对话兰登前公关总监， 畅销悬疑黑马作家阿什莉·奥德兰（下）

对话兰登前公关总监， 畅销悬疑黑马作家阿什莉·奥德兰（下）

【作家简介】
Ashley Audrain 阿什莉·奥德兰
兰登前公关总监， 畅销悬疑黑马作家企鹅
阿什莉·奥德兰（Ashley Audrain），企鹅兰登加拿大前公关总监，曾与胡赛尼（《追风筝的人》）和伊丽莎白·吉尔伯特（《美食，祈祷，爱》）等大牌作家合作。为照顾两个孩子而辞职后，她着手进行文学创作。其重磅悬疑首作《我本不该成为母亲》一举成为聚光灯下的焦点。

【本期核心内容】
在本期节目中，Ashley Audrain继续分享了对她具有意义的另外两件物品：一本叫作I love you forever的插图童书，以及一本名为Forgoten Waltz的小说，并带来了她的另一部作品——The Push。
 
以下内容为对话文稿。
EP2 对话加拿大畅销悬疑作家阿什莉·奥德兰（下）
 
Nihal Arthanayake:
Let's move on to your next object to a book. 
Ashley Audrain:
So it's a children's book called. I Love You Forever by an author who is Canadian Robert Munch. This book is wildly popular here since the day it's been published. It has always been a bestseller here. It is a picture book, and it's a story of a mother who sings the same song to her son every single night, and the book carries us all through the different stages of this son's life. And the words of the song are, I love you forever. I'll like you for always, as long as you're living, my baby, you'll be.
Nihal Arthanayake:
You know what? I almost feel like grabbing my wife now, because we said this to our kids, we read this. I can't remember because it was like 13 years ago.
Ashley Audrain:
Oh really? Wow. So she sings it to him through all the different stages, and every page is a different age, and then we get to the end of the story. And she becomes too old and too sick to sing this to him anymore. And so she calls him at the end of the book and tells him this. And he is making dinner for his own family at that time, and he drives over to her house at night and comes up to her room and he picks her up and rocks her. And he sings the same song to her. And you get the feeling as the reader that this is the last time this is going to happen. And then he goes home to his own baby girl, and picks her up and does the same.
Ashley Audrain:
And it's an utterly heartbreaking book for a children's book. I mean, it really is, but the book is so endearing. It's such an endearing story. And it came out when I was four or five years old, but it was a staple in our house. And I can remember my parents reading me this, and I remember the sadness in them. And actually Robert Munch wrote this after having two stillborn babies, And that song was his way of grieving. And actually despite being a successful author, then his publisher would not publish the book at first, because they thought it was far too dark. And yet it is such a simple book. So there's so much simplicity in how moving it is.
Nihal Arthanayake: Oh, you've brought it back to me. Yes. As soon as you said those live, I was suddenly transported back to that place. Superb. Let's move straight on to object number three, it's a novel, as I said, you're literary geek.
Ashley Audrain:
I am. Yes.
Nihal Arthanayake: 
So of course. It would be lots of books involved in our conversation today. Why is the Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright an object you really wanted listeners to the Penguin Podcast to know about?
Ashley Audrain:
Well, I have a very, very vivid memory of reading this book, and I will say I actually have a terrible memory for most things. And so this sits with me so strongly, and has always told me something and I read it. I remember exactly where I was sitting, I was actually on vacation. It was more than 10 years ago, I was in Thailand in a hammock when I read this book. And I remember the feeling of finishing the book and having this overwhelming conviction that I was going to be a novelist. I needed to be a novelist, I had to write a book and I had to pursue this. And I'm not exactly sure about what about that book spoke to me so strongly besides the fact that Anne Enright is obviously a very genius writer, and it is a fantastic book, but it's not even the plot or any, or the characters or the scenes that I can remember.
Ashley Audrain:
It is the feeling of re it. And it is that feeling that you get when you feel a little bit electric, when you feel a little bit buzzing with a revelation or an awareness, or I think we've all can relate to that feeling at some point where you just, you feel full, you feel very full and alive and you feel conviction in something. And that is just how I felt after reading this. But she does write in the book. The book is about an affair and a marriage. And from a woman who doesn't have children, and she has an affair with a man who has a child, and it's about this affair, how it starts and how it ends. And the character his name is Gina. She is such of what we would consider a flawed-female character.
Ashley Audrain:
I hate the idea of unlikable characters. Because I think that's what makes people so interesting, but she is that classic what we would consider to be this unlikable character. She's actually also quite disgusted by the idea of motherhood. And I think there was something about the way Enright chose to portray a woman like that, that really spoke to me. And that really inspired me.
Nihal Arthanayake:
How do you replicate that feeling within your own writing? Is it possible to?
Ashley Audrain:
Yeah. I don't know that I can replicate that or I don't even know that I can feel that way ever again. And I don't know that I could ever capture that in my writing. I think there's a magic to that kind of a feeling, like it's a bit of a many different elements having to come together to give you that very specific kind of inspiration, and kind of feeling that you might only get a handful of times in your life. So I don't know that I could ever capture that or feel that again. Yeah. I don't know.
Nihal Arthanayake: 
Well, look, there's a brilliant bit in the book where Blithe buys a portrait of a mother and son to hang in her own child's bedroom. Let's take a listen to that. Now, Ashley,
Marin Island:
On the way home, I walked by a woman setting up a small flea market stand on the side of the street. She leaned a stack of old paintings against the lamppost. As she put colored dots on the backs to mark the prices. She pulled out one in an elegant gold frame and looked at it thoughtfully deciding how to price it. I stood behind her and found myself, clutching my chest as I took the painting in. It was of a mother sitting with her small child on her lap, the rosy baby dress, white and cupping his mother's chin gently as she glanced down. One arm was around the child's middle, and the hand of the other held his small thigh. Their heads touched. There was a peacefulness to them, a warmth and comfort. The woman's long draping dress was a beautiful peach with burgundy floret.
Marin Island:
I could barely speak to ask her the price, but it didn't matter. I had to have it. I'll take that one, I said, as she put it back in the pile. The oil? She took her glasses off and looked up at me. Yes. That one, the mother and the child. It's a replica of a Mary Cassatt. Not an original of course. She laughed as though I should know how absurd it would be to have an original Mary Cassatt. Is that her in the painting, the artist? She shook her head. She was never a mother herself. Maybe that's why she liked to paint them so much. I carried the painting home under my arm and hung it in the baby's nursery. When you came home that night to find me straightening the frame on the wall, you stopped in the doorway and made a noise, a humph. What you don't like it? Not your typical nursery art. You hung pictures of baby animals and violets room. Well, I love it. I wanted that baby, that cupped face, that chubby hand on mine, that palpable love.
Nihal Arthanayake: 
That was a reading from The Push written by Ashley Audrain and read by Marin Island. The audio book is available to buy now, and there's a link in the program notes of this episode, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. 
 Nihal Arthanayake: 
Ashley, it's been a pleasure talking to you today.
Ashley Audrain:
Thank you so much, Nihal, I love talking to you the first time that we spoke for your radio show, and it's been really lovely having this conversation. So thank you.