Yannick Murphy is the award winning author of The Call and her next novel, This Is the Water, will be coming to shelves near you in July. Get a behind the scenes look at Yannick's thoughts about her new novel and some of her summer reading recommendations.
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Q: In a recent summer books preview, the Los Angeles Times categorized THIS IS THE WATER as a “mystery/thriller”? Does that placement surprise you? How would you classify your novel?
All fiction should have an element of mystery. It’s the mystery of not knowing where the writer is going to take the reader next that keeps the reader engaged. And it’s the writer not knowing how they’re going to solve their character’s dilemma that energizes the writing, because the reader can then feel the struggle taking place. Maybe that’s why This Is the Water has been categorized as a mystery. If the writer manipulates the reader too much, and takes them on an obvious journey, then there’s no real newness, no real mystery. If readers find the novel mysterious and suspenseful, I’m pleased—I take it to mean I’ve done my job.
Q: As with your earlier work, like THE CALL where the story is told through a veterinarian’s journal entries, THIS IS THE WATER also tells a tale through a unique structure—in this case the point of view. At times, the reader sees things through the second-person perspective of Annie, a New England swim mother. At other times, the narration is omniscient, giving the reader the full view of all the characters and players involved, including a serial killer. How would you describe the point of view of THIS IS THE WATER? And, how did you decide on this sort of style and structure?
When I wrote This Is the Water I wanted the reader to see how Annie, faced with hardships on multiple levels, sees herself. Using the second person seemed appropriate for Annie; it allowed her to share what she was going through, without making it too personal. That distance allowed her to summon the energy to face her demons—her distant husband, her brother’s suicide, her attraction to another man, the serial killer. The second person provided a smoke screen through which she could function, in order to start seeing what her problems were and to begin to solve them. Other parts of the novel are from different characters points of view, and there’s also an omniscient voice, so that the reader feels included on the journey that the book is taking them on. What would a writing class call it? The second person omniscient, maybe?
Q: Annie seems to be the main character of the novel, but I enjoyed getting into the heads of so many other characters, including the other swim moms, Chris and Dinah. Did you enjoy writing one character’s POV more than any other’s? Whose perspective was the most challenging?
When I wrote from Dinah’s pov, who seems less likeable than the rest, I wanted to be fair to her, and include her thoughts, and not just paint her as uptight and selfish, which is how she comes across to the other characters in the novel. Inwardly, she is more generous, and accepts why she’s the way she is, which I think is a redeeming quality. This kind of complexity makes her a challenging character to bring alive, but well worth the effort since no one person in this world is one-dimensional. I relate more to Annie, so writing from her pov came the most naturally. Writing from the Killer’s perspective also came naturally to me. Did I really just say that?
Q: Chris’s husband Paul is a writer who ends up channeling his past experience with the serial killer into his fiction. What was your intent in making Paul a writer (rather than, say, a chef or an accountant)? Is there something metafictional going on, or am I reading too much into things?
I knew I wanted Paul to be someone who was struggling with something in his past, but also to be someone who had a carefree kind of attitude about him that Annie would be attracted to. Fiction writers always seem to be struggling, and they do it while being in the most relaxed skins. They could be lounging in a hammock, but they’re really battling monsters!
Q: There was a recent essay about Gordon Lish in this anthology called MFA vs. NYC. You were mentioned as being one of Lish’s authors while he was at Knopf. He edited your first story collection (Stories in Another Language), I believe. What was that experience like? How has your writing evolved since your first books?
I was at the Sewanee Writer’s Conference once as a fellow for a few weeks. There I met the wonderful Russell Banks. He asked me about working with Gordon Lish, and I told him that he was the best teacher I ever had, and that I felt so lucky to have had him as an editor as well. I told him that I knew some people had negative things to say about how he edited their work, or how Gordon interacted with them, but Gordon was always my biggest advocate. He believed in my writing. He treated me respectfully. He never charged me a dime for his classes because he knew my family was dirt poor. He believed everyone had it inside them to write great fiction, and that it was just a matter of wanting it bad enough. He was an amazing editor, who knew exactly when to end a sentence or an idea for the greatest effect. We would work side by side on the edits, and he’d say, “No, no, no. Come on Murphy, you can do better than that. How could you end it better than that?” And so I’d have to think of it on my own, what line to include or to edit, and when I got it, he’d say, “That’s it! Damn, you’re good.” I wish for my children, whatever career they may choose, that they have someone as inspiring and skilled and generous as Gordon as their own teacher. After I told Russell Banks all of this, he said, “Never be afraid to defend him. Never apologize for it, no matter what bad press he may receive. Continue to believe in him. You owe it to him,” he said, and I do. My writing has evolved since my first book in the sense that I just keep thinking of new ways of seeing things and writing about them.
Q: If you could recommend your own top three “summer reads,” what books would they be?
Here are ones on my summer list that I haven’t read yet:
Mona Simpson’s Casebook,
Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Dave Eggers’ Your Fathers, Where are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?