A book is set in ink on paper but a story is malleable, a story can have versions and retellings and can feel like a living, constantly growing thing. It was a subtle but important shift when I went from writing what I thought was going to be a book about books to a book about stories. I do think it’s already starting to take on a life of its own. But I don’t feel like it ended, I feel like I was done with my part of the storytelling process and now the rest is for the reader. I was ready to let it go and live its story-life. And I didn’t really want it to end, I lived in it for so long it’s strange to have reached the point where other people can live in it now. Can you start by talking about this?ĮRIN MORGENSTERN: Oh, thank you very much, I’m delighted to hear that you enjoyed it. This was an idea you visited again and again. The power of stories to change and evolve, to lead to more. This seemed like one of the largest themes in Starless Sea. And no story ever truly ends as long as it is told. In fact, as I noted in the introduction, near the end you wrote: This is not where their story ends. I had a feeling you didn’t want it to end either. RACHEL BARENBAUM: Erin, I loved this book so much that I did not want it to end. We at DeadDarlings were all thrilled when Erin agreed to this interview, so let’s get to the good stuff: And what has lingered with me long after I put the book down was a question that also lingers with her characters: When we reach the end of a story, are we truly at the end or is that where the story begins? When I tell you to run, not walk, to buy a copy I mean it.
She has a gift for details and an unbounded imagination that sculpts scenes and characters that left me cheering, crying and cursing.
And yes, I’m overflowing with adjectives in these descriptions but that’s because there’s so much-and it’s so good-that I don’t want to leave anything out.īeyond her ability to weave together stories, Morgenstern’s strength lies in her ability to build fantastic worlds that seem as real as the keyboard I’m using to type this interview. Her pirates and painters, lovers, owl king and people lost in time all revolve around the mesmerizing, honey-gold shores of the Starless Sea. Like the master storytellers in the novel, Morgenstern weaves a brilliant tapestry of linked fables, myths and origin tales that kept me spellbound. It sounds complicated-and it is-but that is the beauty of this story.
His journey takes him into an underground harbor filled with magic (although the ‘m’ word is frowned upon) and contrasts with a simultaneous cat and mouse thriller unfolding above-ground. The novel unfolds through a mythical, labyrinthian-like plot/world in which Zachary Ezra Rawlins begins as a lost millennial graduate student and ends as a modern-day Theseus. Erin Morgenstern’s latest, The Starless Sea, is breathtaking.
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