Today, I am honoured to welcome to my blog, the author of “The Story Hour”, Ms. Thrity Umrigar who has a considerable amount of heart-stirring literary fiction under her belt thus far along in her writing career! There was one in particular I still remember finding through my local library: The World We Found. Imagine my happy surprise to not only take part in her blog tour for her newest release, but having the happenstance opportunity to have a conversation with her about her writing life, approach to the craft of creating stories, and of course, bobbles of insight into The Story Hour; the novel of the hour!
Without further adieu, please enjoy where our conversation led us!
Book Synopsis:
From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The World We Found and The Space Between Uscomes a profound, heartbreakingly honest novel about friendship, love, and second chances.
An experienced psychologist, Maggie carefully maintains emotional distance from her patients. But when she agrees to treat a young Indian woman who tried to kill herself, her professional detachment disintegrates. Cut off from her family in India, and trapped in a loveless marriage to a domineering man who limits her world to their small restaurant and grocery store, Lakshmi is desperately lonely.
Moved by Lakshmi’s plight, Maggie offers to see her as an outpatient for free. In the course of their first sessions in Maggie’s home office, she quickly realizes that what Lakshmi really needs is not a shrink but a friend. Determined to empower Lakshmi as a woman who feels valued in her own right, Maggie abandons protocol, and soon doctor and patient become close. Even though they seemingly have nothing in common, both women are haunted by loss and truths that they are afraid to reveal.
However, crossing professional boundaries has its price. As Maggie and Lakshmi’s relationship deepens, long-buried secrets come to light that shake their faith in each other and force them to confront painful choices in their own lives.
With Thrity Umrigar’s remarkable sensitivity and singular gift for an absorbing narrative,The Story Hour explores the bonds of friendship and the margins of forgiveness.
Author Biography:
Thrity Umrigar is the author of five other novels—The World We Found, The Weight of Heaven, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, and Bombay Time—and the memoir First Darling of the Morning. An award-winning journalist, she has been a contributor to the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Huffington Post, among other publications. She is the winner of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard, the 2009 Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Seth Rosenberg Prize. A professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, she lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
When asked about your WIP during your BookSlut Interview you mentioned you were writing “I Begins” which is the very first words of the novel “The Story Hour”. Did you already know the title of the finished version at that point in time OR was it truly the first opening sentence that had already formed?
Umrigar responds: I knew that I Begins would be the first and last lines of the new novel and since it’s the story of a woman’s transformation, I thought it was an apt title for the novel. However, I was also aware that given that it was ungrammatical, the title would confuse readers. I knew I would ultimately have to change it but it was a good working title for me.
You take a sociological perspective whilst carving out the interior lives of your characters, focusing on their particular internal struggles and illuminating their common threads of hope influenced by their actions and choices. Does this come inherently through your own penchant for living through hope whilst embracing cultural differences? Or in combination for a passion for understanding the kinetic struggles of humanity on a whole?
Umrigar responds: I agree with the playwright Tony Kushner when he says that hope is not a choice, it is a moral obligation. I believe positive change is always possible and even if that ultimately proves to not be the case, it makes for a better, richer life if we believe that change is possible rather than start with the assumption that it isn’t. As a writer, I don’t necessary tie up loose ends in a pretty little bow at the end of my novels, but I always like my open-ended endings to allow the reader to at least entertain the possibility of transformation. Without hope, this would be a dead planet.
“The Story Hour” is a testament of crossing boundaries and barriers between patients and their psychologists, a thinly veiled line by most regards, as how close is too close and how detached can you become whilst engaged in therapy? It is a curious quandary to explore, and I was curious if this particular story was centered on a real-life story you’ve overheard (as some of your stories are) or if perhaps it was a thread of your own curiosity to explore?
Umrigar responds: There were two things I was thinking about when I wrote The Story Hour, and in some ways, they may seem like contradictory impulses or assumptions. One was that therapy is primarily a white, middle-class concept, one that is alien to people in many cultures–in the Third World most certainly, where talking about your problems may seem not only indulgent but also futile because poverty, illiteracy etc. are not going to be cured by talking about them. But it is also true in subcultures within Western society–immigrant communities, blue-collar and working class communities.
But at the same time, I was intrigued by the thought that “therapy” was simply a form of storytelling–that is, you are telling the story of your life to another person. By doing so, you are shaping a narrative of your life and this act itself can lead to personal growth and transformation. And that’s why it’s called The Story Hour–that hour a week that Lakshmi and Maggie spend in therapy together is when Lakshmi is allowed to “speak her truth,” tell her own story. It gives her permission, you see, to create her own persona. And then she becomes it.
Randal Wright has been fascinated by the study of families for many years. Seeking ways to raise righteous children led to his receiving a B.S. and M.S. with emphasis in the family area and then a Ph.D. in Family Studies from Brigham Young University. He worked for many years as an Institute director for the Church Education System and taught at BYU in the religion department. He has written several books in the past on family topics including Families in Danger: Protecting Your Family in an X-rated World, Building Better Homes and Families and The Case for Chastity: Helping Youth Stay Morally Clean. He has spoken across the United States, Canada and England and has been a frequent speaker at BYU Campus Education Week and the Especially for Youth program for many years. Randal and his wife Wendy live in Austin, Texas and are the parents of five children and sixteen grandchildren.
Flight to Coorah Creek by 
