Maw Books

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Yesterday I reviewed The Bright Side of Disaster by Katherine Center. I really enjoyed this book, so seriously, go check it out.

Katherine Center is awesome! Not only because she’s a great author but also because she’s super nice! My correspondence with Katherine has been nothing but enjoyable. Katherine was kind enough to sit down and grant us an author interview about her debut novel, The Bright Side of Disaster.

Maw Books: Welcome Katherine! First things first. Food. I was quite pleased when Vietnamese Pho was mentioned in your book, because my family LOVES Pho! Whenever we decide to eat out and ask ourselves where we’d like to go, the answer is 99% of the time Pho. We’ve tried making it at home at least 4 times but can’t quite get the broth right. So maybe this isn’t a question, but just some “yay-ness” for loving Pho as well.

Katherine: Pho is the best! I think it’s the saltiness of the broth with the sweetness of the plum sauce and the spiciness of the chili sauce and the lime-iness of the limes… Plus the softness of the noodles with the crunchy bean sprouts. And maybe also the rhythm of shifting back and forth between the chopsticks and the big, funky spoon. Umph! So good!

Maw Books: And then as if Pho wasn’t enough, Jenny (our main character) makes a Mexican tomato lime soup, maybe I was hungry, but I seriously want the recipe. Would you mind?

Katherine: Sure! This is the most delicious thing I know how to cook. I make it all the time–and I usually eyeball everything, so I’m kind of guessing on the quantities. It’s adapted from a recipe from the Moosewood cookbook from about 15 years ago or so, but it has definitely evolved into its own thing over the years.

1/4 stick of butter
1 large or 2 medium onions (yellow or white), loosely chopped
5-ish cloves of garlic, loosely minced
1 tbsp oregano flakes
2-3 tsps ground cumin
8-10 tomatoes
2-3 tsps salt
5 cubes of vegetable bullion (though you can sub chicken for a couple)
8 cups water
1/8-1/4 c fresh lime juice
as much chopped fresh cilantro as you have patience for
2-3 big, ripe avocadoes
monterrey jack cheese
tortilla chips (we use salted white corn–or sometimes blue corn, to be
fancy)

Sauté the onions, garlic, oregano and cumin in a big soup pot over high-ish heat. While they’re cooking, chop up a minimum of eight tomatoes (loosely, in big hunks). The onions & garlic should be close to done, then add the tomatoes and the salt and stir it all up. The salt helps the tomatoes “melt,” which takes about 10 minutes or so. While they’re cooking, I usually throw in the bouillon cubes so they can start to disintegrate. Then, when the tomatoes look pretty cooked, add the water. I like the broth to be strong, so sometimes I’ll throw in an extra cube. Then let all that heat back up, and peel and cube the avocadoes and put them in a bowl on the table.

Then grate the cheese and put it on the table, too (though the pre-grated cheese works great, too, and I’m all for saving time), along with the chips. Then wash and chop the cilantro (I usually don’t get all that far on the cilantro, even though I love it, because it’s slow-going and the soup is basically ready) and squeeze the limes and then, as a last step, add the limes and cilantro to the broth. (If you add the lime juice to soon, it loses its flavor, so save it for last!). At last, ladle the broth into bowls and let people add the cheese and avocados and crumble the chips into their own bowls.

I make this soup probably 3 times a month because everybody in my family loves it so much. I am always in a hurry because everybody’s hungry and eager and clamoring. That’s the feeling of this soup–everything chopped up fast and thrown into a pot.

One variation is to add chicken to it, which my husband always hopes I will do. But adding chicken takes longer, and the soup doesn’t need it at all. We do it sometimes if we’re all feeling sniffly… If anybody out there actually makes it, please let me know what you think!

Maw Books: Okay, that sounds to die for!! I’m totally making this. Thanks!

In The Bright Side of Disaster, in some ways, I had a hard time believing much of what Jenny goes through. Or maybe it was the fact that although her fiance did leave her at the 11th hour, I was a tad jealous with how much other support she receives. She doesn’t have to work, has money flowing in, a good play group, friends who drop in, and a mother who dropped by at least once a day. Having a baby is hard! But what would you say to those who don’t have an amazing network of people standing behind them?

Katherine: Raising babies is hard. It can be unbelievably lonesome, exhausting, panic-inducing, maddening, and repetitive–for a start. I think one of the best things any mom can do for herself is build up a network of other moms with kids around her own’s same age. Either online through blogging or parenting groups, through school or daycare, through religious communities, or even at the park–find people to talk to about childrearing and all its trials and glories. (I met one of my best mom friends at the grocery store–she had a daughter my age, I got a really good vibe about them, and I gave her my phone number.) Anything moms can do to team up with other moms is good for combating all the frustrations and terrors of parenting–and sharing the joys.

And staying at home with a baby can be especially lonely. I tried to get at that in the book–the way you are not actually alone (because you’re with the baby), but you’re not on your own time, either. When I think of Jenny, I think of her as being very alone. Her man has left, her best friend meets a guy and disappears, her mother, though she stops by, is allergic to cats and won’t come inside the house. As time goes along, Jenny finds her mommy group and makes a friend, but she only sees her on the weekends because her friend is working full time. People stop by Jenny’s house for short visits, but I think of her as being alone most of the time. Which is part of the reason she’s so vulnerable to Dean when he comes back. Jenny was definitely very lucky that Dean’s mother and then, later, her own father stepped up to offer support after Dean left. She didn’t have to move out of her house. She didn’t have to go to work right away. She could keep some things the same, even while others fell apart. That was just the story I heard telling itself in my head.

Maw Books: Great advice. I met on of my best mom friends when she asked if I wanted to come over for lunch after storytime at the library. Of course, I said yes! If only I could be so brave myself. In our culture, mom’s definitly can get very lonely.

A a mother yourself, I’m sure that much of what you wrote was semi-autobiographical. There were times that I wanted to yell at Jenny because I was getting so frustrated with some of the stuff she did. Like letting herself go, not showering (although I have to admit, I totally related to this one!), telling herself that she couldn’t go out for the evening, and picking up the baby to nurse at every single whimper during the night. Is there any of Jenny’s parenting techniques that you actually don’t agree with or think that she should do differently?

Katherine: This is a great question! Jenny is, of course, not me. But the way she approached parenting was a lot like I did early on (I have two little ones now, a girl and a boy, ages 5 and 2). It all seems so earth-shattering when you first get started–or, at least, it did for me. I wanted to do everything right every minute. But of course, as you go along and your mistakes start to really pile up, you have to move to a different view.

I’m not sure there’s a simple “right” anymore, though I used to think there was. I have a friend who is always reading parenting books and trying to optimize her childrearing choices, but I have to admit I’ve moved away from a lot of that as I’ve gone along. I’m starting more and more to feel like: my husband and I are both friendly, well-behaved people–and our kids will likely be, too. (Knock on wood!) And actually, in my second book, which comes out next year, the narrator is much more low-key about parenting. Which is more like the mom I am now.

Maw Books: There was a lot of breastfeeding in this book. I remember making some comment about how I felt like a cow when I was trying to use a pump for the first time. I laughed out loud when you described our main character using a breast pump for the first time, I could totally relate. I appreciated that you didn’t make breastfeeding look easy. Because it’s not. With my first baby, I cried and cried. It hurt so bad that after 7 weeks I couldn’t take it anymore. It was pure torture. With my second I nursed for nearly a year. Odd. You really described “mommyhoood” well. Kudos.

Katherine: Breastfeeding is a really interesting topic to me. Our culture is so bananas over breasts–so obsessed with and focused on and judgmental about them. But all of our cultural interest in breast kind of revolves around their connection to sexuality–and men’s sexuality, in particular. And then, when we women start breastfeeding, the breasts just become about something totally different–about food and love and nurturing. But the culture is still the culture. It’s like your own understanding of this part of your body completely turns itself inside out, and you’ve gone to this new, wise understanding about the place of breasts in the universe, but popular culture is still at a kegger spraying beer at the girls in white tees.

And, yes–breastfeeding my first baby was agonizingly painful for months and months. I can’t believe I stuck with it. But, like you, the second baby was a breeze! Guess it just takes a while to break those things in!

Maw Books: So true, so true! When I finished reading The Bright Side of Disaster, I thought to myself, what kind of book did I just read? Is this chick lit? Is this a mommy book? How would you classify it’s appeal? Would you think that those who aren’t mothers would enjoy it? How would you describe The Bright Side of Disaster as being more than just a mommy book?

Katherine: I think it’s all those things. Or at least, it has elements of all of them. It’s got the reverence for women’s lives and women’s power that “women’s fiction” does. It’s got the brightness and breeziness of chick lit–and also a pretty straightforward love story. And it’s got a lot about parenting life and what it means to become a mother, so it’s definitely mommy lit, too. Jenny’s kind of a hybrid between a mom and a single girl. She’s both.

Moms seem to especially like the “new baby” part of the book and connect to that. But I’ve heard from lots of people who aren’t moms who just liked the love story and watching Jenny grow up and figure out her life.

They say, when you’re writing, that you should write the books that you’d like to read. And Bright Side is that for me. It’s got a quirky humor and it moves along at a good pace, but it also has some meat on its bones, and it slows down to linger on deeper questions and darker moments, too. I love books that are funny, but I also love books that are wise, and my hope for Bright Side was for it to be both.

Maw Books: Why write books? What has been the biggest payoff from doing what you love the most?

Katherine: I think I write because I can’t seem to stop writing. It’s not a choice so much as it is something that just happens. I hear a voice talking in my head, and I go write it down.

I think we really turn to stories to understand who we are and to connect to other human beings. I see it in my kids every day–how they don’t want to come at human problems head-on, they want to hear stories about them. I think we turn to stories–from family stories to fables to novels to movies–to learn about who we are. Human life is so rich and so complicated that very few things can resonate in people’s minds and hearts like a well-told story. I think women in particular are longing for smart stories that reflect their experiences and their interests in ways that are engaging and accesible.

And getting to write for a living is a blessing beyond description. I thank my lucky stars every day.

Maw Books: How do you write with small children in the house? Describe your typical writing day.

Katherine: Having little kids makes it so much harder to find the time to write–but
it also provides vast quantities of inspiration!

I’ve been really trying to arrange my novel writing activities around my parenting life as much as I can. I try to write when the kids are asleep, though my kids are not big sleepers. So when I’m working on a project and a story is alive in my head, I’m always scheming to find more time to write. I have a very helpful mom, and great, great husband. My husband is phenomenal with kids, and he’s a teacher, too, so he gets the summers off. But it’s tricky to balance it all even still, and I definitely haven’t figured it out yet. I’ve gone to hotels before to finish writing projects–and as soon as I got there, I was in agony with homesickness and had to pull out pictures of my kids. Last week I went out to West Texas to stay by myself and write, and I was so homesick–but I got a truckload of writing done!

Maw Books: I seriously want to check myself into a hotel just so I can nap! What are some of your favorite books that you have read this year? Any recommendations?

Katherine: It’s been a pretty busy year for me. But I have read some good stuff recently!

I just read Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos and really loved it. I re-read Jane Austen’s Persuasion for the first time since high school and could not believe what a page turner it was. I got totally sucked into Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and stayed up until 5 in the morning to finish. I read a very funny book of essays called Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me. I’ve read a number of great non-fiction books lately: Brené Brown’s I Thought It Was Just Me, a book about women’s psyches that’s totally astute and brilliant. I’m reading a book about advertising and how it shapes our self-concept right now by Jean Kilbourne called Can’t Buy My Love--and it’s another one of those books that just kind of re-shapes how you see the world. Michael Pollan’s great book In Defense of Food also really captured my attention for a while. And I’m just about to read David Sedaris’s new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. How I love him!

Maw Books: I just finished Love Walked In as well! I really enjoyed it. I’ve never read any David Sedaris but everybody can’t stop talking about When You Are Engulfed in Flames. I shall have to check it out.

Could you tell us a bit about your next book and when to expect to see it out?

Katherine: My next book is called Everyone Is Beautiful and it will come out February
17, 2009. It’s about a woman with three small boys who feels a little bit capsized by motherhood, and she sets about trying to bring herself back to life. It’s a love story about married people, actually–which turned out to be a harder thing to write than I’d anticipated. To write a good love story, you need a good obstacle. And if the main characters sleep in the same bed every night, there’s not quite enough of an obstacle. Though having three boys under four is certainly an obstacle. But that’s almost
too good of an obstacle….

I actually just saw the cover for it, and it’s gorgeous. It has a cupcake on it!

I’m writing my third novel now, which will come out in 2010, and then I’ll
have another one out after that.

Maw Books: Wow! You are off to a great start! Congratulations! I look forward to Everyone is Beautiful and will be sure to read everything that you write. Thanks so much Katherine for sitting down with us. And seriously, I’m off to make some soup. 100 degree heat withstanding!

Thank you! Seriously, does she not sound like so much fun?! Check out Katherine Center’s website and my book review of The Bright Side of Disaster.

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