Following up on Ann Angel’s review of How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr, I sent Sara a few questions to get her thoughts on adoption, teen pregnancy, grief, and what she learned through writing her book.
You perfectly juxtapose your two teen characters in How to Save a Life. Jill comes from an intact family, despite her father’s sudden death, and she has a loving (though imperfect) relationship with her mother. Though she’s sexually active, she’s been in a long-term relationship for two years with a boy who loves her. Despite his kindness and loyalty (and despite the kindness and loyalty of most people in her life), Jill has developed a hard, cynical shell, and it colors her perception of the world around her. Mandy, on the other hand, has never known her father, endures sexual abuse, and has a highly volatile relationship with her mother, who places more importance on the men in her life than her own daughter. She also has a one-night stand with a boy and, despite knowing little about this young man, forms a highly idealized vision of who he is and what he might think about her pregnancy. Mandy has the tendency to romanticize her encounters with others, and to assume the best about other people, in direct opposition to Jill, who tends to assume the worst. Can you talk about your choices for these characters? How does it happen that a girl who has everything becomes so cynical, whereas the girl with nothing becomes so idealistic?
Zarr: That’s a really great question. For Mandy, I think a lot of it boils down to how she’s watched her mother live her life and the things her mother has said. Though Mandy’s mom is a lot more hardened than Mandy, she still sort of lives with this idea that there will be a romantic savior for her and Mandy; the key to happiness and being taken care of is all about the right man coming into their lives. If you believe that, then there’s always hope that even if you don’t have it now maybe it’s around the corner, and you can wind up with this romantic and idealized vision of possible futures. It’s a kind of refusal to take responsibility for your own life or deal with the problems in yourself and your situation. If things are going wrong, you just haven’t found the right man. So Mandy, too, is oriented around that, as evidenced by her encounter with and fantasies about the very first man she meets after leaving home—Alex on the train.
On the other hand, Jill is raised with a strong, independent, and educated mother and father. Jill has seen up close that having everything you need doesn’t protect you from pain or loss. I feel like Jill and Robin live in reality, whereas Mandy and her mom avoid it. Living in reality is a good thing, but reality can sometimes be harsh and painful.
There are clearly no “ideal” solutions when a teenager becomes pregnant. But as a result of immersing yourself in this topic, did you become aware of programs, organizations, ideas or people that you feel deserve more attention when it comes to teen pregnancy and/or adoption? Or was there a true story you encountered that influenced the story and that might encapsulate the ideas you’d love to have “out there” about this topic?
Zarr: The way I write is to immerse myself in the characters’ lives, not so much whatever the topic is. I feel like too much research can just distract me from the individual lives of the characters I’m creating. So I didn’t do a lot of research about adoption or teen pregnancy. In the first draft, I wrote the story the way I saw and imagined it, then did just enough research to make sure that what I wanted to happen in the book was within the realm of possibility in the real world. It’s difficult to go back now and remember all of the things I read and thought about as I wrote the book. I do know that every single individual’s experience and context is unique to that individual, both on the birth mother and adoptive parent side. It’s impossible to generalize, I think, or (for me) to think in terms of programs and policies when I’m dealing with a single human character (or real-life person).
In the context of teen pregnancy or unexpected pregnancy, there is so much political hay to be made over the idea of “choice.” I love the way you turn the whole notion on its head in this book with a surprising, hopeful and ending, showing the way that every “family” is created through a series of choices. I would love to hear your comments about the relationship between “family” and “choice” within the context of the book.
Zarr: Typically, the political/cultural baggage that comes with the word “choice” is about abortion. “Pro-choice” people are painted as pro-abortion or anti-life by the other side, and “pro-life” people are characterized as religious nuts who want to take away women’s rights. The whole discussion, for the most part, is grossly oversimplified and people on both sides are demonized. I did reach a point while writing the book where I had to ask myself—why wouldn’t Mandy have an abortion? Especially if that’s what her mother wanted her to do? Her “choice” is not about religious or political rhetoric or even about seeing the baby as a life she doesn’t want to take away. She sees her pregnancy as a catalyst for change. There’s a moment when she reflects on the day her mother took her to the doctor, and they she knows that if she doesn’t have the baby, her life will continue more or less as it has, and that is unacceptable for her.
Obviously, Mandy is kind of winging it and not consciously considering all of these things. But the pregnancy is the most literal, externalized way of showing the need and longing that all the characters share for new life. And it catalyzes an ever-expanding universe of choices for each of the three women. In this particular story, the pregnancy gives Mandy more choices for her life than ending it ever would have.
American society tends to view birth mothers through a prism of negative stereotypes. As a result, they tend to be relatively invisible and/or keep a low profile, despite the burgeoning popularity of “open” adoptions. In your research, did you begin to form ideas about why this is true and what we can do to change it? What can of difference do you think exposure to a fictional character like Mandy can make? Did you encounter any of these negative stereotypes while researching this book? Did you have any real-life encounters with birth mothers that appeared to confirm or that emphatically or partially contradicted these stereotypes?
Zarr: Again, with my “as little research as possible” approach to writing, I didn’t go deep into the topic. However, I did have a roommate one summer when I was in college who had recently placed her baby in an open adoption. I can’t remember how exactly we came to be roommates–I didn’t know her at all and we had little in common. In a way I guess she fit some stereotypes. She wasn’t white, she was young, she didn’t have much of a plan for her life. But what I remember is that she was very attached to her son, and I have a vivid recollection of her sitting down on my bed and showing me her photo album of him with his adoptive family, and with her. It was clear that there was so much love in that situation. It was also clear that there was a good deal of pain for her. And that’s one of the things I think is evident in the book (and in a way, in all my books, as it’s one of my major recurring themes personally): when you risk love and connection, the other side of that coin is pain or the potential for pain and loss. But if you don’t risk the pain and loss, you don’t get to have the love, and that in itself is another kind of pain and loss. I think that is the primary risk/reward equation we all face in life, and adoption happens to be an ultimate picture of that.
Thanks, Sara!
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