I’m Interested in People: A Guest Post by Kate Greathead
If you don’t know a George, you might be the George. Kate Greathead (Laura & Emma) presents young boy brimming with potential, and takes readers along through two decades of his awkward, disappointing and disgruntled life. Read on for Kate’s exclusive essay on the inspiration for The Book of George, down below.
Hardcover $28.99
The Book of George: A Novel
The Book of George: A Novel
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Hardcover $28.99
If you don’t know a George, you might be the George. Warm, wry and witty, this is a story about untapped potential and masculinity in the modern day.
If you don’t know a George, you might be the George. Warm, wry and witty, this is a story about untapped potential and masculinity in the modern day.
Above all I am interested in people. All of my writing begins with a person I’ve known but not fully understood. A person for whom my curiosity is matched by fondness and exasperation.
Such is the case with The Book of George, though before I get into that I’d like to confess that this novel is also somewhat inspired by a book for toddlers. When my kid was two, one of his favorite books was Oh No, George! by Chris Haughton, about a dog named George whose owner asks him to “be good” while he leaves the house for a few hours. George is not good, and when his owner returns the house is a mess. Eager to redeem himself, George makes a show of being good for the rest of day. When confronted with a series of temptations, he resists, resists, resists—until the final page, when he comes across a lovely pile of garbage. George loves eating garbage. What will he do? are the book’s final words. (Eat it, of course, was my interpretation.) So many books, children’s and adult, are predicated on the assumption that experience plus reckoning equals growth. We expect our protagonists to overcome their obstacles! I admired this story for bucking the convention, for posing the question of whether such evolution is realistic. Certainly it is not so linear.
Like George the dog, the obstacles faced by the protagonist of my book come from within. Young, healthy, educated, brimming with ambition and talent, George has had every advantage in life and he knows it. And yet he is unable to cash in on his potential. There’s a place where self-loathing meets delusions of grandeur, and George spends a lot of time there. George wants to be good, he wants to be great, and yet… More than failing to thrive, he perpetually disappoints. In every aspect of his life—work, relationships, taking care of his body—he falls short of meeting the most basic expectations.
Having known a lot of Georges in my young adult years, I sort of assumed it was a phase a certain type of guy goes through after college, but as the years rolled by and the Georges continued to languish, I began to wonder if there was something more to it. These guys grew up being told they could do anything, be anything! What went wrong? Is there any hope for them? Are their parents to blame? How can I prevent my son from becoming a George? How do I make sure I don’t backslide into my own inner George-ness?
The Book of George is my attempt to understand—with some compassion—the Georges of the world.
