Dear Kelley,
No question, rather a comment. I’m very glad that I didn’t read any of the reviews or the questions posted here. I simply read the book. (Great cover, btw).
Solitaire was a delight. I congratulate you on your knowledge of facilitating techniques. You must know someone in the business because it was so accurate.
What makes a book for me a really good read? It nudges everything else just a tad aside. Like finding that little bit of elbow room at a crowded bar, it allowed me to order up a portion of Jackal, a sip of Snow, and a shot of Neill neat. That’s not any easy feat when life around me feels so complicated. I truly want to thank you for that.
As to the most recent questions/comments posted on your website, it never bothered me that you didn’t develop Steel Breeze into a major plot twist. I felt that they were superfluous from the start, a convenient excuse to convict Jackal. I read it as Jackal was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wasn’t expecting a conspiracy intrique novel. You’re probably too young to remember the Patty Hearst scenario. Yet, had you gone down that road, I’m sure comparisons would’ve been made.
Getting back to my original point: thanks for the great read. I’m nominating you for a Lammy because I can, and because I think you deserve a thunderous round of applause.
I’m just a reader, but I say bravo, Kelley, bravo.
Best regards,
Jeanne Westby
You may certainly describe yourself as “just a reader” if you wish, but I never will. Readers are the earth and sky to me. So thanks for all these kind words, and I’m glad you liked the book.
It is a great cover. It’s gorgeous, simple, reflects the essence of the story, and makes people want to walk across the aisle and pick up the book. The artist is Bruce Jensen, who has done much good work. It was a particular pleasure to learn that he’d been assigned Solitaire because he did the cover of Nicola’s first book, Ammonite, which she and I both really liked (lovely image of a planet with a subtle cloud-cover in the shape of an ammonite – although our pleasure was diminished when the then-president of the publishing house wandered by the editor’s desk and insisted that a spaceship be put in the picture. It’s science fiction. There has to be a spaceship. I swear this is a true story.)
In my corporate life I was, among other things, a professional facilitator. I ran meetings (mine, and other people’s) for groups of 2 to 250 people many times a day for years. The last 6 years of my corporate life focused on process development and improvement, project management, team-building, managing, coaching, and facilitating. I taught workshops on communication and leading effective meetings. I mentored folks. I had an absolute blast. If I ever have to go back to corporate work, it’s what I would choose to do again. And it sounds as though you’re in the business yourself (you’re the first person who has chosen the word ‘accurate’). I’d be interested to hear more about what you do. Me, I think everyone should have some training in this area. People might actually get more done with a little less unnecessary friction (and it seems to me there’s more than enough of the necessary kind to satisfy even those who need conflict to feel that they have done something meaningful).
I like the image of elbow room at the bar. It’s certainly my experience that a good story makes a space for itself inside my head. For me, it’s as if the best stories carve out little caves where they can take up residence and echo back and forth to one another. I can’t imagine my life without books, movies, theatre, conversation (the best talking, for me, always includes story. Let me tell you what happened to me today….). I fall in love with worlds, with characters, with a particular feeling or a specific moment. I imagine myself living that life, making those choices, having a beer with those people, being a part of their world. Writing is another way to give myself that chance.
One of the best compliments I’ve had about Solitaire came from Bill Sheehan, who said in his review for Barnes & Noble.com that I had obvious affection for my characters, and that the best moments in the book had the quality of “actual, felt life.” That’s the essence of the connection that I talk so often about wanting to make with readers. And I’m coming to understand more and more how important these seemingly simple things are to me as a reader and a writer.
I just read the A.M. Homes short story collection The Safety of Objects. She’s a good writer, and I can understand why some people like her work a lot, but I don’t, and I couldn’t figure out why. Nicola and I had a conversation (over beer, naturally) about it the other night, and she went off and read a couple of the stories and said, “Oh, it’s because she doesn’t seem to like any of her characters very much. There’s very little compassion.”
I think she’s right. Homes is perceptive and can write a killer sentence, but she doesn’t tell the kind of story I want to read or write. I can’t imagine wanting those worlds, or those characters, making a space in my head. So telling me that Jackal and Snow and Neill mattered to you (which is how I read your email, and certainly hope you will correct me if I misunderstood), and that you enjoyed their company, is a gift to me. So is the Lammy nomination, which I certainly appreciate.
And I do remember Patty Hearst – I’m not so young as all that (grin). I recently went to a friend’s 30th birthday party, where I was the oldest person in the room. She observed to me privately that all her under-30 friends asked her, “How do you feel?” in tones of concern or compassion, and all her over-30 friends said, “Congratulations, life is so much cooler on this side of the fence.” And so it is.
I remember thinking that the interpersonal skills Jackal learns in the novel come through strong and real. I wish they’d given us work like this to study back in school instead of those boring manuals they commonly use. I can only imagine what a joy it would be to discuss Solitaire with a class, even (or especially) if it were a business class.
Authors who show compassion for their characters: love them. My latest compassionate-author crush is Miranda July. I even had to get both the yellow and pink paperbacks so I could try to color-coordinate while I reread them.
I’ll put Miranda July on my (oh so long) reading list, thanks.
Learning facilitation skills has been one of the most important and life-changing things I’ve done, one of those choices that rippled through my life in many and unexpected ways. It still does.
Kelley–
Having read ‘Solitaire’ just this spring, there is a part of the story I have been curious about.
When Jackal is up in the tower/space needle control room and her friends (web) are in the lift, there is a moment when things start to go wrong. She finds herself at the helm of these controls trying to fix whatever the problem is and the failsafe coding is in Chinese etc. The system is rapidly failing all around her and there is the moment when she presses the wrong/fatal button and the lift plummets and her web is killed.
I read that scene as the system failing of its own accord a split second before Jackal presses the button. The two incidents merge, nearly happening simultaneously, that even Jackal hasn’t any idea what’s really occurred. And she was made to pay for something she didn’t do.
But for the rest of the story it is played out as though Jackal pressed the wrong button causing the deaths and must pay for it. So I’m not sure.
Also, Jackal’s virtual freedom and the line ‘the happiest I’ve ever been in my life,’ made we want to weep.
This whole novel made me feel and think very deeply about many things, which was a shocker since I go around proclaiming how I never read science fiction. Well, no longer. . .
Jan, ah, isn’t that the way of the world? Tell the universe you never do something and then watch what happens…
I don’t know if you saw this post about Jackal and the elevators, but I’m including it here for anyone who is interested. The short answer is, no, the system did not fail of its own accord. Jackal pushed the wrong button. If she hadn’t, there would still have been some kind of incident — see that post for the details — but would the web have been killed? Jackal will never know.
She did do it. It was a terrible, terrible accident.
I have always felt so very sorry for her, having to carry that weight of responsibility and guilt. And because I know her well, I know that she will find some way to make peace with herself. Because that’s what we all have to do. It helps when there are people to forgive us, but in the end we have to forgive ourselves, just as we have to save ourselves in all the other ways.
Which is, of course, one reason that it’s called Solitaire.
I’m glad the book made you think, and I’m especially glad that it made you feel.