Kate Maloy Transcription

March 29, 2008

Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to “Sound Authors.” My next guest is Kate Maloy. Her new novel is called “Every Last Cuckoo.” It is published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. It just came out and it is set in Vermont, a favorite place of mine. It is a good pleasure speaking to Kate Malloy. Welcome to the show.

Kate Maloy: Thank you. It is good to be here.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about “Every Last Cuckoo.”

Kate: OK. “Every Last Cuckoo,” as you said, is set in Vermont. The main character is a 75 year old native Vermonter named Sarah Lucas who, in the course of the novel, suffers a really devastating loss and has to decide how she is going to carry on. She sort of feels that her choices are between lying back and going dark or sitting up and paying attention. She sits up and pays attention.

Dr. Kent: Is this a novel that has personal feelings for you?

Kate: Well, I lived in Vermont when I was writing it. I dearly loved Vermont. My husband and I had to leave for personal reasons and we now live in Oregon, which is a little bit like Vermont. But Sarah herself, although she is modeled on some older women that I have known personally, is not any of those women. She is her own creation.

Dr. Kent: There are so many novels out there right now. Algonquin Press is a wonderful press. How has the book been doing?

Kate: It has been doing actually very well. The official release date was January 22. The book has just gone into its third printing.

Dr. Kent: Oh, wonderful!

Kate: Yeah, yeah. I mean, they are not mega printings, but they are really respectable and really good. Algonquin is just wonderful. I have absolutely loved working with them.

Dr. Kent: So, let us talk a little bit about the book itself. Why did you decide to deal with the topic of an elderly woman and with the sudden death of her husband? I know it is a very thing. It is something we see every day, but why did you choose this topic?

Kate: Well, I chose it partly because it is something that happens to many, many women every year. But really, the main reason I chose it is because I still see older women, women in their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s stereotyped by the larger culture. It is as if people think that an older woman has just arrived on the planet with no history. You know?Instead of looking at these women as people who have developed some skill and strength and wisdom in the course of their lives, they just look at them as frail or silly or negligible in some way. In my experience, it is absolutely not true. There is nobody tougher and nobody more wise than women who have struggled in their lives. And especially if they have raised families and been engaged deeply with the people in their lives. They really become a force to contend with.

Dr. Kent: In Vermont, I went to a college in Vermont, at Middlebury. It is the most beautiful state in the country, I think. Oregon has a good claim, also. But Vermont, the people are so different than people anywhere else. Did you choose a Vermonter for that reason?

Kate: Well, I chose a Vermonter partly because I was in Vermont. Partly because one of the women who is like my character Sarah in spirit, if not in the events of her life, comes from Vermont stock. And also because Vermont has an extreme climate. There is a great deal of, I do not know, challenge to living in Vermont, especially for a lifetime. Weathering the winters. Seeing the amount of poverty in the state, which is really quite a lot and increasing in these days, I am sure.There is just a certain resourcefulness and independence of mind and courage I associate with Vermonters, especially native Vermonters. So yeah, Vermont is important. It is important to Sarah and to the story.

Dr. Kent: What is the process you go about? This book has a whole great cast of characters. What is your process of dreaming up a family? Dreaming up a character? Is this based on people you know? Is it based on people you see walking around shopping malls? How do you do that?

Kate: In this case, although Sarah yes, is based in her attitudes and her courage on women I have known and her husband Charles is probably based on some older men I have known, the rest of her family just kind of arrives. It seemed to me that Sarah needed at least a couple of children, and three seemed better than two.She needed one of them to be somebody she had to really struggle with. Somebody she butted heads with. She needed one to be someone she could always talk to. And another one who maybe they have a history of difficulty and now that has passed and there is a sort of mellowness that has set in. So, I think the characters of her children come from the needs of the story.I would say the same is true for other characters in the book. There is a bunch of people who show up in Sarah’s life after her husband has died. They are all people who need a retreat or refuge or some kind of protection. There have been a few people who have said oh that is ridiculous, no 75 year old woman is going to fill up her house with strangers.And the fact they are not strangers. That is partly a function of Vermont too. One of them is a cousin of somebody she knows and one is her own granddaughter with two of her friends. One is the daughter of a friend. She either knows all of these people or knows where they come from, what their stock is, who their families are. I think that is important too. She is not a foolhardy woman. She is making her choices very carefully.

Dr. Kent: Now, in a world where the last Halloween I remember all of the children in the neighborhood came before 5:00 pm because of the fear of strangers, it is such a frightened society right now. Maybe from all of the television and that. This book is about accepting strangers into a home, the “Every Last Cuckoo.” What does that mean to people?

Kate: Well, I want to respond a little bit to your comment that this is a very frightened society, because I think that is really important in the book. There is hazard all around Sarah. And after Charles dies, she is very, very aware of it and very frightened and has sort of lifelong underground fears to confront and deal with in the course of this novel.Some of that comes from the natural world, which she sees as full of hazard, from the weather to the predators in her woods, accidents that can happen. Somebody falls through the ice into a pond. Someone else nearly freezes to death because her car gets stalled at night on a remote road and it is bitterly, bitterly cold.But there are also echoes of fear from the larger world. People think of Vermont as very safe, which compared to other states it is. But there is a lot of domestic violence in Vermont. There is a lot of personal violence that is bred by poverty and loss of jobs and alcohol and all sorts of things.And then there are a couple of characters in the novel who bring in a sense of danger from the much larger world. There is an Israeli scholar who comes and stays with Sarah. There is news of a murder in Massachusetts that affects her family.So yeah, there is kind of a sense of that throughout the novel. And it is a big challenge for Sarah to learn how not to be afraid when there is so much reason for fear.

Dr. Kent: I know you have written in the past a memoir called A Stone Bridge North, which explores a little bit your Quaker faith.

Kate: Yes, that is right.

Dr. Kent: How does being part of the Friends Church…How does that take place in this novel as well? Is there a little bit of that in here?

Kate: There is some of that in there. There is one character who is a Quaker, who has been a Quaker her whole life. She has doubts, you know as most people who follow any kind of religious faith do from time to time. But mainly the thread from Quakerism has to do with human violence, and whether it is as essential and in the scape of all, as violence in the natural world.I mean, an animal who hunts for its dinner is doing what it was designed and formed to do. But a person who goes to war and kills another person, he does not know and does not have any actual personal quarrel with, is a whole different question. And that is partly why the Israeli character is in there. It is something he has thought about a lot.

Dr. Kent: So, now that you have opened up the political bag of worms a little bit here, what do you think about the political situation?

Kate: The current one?

Dr. Kent: Yes.

Kate: What about it? It is so much.

Dr. Kent: Are you glued to CNN? Or are you more of a newspaper reader?

Kate: I am more of an online reader. I read a lot of stuff online, both from conversations in various forums to reporting on various sites. At the moment, my major concerns are endless war and the threat of further wars. And also the increasingly mean-spirited tone between the Democratic candidates. I do not think it is doing the party any good and I think it is helping Republicans. But that is just my personal take on things.

Dr. Kent: Well this has been a real honor. Kate Maloy, her book is called Every Last Cuckoo. Her website iskatemaloy.com, and that is with a k-a-t-e-m-a-l-o-y.com.

Kate: One L in Maloy. And this is available at Amazon and book stores all over the place.

Dr. Kent: It is from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. And her older books are also available. So, go check her out online. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Kate: Thank you ever so much. I have really enjoyed it.

Dr. Kent: My next guest is the legendary bluegrass, father of bluegrass in some ways, Doyle Lawson with a brand of vocal gospel bluegrass that no one else has. Come on back.

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