When We Were Young: Christine Sneed in Conversation with Anthony Varallo
One of the many pleasures of reading Anthony Varallo’s fiction is how skillfully he inhabits the points of view of his adolescent and child characters. They aren’t bossy, diminutive adults who tell the real adults how to behave and what to think. Instead, they’re bona fide children and teenagers who see the world as kids believably would.
The Varallo short story that I find myself going back to most often is “The French Girls,” which appears in Out Loud, Varallo’s second collection, which won the 2008 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. This story—about the reaction to three foreign exchange students enrolling at an American high school—spans only two pages, but the author captures with an almost preternatural artistry the nostalgia and treacherous suspense of adolescence. The charm and knowingness of this story are indelible.
In The Lines, Varallo’s fifth book and first novel, the author embodies the adult and child point-of-view characters with similar nuanced humor and sympathy. The Lines is set during the gas crisis of the summer of 1979 and begins when two parents announce their divorce to their son and daughter, ages seven and 10, who subsequently become unwilling witnesses to the family’s demise.
Via email and Google Docs, I recently had the opportunity to correspond with Anthony Varallo about.
