Full Transcript for Mary Beth Keane, Whale Harbor

00:03:53.990 --> 00:03:55.087 I have to make my way there. 00:03:55.092 --> 00:03:55.670 I just can't. 00:03:55.674 --> 00:04:05.582 But once I establish myself, I'll bring you over." And he leaves, and in the meantime, a little while goes by, and that younger brother runs away, and they don't hear from him again. 00:04:05.625 --> 00:04:10.038 You know, and it becomes sort of the thing that haunts the family as they go through time. 00:04:10.038 --> 00:04:13.644 They establish themselves in, in the US or wherever they end up. 00:04:13.646 --> 00:04:17.952 They have families of their own, but still that lost brother is 00:04:18.160 --> 00:04:23.192 that binds them and is like a sort of grief that never gets addressed, I suppose. 00:04:23.213 --> 00:04:24.721 And so the book is sort of about that. 00:04:25.357 --> 00:04:25.709 All right. 00:04:25.713 --> 00:04:33.348 So location is such a huge thing in the beginning of this, and I'm gonna butcher this name, and so I'm gonna hope you to dive in and correct it for me. 00:04:33.598 --> 00:04:35.283 Cuan an Mhil Mór. 00:04:35.295 --> 00:04:38.083 I told you I sound like I said something from Game of Thrones, so 00:04:38.809 --> 00:04:43.163 Well, my dad was an Irish speaker, and I don't know how to pronounce most of these things. 00:04:43.175 --> 00:04:49.345 I know it's the Cuan, and I have not pronounced aloud the full name of the town because they wouldn't either. 00:04:49.396 --> 00:04:56.055 So the two central events of the book are things that actually did happen to my dad. 00:04:56.096 --> 00:05:03.499 That was one reason it was important to me to keep the 11 siblings, to keep the Irish language aspect of it in it. 00:05:03.615 --> 00:05:11.163 But yeah, place is a big thing because it's not only in Ireland, it's like a very specific part of Ireland. 00:05:11.370 --> 00:05:22.483 You know, if you read a different book set in the'60s and it was in Dublin or Cork, it would be a very different, um, setting than this rural part of Connemara. 00:05:23.262 --> 00:05:25.377 It's the western part of Galway, correct? 00:05:25.451 --> 00:05:26.267 Yeah, mm-hmm. 00:05:26.797 --> 00:05:27.252 Yeah. 00:05:27.312 --> 00:05:29.593 You have been over to Ireland a lot, correct? 00:05:29.805 --> 00:05:30.564 Yeah, uh-huh. 00:05:30.600 --> 00:05:32.218 Both of my parents are from Ireland, yeah. 00:05:32.916 --> 00:05:37.461 And did you get to spend, like when you were researching this and go, did you get to spend time over there specifically? 00:05:38.745 --> 00:05:45.896 Yeah, I mean, I go over quite a bit to see my cousins or for, you know, lately it'll be like for a funeral and I'll stay a little bit longer. 00:05:45.990 --> 00:05:46.826 We brought the kids. 00:05:46.857 --> 00:05:56.932 But I did two research trips for this book, like with it in mind, but it's kind of easy because it's just the place where my father's from. 00:05:57.331 --> 00:06:01.435 I didn't name it the place where he's from'cause I didn't

have to wanna match it. 00:06:01.831 --> 00:06:07.656 I didn't wanna have to capture a real place'cause the spirit was more important than, like, where the town hall was. 00:06:07.670 --> 00:06:07.903 Yeah. 00:06:07.903 --> 00:06:08.916 Where was the bus station? 00:06:09.377 --> 00:06:15.553 So I did go, but it was mostly to talk about the way things were in the'60s. 00:06:15.569 --> 00:06:18.286 Like even simple things like, how did you cook? 00:06:18.425 --> 00:06:20.850 How did you-- What kind of roof did you have? 00:06:21.175 --> 00:06:28.940 You know, having like a straw roof seemed, or a thatched roof seemed so insane to me. 00:06:28.940 --> 00:06:33.305 I didn't want it to be too-- My mother has this expression, too diddly diddly Irish. 00:06:33.886 --> 00:06:38.702 Um, and I didn't want that, but at the same time, a lot of people still did have thatched roof. 00:06:38.767 --> 00:06:42.394 I give, I gave this family a slate roof just'cause I didn't wanna deal with it. 00:06:42.653 --> 00:06:49.821 But yeah, I did, I did do a lot of research and also about the language, and how important it is and it was, and how it's changed over time. 00:06:50.865 --> 00:07:11.543 I'm so curious because when you read the premise of the book, and even getting into this idea of 11 siblings, it's almost like a, a-- It's not a trap necessarily, but there's a thing you would think,"Okay, I'm gonna get this book and it's gonna be 700 pages." And by the way, it could've been and I would've been fine with it'cause I was so in, and I love these kind of generational stories. 00:07:11.887 --> 00:07:14.598 But how was it for you in terms of did you know? 00:07:14.598 --> 00:07:28.149 I guess because y- in some ways, you were not necessarily basing, but you were using your father as a springboard, um, to kind of focus in on this one character rather than, you know, you have all these extraneous characters, but it all works. 00:07:28.427 --> 00:07:29.911 I'm just so curious about that thought process. 00:07:29.927 --> 00:07:30.081 Yeah. 00:07:30.158 --> 00:07:32.504 I don't know how it worked, but it did. 00:07:32.521 --> 00:07:35.415 I mean, it had to be a problem. 00:07:35.423 --> 00:07:39.684 So when this event happens- 11 kids is a problem. 00:07:40.098 --> 00:07:44.833 If I had reduced them, like at early drafts, I was like, all right, what if I make it six kids? 00:07:45.446 --> 00:07:47.803 One goes to England, say one goes to the... 00:07:47.841 --> 00:07:50.074 Then you, not only, but you only have four. 00:07:50.276 --> 00:07:52.956 It really had to remain a big problem. 00:07:52.968 --> 00:08:01.081 So 11 just seemed to me the number,'cause it was the number in real life, and it was the number I just wanted to have to deal with. 00:08:01.149 --> 00:08:04.718 I mean, I almost want to include a disclaimer in the beginning. 00:08:04.735 --> 00:08:27.656 I think if I were a shopper, and I'm at my local bookstore, and I pick up a book and it says,"This is about

11 brothers," I'm worried that this feeling of exhaustion will come over a person and be like,"Oh, God, is it gonna include a family tree?" I mean, I, I get this feeling of like, really it's extreme exhaustion when I open and there's either a map or a family tree. 00:08:27.658 --> 00:08:29.435 I'm almost like out immediately. 00:08:30.149 --> 00:08:32.591 But I almost wanna say, you don't have to worry about it. 00:08:32.607 --> 00:08:37.456 They're important, and you will keep track of them, but it's also okay. 00:08:37.469 --> 00:08:41.163 It's just that they're there, and they're different people. 00:08:41.173 --> 00:08:49.936 The one you need to focus on is this one, named Macdara And Rian, who is on his mind for his entire life. 00:08:49.977 --> 00:08:52.445 And then the other ones are also important. 00:08:53.001 --> 00:09:00.591 They're important to Mack, and they're important to me, but you don't have to keep their whole biography in top of mind. 00:09:00.591 --> 00:09:09.284 It's just enough to know that there's a bunch of them, and they love each other, and they're there, but you don't have to keep, you know, who has red hair, who has black hair. 00:09:09.285 --> 00:09:10.583 You don't need to know all that. 00:09:11.174 --> 00:09:13.942 Um, but I can't say that in the beginning. 00:09:14.009 --> 00:09:15.246 You just have to have a little faith. 00:09:15.567 --> 00:09:24.340 Yeah, but it's, and it's truly remarkable that you've stripped it down and it's so streamlined, and yet you still always have the sense of all these people. 00:09:24.341 --> 00:09:34.586 And like you said, you don't necessarily need to know the specifics, and you get specific enough to realize, okay, all of these people are still here, who they are, and their relationships, and as they get older. 00:09:34.976 --> 00:09:37.216 So I think that's a pretty remarkable feat. 00:09:37.647 --> 00:09:38.014 Thanks. 00:09:38.553 --> 00:09:44.974 Um, one of the really interesting characters, but he's so maddening early on, is, uh, Mack's father. 00:09:45.235 --> 00:09:45.697 Cahal. 00:09:45.750 --> 00:09:46.763 Cah- Yeah, he- 00:09:46.765 --> 00:09:47.467 Cahal, yeah. 00:09:47.511 --> 00:09:48.826 Like, pretend it's an H. 00:09:48.888 --> 00:09:49.519 Yeah, Cahal. 00:09:50.102 --> 00:09:50.977 He, uh... 00:09:51.105 --> 00:10:04.320 And he goes through an incredible kind of redemptive arc throughout the book, but I'm so curious because in the start of it, he's so absent in a lot of ways and leaves their poor mother with so much of this responsibility of everything. 00:10:04.405 --> 00:10:12.986 And I kept thinking, like, in terms of where he's at, and do you think for him, a lot of it is, like, the undertaking of taking care of this huge family and how he's gonna make it work? 00:10:13.394 --> 00:10:13.808 Yes. 00:10:14.380 --> 00:10:21.311 I mean, I think also as I get older, when you look back and do some calculations, he was young, you know? 00:10:21.350 --> 00:10:22.860 And there are 11 kids. 00:10:22.870 --> 00:10:30.057 Like, you could not get birth control in Ireland until very, very recently, relatively speaking. 00:10:30.440 --> 00:10:34.140 There were just so many kids, and he felt, and he just couldn't cope. 00:10:34.587 --> 00:10:43.681 I think I have a lot of sympathy for people who cope the wrong way, who do what they think is the right thing, but it's actually the wrong thing. 00:10:44.240 --> 00:10:47.845 I mean, he was making a living for his family. 00:10:47.846 --> 00:10:51.374 He was a postman, which my grandfather was a postman in, in real life. 00:10:51.926 --> 00:10:54.376 Um, and he made poutine on the side. 00:10:54.525 --> 00:11:08.207 But the time when a new baby is in a house, I mean, it sounds like you've done The crying, the constant, and then you've got a two-year-old, a four-year-old, a six-year-old, an eight-year-old, all the way up the line. 00:11:08.881 --> 00:11:13.518 I think he just couldn't deal until things settled down. 00:11:13.519 --> 00:11:15.450 And we always heard stories. 00:11:15.474 --> 00:11:22.898 I mean, the thing about being in a big I didn't have, I only had two siblings, but we had a lot of cousins because both my parents emigrated. 00:11:22.918 --> 00:11:28.256 They both had big families, so all of our get-togethers were just my aunts, uncles, and my cousins. 00:11:28.648 --> 00:11:34.206 And we all had small houses, so the kids were just always in the room listening to stories. 00:11:34.609 --> 00:11:34.707 Mm-hmm. 00:11:34.745 --> 00:11:36.865 And you would hear stories kind of like this. 00:11:36.927 --> 00:11:48.505 Um, but I, when, like, someone else would kind of level an indictment against a guy like that, I tried to figure out what, what would maybe shake him awake. 00:11:48.567 --> 00:12:01.802 And when his son leaves, I think he really starts to pay attention to what he's doing, and he, that's when his arc, you mentioned his arc changes a bit when Rian runs away. 00:12:01.841 --> 00:12:04.154 Um- And he has a whole life. 00:12:04.173 --> 00:12:06.163 He- no one has done this before. 00:12:06.171 --> 00:12:09.253 I think he coped very badly when, when the kids were young. 00:12:09.259 --> 00:12:15.570 But then when he had to step up, I think of him as a person who ultimately did. 00:12:16.105 --> 00:12:16.880 You know, he did... 00:12:16.985 --> 00:12:23.269 made some decisions out of desperation that might have been wrongheaded, but I think he tried to correct them, too. 00:12:23.284 --> 00:12:25.101 I think he might be my favorite character. 00:12:25.104 --> 00:12:37.738 A lot of people hate him in the beginning, but I think anyone's who willing, who's willing to acknowledge, like,"I, I did a bunch of things wrong, and now I'm trying to do them right," I don't know, deserves a certain amount of sympathy. 00:12:38.331 --> 00:12:38.687 Yeah. 00:12:38.687 --> 00:12:38.821 You know? 00:12:38.864 --> 00:12:44.783 I think it's fair in the beginning to say

that because it's almost unclear in the beginning, and I think intentionally so. 00:12:45.145 --> 00:12:59.110 You're just kind of like,"Dude, what are you..." And, uh, we're also, we're also coming at it with a very contemporary- Right, exactly view of families and how things should be approached and responsibilities, where you're like, well, child services would be all over this. 00:12:59.437 --> 00:13:02.461 But, uh, you know- Yeah it's just a different thing. 00:13:02.488 --> 00:13:08.081 But, but I do feel like, where he goes to, it, it, it's incredibly moving. 00:13:08.607 --> 00:13:28.076 It's such an interesting thing, too, because I was thinking about this whole place and this idea of, like, kids moving away or being told, like,"You're gonna go to America." There's a quote that I loved so much, and it was talking about Rian and how he is difficult in school and doesn't wanna learn, and his mother- 00:13:28.101 --> 00:13:29.717 Says, she said,"'Cause he's scared. 00:13:29.836 --> 00:13:30.412 He knows he has 00:13:30.419 --> 00:13:35.202 to leave" He's scared because he knows he's gonna have to leave, and that so resonated with me. 00:13:35.222 --> 00:13:38.926 Rian knows that the only reason he has to learn English is'cause he has to leave. 00:13:39.075 --> 00:13:43.479 It's scary to know that from, I think, the moment you're born. 00:13:43.480 --> 00:13:45.407 I mean, my dad talked about that a lot. 00:13:45.418 --> 00:13:47.542 His brothers talked about it, my mother. 00:13:48.231 --> 00:13:51.940 Um, I don't know, it, it must be a weird way to live. 00:13:52.158 --> 00:13:56.669 Um, our family went one year to Newfoundland to this place, it's called Fogo Island. 00:13:56.722 --> 00:14:01.895 It's this very remote part of, of Canada, and on the island there's this hotel. 00:14:01.895 --> 00:14:06.631 It's called the Fogo Island Inn, and it's kind of now world famous, and it's run by this woman named Zita Cobb. 00:14:06.980 --> 00:14:14.738 And Zita Cobb made all her money in tech and kind of got out, but she grew up on this very small fisherman's island, and it feels very much of this feel. 00:14:15.207 --> 00:14:20.244 And what happened is she had all of this money and she wanted to put it back in some ways to the community. 00:14:20.245 --> 00:14:28.048 So she proposed that anyone who wanted to go to university, she would pay and she would cover their costs. 00:14:28.583 --> 00:14:29.356 Kind of amazing. 00:14:29.379 --> 00:14:37.105 And then one day a woman came to her on the island and said,"This is so incredible w- what you're doing, but you're decimating the island effectively. 00:14:37.250 --> 00:14:45.289 You're taking everyone from us, and can't you find a way to- Make it work to keep people here. 00:14:45.383 --> 00:14:54.250 And so she created this hotel, and what they did was, um, all of the furniture was built by craftsmens on the island. 00:14:54.595 --> 00:14:54.605 Wow. 00:14:54.610 --> 00:14:58.716 And all of the, like

the quilts, and the rooms, and everything. 00:14:59.111 --> 00:15:07.538 The local fishermen would bring fish in and their catch, and everyone that works at the hotel is from the island, and she kind of put it all back in and did this incredible thing. 00:15:07.539 --> 00:15:22.077 But it reminded me so much of that, of this idea of people growing up knowing,"I'm gonna have to, to go from here," because there's just for a better, a, a, a albeit a better life per chance, you know? 00:15:22.191 --> 00:15:22.455 Yeah. 00:15:22.455 --> 00:15:25.541 And there's such a big difference between, I think my generation. 00:15:25.542 --> 00:15:30.782 I have cousins who, you know, work in pharma or work in tech, and they opt to leave. 00:15:30.950 --> 00:15:31.172 You know? 00:15:31.172 --> 00:15:31.182 Yeah. 00:15:31.182 --> 00:15:34.365 They're like,"Well, I'm, I'm gonna go work in, uh, Geneva. 00:15:34.397 --> 00:15:40.855 I'm gonna work in Australia, uh, Madrid, or wherever." I have a cousin in Dubai, but it's so different. 00:15:40.855 --> 00:15:43.238 You can choose to go back whenever you want. 00:15:43.408 --> 00:15:43.751 You know? 00:15:43.753 --> 00:15:47.121 You are living in a, a nice situation. 00:15:47.326 --> 00:15:48.831 You leave for a nice situation. 00:15:48.831 --> 00:15:49.542 You're like,"I'm done. 00:15:49.543 --> 00:15:52.010 I'd like to raise my children in Ireland." You come back home. 00:15:52.325 --> 00:15:56.274 For them, it just, there weren't a lot of choices, so it was different. 00:15:56.787 --> 00:15:57.191 Yeah. 00:15:57.249 --> 00:15:58.604 I loved Rian so much. 00:15:58.615 --> 00:16:01.730 It w- he was, for me, he was one of my favorite characters in the book. 00:16:01.808 --> 00:16:06.875 And again, no spoilers, but just u- ultimately, uh, the whole thing's so satisfying. 00:16:06.890 --> 00:16:16.940 But another character that I loved so much, talking generations, is, is Max's daughter, Mary, who is so amazing and so progressive, went to Catholic school. 00:16:16.943 --> 00:16:22.339 And I honestly, I kept thinking the whole time I was reading this, w- is she the one that's closest to you? 00:16:23.759 --> 00:16:24.077 Yeah. 00:16:24.077 --> 00:16:25.554 I mean, of course, she's... 00:16:25.909 --> 00:16:28.123 I went to 12 years of Catholic school. 00:16:28.125 --> 00:16:42.980 I went to an all-girls Catholic school that I think, I honest to God think I got sent to'cause my mother saw a couple episodes of"90210." And I'm the oldest, and she was like- Mm-hmm absolutely not, you know? 00:16:42.980 --> 00:16:44.429 And I was a little boy crazy. 00:16:44.475 --> 00:16:53.467 Uh, and I was like a fighter, like Mary wa- You know, I was constantly arguing with people, like,"We should be distributing condoms and this and that. 00:16:53.467 --> 00:16:56.360 We should be doing..." And I'd get sent to detention. 00:16:56.716 --> 00:16:58.129 My mother would get a call. 00:16:58.229 --> 00:17:03.227 The weird thing is I did love

that school, and I still have a lot of fondness for the nuns. 00:17:03.817 --> 00:17:03.836 Mm. 00:17:03.836 --> 00:17:09.438 I think that they, some of them, I know they agreed with me, even if they couldn't say it. 00:17:09.652 --> 00:17:14.076 Some of them have since left the convent and gone on to lead, like, secular lives. 00:17:14.153 --> 00:17:21.657 But Mary, I wanted to show, I guess, or in my mind, she's a lot like her grandfather. 00:17:22.345 --> 00:17:25.587 Cathal was also always arguing with people. 00:17:25.588 --> 00:17:32.036 He went to a funeral for a Protestant man that he was friendly with, and the town turned against him. 00:17:32.036 --> 00:17:33.717 I don't know if you remember that scene. 00:17:33.728 --> 00:17:33.923 Mm. 00:17:33.957 --> 00:17:40.855 He was constantly sort of at battle with the way things were, with expectations. 00:17:40.896 --> 00:17:43.046 Rían was kind of the same. 00:17:43.614 --> 00:17:44.602 He was an arguer. 00:17:44.602 --> 00:17:46.290 He wouldn't fall in line. 00:17:46.332 --> 00:17:53.650 And she has that, but for her, it'll turn out a little differently because she's educated and she's in the United States. 00:17:53.704 --> 00:17:58.339 You know, it might have worked out differently for her if she were still in Ireland in the year 2026. 00:17:58.339 --> 00:18:00.665 It's a different place than it was in 1963. 00:18:00.746 --> 00:18:06.432 But it is the same set of traits against a different historical moment. 00:18:07.131 --> 00:18:10.417 I think she will be okay. 00:18:10.463 --> 00:18:17.878 The things that didn't serve Cathal very well are the things that will get her where she wants to be. 00:18:17.894 --> 00:18:18.560 Do you know what I mean? 00:18:18.561 --> 00:18:20.126 But it's the same family traits. 00:18:20.144 --> 00:18:22.249 And I, I thought a lot about echoes. 00:18:22.281 --> 00:18:27.030 I mean, when I was writing this book, I went to visit my grandmother's grave. 00:18:27.140 --> 00:18:28.865 She was Mary Keane. 00:18:29.846 --> 00:18:32.673 A, it just says Mary Keene, aged 47. 00:18:33.035 --> 00:18:37.151 At that moment, I'm Mary Keene, aged 47, looking at it. 00:18:37.221 --> 00:18:51.548 You know, I'm like,"Here we are, just over and over, like, different iterations of the same pool," you know, I guess, and I am not going to have 11 children and die young, you know? 00:18:51.855 --> 00:18:54.958 And I'm sorry that you did. 00:18:54.969 --> 00:19:01.355 You know, it's just something I thought about a lot were these echoes through generations, I guess, and time. 00:19:01.416 --> 00:19:03.317 But I also liked Rian a lot. 00:19:03.586 --> 00:19:04.373 I felt for him. 00:19:04.784 --> 00:19:06.306 My God, so much. 00:19:06.316 --> 00:19:17.530 Something you talk about, too, in this in terms of emotion and the way people convey emotion or, you know, the feelings of, I think you describe it as being sad or having the feeling of sadness. 00:19:17.540 --> 00:19:17.915 Yeah. 00:19:18.275 --> 00:19:18.344 Mm-hmm. 00:19:18.349 --> 00:19:28.141 And that so kind of spoke to me of kind of this, um, removal or stoicism that exists with so many of these people. 00:19:28.154 --> 00:19:32.354 And I feel like for Mack, in a lot of ways, it's really his, his wife that helps- 00:19:34.232 --> 00:19:34.500 Cause she 00:19:34.502 --> 00:19:34.702 understands 00:19:34.730 --> 00:19:35.127 kind of softens. 00:19:35.188 --> 00:19:37.329 She gets it and softens those edges. 00:19:37.682 --> 00:19:37.942 Yeah, 00:19:37.957 --> 00:19:39.403 she gets it. 00:19:39.403 --> 00:19:39.413 Yeah. 00:19:39.413 --> 00:19:39.423 Yeah. 00:19:39.423 --> 00:19:41.990 She gets it, and she's from the same place, which I think helps. 00:19:42.034 --> 00:19:55.445 But I do think a lot, and I've, I mean, I've been thinking about this ever since I was young, like the way that we talk about things, even our sentence construction is so revealing of what we think. 00:19:55.823 --> 00:20:04.436 You know, even at an age where you learn about, um, your sentences, I remember early creative writing workshops, you know, my writing was too passive. 00:20:04.606 --> 00:20:07.548 You know, I, I would remove the subject from the sentence. 00:20:08.032 --> 00:20:16.951 And changing around your grammar, making sentences more direct changes how you look at things, and that's the same with Irish language. 00:20:16.971 --> 00:20:22.704 Once I read about that difference, like I am sad, I am happy in the US. 00:20:23.053 --> 00:20:30.404 If you translate Irish and it says, it really means sadness is upon me today, but it's temporary. 00:20:30.404 --> 00:20:33.496 The implication is it, it's not me. 00:20:33.877 --> 00:20:36.125 The sadness is upon me, but it is not me. 00:20:36.661 --> 00:20:38.402 Same with happiness, though. 00:20:38.407 --> 00:20:41.948 It's such an American thing to think,"Am I happy? 00:20:42.520 --> 00:20:51.006 But am I happy in this career, in this marriage, in this life?" It's like, well, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but that is the way it is. 00:20:51.016 --> 00:20:57.976 So anyone seeking a permanent state of happiness, I always feel like is inevitably gonna be really disappointed. 00:20:58.398 --> 00:20:59.775 It just doesn't work that way. 00:21:00.211 --> 00:21:00.560 Yeah. 00:21:00.771 --> 00:21:06.304 I, I had a shrink once say that to me too, where he said,"Feelings are like clouds. 00:21:06.336 --> 00:21:14.132 They're moving through." It's not that, you know, to say I'm happy or I'm sad, or I'm sad because of this, all of these things pass. 00:21:14.221 --> 00:21:18.671 It's just in this moment, that's what you're feeling, and it is temporary. 00:21:19.126 --> 00:21:19.547 Right. 00:21:19.977 --> 00:21:22.183 In some ways, it's such a, that Irish way. 00:21:22.536 --> 00:21:34.184 It's really such a healthier way to look at it, rather than like wallowing in this one existence, whether it's extreme happiness or extreme sadness,'cause yes,

inevitably it's gonna change and life is gonna come crashing in like it does. 00:21:34.433 --> 00:21:51.635 You know, we were talking in the beginning about kids before we started, and there's this moment when one of the characters is leaving for school, and Lily says to Mack about how parents feel when we leave, like no one ever thinks about the parents, and that so resonated to me. 00:21:51.660 --> 00:22:00.265 And I don't know about you, but I thought about that when I dropped my kids off at college the first time and coming home, and it was really strange standing at the airport and seeing all these parents waiting to go back. 00:22:00.709 --> 00:22:05.193 It was the dads who really seemed devastated much more than the moms. 00:22:05.359 --> 00:22:12.105 Certainly, there were some moms who were upset, but I remember seeing one dad who was trying to talk about it at the airport and started to choke up. 00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:12.500 Yeah. 00:22:12.500 --> 00:22:16.730 And he was so overcome with the emotion- Right of this happening. 00:22:17.116 --> 00:22:21.988 But I remember thinking afterwards, there really needs to be some kind of manual put out for parents as they 00:22:22.444 --> 00:22:23.310 as 00:22:23.310 --> 00:22:33.803 they give their kids over and, and they go to college or go to school or, or into life because- We're just not equipped for it or ready for it, and it's so much more overwhelming than you think. 00:22:33.817 --> 00:22:35.064 It's funny that you say that. 00:22:35.089 --> 00:22:42.545 I have noticed it's like a lot of the dads in my world, it's not that they didn't see it coming, you know intellectually. 00:22:42.545 --> 00:22:47.724 It's kind of like they say that when a woman is pregnant, you know, and your partner, they... 00:22:48.130 --> 00:22:51.326 I don't know, I don't wanna ma- make any men out there angry. 00:22:51.710 --> 00:22:55.767 But, uh, the books do say a lot of times men don't really... 00:22:55.883 --> 00:23:00.371 It doesn't click that you've had a child until the, you're holding your baby and- 00:23:00.381 --> 00:23:00.596 Yeah 00:23:00.596 --> 00:23:01.068 getting up. 00:23:01.070 --> 00:23:07.443 And then women sort of become mother when you've, you know, that baby, you know it's in there. 00:23:07.702 --> 00:23:10.936 You feel sick, you feel your body change, you know that it's happening. 00:23:11.313 --> 00:23:14.154 I've thought about that with the men. 00:23:14.656 --> 00:23:15.011 I don't know. 00:23:15.019 --> 00:23:16.174 Women, we knew. 00:23:16.672 --> 00:23:16.990 I don't know. 00:23:16.992 --> 00:23:18.164 I knew I was dropping him off. 00:23:18.167 --> 00:23:19.028 I knew this was happening. 00:23:19.028 --> 00:23:19.779 You could see it. 00:23:20.141 --> 00:23:24.936 But my husband and some others, it, it seems like they were taken by surprise almost. 00:23:24.951 --> 00:23:25.115 Yeah. 00:23:25.115 --> 00:23:26.577 It's like, well, you saw this coming. 00:23:27.054 --> 00:23:27.278

Yeah. 00:23:27.286 --> 00:23:27.626 You know? 00:23:27.743 --> 00:23:30.297 18 years you saw this coming, and here we are. 00:23:30.578 --> 00:23:31.295 I mean, I don't know. 00:23:31.296 --> 00:23:48.092 I, I'm not articulating it very well, but I think if there's one thing I'm good at, when the kids are absolutely bonkers in the backseat, you know those years where, you know, little Johnny in carpool spills his Gatorade in your new car, and then there's a fishing pole that scrapes the whole, you know, you're... 00:23:48.342 --> 00:23:49.231 And it's just chaos. 00:23:49.256 --> 00:23:55.181 I remember looking in the rear view and thinking One day there'll be no one in this car- 00:23:55.643 --> 00:23:55.823 Yeah 00:23:55.823 --> 00:24:01.852 with me, and I would rather this- Yeah absolute bers chaos. 00:24:02.388 --> 00:24:11.751 I heard a kid once from my third row say, I guess one of them got a cell phone before all the others, got an iPhone, and I heard him say,"Okay. 00:24:11.791 --> 00:24:13.530 Type in, what should we look for? 00:24:13.807 --> 00:24:18.021 Search up Kate Upton bikini." And I was like,"No. 00:24:18.916 --> 00:24:19.871 No." I pull over. 00:24:19.884 --> 00:24:25.836 You know, I'm like, what a wild bunch of years, but so funny- No and so fun. 00:24:26.101 --> 00:24:31.270 And it's such a cliche, and you say it to people, and you say, like, every new parent, and everybody used to say it to us, too, 00:24:31.315 --> 00:24:32.217 um- At least we'll see their... 00:24:32.220 --> 00:24:37.311 I mean, I feel like the people who were left behind in immigration, they didn't know if they would see their kids again. 00:24:37.313 --> 00:24:40.365 You know, they would just look forward to a letter once in a while. 00:24:40.442 --> 00:24:40.458 Yeah. 00:24:40.458 --> 00:24:41.923 Maybe a visit every 10 years. 00:24:41.934 --> 00:24:43.952 It's expensive to go back and forth. 00:24:44.550 --> 00:24:52.028 And again, like what we were talking about, it just at the start of this with, with the phrasing of the emotion thing, you did what you had to do, and I think there was a... 00:24:52.204 --> 00:24:58.153 I look at, like, my parents' generation, and I do believe it was a heartier stock than we are now. 00:24:58.452 --> 00:25:05.519 I think it was a, you know, certainly we have words and language to describe our emotions in a much better way. 00:25:05.519 --> 00:25:11.829 We have things that we can kind of articulate that I don't know that people were necessarily able to articulate. 00:25:12.212 --> 00:25:23.125 Even I remember just going to a therapist in my college and telling my parents I was going to a therapist, and I remember my father saying,"Well, what are you doing that for?" He's like,"You talk to your friends. 00:25:23.125 --> 00:25:27.362 I don't even understand that." And that was just that generation. 00:25:27.371 --> 00:25:28.242 They just... 00:25:28.747 --> 00:25:31.900 They all probably could have used it, but- Oh, yeah

you know. 00:25:32.009 --> 00:25:32.733 Completely. 00:25:32.964 --> 00:25:35.147 Is there a significance of the whale for you? 00:25:35.365 --> 00:25:37.743 The whale, there's a whale that takes a big part in this book. 00:25:37.757 --> 00:25:44.739 The whale, for me, was something like it needed- Something to tie together all these parts, I guess 00:25:44.739 --> 00:25:44.749 Hmm 00:25:45.115 --> 00:25:47.454 I knew I wanted to cover a long period of time. 00:25:47.465 --> 00:25:51.076 We have a place on Martha's Vineyard, and we were walking on the beach. 00:25:51.579 --> 00:25:56.673 It was, like, after Thanksgiving, so off-season, and we came across this thing. 00:25:56.979 --> 00:26:02.814 This is in real life, so as I'm drafting the book and struggling with it, we came across this whale vertebra. 00:26:02.826 --> 00:26:07.163 I actually used Google, like, you know the thing that you identify the image and it tells you? 00:26:07.163 --> 00:26:07.503 Yeah, yeah. 00:26:08.900 --> 00:26:13.990 And I think that started me cooking a little bit, and like, how long has this been float... 00:26:13.990 --> 00:26:15.861 You know, I guess it got pushed up in a storm. 00:26:15.875 --> 00:26:24.105 But then I started looking on the Internet and, you know, how long does the body remain with flesh? 00:26:24.105 --> 00:26:27.423 How long does a skeleton remain? 00:26:27.458 --> 00:26:30.990 And they can be there a long, long, long time. 00:26:31.035 --> 00:26:45.590 And so I started thinking about, like, how can I link th- this early moment when the kind of, like, inciting event happens to the rest of their lives, and it just became a way to do that, I guess. 00:26:45.596 --> 00:26:45.615 Hmm. 00:26:45.621 --> 00:26:55.042 I didn't mean it to be I've read since then some, like, symbolic analysis that certainly was not in my head. 00:26:55.057 --> 00:26:57.642 You know, it just was a thing that happened. 00:26:57.957 --> 00:27:03.641 You know, the book opens, it's with Rian and Mack, and they've hiked up a mountain, and that's the day the whale washes up. 00:27:04.702 --> 00:27:07.085 Otherwise, like, why are they up there that day? 00:27:07.098 --> 00:27:13.948 And so I did see that a whale washed up, but I didn't imagine that that same whale might still be there. 00:27:14.079 --> 00:27:16.903 And it, it's not there in the same way that it was on that day. 00:27:16.903 --> 00:27:18.569 It's in parts, it's in this and that. 00:27:19.178 --> 00:27:25.220 But also the fact that some of them remember it and some of them don't. 00:27:25.326 --> 00:27:33.846 We have things like that, like things that were huge in my childhood that I'll say to my sister,"Oh my gosh, do you remember the day Mr. 00:27:34.324 --> 00:27:37.538 Murphy, you know, shouted at..." And they're like,"What? 00:27:38.368 --> 00:27:40.593 That never happened." I'm like, how could this not have been... 00:27:40.595 --> 00:27:43.510 I think of it once a week my entire life, you know? 00:27:43.757 --> 00:27:53.050 And the fact for Mack that some of his brothers don't really remember it being such a significant thing, to me speaks of this is exactly what memory is. 00:27:53.240 --> 00:27:53.459 Mm. 00:27:53.522 --> 00:27:54.771 We think it's objective. 00:27:54.796 --> 00:27:55.678 This thing happened. 00:27:55.678 --> 00:27:56.946 This is what a big deal it was. 00:27:56.951 --> 00:28:06.105 And to someone who's standing right next to you, they're thinking about what they're gonna have for lunch or the person they have a crush on, and they're not thinking about this at all. 00:28:06.131 --> 00:28:12.602 And so every version, you know, I thought about that a lot also with when their father gets remarried. 00:28:12.653 --> 00:28:17.679 You know, to Mack, who is my main character, he only looks at that stepmother one way. 00:28:17.829 --> 00:28:17.935 Yeah. 00:28:17.992 --> 00:28:23.314 And it kind of takes him by surprise that some of his brothers don't see her that way, and they're both right. 00:28:23.405 --> 00:28:23.729 You know? 00:28:23.792 --> 00:28:27.699 She was really, really cold to some of them. 00:28:28.086 --> 00:28:31.825 Who knows if that's the way sh- that's how you deal with children. 00:28:31.829 --> 00:28:37.170 You know, maybe she got trained in that, you know, old school way that just really wasn't appropriate. 00:28:37.561 --> 00:28:41.231 But some of the other kids thought, you know,"That's our mother. 00:28:41.556 --> 00:28:46.886 She raised us, and she loved us," and that was a shock to Mack, too, but it's all true, and it's all right. 00:28:47.554 --> 00:28:49.635 Six versions of the same event, and they're all true. 00:28:49.961 --> 00:28:50.298 Yeah. 00:28:50.820 --> 00:28:55.732 So I wanted-- I think the whale also tried to do some of that work. 00:28:55.780 --> 00:28:59.549 And also the na- Mack is so connected to the natural world. 00:28:59.722 --> 00:29:07.184 You know, I, I like to think of him even in the Bronx, um- The busy Bronx of the 1970s. 00:29:08.111 --> 00:29:13.556 He's worried about a cat, you know, and whether it's gonna overheat in the weather. 00:29:13.570 --> 00:29:16.691 This is July 1977 when New York had a big blackout. 00:29:17.167 --> 00:29:22.877 Or he's thinking about, you know, he's, he's noticing, he's working with horses in the middle of this big bustling city. 00:29:23.346 --> 00:29:33.223 So the whale became important, but I try not to think too heavily on anything like a symbol'cause then it's just creates really bad, clunky writing. 00:29:34.039 --> 00:29:35.852 So I just wrote it, and it seemed to work. 00:29:36.257 --> 00:29:36.891 Totally works. 00:29:37.174 --> 00:29:39.285 Well, Mary Beth, this was great. 00:29:39.301 --> 00:29:40.865 The book is really wonderful. 00:29:40.878 --> 00:29:42.215 Please everyone go out and get it. 00:29:42.226 --> 00:29:45.094 Buy independent if you can, but please get the book. 00:29:45.115 --> 00:29:46.915 It's just really fantastic., Thank 00:29:46.915 --> 00:29:47.039 you. 00:29:47.051 --> 00:29:48.144 Thank you so much for having me 00:29:49.063 --> 00:29:50.183 Thank you again, Mary Beth. 00:29:50.955 --> 00:29:58.430 If you've liked this episode or other episodes of Behind the Stack, please consider liking and subscribing so that you never miss an episode. 00:29:58.852 --> 00:30:08.560 Also, what would be really helpful to me is if you can go to your podcast platform of choice and give the show five stars, and if you have the time to write a review. 00:30:09.001 --> 00:30:13.907 All of these things are incredibly helpful to me to get the podcast in front of more listeners. 00:30:14.273 --> 00:30:23.270 I'll be back next week with another episode, and until then, you can always find me on Instagram, YouTube, and Substack at Brett's Book Stack. 00:30:23.449 --> 00:30:26.163 And as always, thank you for listening