Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working full-time and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001.Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards.
Lippman's latest novel is Sunburn.
From her Q&A with Martha Greengrass at the Waterstones blog:
Your book plays very inventively with stereotypes, particularly the trope of so-called ‘bad girls’ in fiction. Were those stereotypes something you were keen on interrogating and subverting from the outset?Visit Laura Lippman's website.
I definitely wanted to invert much of the classic set-up, in which an attractive stranger comes to town, only to be distracted by someone. That’s how The Postman Always Rings Twice begins. But Postman is also a story about a wanderer versus someone who yearns for domesticity/rootedness, and I didn’t try to flip that script. Polly wants a home, something she’s never really had.
The novel begins with a woman, Polly, making the decision to walk out on her husband and child. Why you think the censure levelled at women who leave their families is one of the most entrenched social taboos? Did you set out to write a story that would encounter the different ways in which men and women are held to account about their family responsibilities?
I was always very interested in the sly way women spoke about Ladder of Years when it came out. Anne Tyler’s novel is warm and comic, her character is pretty much justified in bolting - but all the women I knew at the time, especially those with families, spoke...[read on]
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--Marshal Zeringue