DISCUSSION QUESTIONS The Charmed Wife blends together space 1. and time to present a portrait of both a fantasy world and modern day. At what point in the novel did you realize that something was slightly amiss? Were there any specific observations that clued you in to the shifting realities? As Cinderella recalls the previous thirteen 2. years of her marriage, we see all the ways in which her “fairy-tale ending” is anything but. What aspects of her marriage, and her role within the palace, defied her expectations? Who do you think is at fault here: Cinderella, Roland, Fairy Godmother, or something else? What do you think of Cinderella’s original 3. decision to kill Roland? Do you think this would have solved her problems? What about her decision to escape? The Charmed Wife include interstitials of 4. the exploits of Brie and Nibbles and their descendants. Does seeing all the upheavals in the “downstairs” world of the mice, with their wars and revolutions, put the “upstairs” problems of Cinderella in a different perspective? What were your favorite parts? Discuss Cinderella’s relationship with the 5. Witch and Fairy Godmother. How does her connection to them change throughout the novel? Did you anticipate their modernday parallels?
In addition to Cinderella, this novel 6. depicts many different fairy tales and nursery rhymes, including Sleeping Beauty, the Twelve Dancing Princesses, the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, and others. Which reinterpretation did you find most interesting? Were there any that surprised you? Much of Cinderella’s journey includes 7. her attempts at different ways to become independent, including pursuing the beekeeper, working as a maid, and more. Do these opportunities allow her to become more or less of herself? In what ways? larger narrative of The Charmed Wife 8. isTheopen to many different interpretations. Do you think it actually takes place in the present day? If so, how should the fairy-tale elements be viewed? If not, is there true magic at work here? What do you think is next for Jane? Where 9. do you see her life going after this? What about her relationship with her children? What are some lessons you learned from 10. the fairy tales and nursery rhymes of your childhood? Do you still carry these lessons with you today? Do you think these stories set up a sense of false expectation? How do you view the idea of a “happily ever after”?
A Conversation With
OLGA
GRUSHIN (As appears on WritersDigest.com)
WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO WRITE THIS BOOK? I loved fairy tales as a child—the more traditional, the better, all those princes, princesses, and happy couplings. Yet when I started reading them to my own daughter, she liked stories with tricksters and talking animals well enough, but she absolutely loathed any mention of princesses. “Stories with princesses are so boring,” she said. “They are really all the same story.” At the same time, it so happened, I was going through a divorce. And it was this confluence of my seven-year-old’s reaction and the end of my marriage that prompted me to take a closer look at the happily-ever-after tales we tell ourselves. Eventually I knew that I wanted to write a book that would start as a predictable two-dimensional fantasy, with pastel-colored princesses, singing teapots, and waltzing mice, but would then grow in surprising, modern directions and arrive at a very different narrative in the end.
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO GO FROM IDEA TO PUBLICATION? AND DID THE IDEA CHANGE DURING THE PROCESS? This is my fourth novel, and by now my overall approach has become more or less streamlined. It takes three to four years from the first glimmering of the idea to the finished volume that smells so delightfully of fresh ink: a year of gestation and research (or, if no actual research is required, reading “around the subject”); a year of intense daily writing to create the first draft; and one to two years devoted to revisions and the actual publishing process. I always expect my initial idea to undergo countless changes in the planning stage—that is really what this stage is for. With every new novel, I start a thick notebook where, for months, I jot down themes, plot possibilities, personality sketches, useful facts, and so on. Then one day—and this day always comes without warning—I wake up and feel that I have accumulated enough material, so I read through the entire notebook and, out of the primordial flux of semi-thoughts and proto-characters, create an outline and begin to write. My outlines are never ironclad, though, but have plenty of breathing room to allow for organic changes that will inevitably happen in the actual writing stage. With The Charmed Wife, I knew from the beginning that the figure of Cinderella would be at the heart of the story, and early on I decided to weave in other familiar narratives as well, so Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Bluebeard, and many others began to find their way into my outline. Later still, the mouse theme emerged as its own subplot: I felt that I needed a sort of “downstairs” counterbalance of mouse wars and revolutions to the “upstairs” romanceobsessed life of the princess in order to cast her arc in a different light. But often the precise connections between all these layers would occur to me only as I was writing, and I would get this satisfying sense of puzzle pieces locking into place. I think this feeling of the story pulling together and coming into final focus is one of my favorite things about writing novels.
WERE THERE ANY SURPRISES OR LEARNING MOMENTS IN THE PUBLISHING PROCESS FOR THIS TITLE? I have published all my novels with the same publishing house, Putnam, but the editor who guided my first three books into life, the wonderful Marian Wood, retired a little while ago, and she passed away earlier this year—such a great loss in this year of losses. For this book, then, I have worked with an entirely new team. They are young, enthusiastic, and full of fresh ideas, and I am learning unexpected things. For example, I was always rather old-fashioned when it came to social media, but, at the gentle promptings of my new editor, Gabriella Mongelli, I took a timorous step into the realm of Twitter. I had believed myself intrinsically unsuited for it—the very thought of 280 characters seemed anathema to someone raised on Tolstoy’s War and Peace—yet now I am enjoying it thoroughly. Which just goes to show that it is never too late to leave your comfort zone.
WERE THERE ANY SURPRISES IN THE WRITING PROCESS FOR THIS BOOK? This entire book was really a surprise. I grew up in Moscow, reading nineteenth-century Russian classics, and when, still as a teenager, I declared I would be a writer, I imagined myself writing only “serious,” weighty books. In the early years of my career, I did not see fantasy as a respectable genre at all. But if I have learned anything in my subsequent decades of reading and writing, it is that genre divisions are arbitrary and literature is literature wherever it is found. This book was a great departure from my earlier novels (mostly set in Soviet Russia and dealing with totalitarian regimes and oppressed artists, among other things), and it was tremendous fun to write—the most fun, in truth, I had with any novel. I loved stepping out into the no-man’s land between genres, playing with fantasy and reality, bending conventions, breaking my own past rules. I had this constant sense of adventure while I was working on it. “Can I really do this? Can I really go there, say that? Yes, I can—because why not and who is going to stop me?”
WHAT DO YOU HOPE READERS WILL GET OUT OF YOUR BOOK? This is not at all a traditional fairy-tale retelling, and readers who pick it up looking for a child-friendly Disney-style fantasy may find it quite unsettling. But if they approach it with open minds and few preconceived notions, I hope they will be entertained. I wanted to write something whimsical, something fun (even if the fun is often dark). At the same time, even talking mice can be thought-provoking. If, upon finishing the book, my readers feel they have gained a surprising new perspective on traditional stories, I will be very happy.
IF YOU COULD SHARE ONE PIECE OF ADVICE WITH OTHER AUTHORS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? So much excellent advice is already out there. Live a full life. Read, read as much as you can, across all genres. Approach your writing not as sporadic visits from some flighty muse but as a daily grind. Budget your time. One thing I would stress especially: for a woman writer with a family, it is absolutely essential to carve out not only a “room of one’s own” in your home but also a “room of one’s own” in your mind—a place where you can go and forget, for a stretch, about children’s homework, dinner, and laundry, and devote yourself fully to the world you are creating. Without this intense concentration, without this full immersion, book-length projects cannot be sustained. Teach people who share your life to respect your work from day one.
Author Photo © Karel CudlÍn
MAGIC HOUR
COCKTAIL
Ingredients 1 1/2 oz Lillet Rose 1/2 oz Grapefruit juice 1/4 oz Simple syrup (one part sugar, one part water) 1 tsp Yellow Chartreuse Sparkling wine (such as Gruet) Garnish: grapefruit twist
Steps 1. Add all the ingredients except the sparkling wine to a shaker and fill with ice. 2. Shake, and strain into a Champagne flute. 3. Top with sparkling wine and garnish with a grapefruit twist.
Recipe written by Tom Macy, Liquor.com liquor.com/recipes/magic-hour