Title: Awakening of the Summer
Author: Yorker Keith
Publisher: BookBaby
ISBN: 1543923429
Pages: 320
Genre: Romance; Literary
Reviewed by: Liz Konkel
Author Interview with Yorker Keith
Today we are talking with author Yorker Keith.
HBR: The characters have a deep connection to art especially through James who finds peace and romance through his painting. Can you describe the role art plays in the characters’ lives?
In the university, I took a course, “Ancient Novels,” in which we studied novels written between 300 BCE and 300 CE. Surprisingly there are many excellent novels during such an ancient period. Among them was Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, in which a shepherd and a shepherdess sing, dance, and fall in love. It is a beautiful pastoral story. I always wanted to write a present-day version of such a pastoral story.
So I set the premises of this novel in Oberon Woods, a fictional resort town in New Hampshire, during the summer. The area is surrounded by the woods, wild flowers, a lake, mountains, representing a pastoral scene. But the timeline of this novel is present. I thought that the best way to describe the pastoral ambience in the present-day setting is through a painting, represented by the Impressionist style and the Hudson River school style. I made painting as James’s pastime, and made him paint this scenery. Two sisters appear in this scene, and James decides to paint each of them—a perfect setting for falling in love.
So art, particularly painting, is used in this novel to create a pastoral ambience where James struggles with triple love-triangles among him, Sophie, Kelly, and their boyfriends.
HBR: Sophie is typically seen reading poetry, often a poem from Emily Dickinson. What was the decision behind using Emily Dickinson poems in the story? How did you got about choosing which poem to have in each moment?
Sophie is a delicate, intelligent, introspective woman, whose pastime is reading and writing poetry. Emily Dickenson was a very sensitive woman who lived in seclusion and wrote her poems. I chose Dickenson’s poems to express Sophie’s inner psychology in the scene and circumstances she was placed. I thought that this is much effective than narrating in my own prose.
HBR: Did you always plan on having a love triangle? Though is it fair to say it’s more complicated than a love triangle since it’s James with Kelly and Sophie, but also Kelly and Sophie’s relationships with Steve and David?
In the MFA program, we are repeatedly reminded that a conflict makes a story, that is, without a conflict, no story. A love triangle is a conflict, which will make a good story. Then, I thought that triple love-triangles would have more conflicts, hence they will create much a better story. So I came up with triple love-triangles: (1) James, Sophie, Kelly; (2) Sophie, James, David; (3) Kelly, James, Steve. Isn’t this intriguing? Actually I enjoyed developing the plot of this triple love-triangles.
HBR: What would you consider the awakening moment for the characters? How does the title tie into the story?
Another way to look at the pastoral scene I tried to create in this novel is “Green World.” Shakespeare was good at creating the green world, for example Midsummer Night’s Dream. A man and a woman (or more than two) go to a forest (i.e., the green world), where they encounter mysterious experiences, through which they grow to better persons; afterwards, they come out of the green world as better and happier persons.
This happens in Awakening of the Summer. James, Sophie, and Kelly come to Oberon Woods (the green world). They go through intricate relationships, and then they are to come out of the green world, having been transformed into better and happier persons. So in this novel, the awakening moment for each of James, Sophie, and Kelly is the two-week vacation in Oberon Woods (the green world).
HBR: James is taking a break from Wall Street with painting while the sisters are taking more of an emotional break from their relationships. Would you say the characters are using this vacation to escape from their lives?
“Escape” from their lives is a wrong word. A better word can be “recharge” themselves. However, the best word to describe the break of James, Sophie, and Kelly is the “green world experience.” With this in mind, if you read my answer to the previous question, you should be able to appreciate what the “green world experience” means. It represents the essence of my novel, Awakening of the Summer.