Writers all begin as readers, readers who love the thrill of a story that grabs us and refuses to let go. I started writing to chase that feeling, and the pleasure of being in thrall to a great tale is one of the forces that gives life to my novel, The Angel of Losses [Ecco, $25.99].
My heroine Marjorie is a reader, a scholar of literature, but she puts her research aside when she discovers her late grandfather's notebook containing a fairy tale about a reluctant sorcerer, the White Rebbe, and the Angel of Losses who grants him his power. The notebook suggests the existence of additional stories, and Marjorie embarks on a mission to assemble the missing stories. She wants to read to the end -- to learn the White Rebbe's fate and the Angel of Losses' secrets -- but she's also looking for a project to distract her from her feud with her sister, who has converted to an obscure Jewish sect and married to a controlling man whom Marjorie hates. But in the end, the White Rebbe stories lead Marjorie to confront exactly what she hoped to avoid, and she puts the books aside in order to protect her sister's new family from the consequences of their grandfather's past.
While I was writing, I thought about siblings and children and how our relationships grow and fray over time; I thought about magic and religious longing and the fate of the world; and I thought a lot about the nature of storytelling too. But it was only after finishing that I realized that Marjorie's path dramatizes what we all experience when we engage with a great book. Stories take us on journeys; the best stories take us on journeys that lead us back to our own lives with new understanding of ourselves and loved ones.
I'm far from the only writer to tell a story driven by other stories. There is a wealth of novels that revolve around mysterious manuscripts, and they all, I think, testify to the nearly magical power of a great book. Here are a few of my favorites: