Throughout the book (Julie's Friends and Family), various people become involved with the Project: Julie's husband, her friends, and several of her family members. I think that that's a really interesting observation, how I felt much more comfortable attempting to get into JC's head than into my own family's and friends. Some of that was intentional and some not, and there were several different reasons. I think with Julia, there was an urge to get into her head because she's such an institution that for all her evident generosity and zeal, there is a certain opacity to her, a certain reserve. I wanted to know her, because I knew I'd never know her, if that makes sense. On the other hand, with my family and friends, of course first of all I owe them as much discretion and respect as possible, given that I'm exploiting their lives for my work. But even aside from that, I think there's an extent to which J&J is about how impossible it is to get into other people's heads, and how only you can know what's best for you. My friend upon whom the character Isabel is based was at first a little upset by my depiction of her SPOILER ALERT divorce and relationship with another man she met online. Because in the book I - or "Julie," really, for I do think of Julie as a character in a book I wrote, not always necessarily me - is judgemental about what I think of as her bad choices. I needed to do that, and did it consciously, because I saw Isabel's story as having a lot of parallels with my own, and being a way to depict from both an inside and an outside perspective that moment when you do something the world thinks as crazy because your intuition tells you it's the thing you have to do to survive and grow. So, yes, I wanted my friends' lives to remain somewhat opaque. We're all alone in our heads. |
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