Lizz Schumer and Anne Leigh Parrish Talk About Trust and How Stories Connect Us
I met Anne in that strange, liminal space so many of us are these days: Online, while planning a virtual event reading for my latest book, Biography of a Body. We share a publisher, Unsolicited Press, who matched us up as co-readers because so much of our work explores similar themes. But while I write personal essays and hybrid poetry that delve into what it’s like to be a woman in the world through a highly personal lens, Anne’s fiction brings to life richly painted characters who feel like people you already know. In A Winter Night, we meet Angie Dugan, 34, a social worker struggling with her career, her anxiety, and her difficult family. But like so many of us, she’s also looking for a love she can lean on. Many of the themes in this book — substance abuse, mental health, how much we can trust each other, and whose feelings are worthwhile — feel so pertinent right now, as so many of us grapple with those same issues in isolation. Anne and I talked about what readers can find in this book and how it fits into our broader context.
Lizz Schumer: First, I am always fascinated by titles. The fact that the story is set in the winter certainly tips me off as to why A Winter Night fits on one level, but can you expound a bit on why else that tile works for this book in particular or how you came to it while writing?
Anne Leigh Parrish: I grew up in the Finger Lakes Region of upstate New York, where A Winter Night is set. Winters were long and hard. On a psychic level, winter felt like a retreat, a need to withdraw and seek protection, but it also was a chance to be quiet and reflect. I often sat at my window and watched the snow fall, thinking of the world being covered, lying in wait, preparing itself for the next season. I felt like I did that, too. I waited for time to pass, and my eagerness for what came next was my way of preparing for it.
LS: Without giving too much away, substance use is a major theme in this book. I wonder if you can talk about how you decided to incorporate it, what sort of research you did in order to depict it accurately and thoughtfully. Why do you think it's such a compelling topic, especially now?
ALP: A lot of my characters are train wrecks, and the reason many of them go off the rails is because of alcohol and drug use. These things make someone unreliable, despite his best intentions when he’s sober. My research is personal experience. I have been close to people similarly afflicted, and trying to understand them, and not be harmed by them, spurs me to write about them. With the stress of the pandemic, the economy, and the presidential election, I have to think a lot of us are struggling with substance and alcohol abuse and trying not to jump down our own dreadful rabbit holes.
LS: Similarly, I noticed that weight, food, and the body type of your female characters was also very heavily featured. It struck me that you describe your characters as attaching a lot of value to their size and the food they're consuming (or not consuming). Why do you think that's such a driving force in our culture, and what inspired you to focus on that element?
ALP: Angie Dugan, my thirty-four-year-old protagonist, carries a little too much weight. She’s the only one who cares about this, but she imputes the concern to her love interest, Matt. Early in the novel, she reflects on the fact they haven’t yet slept together, and she wonders if her weight is to blame. I think Angie represents many women in our culture, regardless of what number pops up on the bathroom scale. Men are judged by how much money they make; women by how attractive they are. Angie’s self-doubt is so deep, so hard to soothe and bolster, that even when Matt tells her how great she looks, she doesn’t believe him.
LS: I saw a lot of my own late grandmother's elder care facility in the one where Angie works, which was really touching. I loved the emphasis on the residents' stories. In one scene, two characters talk about the fact that we all tell ourselves stories and that stories keep us human. As a writer, why is it important to you to tell these people's stories, and how do you think storytelling draws out our humanity, in general?
ALP: The purpose of writing — of any art — is to remind us of our common humanity. Stories hold us together across space in one generation, and across time from one generation to the next. The stories we tell ourselves are how we navigate the world. They’re our own private religion and mythology about how we became who we are and why that’s important. Often these stories are based on lies which defend us against how we believe others see us. We take these stories and soften a painful past and brighten an uncertain future.
LS: Similarly, there's a scene in which several of the characters talk about whose feelings are worth protecting. That's such a fascinating idea. Can you talk more about how we make that decision in our lives, and how that sometimes drives our relationships with others?
ALP: I think we learn to view and characterize people through the lens of their weaknesses, or what we perceive as their weaknesses. This speaks again to substance abuse and how it warps not just the perspective of the user, but also the perception of those who have to deal with it. In Angie’s case, her father has a long-standing problem with alcohol. He drinks — or drank, since he’s put much of it behind him now — because he knows how badly he disappointed Angie’s mother, Lavinia. Lavinia suffers a lot, too, but because she just carries on and does what’s required of her, the vibe she gives off is one of strength and being secure in herself, even if she’s not. Angie comes to see that she tends to protect her father because she thinks he can’t take care of himself, when he can. And she tends to overlook her mother’s pain and unhappiness because she functions at a higher level.
LS: I love the complicated relationships in this book, especially those between men and women. Do you model those after anyone in your own life? Who are some of your influences when crafting these relationships between people?
ALP: I’ve been married almost forty-four years, and that’s a long time to spend both observing and experiencing marriage and romantic love. My own parents never seemed to talk about anything important, which contributed to their getting divorced. Many people didn’t open up to their partners back then, probably because it wasn’t encouraged or accepted. I don’t know. My husband and I strive for candor, though we don’t always get there. There’s so much under the surface the other person never sees, yet somehow knows is there. This creates the presence of enormous complexity which both keeps a relationship interesting but can cause strain, especially when other things in life, like careers and what’s going on with your children, go against you.
LS: The meaning of reliability and the limits of how much we can really rely on one another (as well as what it means to go too far) are also explored in depth here. What about that theme interested you? Why do you think it's such an interesting one to explore?
ALP: How much you can rely on someone really comes down to how much you can trust them, assuming they’ve shown themselves to be fairly steady in the first place. We learn this first as children under the care of our parents. Mine were reliable in some ways, and unreliable in crucial ways, especially when it came to affection and offering moral support. They were very wrapped up in themselves, and I never trusted their affection for me, as a result. In Angie’s case, she knows her father loves her unconditionally even though he can’t be counted on to be where he says he’ll be. Her mother is the opposite. She doesn’t hand out affection, though she feels it deeply enough, and is always on time. So, I think it’s a study in what it means to be reliable and more importantly, how. Will one reliably show affection? Kindness? Pay the bills and do chores? Some people are better at some of these than others, and Angie’s is trying to figure out just where Matt falls on this spectrum.
LS: There's a line in A Winter Night that "love is giving someone a chance," which I think is a beautiful sentiment. I'd love to know if there was a particular moment in your own life, or during the creative process, that led you to that idea.
ALP: Angie is constantly confronting her doubts about people, especially Matt. It’s easy for her to assume the worst, and figure he’s just another guy who’s let her down, even when he’s speaking and acting to the contrary. He admits his mistakes then goes on making them, and this drives her crazy. I was proud of her for not falling into the trap some women do, where they tell themselves that the man’s failings are her fault, that she didn’t believe in him enough, or give him enough confidence. Matt asks her flat out if she’ll give them a chance and she sees that she has to, that people don’t come with guarantees. It’s a risk she simply has to take.
LS: One of the things I found fascinating about this story is how timeless it feels. It could have taken place last year, or 20 years ago (a few technological tweaks notwithstanding). Was that intentional?
ALP: I can’t say it was, but I’m glad you found it so. It’s a huge compliment, really. I want my stories to last and not be nailed down to the current time, because life always moves on. The situation Angie finds herself in is timeless, I think, because it’s universal. She wants to find love and has been burned. She has to put herself on the line and try to overcome her doubts and not be all starry-eyed and unrealistic. It’s a hard balance to strike, finding that boundary between oneself and another person, especially because the boundary is always in motion, always shifting.
LS: Let's talk a bit about the writing process. Can you give us a little insight into how this book came to be, and who some of your greatest influences were while writing it? Who are you reading these days? Are there authors your readers might enjoy as a dessert course after finishing this one?
ALP: Well, I love Alice Munro and William Trevor. They are my major influences, and I’d suggest both as dessert to the main course of A Winter Night. As to my writing process, I never outline. Instead, I just roll forward then pause and reread what I’ve got, trying to sense the subtext and direction. I also start pulling out plot threads that need to be resolved or carried through. The one thing I must have always have in hand as I go — or even to begin a story at all — is to know how it ends. Then it’s a matter of building to that point, filling in all that’s blank before then.
