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 Douglas
Kennedy
Douglas Kennedy's novels - The Big Picture, The Job
and The Pursuit of Happiness - have all been critically praised
bestsellers. His first novel, The Dead Heart, has been filmed
as Welcome to Woop-Woop. His work has been translated into
sixteen languages. Born in Manhattan in l955, he lives in London
with his wife and two children.
The
Pursuit of Happiness - plot Summary
A great tragic love story, a tale of
divided loyalties and decisive moral choices.
Manhattan, Thanksgiving eve, 1945. The war was over and Eric Smythe's
party was in full swing. All his clever Greenwich Village friends
were there. So too was his sister Sara, an independent, canny young
woman, starting to make her way in the big city. And then in walked
a gatecrasher, Jack Malone, a U.S. Army journalist just back from
a defeated Germany, a man whose world-view did not tally with that
of Eric and his friends. This chance meeting between Sara and Jack
would have profound consequences.
A
Special Relationship - plot summary
Douglas Kennedy's new novel bears his trademark ability to write
serious popular fiction. A true page-turner about a woman whose
entire life is turned upside down
Sally Goodchild is a thirty-seven-year-old American who, after
nearly two decades as a highly independent journalist, finds herself
pregnant and in London… married to an English foreign correspondent,
Tony Hobbs, whom she met while they were both on assignment in Cairo.
From the outset Sally's relationship with both Tony and London is
an uneasy one - especially as she finds her husband and his city
to be far more foreign than imagined. But her adjustment problems
soon turn to nightmare when she discovers that everything can be
taken down and used against you…
We asked Douglas Kennedy to explain the secret to writing so convincingly
from a woman's perspective in both The Pursuit of Happiness
and A Special Relationship, below is the response he gave:
WRITING AS A WOMAN /Douglas Kennedy
A few years ago - around the time of the publication of 'The Pursuit
of Happiness' - I found myself being interviewed by a most serious-minded
German journalist (mind you, I've never met a frivolous German journalist).
The gentleman in question had one of those unfortunate 'Stalag 17'
accents which put me in mind of countless war interrogation scenes
in countless B-movies. Anyway, at one point in our conversation,
he started asking me about writing 'The Pursuit...' in the voices
of two women. And he said:
"Herr Kennedy, you seem to known vat vimmin vant".
After doing my best to curb the urge to laugh, I tried to explain
that when writing the book, I was never thinking about vat vimmin
vant. On the contrary, I could only think about vat Sara
und Kate vanted. In other words, when approaching a scene, I
didn't put my finger to my cheek in an interrogative way and ask
myself: "Now how would a woman react in a situation like this?"
All I could consider was how my narrators would react to the situations
into which I had thrown them. As I tried to explain to the German
gentlemen, to write as a woman you don't follow the sex of your
narrator - you follow their voice, their character, and their manifold
contradictions.
"But, Herr Kennedy", the journalist said, "you still
must understand the female psyche".
Once again, all I could say was: "I simply understand the
psyche of my characters, that's all".
He didn't buy this - and, I sense, wanted me to reveal the fact
that I had been born with a secret supply of estrogren which I now
tapped into whenever I wrote as a woman. But, then again, there
is a belief that if you write about a specific human condition,
you have obviously experienced it yourself. Consider: in every one
of my novels, there is a marriage that is coming asunder. Does this
mean that I myself have a bad marriage? Not to my knowledge - but
I was raised in the middle of a very bad marriage by two parents
who seemed to be gunning for the August Strindberg Prize for Domestic
Dysfunction... so yes, I do know a thing or two about conjugal unhappiness.
Similarly, in my new novel, 'A Special Relationship', the narrator,
Sally Goodchild, suffers through an appalling pregnancy, then finds
herself plunging into the dark pit of postnatal depression. Now
how did I find out about such charming medical conditions as mastistis
(in which the milk flow to the breast becomes calcified), or the
horrors of postnatal depression? It's simple, really. I did research.
I read a few books. I had a conversation or two with a doctor. I
spoke with a remarkable woman who had weathered a major post-partum
nightmare. And then I simply applied this new-found knowledge to
my narrator's predicament. Or, to put it another way, I thought
about how Sally would handle the agony of being a highly independent,
tough-minded woman who suddenly starts spinning out of mental control.
In short, the trick of writing in the first person - whether it
be as a man or a woman - is an obvious one: you simply must imagine
yourself into your narrator's head. Of course, you're always the
authorial figure controlling their destiny. But, believe me, once
you lose yourself in your character's voice, they often take control
of the action. And as they lead your story down narrative back lanes
you never knew existed, you find yourself often wondering: who the
hell is in charge here?
Check out the reading
guide for Douglas Kennedy's new novel A Special Relationship
- out now...
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