Q: In your day job, you are a professor of history and science at the University of Southern California and have focused on alchemy in your research. What aspects of this intersection between science and magic do you hope readers will pick up on while reading THE BOOK OF LIFE? There’s quite a bit more lab work in this book!
A. There is. Welcome back to the present! What I hope readers come to
appreciate is that science—past or present—is nothing more than a method for
asking and answering questions about the world and our place in it. Once, some
of those questions were answered alchemically. Today, they might be answered
biochemically and genetically. In the future? Who knows. But Matthew is right
in suggesting that there are really remarkably few scientific questions and we
have been posing them for a very long time. Two of them are: who am I? why am I
here?
Q: Much of the conflict in the
book seems to mirror issues of race and sexuality in our society, and there seems
to be a definite moral conclusion to THE BOOK OF LIFE. Could you discuss this?
Do you find that a strength of fantasy novels is their ability to not only to
allow readers to escape, but to also challenge them to fact important moral
issues?
A. Human beings like to sort and categorize. We have done this since the
beginnings of recorded history, and probably well back beyond that point. One
of the most common ways to do that is to group things that are “alike” and
things that are “different.” Often, we fear what is not like us. Many of the
world’s ills have stemmed from someone (or a group of someones) deciding what
is different is also dangerous. Witches, women, people of color, people of
different faiths, people of different sexual orientations—all have been targets
of this process of singling others out and labeling them different and
therefore undesirable. Like my interest in exploring what a family is, the
issue of difference and respect for difference (rather than fear) informed
every page of the All Souls Trilogy. And yes, I do think that dealing with
fantastic creatures like daemons, vampires, and witches rather than confronting
issues of race or sexuality directly can enable readers to think through these
issues in a useful way and perhaps come to different conclusions about members
of their own families and communities. As I often say when people ask me why
supernatural creatures are so popular these days: witches and vampires are
monsters to think with.
Q: From the moment Matthew and a
pregnant Diana arrive back at Sept-Tours and reinstate themselves back into a
sprawling family of witches and vampires, it becomes clear that the meaning of
family will be an important idea for THE BOOK OF LIFE. How does this unify the
whole series? Did you draw on your own life?
A. Since time immemorial the family has been an important way for people
to organize themselves in the world. In the past, the “traditional” family was
a sprawling and blended unit that embraced immediate relatives, in-laws and
their immediate families, servants, orphaned children, the children your
partner might bring into a family from a previous relationship, and other
dependents. Marriage was an equally flexible and elastic concept in many places
and times. Given how old my vampires are, and the fact that witches are the
keepers of tradition, I wanted to explore from the very first page of the
series the truly traditional basis of family:
unqualified love and mutual responsibility. That is certainly the
meaning of family that my parents taught me.
Q: While there are entire genres
devoted to stories of witches, vampires, and ghosts, the idea of a weaver – a
witch who weaves original spells – feels very unique to THE BOOK OF LIFE. What
resources helped you gain inspiration for Diana’s uniqueness?
A. Believe it or not, my inspiration for weaving came from a branch of mathematics
called topology. I became intrigued by mathematical theories of mutability to
go along with my alchemical theories of mutability and change. Topology is a
mathematical study of shapes and spaces that theorizes how far something can be
stretched or twisted without breaking. You could say it’s a mathematical theory
of connectivity and continuity (two familiar themes to any reader of the All
Souls Trilogy). I wondered if I could come up with a theory of magic that could
be comfortably contained within mathematics, one in which magic could be seen
to shape and twist reality without breaking it. I used fabric as a metaphor for
this worldview with threads and colors shaping human perceptions. Weavers became
the witches who were talented at seeing and manipulating the underlying fabric.
In topology, mathematicians study knots—unbreakable knots with their ends fused
together that can be twisted and shaped. Soon the mathematics and mechanics of
Diana’s magic came into focus.
Q: A Discovery of Witches debuted at # 2 on the New York Times bestseller list and Shadow of Night debuted at #1. What has been your reaction to the
outpouring of love for the All Souls Trilogy? Was it surprising how taken fans
were with Diana and Matthew’s story?
A. It has been amazing—and a bit overwhelming. I was surprised by how
quickly readers embraced two central characters who have a considerable number
of quirks and challenge our typical notion of what a heroine or hero should be.
And I continue to be amazed whenever a new reader pops up, whether one in the
US or somewhere like Finland or Japan—to tell me how much they enjoyed being
caught up in the world of the Bishops and de Clemonts. Sometimes when I meet
readers they ask me how their friends are doing—meaning Diana, or Matthew, or
Miriam. That’s an extraordinary experience for a writer.
Q: Diana and Matthew, once again,
move around to quite a number of locations in THE BOOK OF LIFE, including New
Haven, New Orleans, and a few of our favorite old haunts like Oxford, Madison,
and Sept-Tours. What inspired you to place your characters in these locations?
Have you visited them yourself?
A. As a writer, I really need to experience the places I write about in
my books. I want to know what it smells like, how the air feels when it changes
direction, the way the sunlight strikes the windowsill in the morning, the
sound of birds and insects. Not every writer may require this, but I do. So I
spent time not only in New Haven but undertaking research at the Beinecke
Library so that I could understand the rhythms of Diana’s day there. I visited
New Orleans several times to imagine my vampires into them. All of the
locations I pick are steeped in history and stories about past
inhabitants—perfect fuel for any writer’s creative fire.
Q: Did you know back when you
wrote A Discovery of Witches how the
story would conclude in THE BOOK OF LIFE? Did the direction change once you began
the writing process?
A. I knew how the trilogy would end, but I didn’t know exactly how we
would get there. The story was well thought out through the beginning of what
became The Book of Life, but the
chunk between that beginning and the ending (which is as I envisioned it) did
change. In part that was because what I had sketched out was too ambitious and
complicated—the perils of being not only a first-time trilogy writer but also a
first time author. It was very important to me that I resolve and tie up all
the threads already in the story so readers had a satisfying conclusion. Early
in the writing of The Book of Life it
became clear that this wasn’t going to give me much time to introduce new
characters or plot twists. I now understand why so many trilogies have four,
five, six—or more—books in them. Finishing the trilogy as a trilogy required a
lot of determination and a very thick pair of blinders as I left behind
characters and story lines that would take me too far from the central story of
Diana, Matthew, and the Book of Life.
Q: A Discovery of Witches begins
with Diana Bishop stumbling across a lost, enchanted manuscript called Ashmole
782 in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, and the secrets contained in the manuscript
are at long last revealed in THE BOOK OF LIFE. You had a similar experience
while you were completing your dissertation.
What was the story behind your discovery? And how did it inspire the creation of these
novels?
A. I did discover a
manuscript—not an enchanted one, alas—in the Bodleian Library. It was a manuscript
owned by Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, the mathematician and alchemist John
Dee. In the 1570s and 1580s he became interested in using a crystal ball to
talk to angels. The angels gave him all kinds of instructions on how to manage
his life at home, his work—they even told him to pack up his family and
belongings and go to far-away Poland and Prague. In the conversations, Dee
asked the angels about a mysterious book in his library called “the Book of
Soyga” or “Aldaraia.” No one had ever been able to find it, even though many of
Dee’s other books survive in libraries throughout the world. In the summer of
1994 I was spending time in Oxford between finishing my doctorate and starting
my first job. It was a wonderfully creative time, since I had no deadlines to
worry about and my dissertation on Dee’s angel conversations was complete. As
with most discoveries, this discovery of a “lost” manuscript was entirely
accidental. I was looking for something else in the Bodleian’s catalogue and in
the upper corner of the page was a reference to a book called “Aldaraia.” I
knew it couldn’t be Dee’s book, but I called it up anyway. And it turned out it
WAS the book (or at least a copy of it). With the help of the Bodleian’s Keeper
of Rare Books, I located another copy in the British Library.
Q: Are there other lost books like this in the world?
A. Absolutely! Entire books
have been written about famous lost volumes—including works by Plato,
Aristotle, and Shakespeare to name just a few. Libraries are full of such treasures,
some of them unrecognized and others simply misfiled or mislabeled. And we find
lost books outside of libraries, too. In January 2006, a completely unknown
manuscript belonging to one of the 17th century’s most prominent
scientists, Robert Hooke, was discovered when someone was having the contents
of their house valued for auction. The manuscript included minutes of early
Royal Society meetings that we presumed were lost forever.
Q: Shadow of Night and A Discovery of Witches have often been compared
to young adult fantasy like Twilight,
with the caveat that this series is for adults interested in history, science,
and academics. Unlike Bella and Edward, Matthew and Diana are card-carrying
members of academia who meet in the library of one of the most prestigious
universities in the world. Are these characters based on something you found
missing in the fantasy genre?
A. There are a lot of adults
reading young adult books, and for good reason. Authors who specialize in the
young adult market are writing original, compelling stories that can make even
the most cynical grownups believe in magic. In writing A Discovery of Witches, I
wanted to give adult readers a world no less magical, no less surprising and
delightful, but one that included grown-up concerns and activities. These are
not your children’s vampires and witches.
*Interview conducted by Penguin Books
*Interview conducted by Penguin Books
We've loaded a .PDF copy of this Q/A session for printing here: Q&A with Deb Harkness
Until the next teaser . . .
