Any way you look at it, Carrie Pilby, the hero of the first novel by Hudson Reporter editor Caren Lissner, is extreme.
It takes an extreme character to look at the world and see its foibles and self-delusion. It takes an extreme character to notice the ironies and hypocrisies in everyday life.
As much of a genius as Lissner’s main character is (she’s a 19-year-old prodigy who just graduated from college), she also is still a young woman struggling to make sense of the real-world’s emotional turmoil that she is too inexperienced to deal with.
The novel Carrie Pilby, which was published on June 1 by Red Dress Ink, carries the reader through the protagonist’s struggles, often causing emotional moments in a reader that are both humorous and at the same time agonizing.
Lissner will do two booksignings during which she will read from the novel and answer questions on the publishing process, including one this Wednesday, June 4, at 7:30 at the Symposia Bookstore, 511 Willow Ave. in Hoboken. On June 26, she will appear at 7:30 at the Greenwich Village Barnes & Noble at Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, one block south of the Ninth Street PATH station.
Protagonist gets a five-point plan
When the novel begins, Carrie Pilby, fresh out of Harvard University, has just moved to New York City. She sees her therapist, Dr. Petrov, once a week. Petrov comes up with a five-point plan to force her to get out and learn to interact with people her own age – including joining an organization and going on a date. But the people she meets only confuse her more.
In the novel, Lissner has created a truth-seeker in the most classic sense, one who is dumped into a modern world where people do not often – in fact generally can’t – live up to their own ideals.
Carrie struggles to understand emotionally the issues of a immoral, sex-driven, hypocritical society, often choosing to spend her time shut up in her room and in her own mind rather than merely doing and saying things to “fit in.”
The book is remarkably rife with puns and ironies too numerous to delineate, a novel for contemporary people, yet with the wit and wisdom of 19th century satire.
The main character, after whom the book is titled, is brilliant enough to see the incredible inconsistencies of modern society, but also views many things as right or wrong, black or white. Although as a genius, Pilby may seem far-out at first, her struggle can mirror the isolation many people face in their 20s and 30s.
“How many compromises must a person make to fit in?” Lissner asked during an interview. “How much do you need to change yourself to become accepted by those around you?”
The book is about learning to adapt, figuring out which values to compromise and which values to maintain.
“She wonders if there are some things you shouldn’t take a stand on,” Lissner notes, “otherwise you’ll never be happy.”
But don’t think this is a lecture. The novel is so thick with witticisms, one can hardly read a paragraph without finding one. The main character ponders the questions that we have but rarely write, such as why people hoard groceries before a snowstorm or why manufacturers build cars that can go up to 150 miles per hour when the most liberal speed limit is 75.
One of the key moments – and perhaps the defining scene in the book – revolves around the concept of loyalty in a relationship. When Carrie hits it off with a young man who is engaged but likes her, she wonders, why should she resist getting involved with him? Why should she always give up a good time if no one else does?
“I want people to think about morality, about the compromises and tradeoffs,” Lissner said. “Is it right to give in? Is it simply too hard to be moral?”
Working her way up
This is Lissner’s first published novel, although her humorous fiction, nonfiction and personal essays have appeared in the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jane Magazine, and Harper’s. Raised in Matawan and Freehold in Monmouth County, Lissner says she had written or thought about writing since she was 12 years old.
Lissner graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where she wrote for the school paper, the Daily Pennsylvanian. After graduation, she began working as a beat reporter covering Hoboken for the Hudson Reporter newspaper chain, and later was promoted to editor.
In 1997, Lissner attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College in Vermont, one of the most prestigious writing workgroups in the country, a place for people with a passion for the written word.
“I’m constantly writing in my head, even when I’m not writing on paper,” Lissner said.
Lissner had some help from a small Hoboken writers’ group she helped found in 1994. Made up of eight local writers, this group has met every month since its founding, and she often took passages of Carrie Pilby to read there as a sounding board.
“You can lose touch with your own writing,” she said. “You can’t laugh at your own jokes. As a writer, I couldn’t be held in suspense, because I always knew the end.”
She said that during rewrites of Pilby, she tried to take out some of the jokes, only to have other writers tell her that those were some of their favorite jokes.
Lissner said she wrote the first draft of the novel over much of 1999, then took a year and a half more to revise it.
As painful as it was to finally let go of it, she said she had to set the book aside to get perspective on it, and has since gone through a number of new revisions.
“I must have read it more than 50 times,” she said.
The marketing process
To market the book, Lissner sent the first 50 pages to five agents who were willing to look at new writers. The book was rejected by some, but at the same time, several of them liked the writing and wrote long pages of comments and suggestions. Lissner had written other novels that hadn’t been published, and she noticed that the reaction was very encouraging with this one.
One person who worked at an agency liked the book so much, he recommended it to another agent.
“There was a point a few years ago when I thought I would never get a book published,” Lissner said. “I had to accept that it was such a hard process that it might just never happen.” But she kept writing.
As Lissner’s agent was sending the book to publishers, something fortuitous was happening in the publishing industry – books for and about women in their twenties and thirties were climbing in popularity. While Lissner’s book didn’t completely fit this new “chick lit” category defined by books like Bridget Jones’ Diary, it appealed enough to the demographic that Red Dress Ink, a successful imprint founded to take advantage of the trend, made an offer.
Red Dress Ink’s various novels are doing so well, in fact, that books like Lissner’s are getting first printings as high as 100,000 – which is 20 times the normal for a first-time author.
But even before its publication, Carrie Pilby had been optioned for a possible film or a television pilot after a film agent in L.A. took a liking to it. The year-long option recently expired, but could be picked up again by a different company.
The book is part of a two-book deal. The second book, called Starting from Square Two, is scheduled for publication next year.
“I’m currently revising it,” Lissner said.
Publishing her first book has put her in a different frame of mind.
“I’m not rushing to get things out, as much as I once was,” she said.
Lissner said she is taking her time writing her third book, which she says is “completely different” than the other two. She said that the third book has been in her heart for 10 years, and she already has worked on and off on it for several.
“It might take me another year or two to finish,” she said.
Carrie Pilby can be found at any Barnes & Noble, at Symposia Bookstore at 511 Willow Ave. in Hoboken., or on Amazon.com. The Symposia reading is this Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. For more information on the book, click on www.carenlissner.com.