“I think many readers would agree, that they like strong females. It doesn’t have to be superhero strong, but these women who can kind of overcome the odds.” Author Mary Kubica talks to host J.T. Ellison about The Other Mrs. on NPT’s A Word on Words.
Mary Kubica Recommends
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah
What She Knew,, Gilly Macmillan
I’ll Give You the Sun, Jandy Nelson
About Mary Kubica
Mary Kubica is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of five novels. A former high school history teacher, Mary holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in History and American Literature. She lives outside of Chicago with her husband and two children. Her first novel The Good Girl was an Indie Next pick in August of 2014, received a Strand Critics Nomination for Best First Novel and was a nominee in the Goodreads Choice Awards in Debut Goodreads Author and in Mystery & Thriller for 2014. Mary’s novels have been translated into over thirty languages and have sold over two million copies worldwide.
Video Transcript
“- Hi, my name is Mary Kubica and this is The Other Mrs.
– [J.T.] You tell the story in three points of view. All female, talk to me about the choices about that.
– When I write from multiple perspectives, I actually write one narrator in her or his entirety. And, you know, then jump back once they finish that entire storyline. Jump back and pick up with another point of view, and write that story in its entirety. So I wrote Sadie first and then Camille and those were the two that I sort of knew from the beginning. I wanted to tell this story, but I knew that we were gonna need a third voice and it was gonna be different, because it’s a child. And, you know just getting her voice was a little different. She’s told in the third person, which is is the first time, that I have actually, written in the third person in any of my books. It’s not my comfort zone. But I felt like to do this character justice. I needed to do it that way.
– [J.T.] I wanna talk about, the power of women versus the idea of powerful women. Do we ever want to read about a weak female?
– Many readers would agree that they like strong females. It doesn’t. It doesn’t have to be, you know, superhero strong, but you know, these women who can kind of overcome the odds and Sadie, she is in a very dark place at many moments throughout this novel. I think that it’s important for the reader to see her really struggling against the odds to become successful throughout this book, and to try and keep her family together. When, it’s you know everything else says that her family is going to break apart. There are moments where she, absolutely shows weakness and a lot of it, but I think what is really redeeming is the way that she grows and gets stronger throughout the course of the book.
– I think we all love the idea, of getting a fresh start. Can we ever really escape our past?
– You know, we can’t. I don’t think you know, I think it’s so hard to do that because even if you physically leave, the emotion, all that emotional baggage that stays with you, but you know just because you physically changed locations, everything, all that emotion, that bad feelings that you have about it, that sticks with you.
– [J.T.] Thank you so much for being here.
– Thank you so much for having me.
– And thank you for watching A Word on Words. I’m J.T.Ellison. Keep reading.
– [Mary] We never know what struggles, another person is going through, you know, we never know what is there right beneath the surface. We only know what people are willing to share with us. And sometimes that isn’t fully forthcoming.”
