybe just lay off and the Pope did.

[4:31]And the Spanish tribunal, which was original led by Tony Mather, who was himself descended from Comberos, became kind of legendary.

[4:41]Now, I think it's worth saying if you have any Spanish listeners that, you know, there is what's called the black legend where Spain is sort of portrayed as the worst and most brutal of countries when the truth is every country was pretty brutal.

[4:54]One thing Spain wasn't doing was burning a lot of witches. They tended to think that, but that was just a sentimental illness as opposed to actual corruption by the devil.

[5:04]And certainly in England, they were treating Catholics just as brutally as Spain was treating Protestants and Jews and Muslims in Spain.

[5:12]Well, it's quite the history. I mean, you should read. I know we were talking about being Jewish now, but there's an essay from Joanna Raycuff, which takes place in Spain when she tries to find this hidden synagogue and talks all about the history of Spain.

[5:28]Anyway, maybe check it out.

[5:31]I was sure you were going to say that you started this book because like one time you burned bread that you were baking and you were like, would you be great if I can just make my sourdough starter?

[5:41]I was like, that's where this is going to come from. She really wanted to fix it. And then like she had a riff in her dress and she wanted to fix that.

[5:47]Oh, that's a much better story. That's much better. That's a much better origin story.

[5:54]Okay, so we talked at first, you went, we both went to yell at the same time and I didn't meet you there, but maybe I mean, who knows, but ever we can talk about that another time.

[6:01]Did your right, when did your love of writing start where you involved in writing stuff there like when did this all and how did you get to where you are now basically tell me the whole story.

[6:10]Oh, okay.

[6:12]Yes, I wanted, I loved writing from the time I was a little kid. I was only child and I spent all of my time kind of talking to myself and making up stories.

[6:23]I think the turn for me was actually in junior high school. My mom remarried.

[6:28]We moved to a completely different part of town could not have been more different. We had been living in an apartment my whole life now we were living in a house and I started at this new school.

[6:38]I really felt like I had like I had no idea what language they were speaking like it felt like I had crash landed on an alien planet and I walked into my school library and there was some kind library and had put out a table of books that said discover new worlds.

[6:54]And it was all science fiction and fantasy which I had never really read before and that was what I needed. I needed to know that there was something more than home and school and while because I was not thriving.

[7:06]It was a pretty weird awkward kid and that was when I started reading science fiction and fantasy and also when I started writing it became almost like a survival mechanism and like where I was writing compulsory.

[7:18]I would ditch class to write like that's how big a nerd I was and I don't consider that nerdy. I think that's awesome but okay keep it.

[7:26]And I think you know I always wanted to be a writer I always wanted to be a novelist but I had no idea how to go about it.

[7:34]So you know my my history looks good on paper right I I once contest I went to Yale I majored in English and then there's this gap of about 10 years where I found her around.

[7:47]I have a lot of different jobs none of them good well one of them was good I got to write movie trailers for a living but where I would try to write books and I would.

[7:56]Get about 25,000 words in and then I would just stop because I had no idea how to outline I didn't understand story structure.

[8:04]But I was living in Los Angeles and in Los Angeles if you don't take a street screenwriting course they take you out and shoot you so my screenwriting class and I learned how to structure a story.

[8:18]And even then I think you know I had a lot of doubts by that point I was in my 30s and I was in the grips of a pretty intense depression I was married to a real schmuck and I was very lost.

[8:31]And so when I got the idea for shadow and bone my first novel I did not sit down and start writing I thought my bother it's just going to be one more thing that you start and don't finish.

[8:40]And then I had a conversation with a friend which was like you should apply to the MFA you should do this and I said you know what I'm.

[8:45]I'm going to go out on this book and I'm going to try to write it before I turn 35 and as it turned out it took me till almost 36 but I did finish that first book and I told myself it didn't have to be good it just had to be done.

[8:59]But there was nothing that was good that I went back and I revised it and that was the first book I sold I was shot on bone and I didn't change my life.

[9:08]So you just got an agent sold it right away and then I queried I got my first rejection two hours after I sent out my first email.

[9:17]Which was a blow I will not lie and I remember getting on the one on one freeway and driving.

[9:22]Well, this is either going to be the whole story or it's going to be a footnote of the story that I get to talk about and interviews so.

[9:31]Thankfully, John of all pay plucked me out of obscurity just my query wasn't very good but the pages were.

[9:39]And yeah, I it was a very good time to be selling a young adult fantasy story and the kind of fantasy I was writing wasn't particularly popular, but it became popular and I was lucky to live in with a publisher McMillan that really pushed my books aggressively.

[9:59]And that.

[10:00]then led to the Six of Crows duology, which was set in the same world and that really was the

[10:06]sort of big moment in my career and that continues to probably be my most popular book.

[10:12]And then I moved into adult, a ninth house, which is set at Yale, among the secret societies.

[10:17]But I think in some ways, the familiar was the book I would have written when I was, you know,

[10:23]20 or 30, if I'd had the chops. Wow, the word books are hard. I know, I'm like,

[10:30]should I take a screenwriting class? That was what I got out of that whole story of your life was like,

[10:35]maybe I should have taken the screenwriting class. We can talk about the screenwriting class and

[10:40]have it turn out to be a little bit of a scam that I felt. Oh, no. But I learned to outline so

[10:46]I call it a victory. Oh, my gosh, that's so funny. So do you still live in LA or do you live in New York?

[10:51]I do. No, I live in LA. We actually I bought my first house a few years ago during the pandemic.

[10:58]And we just got the roof done. Very exciting stuff. I am learning the joyous interiors of

[11:04]homeownership. But yeah, we live in a much quieter part of town than where I grew up with our

[11:09]bears and coyotes and so forth. Yeah. Interesting. Well, at some point, you have to come to my

[11:14]bookstore in Santa Monica. You have to come to an event. Do you want to? Sure. You're basically in

[11:18]another country because you're in Santa Monica in my face. Oh, you're east. Okay. I was like,

[11:24]where even are there bears nearby? Well, anyway, if you ever decided to take a big trip,

[11:28]well, we can talk about it later, but we would love to have you anytime. And I love that

[11:32]you opened a bookstore. Like, that just makes me so happy. We need them. It makes me happy too.

[11:39]I love it. It's like my happiest place just to go in there and likes it on the couch and listen

[11:42]to all the conversations. Oh, that's good. That's good people listening and people watching.

[11:48]Yes, I was impressed to hear what people are reading and I don't know all their opinions.

[11:53]In the familiar, though, you talk a lot about not only like class differences, right? So

[12:00]which she has sleeps literally in the dirt and it has like no prospects and is basically

[12:06]feeling completely trapped with like an evil boss, which I'm sure many people can relate to in their

[12:11]own lives. Maybe maybe not the dirt, but you know, that feeling of like this is where

[12:18]I am and how am I going to change my station in life? How am I going to get out of this job? Like,

[12:23]what are my opportunities? Like, how do I take my next step and all of that? And that feeling,

[12:28]you know, and then she finds this magic, which I feel like again, people are just looking for in

[12:33]their own lives. Like, we can't always like, you know, make the fire like go up the walls or whatever

[12:38]and like change things and make glasses sort of come together again. But like, I think everybody,

[12:44]I mean, this is like sort of the bigger message of like, can you find that magic that only you

[12:49]have that can somehow change your current situation? I think, you know, I don't always know the

[12:56]story I'm telling when I set out to tell it. I know the plot. I know the big moments. I know

[13:03]where I want my character to go, but I don't think I see the larger theme until I take a step back.

[13:08]And Lucia is this young woman who has, you know, she's very poor. She has a actually a higher

[13:16]education than most people would have because of her circumstances, but she can't use it at all.

[13:21]And she has this tremendous ambition. She wants to use her lively mind. She wants to be seen

[13:28]and understood. She wants to be acknowledged. And instead, she lives sort of invisibly in this

[13:35]world. And the more famous she becomes, the more she is acknowledged, the more she gets what she's

[13:43]hunger for, the more of a target she becomes to. And I think that's something that a lot of women

[13:48]understand, particularly at a time when everybody is expected to look publicly. So the more attention

[13:55]you get, the more success you have, the more of a target you are. And I think that that's sort of

[14:00]at the heart of Lucia's story, this driving ambition that's up against one of the most brutal

[14:06]and terrifying forces in history. And it's for the magic, you know, yes, I think we all want to have

[14:13]that spark inside of us. But I think as I've written, you know, the magic has gotten smaller and

[14:18]the world has gotten bigger in storytelling. And what I really wanted to play with in this book was,

[14:24]you know, this was a time when magic and miracle were virtually indistinguishable, but the

[14:30]the church owns miracles and magic belongs to the devil. But even the idea of the miraculous

[14:36]is deeply embedded in this period of life right at that cusp between the medieval period and

[14:41]the Renaissance period. So to me, that was sort of an exciting thing to play with, what's fraud,

[14:45]what's real, what's miracle, what's magic, and how does the church view something like this,

[14:52]the derive, and this is also something that derives from her own ancestry from looking

[14:57]and from this language of exile, which makes it even more dangerous for her. So yeah, I think in

[15:02]some ways it's a fairy tale, but it's a fairy tale that I kind of said on its head. Yeah, I mean,

[15:08]her first obstacle was another woman, which is also sadly what happens in some sometimes too.

[15:14]Yes, but I think it's a then and out. Yeah, Valentina, like she's on her own journey too.

[15:19]Like she starts out as the kind of wicked stepmother, the evil and clear of the poor

[15:26]downtrodden servant, but she has her own struggles and her own story. And she took me by

[15:32]surprise in the writing. And I loved writing her own kind of hunger and desperation and the shame

[15:37]that goes this desire for a better life. And yeah, she's I love somebody. I love when you

[15:43]meet a character with the characters and turn out to be who you think she is. Yeah, well,

[15:47]she's also feeling very trapped. Everybody's feeling very trapped. Like it's interesting,

[15:52]you mentioned class because if you were at the top, like if you were hanging out with Philip

[15:56]in his court, then yes, you were probably reading and writing. You were talking to philosophers.

[16:03]You were even as a woman. You had tremendous mobility. If you were the very bottom like Lucy is,

[16:09]you, your life is very conscripted. It's very brutal, but you also have a certain amount of

[16:13]freedom because you have to be able to go to the market to go shopping. You have to be able to

[16:17]chores. If you're a fishmonger's wife, you need to sell the fish. If you're in the middle,

[16:21]the way of Valentina is, it's a little tougher. Like you're, you, you literally are trapped inside,

[16:27]women could not leave home without their chaperones. There were actual stories of women

[16:32]leaning out of their windows so far to try to get a glimpse at the world that they would plummet

[16:37]and break limbs or even die. So that's how constrained your life could be during this time period.

[16:43]Oh my gosh. Well, it's interesting with the book coming out, certainly context of what's going on

[16:48]with Judaism at large antisemitism, October 7th, the tags, that feeling of being trapped, not knowing

[16:57]what to say, things aren't fair. There's some themes as a Jewish author and you don't have to go

[17:04]here if you don't want to. But how have you found it, like bringing a book out now?

[17:08]All right, honestly, it's been, you know, in some ways writing about my own identity felt like a

[17:15]very safe space, given some of the conversations that have happened and publishing over the

[17:19]recent years of public, okay, I got to explore this part of myself and then the conversation

[17:25]changed entirely and it's been very hard to figure out how to navigate it. And, you know,

[17:30]the last tour I was on was very intense. I was getting threats and we had to have additional

[17:35]security and not inevitably changed the dynamic of how I interacted with readers and how I felt

[17:42]about being out in the world. And then some ways again, it paralleled Lucy is journey in the same way,

[17:47]the more present you are, the more visible you are, the greater chance that somebody is going to want

[17:53]to knock you down. So it's a deep tangle and it's been the subject of a lot of conversations,

[18:00]but one of the great joys of this has been meeting readers of all different backgrounds,

[18:06]all different religions who have come to me and said, you know, I'm Lucy yet. This is my story,

[18:11]you know, which is a very powerful thing to hear from somebody, especially when you don't come from

[18:16]the same place. Interesting. Yeah, it is a confusing time and every day. I feel like there's more

[18:24]things to fight against. But anyway, that's where I try to stay is in a place of compassion and humanity

[18:30]and I think that's the only thing that's going to get us to the other side of this. Yes,

[18:35]a great. So this conversation is a special thing for me on this podcast because I am trying

[18:42]something new for the first time in like six and a half years. I am part of a book group at

[18:47]a Temple of Manual of the Gather. I have a new Gather book club and they are reading,

[18:51]they were reading your book or we were reading your book. And I said, well, why don't you come

[18:55]to the podcast and listen in and you said yes. And they said yes. So we have a couple

[19:00]book club members who joined in. They've been in the dark in the Zoom squares while we've been

[19:06]chatting. And I wanted to give these two ladies an opportunity to ask you questions. So if you

[19:13]you guys are still there, I will ask you to unmute. And if you have questions for Lee to please

[19:22]ask them. Hi, thank you very much. I have a question. Your feelings behind this book were very

[19:27]personal from your family. Are your other books, do they also have a personal background or are they

[19:34]the same genre of historical fiction with a little bit of fantasy? You might be in for a surprise

[19:41]if you picked them up. 9th house was actually where first my heroine heroine is actually half

[19:47]Jewish and I don't want to get into the specifics of her other half. But she is, she,

[19:54]Lydino comes to the rescue for her. She has because my grandmother spoke Lydino.

[20:00]And so I grew up with these freight fragments and these refranis, and so there's a moment, a very important moment in the story where she calls on that to rescue her from a very dire situation, but those books 9,000 hell bent and there will be a third are definitely darker.

[20:18]There, there's a little more horror in them, they're set at Yale, so it's a, you know, you can literally go and see every single building and object that's referenced in that book, you can walk the path of that, which is kind of exciting when people post pictures of going around campus that way.

[20:35]And then my earlier books are more heavy fantasy, but I would say all of my books have a personal element in them and they have a strong influence of history, so the shadow and bone trilogy was set in a world inspired by Zara's Russia, and I think you will very clearly see parallels to certain elements of that life and that world that you can read through in them.

[20:58]Six of crows which is set in the same world was is set in a country in that world that's more heavily inspired by the Dutch Republic of the 1700s, so for me writing always begins in research.

[21:09]And I want my worlds to feel as real as possible, and so that's where that kind of grounding impulse, I feel like you can't get away with magic if you aren't actually grounding the world in a real way.

[21:21]So the third book you mentioned that is going to be coming, is that part of a trilogy also.

[21:26]Yes, that's part of the ninth house trilogy that's ninth house hell, then, and then third book will be coming out not next year, but the year after that.

[21:35]I'm also working on a series of horror novellas and then I have a pure historical.

[21:41]And then we'll not have any magic in it and it's set in a completely different time period and location because I like to make life art on myself.

[21:48]And that will be probably several years in the future, the thing I realized is I when I was first publishing I was putting out a book a year, which is kind of what working in the adult demands yeah your readers are aging so your publisher wants you to be working as fast as possible and sometimes that's great right that built my career.

[22:07]It taught me a kind of like intense discipline around deadline that said when I moved into writing adult and ninth house and now the familiar there's so much research that goes into these books that that kind of schedules just now possible and also I'm going to be 50 next year and I'm tired.

[22:25]You think you're tired now wait 20 years.

[22:31]Thank you.

[22:34]Of course, thank you for reading.

[22:36]I have a question too because I'm part of the book club.

[22:39]Hello.

[22:40]I and your book was my very favorite because I've read all the books in the book club and I loved your book and I even finished it very quickly because I loved it.

[22:50]And I right started reading ninth house.

[22:53]Okay.

[22:54]And Alex reminded me very much of of Lucia.

[22:58]Oh, interesting.

[23:00]That's because she's so bold on Lucia is so well initially like shot initially. Yeah.

[23:06]And so my question for you is might there be sequel to the familiar.

[23:12]Um, never say never. I wrote it as a one off, but you know where we have it in development as a television show and the inevitable result of that has been people asking well, you know, what, what would the next season look like and so my writer brain is like,

[23:31]which is

[23:33]I don't know. I liked the idea of it being complete like a fairy tale, right? You don't get a sequel to a fairy tale. So for now I'm leaving it where it is.

[23:41]And I have all these other books that, you know, if I want to get paid, I have to write them so.

[23:46]Thank you. I have a 15 year old granddaughter and a 16 year old granddaughter.

[23:52]What book could they, should I recommend to them to start?

[23:57]Good question.

[23:58]Are they, are they too young?

[24:00]No, I think you could easily recommend to them six of crows would probably be the place to start with my YA.

[24:08]If they want to begin at the beginning of the gree shivers or if they're reluctant readers, I would put them towards shadow and bone because it's a simpler chosen one story.

[24:17]A little bit easier if they're not used to fantasy. But if they're reading in that genre already, I would go to six of crows.

[24:23]Honestly, it was my fourth book and therefore I think much better than my earlier books.

[24:27]And obviously there's the Netflix show that was based on both shadow and bone and six of crows that we have two seasons of on Netflix if that's a way to get them engaged.

[24:37]But yeah, they're, and if you have very reluctant readers, we have a graphic novel called demon in the wood that isn't a bad introduction.

[24:45]But yeah, I would start there. I would not point, unless they're very mature readers, I would not point them to ninth house. You've read it.

[24:52]It's, it's, it's quite dark.

[24:55]Yeah, but yeah, I think they're both very, very good reader and readers and one is especially into fantasy.

[25:03]Then I think six of crows is the move. Yeah, it's only a two book series. So if, if they like it, then they can get into the rest of the grease rumors and having these foiled.

[25:12]And thank you so much. I'm so happy to meet you.

[25:16]I'm happy to meet you. But I'm so glad I won book club. That's amazing.

[25:20]What's the name of your net look series. It's called shadow and bone. Okay.

[25:25]It's quite different from the books. Well, first season is quite similar, but then the second season diver just quite a bit, but I think they did a very good job, honestly. So, yeah.

[25:35]Check it out. Great. Amazing.

[25:38]Lee, thank you. Thank you. Book club ladies. Thank you. Lee, thank you.

[25:45]Yeah, this has been wonderful. I'm so impressed with everything that you're doing and have done and you're writing and everything. So congratulations.

[25:53]Thank you so much for having me. My husband actually read your book a couple of years ago on a plane or maybe last year on a plane and was like, do you know this one?

[26:03]It's like, no, I don't, but now I can say I do.

[26:05]Oh, that's awesome. Well, thank you. Thanks to your husband. That's amazing.

[26:10]Thank you all. Thank you for reading the book and thank you for having me. It was really fun.

[26:15]Thank you. Bye. Thank you.

[26:18]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books. If you love it, please leave a review and follow us on social at

[26:25]zippy Owens and at zippy readers.