Author Interview with Eleanor Brown

Eleanor Brown's debut The Weird Sisters was recently released and after having the chance to read and review it, she was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions for In The Next Room.

Where did the inspiration from The Weird Sisters come from? Do you have any sisters yourself?
I am the youngest of three sisters, which definitely sparked my interest in birth order and family roles, one of the themes I knew I wanted to write about. After that, pieces just started to come together to create the story of The Weird Sisters - the family obsession with Shakespeare, the collective first-person narrator, the struggles over what it means to become an adult. It was like holding a magnet and watching little scraps of ideas cling to it until it became a novel!

Do you see yourself in Cordy, Rose or Bean?
I see myself in all three of them, and I hope others do, too! Their conflicts are ones I have felt and have seen others experience - the struggle to find a place to call home, feeling torn between a life of adventure and a life of safety, the difficulty in becoming truly independent, and trying to figure out who you are outside of the role your family places you in.

The Weird Sisters quotes a lot of Shakespeare plays, did you reread his whole canon before you wrote the novel, or just used quotes that came to mind?
I definitely did not read all of the plays, but I read and saw a number of them! I did have a list of quotations I wanted to use, but I found I couldn't write scenes just to use them, so I ended up having to go back to my poor, dog-eared Collected Works a great deal in order to find the right quotation for the situation. Other times there was a play or a character I knew I wanted to reference, so finding something to use there was far easier.

Do you have a favourite Shakespeare play?
I don't think I could pick one! I do love the snappy dialogue between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, and since Macbeth was the first play I ever really loved, I have kind of a soft spot for it (Lady Macbeth is such a great character!). But since I far prefer to see Shakespeare performed rather than read it, I think I have favorite productions rather than favorite plays - a great version of Much Ado set in a USO, performed by the University of Miami, a terrific take on The Tempest at The Globe Theater in London, an awfully sad version of Othello by the Folger Theater in Washington, D.C. I love to see the creativity directors take with Shakespeare and the way a great actor can bring the language to life.

Where do you do your reading and writing?
Wherever I can! I read anywhere and everywhere - my greatest fear is being caught in a line or a waiting room without a book. I have an office at home with a comfy chaise lounge and a treadmill desk, and I've written in both locations, but I'm not picky - I'd write during an aerobics class at the gym if the muse struck me!

What did you do when you found out The Weird Sisters had been sold?
I called my sweetie, J.C. Hutchins, who is also a writer and we celebrated together. Then I went back to work. Clearly, I am not a good celebrator.

Now that you've published this awesome debut, what are you working on next?
Wow, thank you! I'm kind of superstitious about talking about works in progress, but I will say I've been doing a lot of thinking about love and marriage and divorce and how they all fit together. We'll see what comes of it!

Born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, Eleanor Brown has lived in St. Paul, San Francisco, Philadelphia, South Florida, and Oxford, London, and Brighton, England. She lives in Colorado with her partner, writer and new media superstar, J.C. Hutchins. Eleanor’s writing has appeared in anthologies, journals, magazines, and newspapers. The Weird Sisters, her first novel, will be published by Amy Einhorn Books on January 20, 2011.

Thanks so much to Eleanor Brown for her time, and I fully recommend the warm-hearted The Weird Sisters. Click here to read a review of the novel on In The Next Room. To learn more about the book, visit Eleanor's website http://www.eleanor-brown.com/

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

"There's no problem a library card can't solve."

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown tells the story of Andreas sisters, Cordelia (Cordy), Bianca (Bean) and Rosalie (Rose) who grew up in a small college town where their Dad teaches Shakespeare. When the girls got older they went their separate ways but a series of events beginning with their mother getting breast cancer means that all three girls end up back at home under the same roof- a situation just begging for trouble.

I had been looking forward to The Weird Sisters for quite some time, featuring it in a Waiting on Wednesday post last October, so when I received the book I was eager to find out if Brown's debut lived up to my expectations. Thankfully, it did. The novel is clever and engaging, and although it took me a little while to get used to the first person plural ("we") narrator, I came to appreciate it as a way to show the connection between the sisters, even when they bicker and fight sometimes. As a girl with a twin sister and two stepsisters myself, I appreciated that the relationship between the Andreas sisters was not all sunshine, but instead filled with ups and downs which felt genuine and relateable. In addition to simply being an enjoyable book to read, The Weird Sisters offers interesting insight into topics like a woman's role- the girl's mother never worked- and what family really means. Also, having personally spent the last four years in exactly the kind of town that The Weird Sisters takes place in, a little university town which is basically dead over the summer and doesn't even have a gas station, I found Brown's setting completely realistic and in fact it actually made me quite nostalgic.

There were a few awkward patches, mostly involving the conversations between characters. Brown ties in actual quotes from Shakespeare in dialogue throughout the novel and occasionally I felt that the connection was a bit tenuous. I also felt that some of the male characters in the book were weaker, and I didn't feel the same attachment to them as I did to the female ones. Even minor characters like the female librarian seemed more dimensional than Rose's fiance for example. However the sisters themselves were completely warm and real. Ultimately, I do think it'll be mostly female readers drawn to the book, and I am confident they will find a lot to love. The Weird Sisters not only fills the reader with warmth but manages to be intelligent, funny and clever as well; it is certainly worth the read.

Release Date: January 20, 2011
Pages: 336
Overall: 4/5
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This review was a part of TLC Book Tours. Click here to read what other tour hosts thought. For the purpose of this review I was provided with a copy of the book which did not require a positive review. The opinions expressed in this post are completely my own. 

Waiting on Wednesday: The Weird Sisters

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Having grown up with a twin sister and two stepsisters, I'm pretty familiar with how complex the relationships between sisters can be. I also love reading, and so add those two together and you have the upcoming release The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown, coming February 17, 2011 from Amy Einhorn Books.

The Andreas sisters were raised on books – their family motto might as well be, ‘There’s no problem a library card can’t solve.’  Their father, a renowned, eccentric professor of Shakespearean studies, named them after three of the Bard’s most famous characters: Rose (Rosalind – As You Like It), Bean (Bianca – The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (Cordelia – King Lear), but they have inherited those characters’ failures along with their strengths.

Now the sisters have returned home to the small college town where they grew up – partly because their mother is ill, but mostly because their lives are falling apart and they don’t know where to go next.  Rose, a staid mathematics professor, has the chance to break away from her quiet life and join her devoted fiance in England, if she could only summon up the courage to do more than she’s thought she could.  Bean left home as soon as she could, running to the glamour of New York City, only to come back ashamed of the person she has become.  And Cordy, who has been wandering the country for years, has been brought back to earth with a resounding thud, realizing it’s finally time for her to grow up.

The sisters never thought they would find the answers to their problems in each other, but over the course of one long summer, they find that everything they’ve been running from – each other, their histories, and their small hometown – might offer more than they ever expected.

The Weird Sisters is Brown's first book, but the description already has me hooked and I can't wait to dive in this February. What book are you looking forward to?