Q&A: Susan Breen, Author of ‘Merry’
We chat with author Susan Breen about Merry, which sees a mother’s valiant efforts to bring her family the joy of Christmas go haywire when she finds herself haunted by the angry ghost of Charles Dickens. PLUS we have an excerpt to share with you at the end of the interview!
Hi, Susan! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I love dogs, London, ghost stories, Christmas, old books, Charles Dickens and my family, and that’s what my book’s about.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I was the sort of kid who asked my parents if I could go to bed early so I’d have more quiet time to read. So my love of reading began fairly young.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Bullfinch’s mythology (a children’s version)
- The one that made you want to become an author: To Kill a Mockingbird. I wanted to be Harper Lee.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney
Your latest novel, Merry, is out September 23rd! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Mother loses mind in London.
What can readers expect?
Merry’s about how a mother’s valiant efforts to bring her family the joy of Christmas go haywire when she finds herself haunted by the angry ghost of Charles Dickens. So there’s humor, drama, and a lot of scenes in London.
Where did the inspiration for Merry come from?
For the last decade or so I’ve been a mystery writer, with some success and some failure. I was in the middle of writing the fourth book in my Maggie Dove mystery series when I wound up in the hospital with a serious infection. I was there for two weeks. It was a hard time and, in the midst of all that, I got a text from my agent saying that she’d had a dream that I would write an inspirational novel. The idea hit home, and then I spent a year trying to figure out what to write.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Merry has a little dog who she loves and she believes he talks to her. Writing their conversations was fun because I truly had no idea where they would go.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
Writing about Charles Dickens was hard. He was so complicated and people have written volumes about him. So I had to figure out how to get him across in my own voice.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on a new novel set in Concord, Massachusetts.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?
I loved Homecoming by Kate Morton, The Aviator and the Showman by Laurie Gwen Shapiro and Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano.
I’m looking forward to reading Crooks by Lou Berney, Miss Austen by Gil Hornby and The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm by Juliet Nicolson.
EXCERPT
Does Merry Bingham need to put up six Christmas trees this year?
No, of course not. Five would be more than enough.
Neither does she have to have put candles in each of the windows of her pink Victorian house. Or order vintage tinsel from a private supplier in New York City. Or buy presents for everyone at her office, especially given how notoriously particular antiquarian book sellers are. Or try to get her three grown children to smile in a non-snarky way for the annual Bingham Christmas card. Or make homemade sugar donuts to hand out to all the people who drive by her house every year to admire the lights and ask her how much her electric bill is.
This could be the year that Merry Bingham is sensible about Christmas.
She knows she’s supposed to be sensible because everyone keeps telling her so. She’s fifty-five years old, and she’s supposed to be thinking about downsizing and cutting carbohydrates and being careful. She is not supposed to be crawling around on the roof, trying to attach Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer to the eaves. Especially not in the middle of a windstorm, though she does so love the feeling of being up high, the Hudson River stretched out beneath her, waves cresting like little sharks.
She’s never fallen off the roof before! Not even close.
So, all right. She was stupid. And she was lucky the yew bushes broke her fall. Now her ribs are banged up and she had to have an X-ray. She’s back home and totally fine, except her entire body hurts when she breathes in, she feels like she hears a train rushing through her ears.
You’re not twenty-five anymore, her doctor said, which she thought was hostile. As though she doesn’t know that. As though she does not know she is the same age her father was when he died. As though she has not spent the bulk of her life worrying about all the things middle-aged people are supposed to be worrying about. Whether she’ll ever pay off her credit card bills and whether she and her husband will have enough money to retire on and whether her children will ever find happiness. Her beloved children who can’t seem to look at each other without snarling. She knows perfectly well she overdoes it when it comes to Christmas, but how can she not?
Christmas is about a miracle. Christmas is about how the world changed completely over one silent night. Christmas is about joy, redemption, transformation, and yes, bells and whistles and lights and reindeer. Christmas is the exact opposite of being sensible and Merry doesn’t care if she goes soaring right off the roof again and again; she is not surrendering Christmas.
In fact, she comes from a long line of people who do not surrender.
Starting with her ancestor, one little Nora Villard, who at the age of ten, waylaid Charles Dickens on a train on his way to New York City and persuaded the Great Author to give her his copy of A Christmas Carol—which he autographed.
Will you be picking up Merry? Tell us in the comments below!
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