Poured Over: Jacqueline Holland on The God of Endings

By Jenna Seery / March 30, 2023 at 6:00 am

“I live on art. I’m an art vampire, that’s how I sustain myself.”

Jacqueline Holland’s debut novel The God of Endings weaves together themes of motherhood, mortality and the human condition in a vampire novel unlike any we’ve seen before. Holland joins us to discuss vampire lore, the power of art, how her novel grew out of a grad school novella, why you should always read the book rather than watch the movie and more with guest host, Kat Sarfas. We end the episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Madyson.

This episode of Poured Over was produced and hosted by Kat Sarfas and mixed by Harry Liang. Poured Over is brought to you by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and the booksellers of Barnes & Noble. 

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Featured Books (Episode)
The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland
White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link
The Shining by Stephen King

Featured Books (TBR Topoff)
Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The Lovely War by Julie Berry

Full Episode Transcript
Kat Sarfas
Hello, I’m Kat Sarfas forever bookseller here at Barnes and Noble. Today we are joined by the brilliant Jacqueline Holland. Jacqueline’s debut novel, The God of Endings is one book I cannot stop talking about. It’s a gorgeous, era spanning novel that explores the complexity of the human condition, the nature of immortality, motherhood, vampire mythology, and so much more. Welcome, thank you so much for being here with us.

Jacqueline Holland

Thank you so much for having me, I’m really excited.

So, something I really love about your novel is that there are so many things you can sort of take away from it. So as a mom, I was really drawn to the Leo and Colette storyline. But then, as a fan of vampire lore, that mythology sort of consumed me. But then I’ve spoken to those that were captivated with the atmospheric nature and the history of the story, and those that really enjoyed the profound questions around life and death. So, this story seems to take on new meaning depending on the reader. I have to ask, what was your inspiration to write it?

That is the best thing to hear because I love all those things. And those elements were very entertaining to me too while I was writing it. I would have to say that the motherhood angle was sort of the origin point for the story. When I started the book, I was a new mom, I had a three-year-old and a six-month-old and I was not myself a fully formed human being. And I was tired, I was exhausted, and I felt so flawed and imperfect and when you’re a mom, we all are familiar with being flawed and imperfect, but when you’re a mom, and you have these people who depend on you, and who are so, so obviously vulnerable and so obviously being formed by you that that typical run of the mill flawed-ness really takes on a feeling of monstrosity, it’s too much power. It’s frightening. And I think like most parents, I wanted to do only good to my children, I wanted to give them only good things, but I couldn’t. I had to give them myself, which was a really messy mix of good things and bad things and things in process. It was a real kind of existential struggle for me myself, this weighing of, after you’ve yelled at your kid, or you’ve had a showdown, you just feel like the most rotten creature on the earth, and you feel like I am failing this, I am messing this kid up, they would probably be better off with someone else, some angelic ideal that doesn’t really exist. And so, when Colette, I call her Colette because that was her name when I first met my protagonist, when she appeared to me and started speaking to me. Which was very much how it happened, her voice came, and she was talking to me, she took on that sort of crisis and that that struggle, but she deliciously got to push it to such extremes, and make it about actual life and death, an actual, you know, monstrosity, and destructive power, mixed with all the love and care and tenderness of any mother. That was where it was coming from at the earliest point with this book.

I love that because it definitely, that’s something that I very much pulled out of it, that kind of forced me, to pause and reflect. But I will tell you that the part where that’s holding the baby, and she’s thinking about her fear and the vulnerabilities of that child, and you talk about like the power of that defenselessness, what that has on the people who care for it, the sort of mixed emotions that love and horror and that every parent goes through. And while you know, in my head, I was like, Okay, I know, this seems focusing on the child is obviously speaking to, you know, larger relationships in life. The whole, you know, better to have lived and loved argument, which obviously takes on a very different meaning when you’re immortal. But I remember thinking to myself, you know, having gone through and it was funny because I have a similar age gap, I would say, between my two. And I remember that feeling that and you can’t even put it into words and I remember reading that scene and being like, yeah, this, all of this, like right here. Like I wanted to just highlight it, and yell back from the rooftops and be like, that’s what I’m feeling, that’s why I’m crazy. Like, this is why all moms are kind of crazy, because it’s just this constant back and forth of you trying to do your best and then not doing your best and then feeling guilty for it when we’re in this kind of spiral of we’re never going to be that perfect, idealistic thought that we have in our mind,

And that feeling that you’re describing, it doesn’t feel like it at the time when you’re experiencing it. But it is a testament to your vigilance for that child, that you don’t even trust yourself. You know, you care about this person so much that you’re even willing to say, no, I am not good enough, like I am a danger too, there’s no one and nothing that is exempt from our vigilance.

But it does it takes you a while to realize that like you said, in that moment, no, you’re like, terrible person. This is the worst. I’m the worst. Talking about that scene and then I guess I’m also gonna like fast forward, you know, the scene later in the novel, I think with Colette and Augustin like way, way later on, I felt like they took on different meaning, again, talking about different things that you pull from the book, I felt like they definitely took on maybe different meaning for me, in my position in my life, where I am, as opposed to maybe someone else who’s reading it. But so I have to ask, were there scenes like this throughout your novel that were maybe more difficult to write or ones that you kind of went in saying, No, this is the point. This is where I’m going to make this.

The most difficult part to write in the whole book without question was the first chapter, that has gone through so many changes. And it’s because I could have written a whole novel about the first chapter, it focuses on the plague of tuberculosis, that swept to New England, and the vampire hysteria that resulted, which is all historically factual, and just mind blowing, and fascinating. That was just like a little backstory to this first chapter of the novel. And so it was super hard to condense that and capture that while condensing it to be just the starting point for the story. And then the beginning is just so important for setting the tone and I really felt like I was condensing what could have been a novel into a chapter. The scene that you mentioned, where Augustin comes back and talks with Colette, that was one of the easiest scenes that I ever wrote. And I teach writing. I’ve taught it in a lot of different capacities most recently at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and I get this question from my students. And I tell them that often the scenes I like best, and the scenes that are easiest to write are the last scenes that I write in revision, and I enjoy them all throughout, by the time you are revising, you have learned your book, you have discovered what it’s about. And you have actually become the expert that you were trying to pretend you were the whole way through, but you were not. Because as you’re writing a book, it is a stranger, it is this thing that you are groping at and you’re trying to understand. But after six years, which is how long it took me to write this book, I finally knew what it was saying and what it meant or what I wanted it to mean. And so I was able to go back and place in some of these scenes that set it, that like— there’s the thing. And that scene is one in particular that it was one of the last scenes that I wrote. And it’s one of my favorite scenes, it just came because I was so familiar with these characters, and so familiar with what they needed to say to each other. That was really fun. And another scene like that is there’s a scene where Colette is taking Leo to a museum, and they discuss art, and they discuss the work the function of light and darkness in visual art. And that was another scene that was very kind of a thesis statement for the book, and it was easy to write. By that time, I had been struggling for six years to figure out how to get that in, where to say that, how to say that and then at that last minute, it was like, oh, this is where it goes and, and there it goes. I don’t love revision; I’ve had a long slow relationship of warming up to revision and so those experiences were really rewarding. And I’ve had mentors who have said, no, revision actually becomes fun at some point. And I was like, Okay, I’ll take your word for it, it was an experience where I was like, oh, yeah, maybe.

I love that, because it is that. You get to those scenes and it’s one of those things where I think, as a reader, you’re already feeling that and then to have it be like, yes, it like confirms everything, and it just makes you feel very whole and very like, okay, yes, yes. Like I am grasping everything in the right way, in the ways, it’s kind of like confirming your feelings and so it’s funny that you were talking about the tuberculous outbreak because that’s kind of leading into my next question about how this novel, obviously, it spans many years, but it’s also you know, many continent different places. And you cover this the New England vampire pandemic, which I will tell you, or panic sorry, I was not aware of, and I will say that that sent me down quite a Google rabbit hole after reading that just talking about consumption and this tuberculosis outbreak. I don’t know sometimes I think that typing things in that, they could come back at you, so I felt like all it took for me was like, one night right after I started reading. And then I felt like I was getting articles all the time, like consuming me. But you’re crossing the Atlantic, you’re in France during World War Two, there’s eastern European folklore, then you go through Alexandria and fast forward to modern times back in the States, I imagined the research for this story took you down many paths. Was there anything in particular, while that was all happening that sort of took you by surprise?

The vampire panic had to be the biggest one. And nobody does know about it, which is just incredible. Because everybody knows about the Salem witch trials. And nobody knows about the vampire panic, which happened 100 years later, this is happening at the end of the 1800s, which is not very long ago.

And I think that I mean, among many other shocking things with it, you were very historically accurate in the book in terms of describing the remedies and things that they did. Because you know, you always think, oh, authors take liberties. And then when I started, I was like, oh, no, that happened. Exactly.

What I wrote sounds like it has to be taking liberties. It does not sound real; it sounds like fantasy. So just to give the listeners and viewers a sense of it, consumption was ravaging the countryside and people became convinced that it was vampires, that their loved dead ones were becoming vampires in the grave and coming back and slowly taking family members one by one. And that’s sort of due to the nature of tuberculosis and how it manifests and how it’s such a slow wasting disease, and it moves from one person to another to another. They dug up graves, and they looked at them, and they were looking for evidence of vampirism, they were looking for rosy cheeks, they were looking for fresh blood in the hearts. And this was a time when there was so much diversity as far as immigration and people coming from all different countries. And there were people from Eastern Europe or other places that had familiarity with vampire lore and became the experts on what to do in these situations. And Mercy Brown is the most famous of the accused vampires, a little girl, but they found so many grave sites where the bones had been crushed, where the skulls had been fractured, where they’d been rearranged, so that they couldn’t crawl in the night. You know, just weird, wild, wild stuff.

No, it is. And that’s why you know, you when you start doing that, you start going back and like, oh, well, what if this is true when it’s not? And then you realize it’s all true. How do more people not know about this? I for one, you know, thinking back to, you know, when I was in high school, and you know, doing a term paper on the Salem witch trials, I would have been very interested to include, we didn’t really get over it, 100 years later we were back at our own tricks like doing kinda in this hysteria. And then yeah, just to say that, that wasn’t that long ago, even when you write it from Colette’s, or I guess, Anna’s, at that time, perspective, I remember there was, I’m trying to remember, obviously the line, but it was she was kind of like, well, this is just how it was, like this is how this is how people acted, and this is what they did, and almost like a complacency, but just kind of like normalizing, like this was normal behavior, and it’s just so mind blowing. And I think to myself, well, I’m sure there are things that we’re doing now that in 100 years, people will just be like, that was horrific. How could we have possibly done that? And our explanation would be well, that was what we were doing at the time. We didn’t know any better. So that brings me to talking about you know, that sort of Eastern European folklore and, you know, vampire folklore. So, I will say that there’s many sub genres of fiction that I love, but I am probably most drawn and unapologetically so to sort of vampire stories. I love them. You could be trying to sell me on something that like I would never in a million years read, like giving me the plot. And then all you have to say it’s like, oh, and then there are vampires in it. And I’ll be like, okay, fine. I’ll read it, like it could be something I would never read. I think there’s just something so fascinating to me around vampire lore and how it’s constantly changing and it’s so easily adaptable to the times as well as the cultural differences depending on where you’re from. What brought you to the mythology around your vampire.

I did a lot of research on vampire lore and what I found, I would say personally that I’m more steeped in lore and in like the history of vampires than I am in the fiction, I discovered that really vampirism, it’s a broad category, it’s a general monster. Basically, the requirement is that you feed on the life of another. And in different places, they looked very different, they behaved very differently. In some places, they felt more like zombies. like they were sort of dumb, they just had this like, forward motion that couldn’t be stopped it and in others, they were more cunning in the way that we see now, but in various like African diasporic folklores vampires are old hags, they fly, vampires have a have been conflated with owls. And so, there was lore about women whose heads would come off in the night and go flying to find victims and would sort of sit on the window and look in, which sounds a lot like an owl. And there’s a lot of lore around mothers dying in childbirth and becoming vampires, they were some of the most feared, dangerous vampires, which is so fascinating, because it’s a recognition of that intensity of drive for life and emotion and that really powerful connection to life that is very tragically worded. And so there was a lot of fear with mothers who died in childbirth. So, all of that is basically what it did was give me a real sense of freedom, in that I felt like, I can do whatever I want with this vampire, I don’t need to feel at all bound by the sort of sort of hardened tropes that we see now. Because what we see in popular fiction, popular media is really kind of boiled down and, and particular, and if there really isn’t a ton of rhyme or reason for why our vampires are always unable to go out in sunlight, and they’re always super sexy. I mean, there is a line of that, but there’s so many other traditions to draw from. So, for me, this is a fantasy novel, but I was going for also kind of hyper realism. And so, this is like, if vampires were actual biological creatures who lived on this earth, what might they be like? So there’s nothing to do with garlic, they have reflections in the mirror, they go out in the day, their biology has been transformed so that they do not have sexual reproduction organs, because that’s not how they reproduce. So it is, is perhaps the least fantastical iteration of vampires that, that I don’t know, that I’m aware of.

It’s a creature that consumes and what do they consume, and how they feel and how and what are their drives, and I think, sometimes taking away the sparkles, and the garlic and the reflection, all that stuff, and kind of drilling it down is almost scarier, because it’s like living among us and that in itself not being able to sort of easily identify a vampire. And if you think about a lot of even Dracula, it was very apparent, and you could tell, and it was just, obviously, over the top and while I enjoy that, to an extent, this is just the core of them that how they consume and, and their life and what they know and how they live, but I think drilling it down makes it very scary.

And also, I mean, I would hope more relatable, because I think we all feel like secret monsters to some extent, you know, we all have hidden things that we are careful not to allow others to see and that we are like, wish I could get rid of these things, it would be really helpful,

But in that respect, and then also learning to live with them because I think that’s a big thing with Colette is that she wants to sort of separate herself, she’s not with her kind in a way that’s, you know, as it’s quiet, she wants nothing to do with that part. I mean, she kind of accepts it that it’s there, but it’s just not embracing it, or at least again, not so many spoilers, but at least not until later talking about again, I guess I keep on saying Colette because that’s how you were saying it but it’s like, well, you know, Ana, Anya, and Colette depending, I guess on the time is the main protagonist in this story. You created so many wonderful characters throughout and it was so you know what you said earlier about how you could have written like a whole book on just that New England vampire panic. Part of me feels like you could have written a whole book on any one of these characters. I mean, Augustin and Mercy and Vano and Ehru, I hope I’m saying that right, Piroska, Paul, Anais, and Hala. I mean, while some of them do make, again, no spoilers, a sort of second entrance, if you will, there were so many characters that I felt like you must have— did you have that, you know, where you want it to maybe explore them more, but realize that they were there for, you know, a purpose in a, you know, a world where anything goes, who gets the spin off series? Because I honestly, I couldn’t, I would want, I would read every single one of them, like, you know, their backstories and you know, what happens to them? Or it’s just, yeah, so I had to, I had to put in a silly one.

I love hearing that because my characters are my love, you know, like, that’s the thing I love, and I worried that there were too many of them. I was prepared to hear, like, pick a story or whatever. But I just wanted all of it in what a vehicle this woman who has this long life and has this really important sort of rhythm of receiving and then losing and having to cope with that. And so it was important to make, what she received, the relationships that she developed, feel deep and meaningful and rich. And if I don’t know everything about their story, I still sense it. And I have a real sense of like, the richness of their personal story. I have been asked, on occasion, if I think there will be a sequel, it’s certainly possible, I did write a couple hundred pages of a sequel way back when I was in grad school and there are ideas that certainly still intrigue me. One of my favorite characters is the grandfather, I really am drawn to him and his story, both his history and his future, just like what are you up to, he is a prominent character in what I have of a sequel, which, it could be totally scrapped, and, you know, whatever. But I’m really intrigued by him. I also really love Ehru, I love them all, but there’s something about these characters who sort of embody what Colette needs to discover more of. These characters who are saying, okay, you can do your couple 100 years of being lost and aimless. But, then at some point, toughen up and move forward, let’s do something with this time that we have. And they’re very unapologetic and I am fascinated by that. So I’m really intrigued by them. Paul has a really special place in my heart, I think about his history, and it’s really heartbreaking to me, I don’t know, who all has a spin off. But I liked the fact that I kind of feel like any of them, any of that. And I would enjoy I did enjoy that because I love them.

They’re there for the moment, they’re there to sort of, you know, serve their purpose in the larger story. But yeah, you can’t help but think about when she would leave a character and you were kind of like, oh my gosh, like, what is going to happen to that person and what happened to them prior to the meeting that led to them here. And it was really interesting, especially, you know, with the, with the grandfather, and you know, particularly in the conversation that she has with Agoston later on and kind of helping that he’s he is living, he he’s accepted his who he is and that might not be a great person, but he’s accepted that that’s who he is. And he’s moving forward with it and he’s living his life. And he’s doing, you know, what he thinks is his purpose. And then even with that route, I love that he’s like an activist. He’s accepted his fate and the time that he has, and he’s going to do all that he can in this world and what he can do, and there’s a lot of light and darkness throughout the novel, and I think you know, even but, you know, between these characters, obviously, you know, getting into the folklore and the art but then even just back and forth with all these sort of, I don’t wanna say ancillary characters, but you know, the side these sort of supporting roles and then and Colette it’s just it’s just really beautiful throughout this so that sort of metaphor that kind of follows you throughout the novel. So in talking about art, art does play a large role sort of throughout Colette’s life and obviously starting at the beginning where she’s with her father carving, gravestones, and then sort of moving on to discovering, you know, more her artistic talents and other mediums and then sort of fostering this love of art in others. So it really inspires her and sort of sustains her. So I have to ask if there’s anything in particular art or otherwise that sort of sustained you, inspires you.

I love art in every form. And I’m married to a fine art painter, my husband has been a visual artist as long as we’ve been together. And I am so lucky that I have a house filled with paintings for free by my favorite artist. I love to think about the crossover between what different arts can do, how they do them, what’s true and visual art and if that’s also true in verbal arts, or in dramatic Arts. I really geek out on that. So, I have been so fortunate to be really steeped in the process of visual art, in theory of visual art, because of my husband, and there’s so much overlap and overlap in a way that feels kind of metaphysical, even, if it’s something as simple as like, composition and like proportion, which those have really fascinating corollaries as well. But they’re just strange things like the way light behaves, and the way that you have to use light to draw attention to certain things and the way you have to use darkness to draw attention to certain things. There’s no real clear reason why that should be true in both the literary arts and in the visual arts, but it is. One of the art lessons that Collette gives is that in, in painting, in visual arts, the brightness, the striking-ness of light, or the lighter pigments in a painting is dependent on the darkness of the dark pigments in the same painting and on their relationship to one another. So, the brightest white you can achieve in a painting is going to be a white that is placed side by side with the darkest dark, you can put in a painting and that contrast is, is beautiful, it’s striking, it draws the eye creates drama, and beauty. You know, you read the book, let’s see, I’m trying to do the same thing in it, there’s a lot of darkness, but the hope is that that contrast that setting them up against each other, actually makes you hungry for the light, and it certainly does in Collette’s life— all that darkness has just made her so, so unbearably hungry, for some goodness for some light or some beauty to break in. I live on art. I’m an art vampire, that’s how I sustain myself.

That’s your inner monster. That’s what you consume. I think that’s why vampire lore is appealing in whatever way you want to; however you want to look at it. But I think you know, and again, you mentioned this in many different ways and art being just one of them. But even when you’re actually talking about the gods, the Chernobog I think I’m saying this correctly. And please correct me if I’m not, and Belobog, how it’s supposed to be light and dark, but are they really just one in the same? You know, and just giving different gifts when you when you need them? Depending on what you need, you know, if you are if you’re searching for that light if you need maybe that darkness or you know, to sort of amplify something else. And so I think it’s just wonderful that many different things that can inspire us. So I love a great opening line. And I know you said you had many revisions with your first chapter, but it was wonderful. And I love a killer closing one. And I think probably you know where I’m going with this. So the final sentence in God of Endings, and it left me with chills and even just thinking about it now, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Like I think it’s just something that you, it stays with you. So, without giving too much away, what kind of brought you to this fantastic conclusion. Did you always know this is where it was going.

I kind of did. The novel started out as a novella that I wrote in grad school just for fun, just because like I mentioned, it sort of appeared to me and I did it. And it was a really fast process, that was just kind of a good time and I didn’t think a whole lot about it. But the novella focused on Collette’s present story in the 1980s, where she’s running this art school for children. And the main conflict is this conflict with Leo and his family. And her being drawn into the dysfunction of this family and having to make some important choices about how she’s going to choose to be in the world, whether she’s going to just sort of turn a blind eye and hide from things or is she gonna take ownership and responsibility and do something. The very earliest form of this book had that line as its ending. And I feel so lucky that the novel happened in this way, because I’m working on another novel, and I’m doing the traditional thing of starting at the beginning and when you get to the end stop, you just have to delay gratification so long. And with having written a novella, I got to have a mini sort of a condensed version of the book, I got to get feedback from my brilliant peers at the University of Kansas, and from my mentors there, and I got really valuable feedback on a whole, and then got to go back and expand. And I like to think of it as having been like an accordion folder, where, you know, I’ve got this, this spine, and then they get to sort of drop in more dreams, and more of the past story is really what, what developed to make it novel length. And that was so fun to get to, like, you know, just kind of run those rabbit trails. So the beginning was not the same, but the last line was the same. And, unfortunately, that was always what it was moving towards. So that never wavered. And I got to just make that endpoint, hopefully more powerful, impactful and, and meaningful by getting to add so much to it. It was also fun like that the first chapter was the hardest, but it was a really fun puzzle. And, and I knew at that point, I was pretty happy with the rest. And I knew like that first chapter, it just, it has to impress, like, that’s what you what, that’s what everyone should be aiming at, in the writing of their first chapter. There’s no room to take your time. So it was fun to think literally, like, what’s the best first line I can put on this? You know, and I don’t know that. I don’t know that. That’s it. But I hope it’s a good one.

No, it’s a good book end. And I will say that leading, leading up, I think, you know, again, it’s always great to have a killer opening line and closing line. But obviously, what’s in the middle has a lot to do with making it so great. And I will say the tension leading up to the final conclusion I think definitely made that last line what it was. I mean, if it had been in any other context I don’t necessarily know it would have been having that feeling, but how it’s how it leads up to it. I will tell you, I really thought you were gonna do us dirty. I really thought I was what I was reading. I was like, something’s gonna happen. I really was like, we’re not gonna get it. We’re not gonna get it. This is not gonna happen. Because I think you just, you know, in life, you’re like, something’s— the other shoe is gonna drop. And if that feeling, and then you feel it for her, and you just don’t want it to happen. And then I don’t know, maybe other people might look at the ending and feel a little odd for but I was I was all in it.

I’m happy to hear that. People have been quite divided on the ending. Which is really which I’m, I’m cool with like, I love to argue endings with people. So, you know, have at it.

But I think it all goes back to what I was saying earlier about how when I talk to people who read this book, everyone comes away with something different. And I think that’s natural for any book when you’re coming to it. Who are you? And what point in your life? What’s going on around you? I think there’s a lot of environmental factors that make us love or despise a book or not agree with something or just kind of love it. And sometimes I think, it’s, I never want to go back sometimes in some books or in books, I do go back and read. And then there’s other books where I’m like, nope, I was this was the place in time that I needed to read this book and I don’t necessarily know if it will change when you’re reading it again. But yeah, I think that that’s what’s so wonderful about this novel. And it’s just, there’s so many different ways that you can take it depending on the person you are, and so many ways that you can argue Collette’s fate, you know what she’s doing with her life.I think it’s just really interesting. And I think it’s very telling, you know, when people start talking about it, about who they are, and what they’re kind of what they’re going through.

And I feel like the question the book is a really live debate, like it’s not a foregone conclusion. And so there is going to be strong feelings to and she argues both sides pretty passionately. And so some people would be like, no, you convinced me from the first and there and other people will be like, oh, gosh, yeah, I see it differently.

Yeah. Oh, no, definitely. It’s definitely a roller coaster. So because I’m always looking for book recommendations from brilliant women who or what are you reading at now? Or what was the last book you read that you just couldn’t stop talking about?

Yeah, so I’ll give two recommendations. One is just for brilliant women. And actually, I have not even read it yet. The day of my book launch, I was so excited to buy Kelly Link’s new book of short stories. Speaking of brilliant, brilliant women. I am obsessed with Kelly Link. I highly recommend everyone read Kelly Link’s new book; I will be reading it. I’m so excited. She is a brilliant woman. And then for a book, I actually have read: The Shining. This for some reason, I had never read it. And I had seen the movie and was kind of so-so on it, but I read it and the book is so different. I mean, in so many ways, it’s the same. But in really fundamental character ways. It’s radically different. They’re not even about the same thing. And I noticed that I really felt like The Shining is a very similar story to mine, because it’s about a parent, terrified by his own monstrosity, his own destructive power, who is forced into close proximity with someone who loves who is incredibly vulnerable. And he is trying to fight his own monstrousness and struggling to contain his own destructive power in relation to his little son. And so, I was just like, oh, my gosh, I had no idea that we had, that Stephen King and I had so much in common.

That this hidden gem was here this whole time.

I had never really heard it discussed in those terms. Everybody loves it, everybody. You know, it’s so many people’s favorite Stephen King novel. But I had never really heard that angle of it. And I just felt like, oh, I think that I get you as a writer a little more than I realized that I do. And it’s just so well done. It’s just really well done.

And this, folks, is why you should always read the book and not just watch the movie.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh, and very, very different experience.

Yeah, it’s, I mean, you can the I have books where I know this is like completely going to be completely random. But I always use it as an example like Bridget Jones’s Diary. I love the movie. And I love the book. They are very different. I love them equally. But they’re different.

That’s the best possible scenario, when you get two for one. It’s not as good when you like one over the other.

But that’s so wonderful. That’s so wonderful. I couldn’t think of a better way to wrap this up. Yeah, read the book, everyone.

Always, always read the book.

Jacqueline, thank you again. Thank you for this propulsive, gut punch of a novel, that’s probably the best way I can describe it. This has been wonderful. The God of Endings is out now.

Thank you so much for having me. This has been awesome.