In Jennifer Egan's deliciously creepy new novel, two cousins reunite twenty years after a childhood prank gone wrong changed their lives and sent them on their separate ways. "Cousin Howie," the formerly uncool, strange, and pasty ("he looked like a guy the sun wouldn't touch") cousin has become a blond, tan, and married millionaire with a generous spirit. He invites his cousin Danny (who as an insecure teenager left him hurt and helpless in a cave for three days) to help him renovate an old castle in Germany. To reveal too much would ruin the story, just know that The Keep is a wonderfully weird read--a touch experimental in terms of narrative, with a hefty dose of gothic tension and mystery--balanced by an intimate and mesmerizing look at how the past haunts us in different ways. --Daphne Durham
10 Second Interview: A Few Words with Jennifer Egan
Q: What is your writing process like? Has it differed from book to book? A: My writing process seems to be a strange one, at least compared with other writers I've talked to. I begin with very little: usually just a strong sense of time and place--of atmosphere--and a few abstract notions that I want to explore. In the case of The Keep, I had a yen to set a book in what I'll call a gothic environment: an isolated, crumbling structure whose heyday is long past, and where eerie things begin to happen. As for the notions, I was curious about telecommunications: the way that cell phones and the Internet have made so many of us accustomed to nearly constant disembodied communication--a state traditionally associated with supernatural experience. I loved the idea of letting modern telecommunications collide with a gothic environment and seeing what would happen.
I write by hand--usually one long draft that I scribble out quickly (5-10 pages a day) and poorly. I do this almost completely from the gut, with very little sense of where I'm going. It's often in the process of this almost unconscious writing that I discover characters and action. When the first draft is done, I type it into the computer (the parts I can read anyway; I have wretched handwriting) and see what I've got. Not a word of that first draft usually makes it anywhere near the final draft--which, in the case of some chapters of Look at Me, my last novel, was sixty to seventy drafts later. I edit by hand on a hard copy, then type in the changes and print it out again for further editing. The writing itself always remains instinctive, but there is a strong analytical counterpart, when I figure out what I'm doing in terms of plot, characters, thematic underpinnings, and then scheme about how I can do it better. I save every draft until a book is done; a towering pile of paper that I eventually, joyfully, recycle.
Q: Some of the most powerful (and terrifying) moments in the book deal with claustrophobia. Are you claustrophobic? A: I almost never write about myself, or things that have happened in my own life, or about people I know. I like to make all of it up--or at least, I think I'm making it up, until later I realize how much of my own experience has crept into my books, disguised even from me. For example: I'm not claustrophobic, but I've certainly been paranoid, and the two are closely linked. I wanted to capture the way that paranoia (like claustrophobia) can instantly turn a benign environment into an unmitigated nightmare. One question is always at the center of such experiences: is this real, or am I making it up? We live in very paranoid times. I was interested in the way paranoia can make someone turn threatening and aggressive in exactly the ways they perceive the world to be. They become the very monster they fear.
Q: What author/s have inspired you? A: In the big, long-term ways: Lawrence Sterne, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Emile Zola, George Eliot, Robert Stone, Don DeLillo, Jean Rhys. For The Keep, the list is slightly different. There are some fantastic (and totally insane) Gothic novels that I had a ball reading: Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, Matthew Lewis's The Monk--those are all 18th century books--and then from the 19th century, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, which is an absolutely drop-dead great thriller.
I was really disappointed in Jennifer Egan's The Keep.
I'd read a great review of it, and later saw it in the book pile at my local Starbucks. The inside cover made it sound like a really compelling story - right up my alley:
"Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank whose devastating consequences changed both their lives, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe, a castle steeped in blood lore and family pride...In an environment of extreme paranoia, cut off from the outside world, the men reenact the single event of their youth, with even more catastrophic results."
Instead of an edge-of-your seat thriller as the above paragraph would imply, The Keep is a much duller story, muddied by the constant back-and-forth between present and past, and first- and third-person voices.
It gets confusing at times as to which characters are experiencing which actions, and the two "catastrophic events" with "devastating consequences" are almost glossed over to the point where they seem neither catastrophic nor devastating but rather a rambling story about some odd people.
This was one of those books that I had been intrigued by since it came out. I liked the idea of a good gothic novel, similar to the 13th Tale, instead I felt empty and cheated when I finished this book. The Keep, by Jennifer Egan, is not a very good book. There were so many different characters and plots going on; however, none of them were that good. I do not think there was one sympathetic character in this novel. There certainly was not one character that I cared about. There was one clever plot twist that turned this into a Two star book for me, rather than a One star novel. I would not recommend this book.
I really am not even sure why the term gothic has been used to describe this book. Much less as a Tag. The only thing gothic about the book is that there is a castle. Heck, you can get that from a variety of novel. This is the worse book I have read since Hawkes Harbor by S.E. Hinton.
I was very impressed with Ms Egan's writing. This was my first book by this author and it won't be my last.
I feel this story left a lot to my imagination-and I liked that.As I read each page I could picture the characters forming and taking shape in my mind. I don't get this with every book.
I was completely taken in with this story and would recommend it.
Q: What is your writing process like? Has it differed from book to book?
