When I was a boy, my parents’ New Year’s Eve parties were not precisely chaotic studies in dissolution and debauchery, but once when I was in elementary school, I walked in on two of their married friends necking in the bathtub in an upstairs bathroom. This wouldn’t have been quite so disturbing for the three […]
Author Archives: Chris Bohjalian
07
Dec
Dec
by Chris Bohjalian HE LEANED AGAINST THE cement wall, a father who was no longer young with a daughter who was, and listened briefly to the sounds of the toilets flushing. He stared for a long moment at the impeccable streams of Christmas lights and a wreath awash in bulbs the size of chili peppers. […]
Good Reads, The Writing Process, Untold Stories
The novel, “Midwives,” 20 years later: What was the early reaction to the novel like? Has it changed over time?
12
May
May
It was twenty years ago that “Midwives” was published: 1997. Seinfeld was still on the air. The Spice Girls had two of the year’s biggest hits. The Dow Jones closed for the first time at. . .7,000. Throughout this month I will be answering questions from the Reading Group Center to celebrate the new, twentieth […]
The Writing Process, Untold Stories, Vermont
The novel, “Midwives,” 20 years later: Is there anything I would update or change?
10
May
May
It was twenty years ago that “Midwives” was published: 1997. I had hair then. Our phones were considerably less smart. Our books were made of paper. Throughout this month I will be answering questions from the Reading Group Center to celebrate the new, twentieth anniversary edition of the novel. Here is their first one. As […]
26
Apr
Apr
ADOLF HITLER KEPT a bust of Ataturk in his office. Heinrich Himmler considered moving to Turkey in the early 1920s. And Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, admitted in his memoirs (penned while awaiting his execution) that he first killed while serving in the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. Make no mistake: The Young […]
04
Feb
Feb
Of the million and a half words (at least a million and a half) that Howard Frank Mosher published, the sentence I think about most often is the very first sentence of his very first novel: “My father was a man of indefatigable optimism.” It is, like most of his sentences, rhythmically perfect. It has […]
Good Reads, The Writing Process, Untold Stories
An interview in which I reveal my favorite children’s book, what I did before I became a novelist, and my response to one very garish dust jacket
04
Jan
Jan
Over the holidays, I was interviewed about my work and “The Sleepwalker” by Laura Hamlett of Playback St. Louis. I thought her questions were really interesting. Here is the complete interview. Happy reading! * * * LAURA HAMLETT: When I read The Guest Room last fall, I found a new writer to love. I […]
16
Dec
Dec
The forward trenches in the hills just beyond the abandoned village of Talish, in Nagorno-Karabakh, are reminiscent of World War I: long, endless, slits in the ground, the dirt buttressed by wood, with periodic firing posts and dugouts. Stacked tires packed with dirt stand in for sandbags, but otherwise it looks like the Western Front […]
The bug wasn’t Gregor Samsor-big. We’re not talking Kafkaesque. But in my memory it was the size of a cat. It was vaguely wasp-like – black and yellow – with both a stinger at the rear and an earwig’s pincers emanating from the sides of its jaw. If you packed its bulbous abdomen with D […]
29
Nov
Nov
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends, When I finish a novel and the book works — and heaven knows that’s not always the case — I am left with a distinct postpartum sadness. I miss the characters and spending time with them in my library everyday. The truth is, I never write from […]
