After publishing short fiction in many publications, Raymond Fleischmann’s debut novel How Quickly She Disappears was released by Penguin Random House (Berkley Books) in January of this year. Billed as a cross between The Silence of the Lambs and The Dry, this heart-pounding thriller definitely did not disappoint!
We had the opportunity to talk with Fleischmann about his novel and its inspirations, as well as his love of comic books, his grandparents’ time in Tanacross, Alaska where his novel is set, and how real world events play a critical story role when novels are set in the past. We were also fortunate enough to get a tiny idea about his next book.
Hi Raymond! Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Well, I grew up just outside of Washington, D.C., but I went to both graduate school and undergrad in the Midwest. I’ve lived in Seattle, too, but at this point in my life Bloomington, Indiana, really feels like my home. I live there with my wife and three daughters. I’m 36 years old, and I generally prefer cats to dogs and the winter to the summer. I don’t have many dreams at night, but when I do, I mostly dream of music. I brush my teeth a lot because I hate going to the dentist.
Was writing something you always knew you wanted to do, or did you come about it through a more circuitous path?
It’s definitely something I came to through a circuitous path. I was not at all an avid reader until college, and even then I didn’t want to write prose. I wanted to write comic books. I even created my own major in undergrad, a major I called “Writing for Sequential Art,” which was essentially scriptwriting for comics. And as part of the curriculum I designed, I made myself take some fiction workshops, and what I found was that I far preferred writing short stories and novels to writing comics. I still love comics — they’re kind of my first writing love, in effect — but I certainly came to prose writing somewhat late.
What were some of your influences in writing How Quickly She Disappears?
I think my whole life influenced How Quickly She Disappears, at least on the level of its characters and what makes them up, but if you’re asking about books and the like, I think that all of my writing has been influenced by books like In Cold Blood and writers like J.M. Coetzee and Ian McEwan. I’m drawn to novels that are propelled by relatively simple, often violent acts, but do so in a way that’s careful, human, and deeply examined.
Your incredible depictions of the Alaskan setting are so striking and vivid – do you have a connection to the area? Have you visited or lived there?
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, my paternal grandparents lived in Tanacross, Alaska, which is the small Athabaskan village where my novel is set. Apart from the broadest biographical details, the characters in my novel really bear nothing in common with my grandparents — both my grandmother and grandfather were lovely, inspiring people, and they were happily married for over sixty years — but I grew up hearing their stories about Alaska and the cold, the isolation, the long days, the long nights. So, although my characters are quite fictional, the setting is very real, and I did my best to describe it accurately and respectfully. I’m glad you think I got it right.
In your novel, Elisabeth’s connection to her twin sister is so deep and illustrated in such a heart-tugging way, it made me wonder if you ARE a twin, or have twins in your family?
I’m not a twin, and I don’t have any twins in my family, but I’m flattered that you felt the need to ask this question. I do have a sister, however — my sister Lydia, who’s two years older than me — and I think that many of the novel’s meditations on siblings and family were certainly influenced by her presence in my life. Siblings are special, you know? They’re your first friends, and you feel indelibly tied to them in a great many ways.
Global events of the time, particularly World War II, have an effect on characters and situations in the novel, but you chose to set the opening events in a unique time period just before the U.S. entered the war. How did you decide on that exact timing?
I’ve always thought that the interwar period was an interesting time in U.S. history, and it’s one that hasn’t been written about as much as the years that immediately followed. Novels set in the past walk an interesting tightrope: They’re fictional, of course, but because historical events are quite real, the story has to conform to events that really happened, at least if you’re striving to write realist fiction. So, in that way, beginning the novel in the summer of 1941 appealed to me because I knew it would give some inherent structure to the narrative. I knew that Pearl Harbor would occur in December 1941, and that this would steer the story in some way. I knew that there would be widespread anxiety about the war, and that this would steer the story, too. Creating a narrative for an entire novel can feel a bit daunting, but these historical events and the touchstones they offered made it a little easier to build my narrative.
You (very effectively) use a lot of flashbacks to tell this story. Did you always imagine telling it that way, or did you ever consider structuring the story any other way?
The flashback scenes were actually a very late addition to the story. The novel went through about five major drafts, and the flashback chapters didn’t make it in until the fourth draft. I was worried that these chapters might do nothing more than ruin the pacing of the novel, but what I found was that they helped it, I think, and hopefully they added more dimensions to the characters, too. So much of the story revolves around the main character’s missing sister, and I realized that we needed to meet that sister on the page, not just hear our main character’s reminiscences of her.
If I may ask a slightly personal question, in the acknowledgements of your book, you have written such sweet, beautiful words about your wife that it is practically poetry! So where in the world did you get the inspiration for the cold, loveless marriage of John and Elisabeth?!
You’ve really done your homework! I’m flattered that you read my acknowledgements, too. My wife is pretty great, and the simple answer is that I wrote those scenes before ever meeting her. All in all, this novel took me about six years to write, and the chilly dynamics between John and Elisabeth were laid out very early on. And honestly, their marriage is so rough because, well, nice marriages aren’t interesting. Stories are all about conflict, and I knew that Elisabeth’s marriage would have to suffer for the sake of a more compelling story.
On a day where you can read purely for pleasure, what books and authors do you tend to reach for?
T.C. Boyle or David Sedaris. Boyle has been writing consistently amazing short stories for almost forty years now, and every story of his is just so damn readable. It carries you from sentence to sentence, movement to movement. Sedaris is the same way, but of course he’s funnier, and frankly I’m surprised that he’s not more widely celebrated. He’s immensely popular, naturally, but that’s not what I mean by “celebrated.” I feel like David Sedaris is one of the greatest living stylists we have, and yet this isn’t talked about enough. He’s funny, sure, but does everyone realize what a great writer he is? He’s absolutely masterful.
And finally, what is coming up next for you? What projects are on the horizon?
I’m plugging away on my second novel, which Penguin Random House bought along with my first. My next book is set on a fictional island off the coast of Seattle, and it’s about a young woman who moves back home to renovate and sell the house where her father was killed ten years earlier. Unbeknownst to her, however, she befriends her father’s murderer, and the story goes from there. Think House of Sand and Fog meets The Stranger Beside Me.
Raymond Fleischmann’s debut novel, How Quickly She Disappears, is available now from Penguin Random House (Berkley Books). Fleischmann has published short fiction in The Iowa Review, Cimarron Review, The Pinch, and Los Angeles Review, among many others, and he’s received fellowships and scholarships from Richard Hugo House and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He earned his MFA from Ohio State University and now lives in Bloomington, Ind., with his wife and three daughters. Follow him on Instagram @raymond.fleischmann or on Twitter @R_Fleischmann.
