The Miniaturist Magic Of Eliza Minot - new novelist who's really worth the ink - Interview

Here's a new novelist who's really worth the ink - one who knows the true beauty of language and uses it with inventiveness and dazzling precision

Eliza Minot's first novel, The Tiny One (published this month by Knopf), bursts with the sensuality of childhood: the sticky char of burnt marshmallows, the fuzzy nap of a toy bear, neat laces on ice skates, the salty ocean of summers in Maine. Via Revere - the book's eight-year-old narrator - recounts the details of the day her mother died, as a way of making sense of her world after suffering this fundamental loss. "it's like something special that scares me but I like it too," Via says. "I feel so sad but I also, also I feel, like, lit. I can't explain. I close my eyes and it's shining. I open them and it's shining too." Minot, whom Interview tipped as a writer to watch in 1994, is the younger sister of Susan Minot, the lauded author of the novels Evening; Folly, and Monkeys. The Minot sisters share a sense of emotional accuracy, but The Tiny One is also irrepressible and comic, filled with flights of childish fancy. Like a lemon drop, it's sweet and sunny, yet sour enough to bring tears to the eyes.

EMILY JENKINS: Did your mother, like Via's, die in a car crash?

ELIZA MINOT: She was hit by a train, in a car when she was driving. We lived on a private road, a road with lots of houses, but the streets weren't lined and it was out on a point. The railroad tracks didn't have the arm that comes down [to stop cars going across]. During the winter of '78 in Boston there were huge blizzards. For two weeks we didn't have school; it was a total blowout blizzard. She was going in the car in the morning, and the lights weren't working, and she didn't hear [the train] come around a corner. The train just hit the car. She was alone.

EJ: HOW did you begin to write about it?

EM: Originally, the premise [of the book] was different. It was about a kid, still, but it was surreal. She comes home from school and the family's just gone. That's the feeling I was beginning with. She still goes to school, and doesn't want to tell people. She doesn't understand what's happened. She doesn't want to leave her house and tell the neighbors in case they freak out. She thinks maybe [her family is] testing her.

EJ: Why did it change from that idea to its present form?

EM: My sister Carrie read it, my brother George read it, Susan read it. Everybody was just, "The mother's dead!" Because that did happen in our family, and I was tiptoeing around it.

EJ: They read it and saw that you were writing about the death of your mother.

EM: Which I knew. [They said], "Just say it! Just because it really happened, you don't have to avoid it." Then once I started writing, it was easy.

EJ: You're one of seven children. Which are you?

EM: The very last. By quite a bit. The oldest above me is five or six years older, depending on what time of the year it is.

EJ: What is it like being a writer when your sister Susan is already so successful?

EM: Partly because of Susan and George, who is a writer as well, it just seemed very easy. It's not a choice, really. I can't imagine not writing.

EJ: Susan read your stuff, gave you feedback, and helped you find a publisher. I think that generosity of spirit is pretty unusual between siblings. Don't you get competitive?

EM: I don't know if Mum's dying made us closer. We were always close, even when she was alive. It wasn't like this "rah rah" team thing, but everybody was very protective of each other, even if we were talking behind each other's backs. Career is not a major thing that we were brought up with. Our priorities are family, love, spiritual health. That was all around in our family. But certainly we are competitive. Everyone plays whiffleball, and we get mad about the rules. But it's not cutthroat. I mean, we're blood. We're one unit.

EJ: How do you make a living?

EM: When I got out of [Barnard] college I started working at The Conan O'Brien Show. I was a researcher - I read People magazine and Entertainment Weekly. I didn't really write during that time. It was a windowless office that me and this girl shared. More recently I worked for Michael Moore on The Awful Truth. It's not that I didn't like the job - it's that I felt almost resentful because I couldn't be doing what I really wanted to be doing. I would often be like, "I'm so fired! I've been working for twelve hours! Will I ever write again?"

EJ: What did you read as a kid? Did you have favorite books you read over and over?

EM: I really went for the animal tearjerkers like Old Yeller, or The Yearling. Or biographies. I remember in the kids' room in the library they seemed so official and real. Hardcover, kid-size, with pretty big print, but not too big. They looked like real grown-up books. Abraham Lincoln was one I really liked. And Knute Rockne.

EJ: Did you get Into horse books?

EM: Most of the horsey stuff I didn't really go for. Black Beauty, the movie - that was great! And then there's National Velvet - that goes without saying.

EJ: Why Is there so much sexual threat In your book? Via is threatened sexually by her woodworking teacher, the paper bey who pays her five bucks to kiss his penis, and the guy who smokes pot on their lawn.

EM: I remember those kinds of characters. With the paper boy, obviously Via has bad judgment. But she's a kid, and interested in the five-dollar bill and not really aware of what she's doing. With the teacher, she has the composure to be creeped out and leave, and maybe tell her mum. It is a dangerous world, and if you don't have a wholesome whole backing you up, like your family, I can't imagine how kids cope.

EJ: It's pretty rare that adult novels have child protagonists these days. In a way, it's a Victorian convention - nineteenth-century novels like Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, David Copperfield all begin with the childhood of the central character, and that childhood is a major part of the story.

EM: Even in good, meaty fiction, and even in movies, I often ask myself - where does this [character] come from? I want a little flashback, a little something to . . . well, maybe I'm getting overexcited about it. It's not really something that occurs to me all the time. Just sometimes.

EJ: I'm asking you about the child's perspective. Why do you think that matters, since most writers today don't make It of primary importance?

EM: Maybe there are some incredible souls out there who come into themselves at twenty-one with no regard for where they've come from, but to me [childhood] is the root of everything. It's psychology. It's where you were formed.

EJ: Via is only eight. How does she develop emotionally in the novel?

EM: Through loss. And whether she realizes it right then or not, through the growth of realizing she's alive. There's such a big thing in losing somebody. It's like when you're sick, and then you feel better - it's like you get a big cold splash of water in the face. She will be OK. She'll journey on and hopefully grow more than she might have otherwise.

EJ: What Is The Tiny One about, for you?

EM: What I really wanted was for it not to be a depressing, tragic tale. Sad, yes. But what this kid has with the mother, it's just real. It's just right, comfortable, not scary, full of love. So it can sustain her through any kind of disaster.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.
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