Book Talk: Bausch on private love, tragedy in 9/11’s shadow

[January 02, 2015]  By Bernard Vaughan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Author Richard Bausch has explored unorthodox matters of the heart in his award-winning career. In his latest novel, "Before, During, After," a woman is stranded in Jamaica by the Sept. 11 attacks, unable to reach her fiance in New York.

The woman, Natasha Barrett, is a senator’s aide eager to contact her fiancé, Michael Faulk, a faltering Episcopalian priest who was in New York for a wedding.

While the attacks and what followed frame the novel, it is Natasha’s rape in Jamaica around which “Before, During, After” revolves.

Bausch, 69, spoke with Reuters about the book and being in New York during the attack.

Q: How did this premise of the book come about?

A: It started as a story, and I posted on Facebook that I’m writing one of the darkest things I’ve ever written. It was about a rape ... When the idea came that she goes to Jamaica, I was thinking about 9/11, and it just started to happen.

Q: Why did it take so long after Sept. 11 to write?

A: I never even dreamed I’d write about 9/11. I was there, in New York, and didn’t want to write about it. Then when I started to, all that stuff started coming back.

Q: As a male, did you hesitate writing so graphically about Natasha’s rape and how she coped?

A: No, although I knew I was probably going to catch some shit for it. There’s a whole group of people who think you can’t write about the opposite sex.

Q: Natasha’s parents died in a cruise ship fire when she was young. She lingers on this while fearing Michael’s death, as she walks alone on the beach shortly before she is attacked. Were you suggesting that some people are somehow more prone to suffer tragedy?

A: No, but I’m sure Natasha thinks that. She has learned to expect, since her earliest memories are of crisis, a bad outcome.

Q: The detail-rich sections exploring reactions to 9/11 ring so true. How did you cultivate such authentic material?

A: It was a combination of things, because I was there. The TV thing with Michael came from my own experience. I was in a hotel on 54th Street, and my wife called and said, “Take a look out the window,” and I said, “I don’t see anything, it’s a perfectly pretty day.” My wife said, “Put the TV on.”

(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Matthew Lewis)

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