How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Simon Tolkien's website.
I had no title for my book all the time I was writing it, and last year I started to get worried that I would have to make do with something generic that didn’t do justice to the story. I wanted a title that would be lyrical and mysterious, but would also make sense when the reader sees it appear as a phrase in the text. A tall order! And then, just when I’d started to despair, I found 'the palace at the end of the sea’ buried on page 164! It’s an image for how Michael, the father of Theo, the hero of the story, saw Ellis Island at the end of his family's long hard voyage across the Atlantic from Poland at the end of the 19th century. The huge redbrick and limestone hall glittering in the sunshine is the gateway to a new life in America, a world where the Manhattan skyscrapers hold the promise that anything is possible. But Michael’s dreams disintegrate in the Great Depression, and Theo realizes the hollow irony of his father’s vision when he too passes Ellis Island on a boat leaving New York at the end of Part One. The title thus encapsulates the themes of hope and loss, illusion and disillusion, that are...[read on]
Q&A with Simon Tolkien.
--Marshal Zeringue
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