Spencer Wise photo by Molly Hamill
Our own Judy Blume raves about Bethany Ball’s WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE SOLOMONS, as does Booklist, writing, “Ball, with great humor, profound wit, and notable insight, vividly captures a singular family . . . This novel from a most promising writer has been compared to the work of Isaac B. Singer and Grace Paley, as well as Nathan Englander and Jennifer Egan. Try Eudora Welty with sex and Jews.”
Bethany will be giving a joint book talk with author Spencer Wise, Thursday, January 17th at 6:00 p.m. at B’Nai Zion Synagogue, 750 United St. in Key West. This event is free and open to the public. Please join us for what is sure to be an insightful and engaging conversation.
Leading up to this fun double-bill, I had the opportunity to ask both Spencer and Bethany a few questions.
Q. What do you like best about having a tour buddy?
A. Spencer and I have the same agent, the wonderful Duvall Osteen. She had sent me his book in galley form. When he asked me to do his launch reading with him in New York City, I jumped at the chance. We have a good rapport. I can feel a little jittery with public events, but not with Spencer. He’s really funny and generous and kind. Everyone who meets him loves him. And our books go well together. Ex pat Jews, old patriarchs who find themselves a little outre and not with the new times, and the younger generation trying to break out of the mold that they feel was cast for them long ago. Our books also deal in depth with the world outside of the United States which I’m always happy to explore both as a writer and a reader.
Q. What do you like about Spencer’s novel, THE EMPEROR OF SHOES?
A. Spencer is a wonderful storyteller. He gets you hooked right from the very beginning. THE EMPEROR OF SHOES tackles a topic we are all interested in: what does it really mean that everything we own and wear and buy for our kids is made in China? Who are the people working in these factories? It’s political and real but warm rather than dark and at times it’s really funny.
Q: Tell me a little about how you came to write your novel?
A. My book started out as several stories I was playing around with. The first was the chapter, Guy Gever Stands in the Fields. I had lived in a kibbutz for about half a year with my ex kibbutznik husband and young son. I have lived with and around kibbutzniks for almost twenty years. It was something I was dying to write about! I was fascinated by the concept of communal living in the mold of Marxism and what that meant for a generation of people my own age. Later, I wrote stories about Israeli Navy Seals and then an American woman named Carolyn and an Israeli woman who accidentally leaves her young son alone while she travels to the United States. I decided to take those three or four marginally related stories and write in the connective tissue. Out of all that was born WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE SOLOMONS.
Q. What are you reading and recommending?
I just read a wonderful time travel novel called The Heavens by Sandra Newman coming out from Grove next month. It’s literary but wonderfully readable. A writer friend of mine gave me the new edition of Just Kids by Patti Smith with the photograph that I’m rereading. I love her very grounded mysticism.
Q. What are you working on now?
I’m working on a new novel about a group of families in a satellite town of New York City. I was kind of a lonely only child growing up without a lot of family or community so I like to populate my books – as I once did my imaginary games – with a lot of people. Reading them is fine but I would feel lonely and claustrophobic writing a book from the POV of just one person!
~Robin Wood, Associate Manager