Jacquelyn Mitchard
Author Interview - Jacquelyn Mitchard
Author of The Good Son and A VERY INCONVENIENT SCANDAL
About A Very Inconvenient Scandal:
Acclaimed underwater photograph Frankie Attleboro comes home to Cape Cod to announce that the undreamed-of has happened: She's expecting a baby and getting married -- only to learn that her famous marine biologist dad, Mack, 60 years old and a widower for one year, is marrying Frankie's best friend -- and they are expecting a baby too. But that's only the beginning of the mayhem as decades' worth of secrets come bobbing to the surface and a prominent family is broken, perhaps forever.
About The Good Son:
When her son gets out of prison after serving time for his role in the death of his girlfriend Belinda, Thea must battle her town’s rejection; activists galvanized by Belinda’s revenge-seeking mother and anonymous threats on Stefan’s life. Soon Thea realizes that she has no idea what happened on the night of Belinda’s death and that Stefan is in more danger at home than he ever was in prison. She may lose him before she even has a chance to forgive him.
Author Interview - Jacquelyn Mitchard
Author I draw inspiration from:
2023: Betty Smith, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, Elizabeth Strout, MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON, Ann Patchett, COMMONWEALTH ... these are conjurers who use ordinary words to make magic
2022: Elizabeth Strout
Author Interview - Jacquelyn Mitchard | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
2023: on a long car ride ... or on my back porch, or in bed with a cup of tea at night, when everyone else is asleep. I don't have the gift of good sleep and that hasn't changed as I've grown older except to get worse. Fortunately, reading is always solace.
2022: cuddled under a quilt during a thunderstorm
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
2023: It would be Atticus Finch from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee ... We would be the same age and we would marry and raise Scout and Jem together ... and talk all night every night about the puzzling ways of people. Like almost everyone else, I have a special connection with TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, but I also have a story about it ... Years ago, we had moved out of the house where my older children were born and to a place in the country outside of Madison, Wisconsin. The people who bought our house were from Denmark and they didn't speak much English, but they kept leaving me messages about a damaged package and the driveway. So one day, I and my eldest son, who was then a teenager, went over to that house and the woman who was there gave me a package that, indeed, looked to have been driven over by a car. The contents, however, did not seem to be damaged. I opened it, and it was a copy of the 50th anniversary edition of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and it was inscribed to me, with admiration, Harper Lee. I burst into tears and so did my son. It was just a really, really generous thing to do, from one very shy person to another.
2022: Dr. Marina Singh in Ann Patchett's 'State of Wonder'
Author Interview - Jacquelyn Mitchard | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
2023: It was probably after I finished reading A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN for the first time. Maybe I was thirteen. I saw myself in Francie Nolan: I was not so poor as she but my family struggled with many of the same things, with alcoholism and with the cruelties and kindnesses of others just like them in a blue-collar city neighborhood. For Francie, reading and writing were her salvation. Those comprised her freedom. I wanted to write stories but I wasn't sure I ever would do so with any success -- that is, until I actually finished a book. I named my firstborn daughter Francie Nolan.
2022: In fifth grade, a teacher was reading aloud from 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' and he read from the part in which the black reverend tells Scout Finch, "Stand up, Miss Jean Louise, your father's passing ..." and the teacher couldn't finish, because he started to cry. I was overwhelmed by the power of words, even familiar words, to summon emotion.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
2023: Well, I love the feel and the scent of a hardback book. That would be a number one option for reading in bed, in a place where I was sure I wasn't going to experience the dreaded tub drop or coffee spill. I love reading aloud from a hardback book when I teach other writers. In recent years, because my e reader can hold so many books that I can graze among those stories, I end up reading that way most of the time. When I'm driving, an audiobook turned up to just a little faster speed is a great companion. I thought I would not have the patience for audiobooks but they comprise a whole other way of being in a story, immersive, like a play going on inside your head. I am the person who doesn't mind if the flight is delayed because I just tuck into a book. Truly, I would ask if we could wait to summit Everest so I could read just a few more pages.
2022: e book ... I can't go anywhere without my Kindle. I LOVE hardcover books, however; I think they're great art.
The last book I read:
2023: I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU by Rebecca Makkai. This book was so engrossing, provocative, challenging ... I loved it. It was a mystery but also a sly inquiry into all sorts of social behavior in its 21st century incarnation. This author is a powerhouse, an absolutely new voice.
2022: The Glass Hotel' Emily St. John Mandel
Author Interview - Jacquelyn Mitchard | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
2023: My laptop is the extension of my brain, it's certainly my artificial intelligence. I compose on the computer, always, and I cannot even conceive of doing more than writing down a few notes in handwriting ... and if I did, I don't even know if I could read my own handwriting; I have trouble signing an autograph. I know plenty of good writers who write everything on legal pads in longhand and then transcribe it into the computer but for me, life is too short and so is my patience. The closest to that I do is to use "Speechy," a phone App that turns spoken words into text.
2022: laptop computer
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
2023: Mattie Ross in Charles Portis's immortal Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel TRUE GRIT. "People do not he was absolutely indomitable and, while judgmental to a fault, possess of a keen sense of justice and also a great sense of humor -- although she did not appreciate jokes at her own expense. The novel opens: “People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood,” As Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn, the cantankerous marshal she hired to help her said, "She reminds me of me." Mattie was brave, and I put a high premium on courage.
2022: Francie Nolan ('A Tree Grows in Brooklyn')
Author Interview - Jacquelyn Mitchard | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
2023: I would have liked to be a paramedic ... for a short while, I was a sort of support to some EMT's on a volunteer basis, and they did astonishing work, sometimes utterly against the odds. I also once had a near-death experience, a close call, and I remember the young paramedic (I was very young too, in my mid-20s) who was on the call. When you experience hypotensive shock, it's actually a really good, even blissful feeling -- it's the way the body lets go before death, if you will. So, in the back of that ambulance, that was how I felt, almost euphoric, to let the world go on without me. But this paramedic kept slapping me in the face and saying, don't die, don't die, please don't die, and I could feel his tears falling on my face. So I didn't die. I didn't want to let him down. After I had surgery, I woke up in a hospital bed and the night outside the window was just beginning to give over to the violet gray of morning, and I saw him sitting there, sleeping in a hard chair, at the foot of my bed. It turned out that it was his very first ambulance run as a graduate and he ended up having to fight for a life, and he won. That was just very moving to me.
2022: judge
Favorite decade in fashion history:
2023: Oh that's easy, the 1940s -- all those fetching fitted suits and big hats and stockings with seams. Now, I want you to know, I don't even wear dresses ... ever. But I like to think I would have done.
2022: 1940s
Place I’d most like to travel:
2023: Oh, Italy again, Umbria, Tuscany ... I've been there many times and I never had a bad meal or a bad stroll. Just magical, walking through the village square at evening with my sister, our arms linked, getting a coffee ... but also, the years I went to the Maui Writers Conference were some of the best years of my life. Hawaii and Fiji were two places on earth that were not over-sold to me. They were even better. It wasn't just sights or weather but the ease and grace of life, if you will. Of course, I was working but working in paradise is better than working in Ohio (I've worked in Ohio a good deal, so I know what I'm talking about ...)
2022: Egypt
My signature drink:
2023: Ginger ale and orange juice, a fake mimosa. I don't drink alcohol beyond a glass of champagne at Christmas ... it just immediately gives me a headache. I'm the life of the party, as you can tell.
2022: Oh gosh ... a latte! (once a year, a Kir Royale, champagne and raspberry liquer)
Favorite artist:
2023: To pick a visual artist, Edward Hopper, my favorite by orders or magnitude. For a musical artist, Marvin Gaye. Dance, Misty Copeland. Movies? THE GODFATHER, Part II. TV? Anything David Simon touches plus also Taylor Sheridan's 1883. And as for writing, writing, oh please, don't get me started. I would read anything by Hilary St. John Mandel (STATION ELEVEN) or Elizabeth Strout (LUCY BY THE SEA) or Ann Patchett (COMMONWEALTH), Lorrie Moore (BIRDS OF AMERICA), Dennis LeHane (MYSTIC RIVER) , Stephen King (RITA HAYWORTH AND THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION), Donna Tartt (THE GOLDFINCH) ,Mark Harris (BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY) Curtis Sittenfield (ROMANTIC COMEDY) , Sara Waters (THE LITTLE STRANGER), Chad Harbach (THE ART OF FIELDING), Michael Cunningham (THE HOURS) And of course, so many departed, Truman Capote, Emily Bronte, Hilary Mantel, Virginia Woolf, John Cheever, Scott Fitzgerald. Shirley Jackson, Ruth Rendell, Edward Gorey, MacKinlay Kantor ... see you got me started ...
2022: Edward Hopper
Number one on my bucket list:
2023: I'll never do this but I would love to swim in the vicinity of a whale -- although I'm terrified of the ocean. (I live on Cape Cod and I'm terrified of the ocean and I hate the sand ... right?) I would love to go on a photo or conservation safari and see elephants where they live. I would love to have Gordon Ramsay teach me something with cooking that did not involve bacon and would transform my cuisine, which is actually pretty accomplished!
2022: Be in an episode of any iteration of 'Law and Order'
Anything else you'd like to add:
2023: Stories are the only thing that makes us human.
2022: I'm better at ONE thing than at writing (making pasta sauce)
Find more from the author:
Twitter: I https://twitter.com/JackieMitchard
Website: https://jacquelynmitchard.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jacquelyn.mitchard
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacquelynmitchard/
Twitter.com: https://twitter.com/JackieMitchard
and last but not least, Substack! https://authorjacquelynmitchard.substack.com
About Jacquelyn Mitchard:
Jacquelyn Mitchard is the New York Times bestselling author of 25 books of fiction and non-fiction for adults, young adults and children, with more than 3 million copies in 34 languages worldwide. Her first novel, THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN, was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club and she has won or been nominated for prizes including the UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Heartland Prize for Fiction and others. A native of Chicago, she lives on Cape Cod with her family. Her newest novel, A VERY INCONVENIENT SCANDAL, the story of a young photographer whose esteemed family is fractured when her 60-year-old widowed father marries her 27-year-old best friend, will be out in November from Mira/HarperCollins
