When one of many two central characters in your debut novel is lifeless, there are unintended penalties, as Anna Montague reveals at first of our dialog about How Does That Make You Really feel, Magda Eklund? Within the e-book, Magda, a psychiatrist who is popping 70, takes a prolonged, life-changing street journey with the cremated stays of her finest pal, Sara, buckled into the passenger seat beside her.
“My condominium is simply lined in urns,” Montague says, talking from the Brooklyn condominium into which she has simply moved. “I’m truly actually trying ahead to exploring different decor choices as soon as the e-book is out. I’ve possibly 15 in my entryway.”
Actually, Montague’s late grandfather, who was the manuscript’s first reader, recommended she name her e-book The Urn. Individuals have already been sending them to her, and little doubt she’ll be getting extra with the publication of her extremely anticipated novel. What’s extra, one among these gifted vessels may very well include stays. “It sounds distinctly like there are some ashes in it,” Montague says, laughing, “however it appears to be locked. I don’t know who despatched it, so I’m in a little bit of a holding sample with that one.”
“I keep in mind questioning what it could be wish to attempt to begin over . . . whenever you’re in your 70s, and also you assume you’ve gotten every little thing sorted out.”
Whereas she was engaged on the e-book, Montague misplaced not solely her 100-year-old grandfather, however two different pricey folks: her 94-year-old grandmother and a lady named Dorothy (Dot), one among her father’s aged neighbors whom she had befriended. Someday, as Montague dog-sat for Dot’s husband, who was touring, she all of the sudden realized that Dot’s ashes have been in an urn within the room the place she was writing. She notes that “lots of the impulses that Magda has” in direction of her pal’s urn within the e-book—like speaking to it—“are very true to actual life. At the least for me. I discovered that the will to attach and pay homage to that individual nonetheless very a lot existed in ways in which I didn’t anticipate.”
Montague’s preliminary inspiration for the story got here when her therapist dropped her. “It’s not as unhappy because it sounds,” she interjects, explaining that in the course of the pandemic, her therapist—whom she guesses was in her 70s—determined to downsize her apply to solely sufferers she was seeing often. “Once I requested her what she was planning on doing with all of that newfound free time,” she continues, “there was a pause. And she or he stated, ‘I don’t know, possibly I’ll journey.’ I keep in mind questioning what it could be wish to attempt to begin over . . . whenever you’re in your 70s, and also you assume you’ve gotten every little thing sorted out.”
Enthusiastic about her therapist led Montague to the character of Magda, and Sara’s character appeared quickly after. “I assumed I used to be drafting a brief story,” Montague remembers. “And inside a few pages, Sara was already there. I assumed, ‘Okay, that is maybe not a brief story, and that is undoubtedly concerning the relationship, the friendship between these two girls.’”
Readers who plunge into this heartfelt, well-told saga could also be stunned to find that Montague is just 31. “It is rather simple for me to jot down from the vantage level of a senior citizen,” she admits with amusing. “Maybe too simple.” She describes her friendship with an 80-year-old named Lena, noting, “for those who simply had a profile of the 2 of us, you’ll by no means know that I used to be the youthful one. [Lena] likes dancing to deal with music and afternoon boat cruises, and I’m usually in mattress with a cup of tea at an hour that I received’t disclose. However I’ve spent plenty of my life round considerably older folks, a lot of whom have been mining the troublesome house of recognizing that their lives have been greater than seemingly half over, generally greater than three-quarters over.” The conversations Magda has with herself about what it means to enter her 70s are drawn from ones Montague has had “with lots of the older people in my life.”
“Most ladies I do know develop into happier and extra fulfilled as they grow old,” she provides, “and I needed Magda to very slowly come to phrases with that.”
“That’s the absurdity of a street journey, proper? You’ll be able to have all of it mapped out completely, however you can not anticipate all the occasions that may occur.”
Montague acquired to know Lena by SAGE, a nationwide group that advocates for LGBTQ+ elders and fosters intergenerational connections amongst LGBTQ+ folks. Listening to about Lena’s experiences residing in New York knowledgeable Montague’s writing, together with her determination to set How Does That Make You Really feel, Magda Eklund? in 2011, simply earlier than New York state’s Marriage Equality Act.
“One of many issues I used to be eager about fairly a bit whereas writing was the inherent queerness of feminine friendship,” she explains. “The intimacies which are allowed each privately and publicly to feminine pals that aren’t allowed to males. As an grownup, for instance, I’ll usually have a pal keep over, and my male pals would by no means have a sleepover. . . . Girls are inspired to assist one another in methods each emotional and bodily [that] are so totally different from the ways in which males are socialized.” She means that the intimacy of feminine friendships will be complicated for male companions, even a supply of envy, “as a result of it’s a level of closeness that they haven’t been allowed. And possibly it’s even a level of closeness . . . they haven’t been capable of obtain with their companions, , as a result of these wants are being met elsewhere.”
Montague dedicates her e-book to her pal Isabel, whom she calls “the platonic nice love of my life.” They met at summer season camp and have been “a continuing” in one another’s lives since they have been 13. The 2 speak day by day, and as Isabel is a poet, they usually confer about writing initiatives.
As soon as Montague determined that Magda would take a street journey, she says, “I had a reasonably good sense of the place she would go, however I didn’t have as a lot of a way of what would occur to her emotional or mental self alongside the way in which. That’s the absurdity of a street journey, proper? You’ll be able to have all of it mapped out completely, however you can not anticipate all the occasions that may occur.” She provides, “The primary draft had many extra flat tires and a variety of extra absurd characters who didn’t make it by to the ultimate manuscript.”
Montague additionally turned to psychology textbooks for reference. They have been helpful for chronicling Magda’s psychiatric apply in addition to Magda’s personal interior struggles, that are a lot tougher for Magda to face than her sufferers’ quandaries. Montague confesses, “There have been many moments after I simply wished I might seize Magda by the shoulders and shake her. After which I needed to do not forget that I used to be the one creating this individual and all of her issues—which meant I used to be additionally answerable for fixing them.” By no means worry, readers. The options—and the lengthy and winding roads that Magda takes to achieve them—are one of many many delights of this e-book.
The writer nonetheless feels related to Magda and Sara, and anticipates that these characters might reappear in her writing. Nonetheless, she is now “very a lot within the weeds with the following one”—one thing fully totally different. Montague is an especially busy literary skilled: She additionally works as an editor for Dey Avenue Books, specializing in narrative nonfiction, science and wellness books. (She lately labored on NPR music critic Ann Powers’ “kaleidoscopic” biography of Joni Mitchell, Touring.) Montague says that it helps that she suffers from insomnia, which provides her time at night time for her personal writing. Writing fiction whereas enhancing nonfiction dovetails properly for her. “It looks like there’s simply sufficient distance between the 2, however there’s sufficient overlap that I can study and apply these learnings to the opposite,” she explains.
Montague has at all times stuffed her life with books, and juggling between totally different ones is nothing new. As a preschooler in Irvington, New York, she stored books in a number of rooms in order that one was at all times on the prepared. She stored one in her bed room, one other within the kitchen and yet one more within the entrance hallway so she’d have one thing to have a look at whereas placing on her footwear. She started writing brief tales at a younger age as effectively. “I used to be at all times notably captivated by folks and their motivations for—every little thing actually,” she says with amusing. “I feel on the coronary heart of it, that’s at all times a principal focus and fascination of mine.”
What about that therapist who dropped her and impressed How Does That Make You Really feel, Magda Eklund? Does she plan to ship her a duplicate?
“Sure,” Montague says. “She was very excited to listen to concerning the e-book, and we’ve exchanged letters right here and there. My present therapist can be excited to learn it, however I’m a bit petrified of what they’ll make of it.”
Learn our overview of How Does That Make You Really feel, Magda Eklund?
Anna Montague writer photograph by Hannah Solomon.