THE FALSE FRIEND: AUTHOR INTERVIEW AND BONUS ENTRIES

GIVEAWAY ENDED
THE FALSE FRIEND
BY MYLA GOLDBERG

REMINDER...ABOUT THE BOOK:

From the bestselling author of Bee Season comes an astonishingly complex psychological drama with a simple setup: two eleven-year-old girls, best friends and fierce rivals, go into the woods. Only one comes out . . .

Leaders of a mercurial clique of girls, Celia and Djuna reigned mercilessly over their three followers. One after­noon, they decided to walk home along a forbidden road. Djuna disappeared, and for twenty years Celia blocked out how it happened.

The lie Celia told to conceal her misdeed became the accepted truth: everyone assumed Djuna had been abducted, though neither she nor her abductor was ever found. Celia’s unconscious avoidance of this has meant that while she and her longtime boyfriend, Huck, are professionally successful, they’ve been unable to move forward, their relationship falling into a rut that threatens to bury them both.

Celia returns to her hometown to confess the truth, but her family and childhood friends don’t believe her. Huck wants to be supportive, but his love can’t blind him to all that contra­dicts Celia’s version of the past.

Celia’s desperate search to understand what happened to Djuna has powerful consequences. A deeply resonant and emotionally charged story, The False Friend explores the adults that children become—leading us to question the truths that we accept or reject, as well as the lies to which we succumb.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

MYLA GOLDBERG is the author of the bestselling Bee Season, which was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2000 and made into a film, and, most recently, of Time's Magpie, a book of essays about Prague. Her short stories have appeared in Harper's and McSweeney's and on Failbetter.com. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW:

1. Welcome, Myla Goldberg, to BOOKIN' WITH BINGO. I am so excited you are here as I had wanted to read THE FALSE FRIEND from the first time I saw something about it. Do you think you can tell us a little about yourself and where my readers might look to find out more about you?

I’ve wanted to be a writer since at least second grade. When I was little, I used to sit at an electronic typewriter and pretend I was writing a novel. I graduated from Oberlin College, where I majored in English. After that, I lived in Prague for a year, where I split my time between writing and teaching ESL--but mostly writing, because in the early ‘90s, Prague was a ridiculously inexpensive place for an American to live. When I returned to the States, I moved to New York City, where I variously worked for a literary agent, as a production assistant for a movie, and as a freelance reader for television movies. I liked that last job the best because it gave me the most time for my own work. I quit it when Bee Season started doing well, and since then I’ve split my time between writing and serving as a migrant adjunct at various MFA programs around the city.

You can find all sorts of additional info, including bio stuff, at www.mylagoldberg.com.

2. Where did you get the inspiration or idea for this book?

About ten years ago, I remembered this girl who I’d sometimes been mean to in elementary school. We were both pretty socially marginal (i.e. we were nerds; not the cool kind), so we clung to each other and battled each other with equal vehemence, each of us secretly seeing the other as an impediment to our own popularity. Until remembering this, I’d retained all sorts of memories of when I’d been bullied, but I’d forgotten the occasions when I’d been a bully myself. I became intrigued by the idea that my memory had been so selective. When I tracked the friend down to apologize, she told me that she didn’t remember me doing anything particularly nasty, but that she knew she’d been pretty awful back then, and hoped that I’d forgive her, so we parted mutually forgiven and unsure of exactly what we were forgiving the other for. Nothing from my experience was remotely close to the scale of what happens in The False Friend, but that’s what makes writing fiction so much more fun than sticking to the truth.

3. How did the title of your book come about?

It just kind of came to me. Naming stuff, whether it’s a book or a character, is a pretty intuitive and visceral process.

4. Do you see yourself in your characters? Which characters are easiest or more difficult to write?

I see at least some small part of myself in the majority of my characters. The most difficult characters to write are the ones for whom that isn’t the case, as the route to empathy and understanding is a bit more challenging. A character written without empathy is about as engaging as a sock puppet.

5. What books would you say have made the biggest impression on you, especially starting out? What are you currently reading?

There are so many different starting outs to choose from! The work of Roald Dahl and Judy Blume featured hugely in my early reading life, plus there were these two individual books, Bridge to Terabithea, and The Cay, which still exist intact in my reading memory. From there, it was a lot about Kurt Vonnegut and Stephen King, with On the Beach making a pretty big cameo appearance. By the end of high school, I’d discovered J.D. Salinger and Milan Kundera, and in college I was blown away by Vladimir Nabokov, Donald Barthleme, and Jeanette Winterson.

I’m currently reading Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad.

6. What is the next or current book/project you are working on?

I have no idea! I’m totally monomaniacal when I write. I pour myself 

utterly into the thing I’m working on, which means that when I finish I’m pretty much just an empty shell of my former self. Right now I’m reading and wandering about in order to start the process of getting filled up again.

7. What is something about you that you would want people to know about you that we probably don’t know?

I have a prehensile tail! Okay, I don’t really have a prehensile tail, but wouldn’t it be cool if I did?

8. What is your best advice to anyone, including young people, who want to be writers?

Write as much as you can, as often as you can, and for as long as you can. When you’re not doing that, read.

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO ADRIENNE AND THE GREAT
FOLKS AT RANDOM HOUSE, I HAVE TEN
COPIES OF "THE FALSE FRIEND" TO
GIVE TO TEN LUCKY READERS!

 
--U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY

--NO P. O. BOXES
---INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
IN CASE YOU WIN!
--ALL COMMENTS MUST BE SEPARATE TO
COUNT AS MORE THAN ONE!

HOW TO ENTER:

+1 ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU FOUND INTERESTING ABOUT "THE FALSE FRIEND" OR THE AUTHOR BY VISITING MYLA'S WEBSITE HERE

+1 MORE ENTRY: "LIKE" MYLA GOLDBERG ON FACEBOOK HERE AND COME BACK TO LET ME KNOW

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT IF YOU VISITED MY FIRST POST AND REVIEW OF "THE FALSE FRIEND" HERE AND GIVE ONE OF THE NUMBERS OF YOUR COMMENTS. REMEMBER, I READ AND MODERATE ALL MY COMMENTS SO IF YOURS ISN'T POSTED YET, COME BACK WHEN IT IS. I DO THAT SEVERAL TIMES THROUGHOUT THE DAY.

GIVEAWAY ENDS
6 PM, EST, OCTOBER 20!

GOOD LUCK