The Books That Shape The Novel
In the acknowledgments of my novel, A Thread of Sky, I list several books that figured in my research: Iris Chang’s The Chinese in America, Wang Zheng’s Women in the Chinese Enlightenment, Sherwin B. Nuland’s How We Die. But virtually every book I read over the five years that I worked on my novel fed into it in some way.
Sometimes I knew what I was seeking—for instance, Frank Partnoy’s Fiasco supplied details on the life of a Wall Street trader that helped bring into focus one character’s struggle to prove herself, day after day, as more than a “hot Oriental babe” on the trading floor. (This book is also the reason why I can define a derivative even though I can’t divide a restaurant bill.)
Sometimes what I sought became clear only after I’d found it, as when I read an old Chinese folk tale, “The Legend of White Snake,” out of curiosity. Months later, it became part of a pivotal scene in the novel, as the characters view the pagoda where the White Snake goddess’s remains are said to be encased and an innocent retelling of the legend begins to unearth the roots of one woman’s fury.
And sometimes a book provided something—an idea, an approach, a way with words—that is still difficult to define. All I know is that, in some way, it nourished me. Here are eight more books that helped shape A Thread of Sky.
Against Love: A Polemic by Laura Kipnis
Kipnis brilliantly examines how modern love has become "a new form of mass conscription" in this treatise that begins thus: "Will all the adulterers in the room please stand up?" These questions about our never-ending quest for lasting love and our definition of betrayal are ones that the six women in my novel are also moved to explore as they traverse China, through the various lenses of youthful rebellion, wistful widowhood, and decades-old bitterness—though without quite matching Kipnis's wit or her surprising lack of cynicism.
The City in Which I Love You: Poems by Li-Young Lee
“But birds, as you say, fly forward./ So I won’t show you letters and the shawl/ I’ve so meaninglessly preserved./ And I won’t hum along, if you don’t, when/ our mothers sing Nights in Shanghai.”
Intuition by Allegra Goodman
One of my main characters is a researcher who once came close to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s—just when she became pregnant with her third daughter, necessitating a choice that still haunts her. This novel is an excellent model of how to fashion a gripping story out of the goings-on in a research lab.
Dreaming by the Book by Elaine Scarry
Truly a unique synthesis of literary criticism, philosophy, and cognitive psychology that illuminates how, despite the fact that “the verbal arts …—unlike painting, music, sculpture, theater, and film—are almost wholly devoid of actual sensory content,” writers manage to bring off the miracle of evoking images more vivid than our own daydreams.
The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey
A novel about memory, identity, and loss that reads like a reverie.
The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers by Elizabeth Benedict
When it comes to writing sex scenes, many otherwise fearless writers seem inclined to “fade to black”–or, more accurately, to white space–instead of showing how our characters are, in more ways than one, laid bare. While this book isn’t quite revelatory, it makes a good case that part of our duty as writers is to “deliver the moment.”
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
A wise, gorgeous book that needs to be read again and again.
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
I picked this up simply to reread a classic I hadn’t looked at since junior high. I was halfway through before I realized that the very title encapsulates the legacy that all six women in my novel carry, a legacy that binds them together even as it drives them apart.
