Award-winning author and actor Sonya Walger (Lost, For All Mankind) joins us to discuss her latest novel, Wifehouse—the story of a woman who has always defined herself as a wife and mother, and who, in trying to put her own happiness first, pursues an affair with a much younger French tutor. As Sonya puts it, it's ultimately a novel about "a mother who leaves,” and the questions such a story raises: Why would a woman make that decision? And what happens after?
The passage Sonya reads centers on a real-life story that inspired one of the book's most pivotal scenes—and one of the hardest for her to get right. It’s a great conversation about concision, pacing, metaphor, and how an ordinary podcast anecdote can find it’s way to unlocking the emotional heart of a novel.
Sonya also talks to Cory and Jon about her process of “writing into a question,” how the experience of interrogating a script as an actor lends itself to novel-writing, why more actors should write novels, the art of turning life’s observations into fiction, and what makes airplanes great places to get some work done (hint: it’s the fact that you’re trapped).
Sonya’s passage, from Wifehouse:
She gropes for her phone in the dark, finds a podcast to drown out her thoughts. The host of a news review show tells a story about a group of tourists on a guided tour bus in Iceland who got off at a rest stop to stretch their legs and take in the scenery. One female traveler decided to change her clothes before getting back on the bus. When it was time to leave, the passengers boarded the bus, and one of them alerted the driver that they were missing a passenger—a woman in black who had been sitting by the window. The driver agreed to wait, and they all sat on the bus, patiently awaiting this woman’s return. Eventually, when she did not appear, they decided to get out and search for her. The female traveler joined in the search. Local police were summoned, the fire department deployed, all beginning an increasingly frantic search for a missing woman in a black jacket. It was many, many hours before the female traveler realized that she was, in fact, the person for whom they were searching. She informed the authorities, and the search was called off. The host laughs as he tells the story.
Annie is wide awake now. She pictures this woman, trudging through the tundra, searching for the missing tourist. She wonders how long it took her to realize her mistake. She wonders how long it took her to admit to it. Did she hesitate, Annie wonders, did she for one wild moment wonder what would happen if she never owned her mistake but allowed that other self to vanish into that treeless horizon? Did she, for a moment, hover on the threshold of becoming someone new, someone naked, reborn, free?
Annie stares at the darkness. She, too, is walking in the wrong direction, knowing full well that she is the one who is missing.
