by Amy S.
I love a good summer read and I highly recommend Wendy Walker's Four Wives - and not just because I got to interview Wendy Walker and get the scoop on what transformed her into a writer. Four Wives is an intimate look at the choices of four highly-educated women. Now living in suburbia, they are the picture of perfection - until they confront their varied personal struggles.
The sometimes painfully close-to-home prose is quick-paced and witty - there is more here than you might suspect. And I don't think any female reader will be able to read the book without wondering if Walker is also a mind-reader. If you've been married, given birth, held down a job while raising a family, stayed-home while raising a family - or generally lived as a female in today's world, you'll find yourself in this book.
I conducted an email interview with Wendy Walker to find out more about how she made these characters come alive...from the back of her minivan!
Amy - Tell us a little about your life.
Wendy - I grew up in the midst of growing affluence. My parents were the children of immigrants and they worked their way up the economic ranks through hard work, and without formal educations. As a young girl, I set my sights on becoming an Olympic figure skater and trained competitively for ten years, three of which were spent at a training facility in Colorado. When I made the difficult decision to quit, I focused on my studies, intent on becoming an investment banker like my father.
I attended Brown University and after graduation landed a job at Goldman, Sachs & Co. as a banker in Mergers & Acquisitions. But that job never felt quite right to me, mostly because I did not have a passion for it, and also because it was very clear to me that to do that job and one day have a family, I would have to find not just a husband, but a wife as well! It is a grueling life. I went next to law school at Georgetown and then worked as a corporate litigator to help pay off my student loans until I got married and decided to have children.
It was not a difficult decision to quit work to stay home with my baby, but I soon grew restless. This is a very common dilemma for “housewives” and mothers who stay home – the desire to be with your children, but also the gaping hole that is left when you give up the part of yourself that existed in the outside world. It was at this point I decided to start writing to fill that hole and also to forge a career that would fit in with the role I had chosen as a mother. I am grateful that this dream came to fruition!
Amy - One of the things I love about your story as a writer is that you wrote much of the book from the back of your minivan in-between ferrying your three sons to school, soccer practice, etc. What was it that triggered you to begin writing during that time? Did you set out to write a book or did that goal come later?
(Read more by clicking on the link below.)
Wendy - As I mentioned above, I began writing as a way to fill the void that was left when I stopped working outside the home. I had never thought I would be a writer...I had this one plot spinning around from a situation that came up at work, and I decided to write a novel using this idea. I sat down to write when my first son was about a year old, and I wrote on and off for a few years anywhere and everywhere I could. I eventually found an agent, and that was when I really began to take things seriously. The van was the best place to work because it kept me from my house, which always calls out to me with things that need tending, and also because it cut down on time spent driving back and forth to the kids’ schools.
Amy - You mention in the online interview on your Web site that you hope each reader finds a little of themselves in the characters of your book. I know that for me there were moments while reading the book that it felt like you had jumped inside my head and taken words straight out of it. Do you feel that any of you as a person wound up in the book? Was it difficult to "expose" those seldom-discussed topics?
Wendy - I am all over the book, in every character and every story line. But I am also no where in the book because I was very careful not to make this a memoir. What I did was to take issues that impacted me and those around me and then to construct fictitious characters around those issues. This is why so many women can identify with the characters and feel that their words were taken from the reader’s own conversations, but at the same time why no one feels they are actually portrayed in the book. I went through every page and made sure that nothing anyone had told me was actually written in, though the basic human dilemmas are all there. And I felt very good about bringing these issues and dilemmas to light because so many women feel them and live them and find great comfort in knowing that others are living them as well. Walking the same path of life is what bonds us all together.
Amy - Each of the four main characters struggles with her own "secret." What made you want to expose these characters and how do you think your readers relate to the characters?
Wendy - I was actually rocking my third baby in the middle of the night when I came up with the first issue to examine in Four Wives. I was sitting there in the dark, thinking about the conflict between loving and caring for my children, and the deep discontentment within myself. Knowing this was a timeless issue and one that impacted many of my peers, I began to construct the character, Love Welsh, from this issue.
From there, I thought about the suburbs and the somewhat strange life we lead here, and the other issues were born and characters constructed from them. There is the complete division of labor when mom is at home and dad works. This is where Marie finds herself. Though she works part time, she is still the domestic caretaker for the family and her husband is the primary breadwinner. This is a dilemma many suburban women face and the impact on marriages is profound. Then there is the universal problem of living within a marriage that is just dead. That is where Janie comes in. However, because of where she lives, leaving the marriage is that much more difficult. The bedrock of the community is the married family unit, and she does not want to leave it. At the same time, she has given up the part of her that is a sexual woman, and this is also devastating. Likewise for Gayle, leaving her marriage in the suburban culture seems impossible, even in the face of abuse.
Because these issues are so common, I think readers find themselves in one or more of the characters and can, hopefully, find some comfort in knowing that we all go through some or more of these obstacles in life, and that there are no perfect or easy answers.
Amy - You mention the "opt out debate" a lot - tell us what that means to you and how it changed the direction of your own life.
Wendy - The opt-out debate is the discussion over whether women should make the choice to leave the work force and stay home with their kids. Many women believe that this is detrimental because of the economic dependency it creates and the loss of self that can occur. Others think this is outweighed by the benefits to the family unit. I see both sides of this issue, and also a third, which is the pressure to stay home resulting from the necessary division of labor in affluent communities. The jobs that fuel this level of affluence are 24/7. They are not family friendly jobs that can accommodate a second working spouse. The division of labor really becomes a necessity for the families who have a spouse working one of these jobs, and this spouse is typically the man (a topic for another time!)
I saw many of these issues play out in my own life. When I left work to stay home, there is no question that my family benefited and still does. However, as I am now divorced, I can see the pitfalls of the economic dependency that I created for myself. I also felt the loss of a large piece of myself by staying home, and that is, of course, what drove me to write in the first place. It is ironic that the reason I began writing became the topic for my novel which in turn has opted me back in to the workforce on my own terms!
Amy - One of the things I love about Four Wives is that it represents the types of struggles that all moms have universally - Why do you think women tend to draw lines in the sand versus seeing our common ground?
Wendy - Unfortunately, the opt-out debate has polarized women into these two camps to some extent. Women who stay home often feel the need to justify their work as being intrinsically valuable – which it is. But to say there is great value in a mom being home also implies that a family is worse off if the woman does not stay home, and therein lies the dilemma. My take on this is simply that there is no perfect situation, and that every family must make choices that are best for its members, given the personalities, ambitions, and economics that can be so different from family to family. Children benefit from having a parent at home. And yet they also benefit from seeing their parents adding value to the world and bringing home resources for them. Perhaps the greatest factor, however, is whether the parents are happy with the arrangements they have chosen to make. If the parents are happy, and the children cared for by someone loving and responsible, then I think that family has done its job well.
Amy - As the character's secrets are revealed to one another, they seem to lower their guard with one another - have you experienced this in your own suburban community?
Wendy - I think that women ultimately want to share their worlds with each other, especially in these suburban communities where spouses live such different lives. I have often found that if I confess my problems and secrets to my friends, they will reveal theirs as a show of support and trust and friendship. Indeed, this is the lifeblood of female friendships and the very thing that holds us together as we live in our isolated houses and cars. Writing Four Wives has been amazing for me because women have been so forthcoming with their stories and experiences as they relate to the book. And this is also why I am so careful not to betray any confidences in my writing. I will be taking many, many secrets to the grave!
Amy - Can you tell us anything about your next book?
Wendy - I have two exciting books coming out in 2009. The first is a novel, entitled The Queen of Suburbia, and it is very similar to Four Wives, but not a sequel. There are multiple characters and interweaving plots all set in an affluent suburb. However, this suburb is even wealthier than Hunting Ridge, and the issues are new. As I did with Four Wives, I thought about the issues first, and built the characters around them. The Queen of Suburbia will look at the impact of extreme wealth on people and families, the loss of intimacy in the sexual relationships of teenagers, and the dilemma women face when they spend a lifetime developing skills that hold little value in society outside of a marriage – the dilemma of the professional wife. It is a suspenseful and page-turning read which I hope everyone will enjoy!
The second book is an edition of Chicken Soup for the Soul, entitled Power Moms, 101 Stories Celebrating the Power of Choice for Stay at Home and Work at Home Moms. We are currently collecting stories from women everywhere for this wonderful new book that will be out for Mother’s Day 2009. Anyone interested in submitting a story can get information from my website, which is wendywalkerbooks.com, or at dbs.chickensoup.com. I hope women will share their wonderful stories!
Note: A copy of Four Wives was supplied as part of this interview opportunity. Pick up your copy for great summer reading.
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