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I knew the title early on. I generally know a title before I start writing. In Scarlet in Blue, I wanted the title to do more than one thing. Scarlet and Blue are the names of the book’s main characters, a mother and fifteen-year-old daughter who are on the run from a phantom man but using in instead of and is about the concept of one character or person being inside another. This isn’t immediately clear when the book begins but as the novel unfolds it becomes a unifying theme throughout. For example, where it has to do with Blue, who is a pianist, her piano teacher tells her that when playing the work of a famous composer, Beethoven, for instance, she should imagine the composer is inside her, feel his energy and how he must have felt when he played the piece. Scarlet, a painter, employs this same practice. Scarlet and blue are also colors. Color in general figures both in large and subtle ways throughout the novel. Mixing paint. The color red. Blood. The idea of fugitive pigment, or fading pigment, relates to both the impressionist artists that Scarlet studies and models her paintings after, but also the nomadic life of the mother and daughter. To Blue, their constant moves have made her feel like she herself is...[read on]
Q&A with Jennifer Murphy.
--Marshal Zeringue
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