What Matters Most Nicole Bokat Paperback $12.95 Read more...

INTRODUCTION

This Conversation Guide is intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

A CONVERSATION WITH NICOLE BOKAT

Was there a specific event or person that inspired you to write What Matters Most?

I was describing the scene of my father's funeral-a terrible moment in my own life-to a friend and I started to laugh. It struck me how people behave in comic ways even during the most traumatic times. I wanted to re-imagine the scene with fictional characters. Thus, the idea for the novel was born.

One of the themes of your novel, What Matters Most, is keeping secrets within a family. What drew you to this topic?

Discovering secrets struck me as a good frame for a story about psychological growth. It lent itself to character development and dramatic tension. In the novel I'm working on now, family secrets also play a major role in the plot. I guess this particular theme fascinates me.

The story is seen primarily through Georgia's eyes even though the novel is written in the third person. How "autobiographical" is your novel?

I think most fiction writers blend their own emotional responses to the world with those they've observed in other people, along with descriptions and circumstances they've experienced, all of which they inject into imaginary events and characters. For example, Georgie's sensibility is much like mine, as is her sense of humor. I lost my father to cancer several years ago, although not to lymphoma. I have two sons, so I drew upon life experience in my portrayal of Jesse. And my background is Russian Jewish. But the plot and situations are fictional and the characters are either composites of people I know or imaginary.

What was the hardest fictional situation to imagine?

Well, one of them was being a single mother. Georgie has it pretty good in terms of her relationship with her ex-husband, Lucas, and the fact that he is wealthy and financially generous. It was a stretch for me because my husband divides most of the childrearing and/or chores with me and we are not affluent like Lucas Carter.

You changed the voice and the sequence of events in the middle of the book? Why?

I played around with this section a lot. In early drafts, sections of Estelle's past appeared throughout the novel but, ultimately, this structure didn't work because it gave away too much of the plot. I felt a lot of empathy for the young Estelle and became very interested in the history of women in medicine in the United States. I've read some great books about the subject.

What writers influence or inspire you the most?

As a child, the greatest influence on me was Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time because it inspired me to write fiction. When I was ten years old I wrote a hundred-and-fifty page novel about time travel; I wrote every day at sleep away camp during rest time. In high school and college, the writers I read most veraciously were: James Joyce, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen. More recently, I read and adored A.S. Byatt's Possession and Edith Wharton's House of Mirth. I often return to the poetry of T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, and two of my teachers from my graduate school days, Galway Kinnell and Philip Schultz, for inspiration. I admire so many contemporary writers, including: Michael Cunningham, Rachel Cusk, Kathryn Harrison, Scott Spencer, Elinor Lipman, Elizabeth Strout, Andrew Sean Greer, Nancy Reisman, and the nonfiction of Lauren Slater, Bonnie Friedman and Anne Lamott.

In general, what motivates you to write a novel and what do you find to be the hardest challenge?

Character and theme come to me first. In What Matters Most, I wanted to write about loss and its aftermath, the changes in my protagonist's life after her father-upon whom she relies for emotional support-dies. Plot is always the hardest thing for me to sustain. Gradually, I've learned to think more in terms of plot and not just to "superimpose" it upon the characters.

Is there any kind of novel you'd like to attempt that you haven't yet?

I'm considering writing a historical novel, one that takes place in the late 19th century and deals with themes that interest me-women's burgeoning role in the field of medicine, the mistreatment of woman by society and the medical community, Freud and the dawn of psychoanalysis-but I find the prospect daunting. I wrote one chapter of this novel to which I may someday return, but I found myself bogged down with details like Victorian clothing, plumbing, and the exact routes of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad! I have literally hundreds of pages of research that I amassed from the Internet or various books. It was exhausting. While I enjoy research, I think I might torture myself over these kinds of specifics. I so admire Tracey Chevalier for what she accomplished in both Girl with the Pearl Earring and especially The Lady and the Unicorn (which I loved).

What are you working on now?

I don't like to give too much away out of some silly notion that it will jinx the writing. But, suffice it to say, it's a novel about two sisters who are very close, one of who struggled with mental illness and has suddenly chosen to become public with her condition in a manner that offends her loved ones and discloses shocking secrets about her past.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. The death of her father is the catalyst for so much change in this novel. In what ways does losing Adam propel Georgie to reevaluate her life and family? In what ways does she mature and come into her own after this experience?

2. Estelle is originally an unlikable character, especially as seen through Georgie's point of view. How did the switch to Estelle's perspective help you understand her better or appreciate her life circumstances more?

3. Georgie considers her role as Jesse's mother the greatest joy of her life. Yet she can't follow through with her pregnancy after her divorce from Lucas. What did you think of her decision to have an abortion? Did it bother you that she never shared the knowledge of her pregnancy with her ex-husband?

4. How did the fact of Daniel Kaplan's existence shape your opinion of Estelle? Did you feel she should have shared this secret with Georgie sooner?

5. Georgie struggles with her own ambitions and identify in the world. She comes from two successful parents and a mother who was somewhat of a trailblazer in her time. Is Georgie really just a "light weight," as she calls herself or are other factors impinging on her dreams of writing more substantial articles and her true-love, poetry? On the other hand, she has carved out a good career for herself as a freelance journalist. Is her self-perception preventing her from appreciating her own significant achievements