Omnivoracious

Therapy in Reverse: An Interview with Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is the award-winning author of 14 works of fiction and nonfiction, including Pulitzer Prize finalist The Poisonwood Bible. Her latest novel, Flight Behavior, was selected by Amazon's editors as a Best Book of the Month and one of our Best Books of the Year in 2012. We sat down in New York City to talk about Ms. Kingsolver's new book, the intersection of fiction and science, and why literature should be "mandate-free."

Mia Lipman: I have a friend, a high school teacher, who calls your books "faction"—a combination of fiction and fact—and says that he and his students learn from them. When you write novels, do you intend to educate? Or is that a bonus byproduct?

Barbara Kingsolver: I would say it's a byproduct. If someone does learn about the world from reading a novel of mine, that makes me very happy. It's probably not what brings me into the novel in the first place—I usually am pulled in by some big question about the world and human nature that I'm not going to resolve in the course of the novel. But I'm very devoted to getting my facts straight.

I didn't study writing in school, I studied biology as an undergraduate and graduate student. So I think that I write fiction in the scientific way. I love invention, obviously; I love creation of character. But I do feel very rooted in the real world, even in the way that I create characters. I begin with themes, I think about the plots that are going to reveal these themes as people address big questions…and then I think about character and psychology and kind of work as a therapist in reverse, because I have to back up and give these people whatever background—and even damage—will render them believable in the actions that they're taking. So I try to invent my people in a realistic and fact-based way.

If my setting is new to a reader, or the concerns of the novel are new, I hope they will learn something about the world. I would like to say that they can trust that what they do learn in the novel will be accurate, because I pay a lot of attention to facts. I do a lot of research to make sure that I'm not giving them, you know, blue moons of Jupiter. It's not science fiction.

Flight Behavior incorporates your well-known passions for environmentalism and sustainability—as you mentioned, you trained as a biologist. Is it a challenge to bring social responsibility into the worlds that you create, or does that happen organically?

I would say it's probably completely incidental. It's not what I'm setting out to do. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to think or, heaven forbid, how to behave—that's not the domain of fiction at all. In fact, one of the things that I really love about literary fiction is that it's one of the few kinds of writing that doesn't tell us what to think or what to buy or what to wear. We're surrounded by advertising—

By mandates—

Mandates! That's exactly the word I was looking for. We're surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that. However, because I write fiction that is based in the real world, it's going to lead people into some of the modern dilemmas and concerns and even catastrophes that they will think about in a new way…. I'm not going to tell them how to feel, I'm just going to tell them: Here we are in this particular pickle. That's the situation in this novel—it's leading the reader into some knowledge about the new world we live in, in which the climate has already changed.

So writing a contemporary novel requires some addressing of contemporary concerns.

That's right. But I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives. What are the motives that drive denial? Because we all have our favorite denials [laughing].

We certainly do.

It's a really important part of human life. And in some sense, it's how we all get through our days. I've kind of avoided talking about the plot so far, but in this novel, which is set in a rural place in Southern Appalachia, something happens—which I'm not going to describe—but something happens that looks very beautiful and miraculous, and it may also be catastrophic. And it attracts a lot of attention, but the rural people who live in the middle of this beautiful catastrophe have to figure out what to do with it. So that's the point of entry. It's about human psychology and it's also about the world, and there are scientists in this novel who are working out exactly what is happening.

When I think of your work, I think of strong women: Taylor in The Bean Trees, the Price women in The Poisonwood Bible. In the character of Dellarobia, you have another female protagonist with a very strong and very real voice. Do you shift your approach when you're writing from a male perspective, as you did in The Lacuna?

Not really. I don't begin with gender, by any means. I begin with character. I knew that for this story, I needed two important characters: one who was smart but very naïve, very unworldly, and who had had a very narrow life. So I thought that it made sense for her to be a young farm wife who got trapped, who had to give up her own plans when she became pregnant and got married at 17. She's never been off the farm—she's been in this pretty stultifying life with in-laws who don't like her, don't ever approve of her, and economically they're really struggling. So she's a person who started out with big dreams, but she's never seen the world. And I thought that she was a perfect kind of character [to bring readers] into this story, to let them see the world through her eyes, and then explode her life outward. Chapter by chapter, her very restricted life opens. First she becomes an important player in her family, then in her church, then in her community and in her state—and then, of course, it goes viral. So in the course of just a few months, [Dellarobia] has to deal with a lot of new information and new kinds of people. Having you see this all through her eyes was a very handy device.

And the other important character is kind of her opposite. This scientist, Ovid Byron, has seen the world. He's traveled, he knows a lot about what is going on—but there's a lot he doesn't understand about not just the local culture and the local people, but about what it is like to be a person of limited means. And so putting those two characters together and creating this chemistry was really fun.

In addition to novels, you write essays, poetry, and nonfiction. Are you drawn toward a given medium based on what's happening in your own life, or are there outside forces at play?

Once I heard the great poet Lucille Clifton give a reading. And someone in the audience asked, "Why are your poems always so short? They're never more than about 14 or 16 lines long." And she said, "I raised six children, and that's how many lines I could hold in my head through the whole day. I was waiting to sit down at my desk and write." So I can relate to that, because at the time I heard her say it, I had a small child. I had a baby that I left with a babysitter for one hour so I could go hear Lucille Clifton. So undoubtedly for all authors, and certainly for authors who are women raising children, there are constraints on our lives that will affect the shape of our work. And I'm no exception, but I've been very lucky to have a very cooperative family that allows me to write whole novels, usually with a few interruptions. [Laughs.] But I also feel that having a family life…has enriched my life immensely and given me any wisdom that I have.

Speaking of wisdom: In 1999, you established the Bellwether Prize for writers who've never published a major novel. When new writers seek out your advice, which I imagine they often do, what's the first thing you tell them?

Quit smoking. [Mia laughs.] Because I think that when people read fiction, they're really reading for wisdom. I am. That's what most of us really love. If we read a novel that rocks our world, it's because there's something in it that we didn't know already. Not just information but really wisdom—sort of what to do with our information. And wisdom comes from experience, so…

So you want them to live a long time.

Exactly. The longer you live, the more likely you are to have something to say.

YA Wednesday: Reaching out to Ally Condie

Utah has great skiing, a fascinating history, and an abundance of marquee YA authors including Stephenie Meyer, James Dashner, Shannon Hale, and Ally Condie. 

Condie's amazing Matched trilogy wrapped up recently with Reached--one of our Best YA books of the year and also a customer favorite for 2012.  The series is smart and exciting, the romance feels authentic and each book adds another layer and voice.  In Reached we finally get to see inside the heads of all three members of the love triangle, and things really heat up.  Forget Peeta and Gale, the question these days is will Cassia choose Ky or Xander??

In this video interview, Condie talked to Amazon's Mari Malcolm about the inspiration for the series (I'll just say her husband provided the light bulb), the YA writers community in Utah, and what she reads while writing her own novels (love her taste in books!).

If you need a good book to start over the holidays and haven't read Reached or maybe are new to this series, Condie's world goes great with a warm living room, a comfy couch, and a few hours to lose yourself.

Most Read by Facebookers in 2012

If you've got a Facebook profile, you may have noticed a new link: "See Your 2012 Year in Review." The roundup goes beyond your own pictures, new friends, and how many pages you liked, though. Facebook Trends from 2012 includes quite an interesting feature revealing the books that were most read by Facebook users in 2012. And, unlike our own Best Books of the Year list (which focuses on books published in 2012), this list ranges from an entire modern series to decades-old classics.

Topping the list in positions 1, 2, and 3 is Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy in sequential order. At least among Facebook users, the beginning of the Harry Potter saga continues to attract new readers and re-readers. Classics To Kill a Mockingbird (which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year)and The Great Gatsby (soon to star Leonardo DiCaprio in the big screen remake) add a little canon to the mix, while Fifty Shades of Grey stands out as an R-rated anomaly on an otherwise PG-13 list.

Here, in order, is what Facebook users read in 2012:

 

Fight to the Finish: Two Books About the Killing of Osama Bin Laden

By Sara Nelson

Generally, I think you'd say I'm a mostly fiction reader, with a little memoir, some biography and the occasional think-y book thrown in for balance. The one thing you'd probably never say -- just ask the people who know me -- is that I'm known for my opinions on books by or about soldiers (except maybe The Yellow Birds, but that, again, is fiction).

I disclaimed as much when I previously wrote:

OK, so I'm not an aficionado of the genre: I've never seen Delta Force or read any of the other books about Navy Seals... In fact, I'm the mother of a MAM (military aged man in SEAL parlance); we're not generally the ones who love to read about anybody's children putting themselves in serious harm's way -- even for love of country, let alone the pure thrill of it.

As a MOMAM, I admit to fascination with Mark Owen's descriptions in No Easy Day, particularly about his childhood in rural Alaska: "My parents never let me play with toy guns because by the time I was finished with elementary school I was carrying a .22 rifle;" Less appealing, perhaps, but still fascinating was the stuff about the practical jokes SEALS play on each other: Hanging a bra on a buddy's backpack? Slipping a sex toy into someone else's bag of gear? This is a book that celebrates a certain kind of man and a certain kind of brotherhood.

There's none of that cartoonishness in The Finish, Mark Bowden's measured, reportorial account of the same topic. Instead, Bowden includes accounts of private conversations he had with Barack Obama, as well as interviews he did with some of Owen's very same SEALS. Ultimately he produces a better, more balanced, more interesting book -- which is why it's higher on our list.

But then, it depends what you're in the mood for. If you're hankering for what Jonathan Segura called, in Publisher's Weekly, "gear porn," No Easy Day is the book for you. If what you'd like is a more thoughtful account of how the Obama administration made one of the most important decisions of its first presidency, buy Bowden.

Both of these books can be found in our 2012 Best Books of the Year. Click here to see all our editors' picks.

 

Oliver Broudy: My Favorite Kind of Atheist

Non-believers generally fall on a spectrum from militant to utterly disinterested, but some, like New Yorker Oliver Broudy, truly care about religious faith. To their immense credit, they tend to be actively curious listeners with an overt willingness to suspend disbelief and approach the faithful with the peace offering of an open mind, in an attempt to understand better how the other half lives.

Broudy is fast becoming the essayist of record for such generous atheism. In the past eighteen months, his Kindle Singles have explored this theme through the lenses of three unique narratives, building a cohesive body of work that portends Broudy's emerging mastery of the long-form, high-stakes, nonfiction narrative.

The Saint (also available in Spanish as El Santo) profiles James Otis--a wealthy Gandhi devotee and collector of Mahatma-related memorabilia--a seemingly routine journalism gig that takes Broudy halfway around the world and through a whiplashing gauntlet of emotional crests and troughs. Forced to play friend, protector, fixer, PR agent, and a host of other duties on Otis's behalf, Broudy weathers lies, danger, and difficult self-discovery, emerging from his Gotham ennui with a tale that succeeds as profile, travelogue, and tale of true adventure.

On its surface, The Codex is a coyly unfolding narrative of Broudy's trip to Prague in pursuit of the meaning of a strange book, "a book so explicit that it would be banned by any public library, a book whose pages chronicled the extinction of mystery, and at the same time spawned new mysteries just by existing." Featuring an outspoken cosmetic surgeon--a mysterious artist of the female form who may provide the key to Broudy's own mixed feeling about adulthood--it employs gorgeous prose, a keen succession of nested structures, and a parade of scalping insights into modern life.

Best Picture Books of 2012

Choosing the best picture books of the year is one of my favorite things to do as I stare down the close of another year.  It's so fun to go back through and enjoy the books all over again--even the ones I haven't stopped reading for months (those are truly the best!).  Here are the Top 10 and you can see all 20 of the best picture books of 2012, in best-selling order, here.

 Editors' Picks for the Best Picture Books of 2012

1. This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen: Klassen's award-winning book I Want My Hat Back was a big hit in 2011 and his new one is every bit as fun.  This is Not My Hat flips the story so this time it's the thief we are following--in this case a little fish who steals a bowler hat from a very large fish--as he tries to get away with it.  I love this book so much because the illustrations effortlessly tell much of the story and the ending invites conversation as both fish go into the tall weeds and only the big one comes out.  With his hat on.  What happened to the little fish?  Maybe he got eaten, maybe they had a talk and he gave it back, maybe he dropped the hat and escaped.  It can be different every time, limited only by a child's (or parent's) imagination.  I chatted with Klassen a few weeks ago in the Amazon offices and he drew while we talked--you'll recognize the turtle from the first book and the crab from the second.  You can see the video after our #10 pick below.

2. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce: Joyce has had a busy year--the animated short film version of this picture book won an Oscar (!) and he published the next 3 books in his terrific new chapter book series, The Guardians of Childhood--you may also recognize that title from the movie adaptation out now.  The Fantastic Flying Books...is a picture book for book lovers, sharing an appreciation for stories, however they are told, and illustrated in wondrous detail.

3. Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by James Dean and Eric Litwin:  Pete the Cat is a new favorite around my house, and for good reason.  Pete is laid back and loves to tell a story with a song.  In Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, Pete does the math (in song, of course) on how many buttons he has left after yet another one pops off until the final button goes... but it's still not the end (Pete still has a belly button!).  Really fun to read aloud, and a big hit with the PreK-K set.

 4. Olivia and the Fairy Princesses by Ian Falconer:  This is one of my favorite Olivia books so far.  In true Olivia fashion she wants to be different and this time she's eschewing the pink princess trend that all the girls (and a couple of boys) are following.  Falconer's illustrations are brilliant and I particularly love how Olivia tries on princess alternatives and goes through a Martha Graham phase.  Pure Olivia fun with a great message about identity and self-confidence.

5. Big Mean Mike by Michelle Knudsen and Scott Magoon:  The picture book version of an often told story--a character with a hard exterior is found to be hiding a heart of gold.  Mike is a tough, leather jacket wearing bulldog who keeps finding fuzzy white bunnies hiding in his big, loud, muscle car.  He tries to resist their cute little bunny faces but at last he just has to give in and enjoy their company.  I love the message about standing up for friends in the face of the "in" crowd and not judging people by their exterior.  And there are bunnies wearing sunglasses.  Need I say more?

 6. Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney:  LLama Llama always hits the right notes and sharing is an ideal topic for toddlers on up who can relate to Llama's dramas.  Dewdney gets the dynamics of little ones sharing--and then suddenly deciding they no longer want to--often with the result we see in the book of the very toy being fought over ending up broken in the struggle. All's well that ends well for Llama and Time to Share is worth reading over and over.

7. The Cloud Spinner  by Michael Catchpool and Alison Jay: Alison Jay's illustrations have a special quality of being beautifully detailed but the feel is warm and simple--her style is easily recognizable and she's one of my favorites. Jay's images perfectly embody a soft and heartfelt environmental message that touches on greed and preservation of resources.  Best of all, it's the kids in the story who see what is happening and take action.  Every time I read this book I think of someone else I want to give it to.

 8. The Adventures of Little Nutbrown Hare by Sam McBratney: Guess How Much I Love You is still a favorite with parents and kids so having a new Nutbrown Hare story this year is really exciting. In each of the four stories that make up Adventures...budding independence is tempered by parental support and reassurance that makes the Nutbrown Hare books relatable and timeless.

 9. The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? by Mo Willems:  The Pigeon is joined by an adorable little duckling who gets what he wants just by asking...politely. Duckling and Pigeon are both sides of the coin and it's easy for little ones to make the connection between using good manners and kindness rather than a temper tantrum to get what you want--whether it's a cookie or a friend.

 10. I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King Jr. and Kadir Nelson: Kadir Nelson's stunning illustrations accompany the full text of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech in a new picture book that includes an audio CD of the original speech from 1963 .  King's words and Nelson's images are a powerful and breathtaking combination that has award-winner written all over it.

 

 

Amazon Talks to Jon Klassen, Author of "This is Not My Hat"

Carry The One: It’s What You Should Read Next

by Sara Nelson

Every once in a while, you're lucky enough to come across a novel that, from its very first line, draws you in, sets you up, makes you a committed visitor to the author's newly created world. Carol Anshaw's Carry the One -- on our Best of the Year List at No. 64 -- is that kind of novel.

It begins: "So Carmen was married, just." Maybe it's the afterthought adverb "just" that sets the tone. After all, don't you know something different about the narrator and the story than what you'd think if Anshaw had written, "Carmen had just gotten married"? It's conversational, it's casual; and in its casualness it suggests, counter-intuitively, that something serious is about to happen.

Something serious -- a car accident that will haunt this group of friends for years to come* -- does happen, and you're left with a feeling you get mostly from the really best books: a sense that the outcome will be both surprising and inevitable at the same time. Carry the One suggests that any of us could make a single mistake that would haunt us forever. Of what, exactly, are we capable -- and culpable? What is our relationship to the truth, to family and to love?

If all this sounds brainy or didactic or book-review-y, I'm doing you (and the much undersung author Carol Anshaw) a giant disservice. This novel reads more like a thriller than a psych text, and it's full of humor and sex and other hijinks, too. You'll know these people. You may be these people. Carry the One is what you should read next.

*I'm not spoiling. This happens very early in the book.

And once you’ve finished this gem of a novel, take a look at some others that explore similar guilt-and-obligation themes:

 

 

 

Gonzo Curiosity: David Wolman and "The End of Money"

The most important thing that teachers can impart to their students is a desire to learn. Similarly, there's a certain class of book that I think of--and evangelize--as "nonfiction for non-specialists." When successful these books tackle widely relevant subjects via more or less dramatic narrative, spun in language that's unabashedly intended for a popular audience. (Recent blockbuster examples include Moneyball, Steve Jobs, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). The very best of these inspire a desire to find out more.

Enter David Wolman, a Portland-based journalist and contributing editor for Wired whose surprising bibliography illustrates just such eclectic curiosity. When I first came upon his work--via his Kindle Single, The Instigators--Wolman had already written books on the history of English spelling and the meaning of left-handedness. This year, he published The End of Money (print | Kindle). An Amazon Best Book of 2012 (#85 on our Top 100 list: Print editions | Kindle books), this fascinating book explores "the coming cashless society" through a cast of compelling characters that includes an end-times fundamentalist who views the growing obsolescence of cash as a sign of the coming rapture; an Icelandic artist whose claim to fame illustrates the complicated relationship between cash and nationalism; an American libertarian and coin-maker convicted on federal charges for the distribution of "Liberty" coins and Ron Paul dollars; and an Indian software engineer (self-billed as "the assassin of cash") whose firm is enabling digital payment methods that are lifting the living standards of thousands of poor New Delhi residents via their cell phones. Raising the stakes with a personal experiment, Wolman even goes (almost) a full year without using cash at all.

Readers need neither an advanced degree in economics nor even a basic understanding of currency markets to have a lot of fun with this book. If you've ever paid for a purchase in cash, you’ve got all the background you'll need. "I suspected the book would resonate, but I didn't anticipate such a loud and sustained response," Wolman tells Amazon. "Perhaps I should have. After all, the story of cash is enmeshed within the much broader story of money, the economy, and value itself."

Amazon Asks: National Book Award Winner Louise Erdrich

Sara Nelson talks with the beloved author about the important books in her life, about her current author crush, her most memorable author moment, and more.

How much do readers love Louise Erdrich's The Round House? The prolific author’s 14th novel -- which, like most of her earlier books, observes contemporary Native American life -- was our No. 1 pick of 2012, and then won the coveted National Book Award for Fiction.

"Powerful," many reviewers called it, and so it is -- but the story of a brutal racial attack is also ultimately redemptive, written as it is in Erdrich's masterful, magical prose and focused with such love on the adolescent boy at its center.

Warm and friendly and in a very good mood a few days after her wins, Erdrich talked to us about writing, reading, and a couple of weird artifacts she cherishes.

What's the elevator pitch for your book?

It's a story that asks the question: Will a 13 year old boy kill to save his mother?

What's on your nightstand?

When I'm writing, I only read for the book, so now one of the joys has been reading for pleasure. I just read Jaimy Gordon's The Lord of Misrule. I read all the fiction finalists [for the National Book Awards: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, A Hologram for the King, This is How You Lose Her, Yellow Birds], and I've been reading Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, Dinaw Mengestu's How to Read the Air and Michael Ondaatje's Cat's Table.

What is the most important book you never read?

There are so many but one would be Ulysses. I've never been able to forge all the way through it. It's one of those that I've got on a shelf and it stares at me. It says, "You're going to pick me up." Maybe someday.

Is there a book that changed your life?

There are actually three:

The Bible. As for so many writers, its language informed my earliest speech, writing, thoughts.

Second was Animal Farm; I thought it was about pigs. I knew about pigs because my grandparents had a butcher shop. Then it got me.

The third book is my father. He's a book. He's the most intelligent, literary, funny and tender human being I know. He's the main reason I became a writer. He wouldn't say he was a writer, but he is. He writes still, has volumes of his letter. He has written memoirs because he wants to. Poetry, reams of poetry. He has constantly written. He's 87 and still lives with my mother.

What's your most memorable author moment?

First moment was when I found out that I won a magazine award from Chicago magazine. What I'd written was a story that became the opening of Love Medicine. I was broke and Studs Turkel and Kay Boyle and one other writer made the decision -- it was 1983. It paid $5,000. It was huge. It was astonishing.

What talent or superpower would you like to have (not including flight or invisibility)?

I'd like to make everyone I love immortal. I don't think they'd even want it, but I'd want it.

What's your most prized/treasured possession?

It's a Thunderbird egg, like the one Cappy gave to Joe [in The Round House]. I got it from an old person.

Who's your current author crush?

Junot Diaz. I thought I'd discovered him, but I guess not.

What's the last dream you remember?

When I'm writing I don't dream. But I had a dream last night. It was so exciting. It was about one of my brothers. He was riding a 12-foot-high horse, and he had glowing saffron robes flying out behind him. It reminded me of one of my favorite images: walking through Christo's gates in Central Park in 2005. I remember the snow, the bare branches.

What's your favorite method of procrastination?

I have my daughters -- 28, 27, 23 and 11 -- so I always have things to do. I have one to bring to school and get things prepared so I don't go straight to my work in the morning anyway. But I'm not a procrastinator. What happens after you write for 30 years, you form an addiction to being someone else, or living in someone else's world. And having the silent intensity of communication with a character in another situation is truly addictive. I don't have to force myself to get there. I need to get there.

What's the best piece of fan mail you ever got?

I had written a story called Saint Marie, and this reader wrote to me and called it "a nauseating phantasm of convent life." I loved that. I thought, "I have really struck a nerve." I was very angry when I wrote the story; I was angry at Catholicism, the coverups in Catholic life, the priesthood, and I knew from that letter that the reader felt my anger. I used to have a confessional in the book store; I bought it when a church was being torn down. People used to go in there and confess, but then we put up a little sign that says "Our insurance doesn't cover damnation." Now we prefer to think of it as a forgiveness booth.

YA Wednesday: The Inspirations of Laini Taylor

Last year Laini Taylor's The Daughter of Smoke and Bone was our #1 pick of the Best Teen Books of 2011 and we all waited (and waited..) for a chance to read the follow-up.  It's always a bit of a dice roll, reading a second book when you really love the first, but Days of Blood and Starlight delivered everything I'd hoped for, and more.  Days is on our 2012 list of Best Teen Books, and right from the beginning it engulfs you in a story rich with emotion, brutality, and breath-taking twists.  Like the first book, Days also takes you to exotic, faraway lands--lands Taylor visited and photographed.  In an Amazon exclusive, Taylor shared some photographs from her trip to Morocco after she finished The Daughter of Smoke and Bone--she's an amazing photographer and the places that inspired Days are even more beautiful than I imagined.  Note to self: go to Morocco and pack Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight for re-reading.

 

When I wrote DAUGHTER, I had been to Prague but not Morocco, but it was the source of my travel lust at the time, so I did the best research I could, including watching videos, and created a sense of place that way. Then, going to Morocco was my reward for finishing the book. I did not know at that time that the trip would inspire book 2 in such a major way, but it did. Whereas Marrakesh features in DAUGHTER, the action of DAYS (well, some of it) has moved on to the land of kasbahs and palm oases in southern Morocco. My husband Jim and I came *this close* to abandoning this portion of our trip as a result of the driving time. Clementine was 16 months old and hated her car seat with a burning passion, so that drive over the Atlas Mountains was ... blood-pressure raising. We actually stopped at one point and seriously considered turning back to Marrakesh. But I'm so glad we didn't.

 Here is a glimpse of the world that inspired my "land of dust and starlight"--Laini Taylor

 

kasbah of Telouet, which was the real inspiration for the primary setting of DAYS:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ait Benhaddou, the most famous kasbah in Morocco; it is where Zuzana and Mik are when "it" begins: "It. The thing that would never be eclipsed, that would own the third-person neuter pronoun "it" forever. Where were you the day it began?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agdz, where Karou goes to buy supplies:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine Karou standing here, and that blue robe as a flash of her blue hair: