In her blurb for Black River Sonia Faleiro wrote, "it feels completely true". Her book The Good Girls memorably starts with girls suddenly hanging from a tree. Given that yours begins similarly, were you ever tempted to fictionalize fact? Did you keep at bay the horrors or give them room?
When we imagine a writer leaning on the truth, we imagine the incidents that get into the newspapers, or on television. The truth is here to some extent, but there's a difference between a book that's based on reality and one that aims for a kind of truthfulness to what's happening in the world. From 2009 to 2013, when I was working on gender for The New York Times (NYT), I spent a lot of time in places that would never make it to the newspapers these were commonplace where the damage was not violent or egregious enough. But, a family or a survivor was still left completely shattered. Everywhere I went, I was seeing a collective absence. There were these missing girls, who were knocked out of life because of the violence of their times. Munia [from Black River] came out of that. I was seeing the lasting agony of these absences. I think I was struck by being both an intruder on very private grief and a witness to how deeply that grief would go, changing people's lives for years afterwards. You don't get over the death of a child. We because murders, keep searching for justice. Yes, there is the justice of the courts, and there is the justice of knowing, or, as one of the characters in the book tries, to get some kind of acknowledgement. The justice has nothing to do with the absence. And the absence was what I was writing into.
Was journalism, and you're reporting for NYT, an education in novel-writing?
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BOOKS
Books review
STUDIO - Off Lamington Road by Gieve Patel
Oil on Canvas, 54 x 88 in
NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF MEDICINE
FOODS THAT FIGHT DEMENTIA
TO HELL AND BACK
The Darvaza crater in Turkmenistan is known as the Gates of Hell. I stood on its edge - and lived to tell the tale
THE SNAKE CHARMERS
Invasive Burmese pythons are squeezing the life out of Florida's vast Everglades. An unlikely sisterhood is taking them on
Sisterhood to Last a Lifetime
These college pals teach a master class in how to maintain a friendship for 50-plus years
...TO DIE ON A HOCKEY RINK
ONE MINUTE I WAS PLAYING IN MY BEER LEAGUE, THE NEXT I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL
Just Sit Tight
Broken, battered and trapped in a ravine for days, I desperate driver wonders, \"Will anyone find me?\"
Allow Me to Mansplain...
If there's one thing we know, it's this: We're a nation of know-it-alls
THE BITTER TRUTH ABOUT SUGAR (AND SUGAR SUBSTITUTES!)
It's no secret that we have a serious addiction. Here's how to cut back on the sweet stuff, once and for all.