I received a strange and wonderful letter the other
day, from two readers in Italy named Alberto and Elisa. They had read the first
book in my trilogy, The Shadow of
Malabron (in Italian, L’ombra di
Malabron) and wanted to let me know what the book had meant to them. It
seems that the story of Will and Rowen reflects their own lives in certain
coincidental ways. They told me that Alberto shares the same birthday with Will Lightfoot, and that as he grew up Alberto saw “his dreams break into a thousand
pieces like mirrors” much in the way that Will’s life seems to have shattered
after his mother’s death (the tree hung with shards of mirror becomes a symbol
in the book of that event).
Alberto and Elisa met by chance much the same way that Will
and Rowen do in the novel, and they even felt that my description of these
characters resembles them.
I’ve had similar experiences in the past, in which readers
told me that incidents or characters in my books mirror their own lives. After
I published my first novel, Icefields,
I met a man who had fallen into a crevasse on a glacier, much as my main
character, Doctor Byrne, does in the book. And the result of this accident was
a profound change in the life of this man. Much as it was for Byrne in the
novel. Talking to this man I had the strange feeling that my own fictional
character had come to life before me.
As a reader myself I’ve had such experiences, too, finding deep
and surprising connections between my own life and certain books. I don’t know
what to think about these kinds of coincidences and connections, other than
that they must have much to do with Story itself, and how our own lives are
woven of stories (the stories we tell ourselves, or are told by others, or find
ourselves in, the stories of history and culture and religion…). As Elisa said in her message, “the universe
works with us in ways that the human mind cannot even dream.” I believe that’s
true. And I believe that stories are one of the ways that we attempt to dream
the universe and understand how it works.
I'm still putting the finishing touches on the third book of the trilogy, and now I find myself in the strange situation of wondering whether the adventures of Will and Rowen in Book 3 will in some way continue to mirror the story of these two readers.
Thank you for the magical letter, Alberto and Elisa.
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