How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Louise Fein's website.
I actually love the title, Book of Forbidden Words! I would love to take credit for it, but it was actually reached with collaboration with my editor. I was playing around with Forbidden Words, or The Forbidden Word, but she came up with Book of Forbidden Words, and I knew that was it. I do think it is a title that gives readers a good idea of what the book is about. It is a celebration of the freedom of speech and the power of the written word. The book is set in two very different time periods, four hundred years apart. Or perhaps they aren’t so different after all. I also feel the themes in the book echo all the way down the years to the present day.
As the title insinuates, there is a manuscript at the heart of this book, and three women who are connected with it. Lysbette Angiers, an ex-nun in the early 1500’s who writes the book, Charlotte Guillard, a Parisian printer who in 1553 preserves the book for future generations, and Milly Bennett who in 1950’s suburban New York, unencrypts the manuscript. Each of the women must fight for their right to have their voice heard, for their words and ideas to matter. Each woman risks everything in pursuit of this freedom, and all of them...[read on]
Q&A with Louise Fein.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
