Picoult Talks About The Tenth Circle
Jodi Picoult Exclusive Interview with Book Help Web
Jodi Picoult is so refreshingly normal and frank that while attending Princeton she called her mother, asking whether they could find any dysfunction in the family that she could use as a basis for creative writing.
Picoult defies genres to tell stories that explore relationships, families, and morality. In 2003, her novels won a New England Bookseller Award for Fiction and a Romance Writers of America award for "Best Mainstream Fiction Novel".
More importantly than literary awards, however, Picoult's books strike a chord with their readers and resonate with meaning for all who read them. Picoult took the time to answer a few questions from BookHelpWeb before leaving on a 50-city tour to promote her latest book, The Tenth Circle.
BookHelpWeb: Your readers are very loyal. I've heard you described as "kind, normal, and sweet" by a fan who has met you. What is the most rewarding part about interacting with your fans?
Jodi Picoult: I think that the one missing ingredient in publishing novels is figuring out how your books affected the masses who read it! Sure, we get sales figures, but a number isn't quite the same as hearing from the victim of a date rape who's read The Tenth Circle, and comes to hold your hand and tell you that because of your book, she's finally told people what happened to her. Or the suicidal teen who reads The Pact and decides that she doesn't want to wind up like Emily after all. Those are the moments that I have to catch my breath, because when you write fiction, you don't necessarily expect to change someone's real life. I love that my fans are willing to go wherever I take them; not many writers have that kind of freedom...but they trust me to provide them with the best story I can at any given moment, and they let me choose the venue for it. We've got a pretty amazing partnership!
BHW: The Tenth Circle forges out into new territory with the integration of a graphic novel. What inspired such a move?
Jodi: Graphic novels are the first genre I've seen in fiction that's truly NEW and respected. They even have their own review section in the NYT Book Review - and if that isn't acceptance, what is? Plus, they've evolved over the years dramatically. When I started The Tenth Circle I was thinking of the stories we tell ourselves, and how we choose to tell them - a major theme in the novel. I wondered what would happen if I included a character who wasn't particularly good communicating with language, but instead, used art to express himself, and had done this in the past as well. In the case of The Tenth Circle, the graphic novel is a vehicle for you to understand Daniel Stone's reaction to his fourteen-year-old daughter's date rape -- which he can't express with mere words. The art shows you what he fears the most; what he hopes; and ultimately, whether or not his relationship with his daughter can be mended. A lot of people think The Tenth Circle IS a graphic novel - it's not. It's a Jodi Picoult book that happens to have some illustrations in it...and most readers I've spoken with find it a really intriguing way to read a book, and to learn more about the characters inside it.
BHW: Is there a story that you'd love to write but don't think you'll ever be able to? What is it and what keeps you from it?
Jodi: I haven't found it yet, to be honest. Some stories are harder than others - for example, the ones that deal with children in distress who happen to be the same age as my own children. But thankfully, I haven't found a story line that is too emotionally difficult to write. In fact, if I did, I'd probably FORCE myself to write it, because I'd think there was then a very good reason for me to work through the difficulty.
BHW: What was the most amusing thing that has ever happened to you while researching a book?
Jodi: Lots of remarkable things have happened - from living with the Amish to ghosthunting to learning how to make a zip gun from an inmate in jail. But the FUNNIEST thing that happened came when I was researching My Sister's Keeper. I was working with a firefighting team - had my own turnout gear, was riding on the truck in the middle of the night, sleeping at the fire station, etc. -- and we got a call for a fire. Now, when you are en route to a fire, you are already on the truck out the door and then dispatch patches the address up to you...well, that address sounded AWFULLY familiar. Turns out the home belonged to the parents of a little boy in my son's class who was the BIGGEST bully that year, and had been tormenting him. So I got out of the engine and thought, for just a moment, "Oh, let it BURN!"
BHW: Which book of yours turned out the most differently from what you thought it would be when you started?
Jodi: I know the endings of most of my books when I start writing, so not many of my books deviate that far. However, when I started writing Vanishing Acts, I was writing an entirely different book. I had gotten about 150 pages into it, and my agent had read those pages and liked it -- and yet, I felt like although it was good, it wasn't GREAT. The whole time I had a voice in my head saying, "I was six years old the first time I disappeared...HELLO?? Listen to me!" So finally I sat down one day and wrote forty pages in that voice...and she turned out to be the narrator of Vanishing Acts. I read it and said to myself, Oh, I get it...THIS is the book I'm SUPPOSED to be writing!
BHW: You've done some fascinating things to research your book. Now that The Tenth Circle is to the printer, what type of research trips do you think you'll need to make for your next book?
Jodi: I write a full year ahead, which means NINETEEN MINUTES, my 2007 book, is done. So I've been doing research for my 2008 book...which will involve an inmate on Death Row...who wants to donate his heart, post-execution, to the family of his victim. This creates enough of an uproar within the prison...but then the inmate begins to heal others he comes in contact with; he gets a ragtag group of felons believing everything he says. But when the prison chaplain starts wondering if this man might not be a messiah...everything he knew for sure - his faith, his God, his trust in the American system of justice - is turned upside down. I'm hoping this book will explore the nature of faith and forgiveness, and whether or not it's right to believe what we're told is right...or if we need to figure things out for ourselves. For research, I've taken two trips to Arizona's death row. The most jarring moments in my research trip? Speaking at great length to a condemned man "who was convicted of murdering someone by shooting battery acid into his veins" yet who also called me Ma'am and explained that he doesn't swear, because it's disrespectful. And talking to the warden in the death chamber: I was having trouble juggling notebooks and papers, and leaned against the closest surface to take notes more easily-only to realize I was sprawled across the lethal injection gurney.
