What if you had lived past lives? What if you could remember them? What would you do? Ann Brashares, the beloved author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, explores these questions and more in her second novel for adults, My Name Is Memory. The novel’s protagonist, Daniel, has spent countless lifetimes searching for Sophia, whom he met waaaaaay back in 541 AD, when he burned her house down and murdered her and her family. Since then, Daniel’s obsession with finding her has dominated his many lives.
Ann Brashares chatted with Books@Torontoist about writing for adults and constructing a compelling new mythology, in which readers can fall in love, lifetime after lifetime.
Torontoist: Tell us about your new book, My Name Is Memory.
Ann Brashares: At it’s core, My Name Is Memory is about its characters. Daniel, the main character, is unusual and remarkable. He’s unusual in that he can remember everything, from his past deaths and births to the beginning of his life. He keeps with him a brutal and searing memory from his first life, the face of a girl who has become a centerpiece of his memory. He spends each lifetime trying to find her again, and connect with her again. To him, she represents some form of completion.
TO: Where did this idea of playing with reincarnation come from?
AB: It first came about as an image that came into my head. At once, there was a young man and woman in some uncertain peril, facing a dire situation. In the face of death, he comforts her and says “I will find you again, this won’t be the end, I promise.” I don’t know why, but I started to question own imagination. Why does he know that? Why did he think that? Maybe he died before and remembers past it, maybe he’s lived many times and remembers back and back and back. What sort of life would you lead? What would it be like to have many lives and many mothers?
TO: Daniel lives many lives, but you focus on only a few, namely his life in 541 AD and in England during the war. Why did you select these particular times and places in history?
AB: I always loved history a lot. I based episodes in places I had knowledge of or a particular interest in.
TO: Why did you elect to set the present story in Virginia?
AB: I was born in Virginia, and O grew up in the DC area. My dad went to the University of Viriginia, and I’ve always been attached to the area. It’s a very rich atmosphere, it’s historically very rich. It was settled a long time ago, and has a strong sense of place. I wanted to situate this story in a place whose history and identity was as rich and strong as Daniel’s.
TO: Did you do any research into reincarnation? How did the mythology evolve as you worked on the novel?
AB: Not really. I read ancient Hindu writings and learned a little bit about reincarnation, but I didn’t read contemporary ideas. I wanted to do it in my own way. This story needed its own mythology and I wanted total freedom to create that. I wanted to develop a mythology that was consistent with the world as we see it, but could also allow for the development of Daniel and his abilities. I mapped out some of it beforehand, but some ideas came along with me as I wrote. I thought about what his life would be like, what it would be like to try to access that past memory, what sort of ramifications exist because of this memory, what a memory like this meant, and what death felt like.
TO: Is it true this is supposed to be the first in a series?
AB: That’s the grand scheme. I had the idea to make this a classic three-act drama. I saw this book as being a first act with a natural ending, but it also leads on to more. In the second act, stakes would rise and open up and other states of being would be revealed. There’s this whole underworld of people with the memory, and people more dangerous than Daniel can imagine. There’s a teeming underworld where there are pretenders, people who know about the memory and claim to have it, and people who experience it differently than Daniel. I have lots ideas and ambitions for these characters, but we’ll see how it goes. Hopefully this book finds an audience. I really hope it will, and that will give me the space to further explore this story.
TO: This is your second novel for adults. What has the transition from writing for teens to writing for adults been like?
AB: As a writer, it felt very organic. The Sisterhood characters turned 16 at the beginning of the series, and they are turning 19 at the end. With the next book [The Last Summer of You and Me], Alice [the protagonist] was 21 or 22. It’s been a gradual growing up, and not a radical departure for me. A lof of My Name Is Memory takes place in present time. It actually begins when they’re ending high school, when they’re teenagers, and ends with Daniel and Lucy in their early twenties. The world of publishing makes strong distinctions between YA and adult novels, but they’re not that different. They explore similar themes and YA can be very sophisticated. By the time you’re 14, you’re reading books on par with adult fiction anyways.
TO: The concept of names and identity play an important part in this book, and in understanding the various characters.
AB: One’s sense of identity can be fragile over time. I feel like I wasn’t same person when I was an editor and when in college. It’s only our memory that binds us together. Daniel is one person with one identity. He’s named several times in his many lives, but when this happens, he loses himself and loses his memories and identities. He’s so fragile and his name is one thing he can hold on to, and it keeps him together as a person.
TO: The other character with the memory, Ben, has a very different perspective on names and identity. Where did he come from?
AB: He came out of the blue for me. He was fun character to write, as he knows how to live. Daniel seems to have lost the feeling for living. Ben lives in his skin, and lives in the present. He’s not constrained by past lives or past bodies. He feels things, really feels things, and is highest example of what it really means to embrace life. Daniel really struggles to do that, as he’s aways searching for something from a past life and desperately hangs on to memories and feelings from his past.
TO: In this mythology you’ve constructed, whan happens when Daniel’s lives are over?
AB: They go to a heaven, at least I think that’s where they go. I had an idea that when Daniel is finished, that when he’s found that balance and fate and completed what he needed to be completed, his life will end. He’ll go to a place where others have made the same journey, and he’s not alone. Everyone there remembers everything.
It sounds fascinating! Your comment about how the hero “keeps with him a brutal and searing memory from his first life” reminds me of how I sometimes imagine my ancestors…. I look forward to reading it.