Lauren Willig at the Corner Bookstore

The English Wife

I made my first trip to the lovely Corner Bookstore on Madison and 93rd Street in New York City for a book launch for Lauren Willig, author of The English Wife. The Corner Bookstore holds a special place in Willig's heart as it was her neighborhood bookstore growing up (her parents still live nearby), and she has been launching her books (starting with The Pink Carnation, thirteen years ago) there since she began writing.

Willig was set to write a book set in WWII Paris, and she had been in the middle of her research when she had a vision of a woman with a Gibson girl hairdo and 1890's clothing falling from a parapet into the Hudson River. This vision led her to drop the Paris book and write The English Wife. (Her agent suggested a saga set in Palm Beach, which the enthusiastic crowd groaned at.)

The English Wife is about an wealthy American man, Bay, who marries Annabelle, an English woman "with a dodgy past". He builds his wife a replica of her English home on the Hudson River, and amid rumors of an affair between Annabelle and the architect, on the night of a grand Twelfth Night Ball, Bay is stabbed and Annabelle goes missing.

The action in the book takes place in 1895, with Bay in England, and 1899, with Bay's sister Janie investigating the events of the evening. Eventually both timelines merge until we get to the the denouement of the mystery.

Willig then read a few a passages, and took questions from the very engaged audience. When asked if she knew the ending of the novel before she wrote it, Willig stated that she never knows how her books will end; she goes on a journey with her characters and she figures it out when they do. She stated that she "feels like I stumble on my characters in a bar and they follow me home", which the audience laughed at.

When asked about writer's block, Willig said that she finds two forms of it- the first is "I don't wanna write", and that the cure is just to sit there and pound away at the keyboard. The other happens when she tries to force her characters do something they wouldn't do. When that happens, her sister calls it  "going into the barn", which refers to a time when Willig was writing a scene set during the Dublin uprising and she had to get characters into a barn for a scene. She spent a month trying to figure a way to get them into the barn when her sister finally said "just don't go into the barn.'

Willig is a charming, delightful speaker. She is very at ease in front of an audience (and not all authors are), and there was a lot of great conversation between Willig and her audience. It was really one of the most enjoyable author events I have had the pleasure of attending. (I can't believe I didn't take a photo that night.)

The English Wife is now on sale, and I just finished it and it was a crackling good story. My review is here.

Lauren Willig's website is here.
The Corner Bookstore website is here.