How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Janet Burroway's website.
Simone in Pieces both describes the heroine’s plight and offers the reader a clue to how to read the novel. Simone has lost her childhood memory in a traumatic war rescue, and must reconstruct a self as herself-from-now-on. Mostly, like all of us, she takes from her encounters with others what she wants and needs to make herself a fulfilled person. The novel uses many points of view, so readers take from each voice what they feel and need from it. My fear about the title was that some might think it meant only “she’s all to pieces” emotionally. Certainly that cliché often applies to Simone, but the emphasis is on the remaking and its complexity. Simone is an “opsimath”—one who begins learning late in life, including learning about...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Bridge of Sand.
The Page 69 Test: Simone in Pieces.
Q&A with Janet Burroway.
--Marshal Zeringue
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