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How to pronounce Kate Christensen: Chris-ten-sen
Kate Christensen is the author of eight novels, most recently Welcome Home, Stranger. Her fourth novel, The Great Man, won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She has also published two food-centric memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose, which won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Her essays, reviews, and short pieces have appeared in a wide variety of publications and anthologies. She lives with her husband and their two dogs in Taos, New Mexico.
Kate Christensen's website
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In two separate interviews, Kate Christensen considers the surprising nature of her characters in The Astral, and she reveals the inspiration behind her sexy tragicomedy, Trouble.
Kate Christensen on The Astral
You write The Astral from the perspective of a 57-year-old male narrator, Harry Quirk. What was it like writing from a different gender?
The Astral is the third novel I've written from a male point of view, so apparently I must enjoy it! Writing from a male perspective is very comfortable for me. Each of my three male narrators is different from the others. Unlike the other two, Harry has raised children, has had a long marriage, and is old enough to feel washed up in his career. Therefore he has few illusions and a realistic sense of who and what he is, which makes him a trustworthy guide to his own story.
The story became more poignant and urgent because I wrote it from Harry's perspective than it would have been if I'd chosen his wife, Luz, or his friend, Marion. In my experience, women are emotionally tougher than men, on the whole, and better able to weather personal crises. The fact that Harry is a man rather than a woman makes him seem more emotionally vulnerable to me. It raises the stakes on his ...
Elizabeth Berg is the author of many bestselling novels, including Open House (an Oprah's Book Club selection), Talk Before Sleep, and The Year of Pleasures, as well as the short story collection The Day I Ate Whatever I... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Astral
Try:
Open House
by Elizabeth Berg
Anne Enright is author of seven novels, most recently Actress. She has been awarded the Man Booker Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards. She ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Astral
Try:
The Forgotten Waltz
by Anne Enright
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