Christine Sneed's latest novel is Paris, He Said.From her Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:
Paris is such a character in itself--I bet the research was a great deal of fun, no? I realize you were once a student there, but did you return? Did anything surprise you in the way your characters relate to Paris--and the way Paris relates to them?--Marshal Zeringue
It was a lot of fun to write about Paris and to do the research for this novel. I’ve been to Paris about a dozen times since 1991, the year I was a student in France (I studied in Strasbourg but took five or six trips to Paris during that year.) I made two trips to Paris, both during the first week in September in 2013 and 2014, while writing this novel. Even though I knew how beautiful a city it was, I hadn’t been there for a number of years before my 2013 trip, and I think it startled me just how beautiful it is.
My main characters, Jayne and Laurent, don’t take their privileged lives for granted in Paris, though Jayne does find herself getting habituated to the city’s many marvels and awe-inspiring beauty after a few months. Laurent is from a village outside of Dijon, which is several hours southeast of Paris, and he has always thought of Paris as a city of wonders, and I wanted that marvelousness to come through on every page, if possible. He is a devout pleasure-seeker, Jayne less so. And it was this disparity in temperament where I tried to make the conflict was most palpable between them.
What was so fascinating about your novel is the way you explore how people navigate what they think they want, and how they discover what they really need, instead. Could you comment on this please?
I don’t think we often truly know what...[read on]