Q&A with Alina Adams

From my Q&A with Alina Adams, author of The Nesting Dolls: A Novel:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

There is a funny story behind the title of my book. I originally called it Love Is Not a Potato, after the first line of the book, and a Russian expression (Love is not a potato. When it goes bad, you can't throw it out the window.) My agent thought it sounded like a children's book, so I changed it to Mother Tongue, to highlight how difficult it is to communicate between generations even when you speak the same language - and especially when you don't. My editor, however, felt that it sounded like a nonfiction title, so we went back to the drawing board. I eventually asked my friends on Facebook to suggest a title, and one of the suggestions was The Nesting Dolls. Nesting dolls are dolls who live one inside of the other, and The Nesting Dolls is the story of three women who...[read on]

Visit Alina Adams's website.

Q&A with Alina Adams.

--Marshal Zeringue