The entry begins:
The Dark Library is set in 1942, and it is heavily influenced by books and movies of the area, especially the brooding and atmospheric movies of Alfred Hitchcock and the dark suspense novels of Daphne du Maurier. If, like me, you love Hitchcock’s adaptation of du Maurier’s Rebecca, then you know exactly the vibe I had in mind.Learn more about the author and her work at Mary Anna Evans's website.
My protagonist, Estella Ecker, who would much prefer that you called her E, is a scholar of Gothic literature, which she says are stories of “unhappy people in big houses,” so The Dark Library also nods to even earlier novels like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. (I almost called the book Unhappy People in Big Houses.) These are novels that are incredibly cinematic, so I hope you read The Dark Library with mental images of old stone mansions surrounded by overgrown gardens, brooding over the wind-tossed Hudson River.
Because this is a book that has one foot in the present and one foot in the past, I’m going to cast the movie twice, once with actors who are currently working and once with actors working in or around 1942. That’s twice the fun!
The Cast of The Dark Library, Now/Then
Dr. Estella “E” Ecker: Brie Larson/Veronica Lake at 32
Mother: Nicole Kidman/Veronica Lake at 52
Father: Kenneth Branagh...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Floodgates.
Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans (October 2010).
The Page 69 Test: Strangers.
My Book, The Movie: Strangers.
The Page 69 Test: Plunder.
Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans (November 2013).
The Page 69 Test: Rituals.
Q&A with Mary Anna Evans.
My Book, The Movie: The Physicists' Daughter.
The Page 69 Test: The Physicists' Daughter.
Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans (June 2023).
The Page 69 Test: The Traitor Beside Her.
My Book, The Movie: The Traitor Beside Her.
The Page 69 Test: The Dark Library.
Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans.
My Book, The Movie: The Dark Library.
--Marshal Zeringue
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