A tenacious ER doctor is the heroine in my new thriller about a deadly pathogen, THE RED LOTUS. My time researching the novel with ER doctors left me gobsmacked and grateful. Thank God they are strong, empathetic, and courageous — and have great senses of humor. Here is an essay I wrote about them, and […]
Category Archives: Good Reads
26
Mar
Mar
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who are Friends, It’s official: the audiobook of my first play, WINGSPAN, landed today. You can download it wherever you download your ebooks. If you enjoy reading scripts, there is an ebook, too. The one-act play premiered last year at 59E59 in New York City and ran throughout the […]
04
Apr
Apr
“Filled with turbulence and sudden plunges in altitude, ‘The Flight Attendant’ is a very rare thriller whose penultimate chapter made me think to myself, ‘I didn’t see that coming.’ The novel — Bohjalian’s 20th — is also enhanced by his deftness in sketching out vivid characters and locales and by his obvious research into the […]
31
Dec
Dec
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
