Evgenia Citkowitz’s New Novel Is a Dark, Cool Tonic for Blazing Summer Days
Evgenia Citkowitz’s The Shades is technically a first novel, but banish all assumptions that the designation might evoke. This is not single-strand auto-fiction, a thin mask for the author’s experience. (Citkowitz also published a collection of short stories in 2010.) It is an ambitious, structurally complex, richly allusive book. (I sensed the ghosts of Henry James and Daphne du Maurier; Citkowitz cites Elizabeth Bowen.) Literary DNA doesn’t pass from one generation to the next, of course, but when you consider Citkowitz’s pedigree, the level of accomplishment is somewhat less surprising. Citkowitz’s mother was the comic novelist Caroline Blackwood, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat born into the Guinness dynasty and once married to Lucian Freud whose novels were compared to those of Muriel Spark and Irish Murdoch, though an added dose of of “rather brilliant bitchiness” set hers apart. Her stepfather (the Freud union eventually broke up) was the poet Robert Lowell. She recently spoke with me for Vogue about growing up in their midst, and the inspiring terror of being a parent.
This is a first novel, but it doesn’t read like one. No offense to first-time novelists, but this is a layered, structurally ambitious, emotionally complex work told from shifting perspectives. How did you prepare to embark upon a complex book like this?
Whether I’m approaching a short story or novel, the process is essentially the same: I start small with an instinct or premise and build from there. With The Shades the first idea was about a person returning to a place of her/his youth. Then I started asking questions: Who is being visited? Who is doing the visiting? and I began to populate the place, expanding the idea to include themes that interested me. Eventually, the stories of a mother, father, son, deceased child, and ostensible interloper in a family materialized. I say “eventually” as the process took many years. Unfortunately, layering doesn’t take place all at once. With the different points of view and the circling structure, I was trying to get the feeling of a kaleidoscope, so that with the introduction and return of each character, it’s as if the story is being shaken and re-set to a new place of understanding each time.
The book is quite short, but packs an enormous amount into its 190-ish pages. Did you always set out to write a dense book? Or had you imagined something more sprawling at one point?
My characters are intense, and the events in the book are too. The knotted prose is most often a reflection of gnarly states of mind. When my wonderful editor, Jill Bialosky, first read the manuscript, she encouraged me to flesh out the story, which I did, but I believe she was less concerned about page count than wanting me to fulfill the characters. When I started writing The Shades, I wanted it to be lean, to maintain tension and momentum. I also knew it was going to be a long haul. By that I mean, I always knew the structure was going to be challenging.
You’re compared to Patricia Highsmith and Ian McEwan in the promotional materials for the book. From my own very subjective perspective, the book also reminded me of Henry James, Alan Hollinghurst, Julian Barnes, and Daphne du Maurier. Did you have any particular literary references in mind as you were writing?
The British have a tradition of using houses like characters and I wanted something of that kind of atmosphere and presence. Yes, I dreamed of Daphne du Maurier while I was writing—Elizabeth Bowen as well. Bowen’s houses breathe and expirate. There’s terrific depth of feeling in her novels and stories, at the same time, elegance and restraint. I admire very much all the writers you mention. James’s The Turn of the Screw is eternally haunting. Initially, I set the story in San Francisco, before quickly realizing that the geography wasn’t going to work. You could say I was looking for my Manderley. Hence, I moved the story to the U.K., where it was easier to find a decaying estate of a particular kind.
Feel free to tell me they had no bearing on your literary aspirations, but both your mother (Caroline Blackwood) and your stepfather (Robert Lowell) were famous writers. Did growing up around writers shape you? Or did you find yourself pushing back against their profession? What did you learn or absorb by growing up in their midst?
Growing up around writers normalized it as an activity. Writing is a singular pursuit. The fact that creativity was valued and that words were considered important impacted me, for sure. Yet, in the end, if I hadn’t been innately interested in writing or had the will to tell stories myself, I’m not sure what it all would have meant, other than my having the opportunity to absorb or reject an appreciation for literature. My mother was temperamentally dramatic, but she wasn’t dramatic about writing. She got on with it. I think that was as valuable a lesson as any. Get on with it. I learned to write by writing. From her and Robert Lowell I saw that that in spite of the turmoil in their lives, writing was a quiet process, like watching someone put beads on a string. It didn’t seem romantic in any way. For two people who weren’t remotely organized, their application was always practical.
Someone—I thought it was Lorrie Moore, but Google is not helping me figure it out—once said that the way to write truly affecting fiction is to write about what terrifies you the most. I was thinking about this as I read certain parts of your book that had to do with the characters losing their children in various ways. Can you talk a little about what you wanted to convey about the relationship between parents and their children?
Yes, who said that? It’s intriguing. I can relate to being motivated to write from fear. In The Shades I wanted to explore what it means to be a parent in an uncertain world, the anxiety of it, and the barriers that we construct to keep the reality of that at bay. My novel is what happens when a family is slammed and their protective cocoon destroyed. As parents we are invested in the idea of nurture, and believe that if we give our children the best, and provide every support, we will have succeeded. There’s beauty in that, the love, work, sacrifice, and care that takes, and it’s mostly for the good, but we are also invested in the idea because it presupposes that we have more control over our children’s lives than we do. It’s a kind of necessary hubris. Not to believe in the power of our influence would be terrifying, because if we don’t, it means we are helpless to protect our children. I also wanted to say something about resilience. Children grow up because of their parents, and also in spite of them. As well as being vulnerable, they are often wiser and more resilient than we sometimes know.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
