Paris and Saudade

My friend Judy Hooper, the writer, introduced me to a word I needed badly to know: saudade (pronounced ‘soDAHday’)—a Portuguese word for which there is no proper English translation. It…

FAWM #6: Hammurabi

Odyssey-Influenced Novels: Family and Ghosts (Part 2 of an ongoing series)

Although my Road Novel is nowhere near as dark (nor literary) as either of these books, it does share the theme of characters who are as dead set as the Bundrens on getting to their desired destination. Like both Faulkner’s and Ward’s stories, mine contains multiple narrators, characters who each have their own story arcs. Though they judge each other for their monomanias, they each have their own obsessions which blind them to the insanity of their quests. All this gives me a great sense of empathy for the characters in these novels who stand by helplessly as their Odysseus/Anse/Leonie plunges into their foolish journey which will lead to pain and family fracture. There is a reason we read these stories year after year, millennium after millennium. There is a reason why we keep writing them, too.