Ask the Author: Stephen Policoff
Answered Questions (5)
Stephen Policoff
I would have to say that Pip and Estella, in GREAT EXPECTATIONS, is my favorite fictional couple. First, that book remains one of my favorite novels decades after I first encountered it. And their fraught, impossible yet unbearably poignant relationship seems to resonate even in as utterly different an era as our own--that they are inextricably bound to one another yet unable to really help one another is both sad and real. And that Dickens felt impelled to provide both an implausibly happy ending for them and a bleaker one just underlines the whole idea of their improbable yet mesmerizing love. That one can love someone--go on loving someone-- yet know that it is useless or at least self-thwarting to do so, is real, tragic, and beautiful to me.
Stephen Policoff
I guess I should ask you how you know about the death of Anna?
COME AWAY was certainly inspired by my daughter's illness and the darkness evoked by the fear of losing her.
COME AWAY was certainly inspired by my daughter's illness and the darkness evoked by the fear of losing her.
Stephen Policoff
As Winston Churchill observed under very different circumstances, "Never give in. Never give in. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never." (It's the 5 Nevers that really make that statement, I've always thought).
Stephen Policoff
The short answer is that when I was discussing my disabled daughter's dire health with a neighbor, he confided in me that when his son was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, he felt as if his beloved son had been whisked away and replaced by a changeling. That sent a shiver down my spine, and propelled me to do some reading and research in the lore of the changeling, which led me back to a poem by Yeats, a painting by the mad British artist Richard Dadd, a medieval legend...and much much more.
Stephen Policoff
I am working on a third novel...it is the 3rd part of an unintentional trilogy, with the same characters and the same mélange of dark domestic comedy and a mild buzz of the supernatural which you will find in COME AWAY.
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